Washingtonpost.com article on Online Learning

Local example of online learning to pool resources and extend learning.

Md. School Joins Test of Online Courses Tailored to Girls

By Michael Birnbaum

When the Online School for Girls flickers to life this fall on computer screens across the country, students will take part in an unusual experiment that joins two trends: girls-only schooling and online teaching.

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Slideshow from CES Gala 2009

If the video does not appear, try clicking here to go directly to video.

Eighth Grade Submits Print Yearbook to Publisher

One of the most satisfying moments of the year for the eighth grade is when they are finished with the yearbook. After months of planning, photographing, journalling, designing, collaborating, organizing, editing, problem-solving, etc., the yearbook is submitted to the yearbook publisher.

Here's a photo of the eighth graders' ceremonial "last click" to submit the yearbook to the publisher.

Creating a 21st Century Classroom

Good teachers spend a considerable amount of time reflecting on their teaching, seeking ideas and new knowledge to inform their teaching and learning, and developing a personal philosophy of education to guide  their practice.  One of my most trusted friends sent along the following tips that articulate much of my current thinking and what I aim to put into into practice as best I can. 

IDEO'S Ten Tips For Creating a 21st Century Classroom
(published by Metropolis magazine, February 2009)


1.  Pull don’t push. Create an environment that raises a lot of questions from each of your students, and help them translate that into insight and understanding. Education is too often seen as the transmission of knowledge. Real learning happens when the student feels the need to reconcile a question he or she is facing___ and can’t help but seek out the answer.

2.  Create from relevance. Engage kids in ways that have relevance to them and you’ll capture their attention and imagination. Allow them to experience the concepts you’re teaching firsthand, and then discuss them (or better yet, work to address them) instead of relying on explanation alone.

3.  Stop calling them “soft” skills. Talents such as creativity, collaboration, communication, empathy and adaptability are not just nice to have; they’re the core capabilities of a 21st century global economy facing complex changes.

4.  Allow for variation. Evolve past a one size fits all mentality and permit mass customization both in the system and in the classroom. Too often, equality in education is treated as sameness. The truth is that everyone is starting from a different place and going to a different place.

5.  No more sage on stage. Engaged learning can’t always happen in neat rows. People need to get their hands dirty. They need to feel, experience, and build. In this interactive environment, the role of the teacher is transformed from the expert telling people the answer to an enabler of learning. Step away from the front of the room and find a place to engage with our learners as the “guide on the side.”

6.  Teachers are designers, let them create. Build an environment where your teachers are actively engaged in learning by doing. Shift the conversation from prescriptive rules to permissive guidance. Even though the resulting environment may be more complicated to manage, the teachers will produce amazing results.

7.  Build a Learning Community. Learning doesn’t happen in the student’s mind alone. It happens through the social interactions with other kids and teachers, parents, the community, and the world at large. It really does take a village. Schools should find ways to engage parents and build local and national partnerships. This doesn’t just benefit the student___ it brings new resources and knowledge to your institution.

8.  Be an anthropologist, not an archaeologist. An archaeologist seeks to understand the past by investigating its relics and digging for the truth of what was. An anthropologist studies people to understand their values, needs and desires. If you want to design new solutions for the future, you have to understand what people care about and design for that. Don’t dig for an answer___connect.

9.  Incubate the future. What if our K-12 schools took on the big challenges that we’re facing today? Allow children to see their role in creating this world by creating for topics like global warning, transportation, waste management, health care, Poverty, and even education. It’s not about finding the right answer. It’s about being in a place where we learn ambition, involvement, responsibility, not to mention science, math, and literature.

10.  Change the discourse. If you want to drive new behavior, you have to measure new things. Skills such as creativity and collaboration can’t be measured on a bubble chart. We need to create new assessments that help us understand and talk about developmental progress of 21-st century skills. This is not just about measuring outcomes, but also measuring process. We need formative assessments that are just as important as numeric ones. And here’s the trick; we can’t just have measures. We have to value them.

Thoughts anyone?

How Erin Sees It

CES eighth grader Erin H.'s photo "Exit" has been selected by Frank Goodyear (Assistant Curator of Photography at the National Portrait Gallery) for inclusion in VisArts' upcoming exhibition "How You See It." Ninety-eight students from Maryland and DC submitted more than 160 photos, and Erin's was one of only 20 that were chosen. Nice work, Erin!

"How You See It" is a juried exhibition of photography, including work by high-school and middle-school students in or around Washington.

Selected works will be printed and hung in the VisArts Portfolio Gallery from March 10 to May 23, 2009.

CES students learn photography and imaging skills as part of the CES' Technology Program. In addition to photographing , journaling, and producing the school yearbook, CES 8th graders are also publishing an online journal of writings and images. Contact John Hartranft (301-315-7142 or jhartranft at cesstaff dot org) to learn more about CES' Technology Program.

To learn more about VisArts, visit http://www.visartscenter.org/

Photosynth

Check out the CES computer lab using Photosynth technology >>

Or paste the following URL into your IE7 or Firefox web browser:
http://photosynth.net/silverlight/photosynth.aspx?cid=5c5492f9-251d-4372-9a3b-3e4abbd39dc7

You'll need to install the free software Silverlight to view the tour.  Simply click on the Install Silverlight icon on the viewer screen.  It takes less than 30 seconds to install Silverlight.

Opportunity for Young Photographers, Deadline is Jan 9, 2009

The announcement below comes from VisArts in Rockville... (also in PDF form here).

By the way.. a few CES students will be submitting their photos.

“How You See It”
A juried exhibition of photography, including work by high-school and middle-school students in or around Washington.

VisArts announces an amazing opportunity for Washington-area high school and middle school photographers to have their work juried by Frank Goodyear and potentially exhibited at VisArts along with professional work. Submissions are due by January 9th.

To enter, simply submit any original photo image shot since 2006. Digitally manipulated images man be included. Selected works will be printed and hung in the VisArts Portfolio Gallery from March 10 to May 23, 2008. Some works may be shown in rotation via projector. Student works will not be offered for sale through our gallery.

Submission Requirements:
• Artists must live in the Washington, DC Region
• Minimum 300dpi and suitable size to be printed as an 8” x 10” piece.
• Digital images must be accompanied in email by the following:
(1) Artist name
(2) the image title
(3) artist age
(4) current school
(5) the name(s) of the artist’s photography or art teacher(s)
(6) “Photo Submission” in the e-mail subject line.
• Your name should not appear anywhere on the image itself. Accepted photographers will be expected to supply an Artist Statement by Feb. 13.
• Maximum two submissions per student.

Submissions should be sent to Tim Hampton at: digitallab@visartscenter.org

Calendar:
Jan 09 Submission Deadline: digitallab@visartscenter.org by Jan 30 Notification of selected students
Feb 13 Artist Statement Due
Mar 05 Opening reception at VisArts, 12-3pm
May 09 End of show

Influential People

Today, the CES 8th graders posted several paragraphs to their Online Yearbook that describe people that have influenced their lives here at CES, or have been memorable in some way. Thought you might be interested in reading what they have written... see http://cesyearbook.blogspot.com/

Oh, by the way...they weren't allowed to use the words "I" or "me" when writing their paragraphs, nor were they allowed to name the person.

CES Yearbook: Visit the Online Journal

I hope you have the opportunity to visit regularly the CES Yearbook Online. The 8th Grade is publishing this online journal as part of their year-long project to document CES and publish content using various media, including a 64 page print yearbook.  On the CES Yearbook Online, you'll find items that won't necessarily make it into the print version of the yearbook. The students have posted slide shows, writings and news items with photos to capture some of the happening around CES.

The capstone for the CES Technology Program is the school yearbook. Eighth graders apply a variety of creative,and technical skills to chronicle and publish the print and web versions of the school yearbook: journaling, writing, theme development, research, photography, imaging, graphic design, web design/development, and information management. The students learn "real world" business skills, such as collaboration, project management, communication, problem-solving, decision-making, creativity/design, quality control, and integrity.

Students in grade 4 through 7 progress toward achieving the competence and confidence necessary to complet a project at the level of responsibility, complexity, and resiliency that publishing a yearbook demands. Students construct their understanding of technology concepts, and learn how to apply their knowledge and skills in a project-base learning environment that Mr. H's middle school computer classes offer.

Recycling 2nd Graders?

Well, the CES 2nd graders aren't actually being recycled...

They are recycling here at school AND have shared with us all a terriffic slide show of their field trip to the Recycling Center.  Check it out on Mrs. Morgan's newsletter, Lower School Computer Lab Showcase.

No Longer Just The Old Typing Class...

A recent article published in eSchoolNews hit home to me. It addresses issues that educators grapple with on an ongoing basis, particularly relating to how we prepare our students for the world today and in the future. Those of us involved with educational technology have seen a shift in emphasis in the national standards for technology education during the past several years (see ISTE National Educational Technology Standards), from a focus on lower-level skills to higher-level critical thinking skills (creativity, innovation, problem-solving, decision making). The eSchool News article is food for thought as we continue to review the focus of CES' Technology Program curriculum and some of the goals that we are working toward in the middle school computer lab.

Here's an excerpt, with a link to the full article below.


"A lot of people think the skills that students need to learn for the workforce and the skills they need to learn to be a good citizen are two separate sets. But they're not. What makes a student successful in the global workforce will make a person successful at life.... [Employers] . . .don't mind training employees in technology--but you can't teach someone how to think."

Tony Wagner from Harvard argues for a list of seven "survival skills" that students need to succeed in today's information-age world, taken from his book The Global Achievement Gap: Why Even Our Best Schools Don't Teach the New Survival Skills Our Children Need--And What We Can do About It. It's a school's job to make sure students have these skills before graduating, he says:

1. Problem-solving and critical thinking;
2. Collaboration across networks and leading by influence;
3. Agility and adaptability;
4. Initiative and entrepreneurship;
5. Effective written and oral communication;
6. Accessing and analyzing information; and
7. Curiosity and imagination.

Story: http://www.eschoolnews.com/news/top-news/index.cfm?i=56127

CES Family Fall Festival Photos

I'm a fan of good photographs, and the photos in the slide show below capture some moments from CES' recent Family Fall Festival. These are really good photos!

So, what's the "techie" story behind sharing these photos here on the CESTJ?

CES Parent and talented photographer Eric Jensen (who, by the way, provides insightful and helpful hands-on support for our school's technology program), suggested that we test a feed from the photo sharing site Flikr to create the slide show below. Our main CES website is a bit limiting when it comes to uploading, storing, sharing, and displaying photos, hence our little experiement here on the CESTJ. Let us know if you find this content to be of value to you. Feel free to email me or leave a comment to this post.

Thanks Mr. Jensen!

Boo!

Some interesting characters were seen around CES on Friday, October 31. Mr. "Retro Man" Renfroe greeted families during the morning carpool and was seen strutting his stuff throughout the day. The third grade students were nowhere to be seen during their regularly scheduled computer class, while goblins, alter egos, famous personalities, and storybook characters took their place. Who are these people?

CES Election Day 2008

CES students in grades 4 through 8 lined up outside the Jefferson Building computer classroom to vote for President and 3 ballot referendums today. Outside, students politicked while inside, 8th graders served as election workers and poll watchers.

For those of you following the techie side of things, we used SurveyGizmo to create the ballot, which we embedded onto our Cardinals' Nest Wiki space. We were able to compile results in real time using SurveyGizmos' reporting tools. Mr. Hartranft is happy to report no computer glitches (whew!).

Thanks to Mrs. Harkins for coordinating this important civics lesson!

Take the 4th Grade Pie Preference Poll

Taking a break from their keyboarding practice, the 4th grade launched a Pie Preference Poll on the 4th grade page of the Cardinals' Nest. Help the 4th grade's market research by voting your preferences...'tis the season for pie!

Hispanic Heritage Month Gallery Update

We figured out how to add audio to our Cardinals' Nest web space (actually, it's a wiki..a web 2.0 tool ), and are pleased to add student voices to the Hispanic Heritage Galleries. Thanks to CES Spanish teacher Marta Bou, the students are recording a greeting en español. Take a look (and a listen!!!) to the 5th grade gallery and the 6th grade gallery. We have a bit more recording to do, so keep checking back in....

Tener un buen día, amigos!

6th Grade Celebrates Hispanic Heritage Month

The CES 6th graders, with guidance of Mrs. Myers, researched prominent Americans with Hispanic roots and wrote a brief biographies based on their research.

During Mr. H's 6th computer class, Mary Beth S. helped to process the text files to publish on on our "electronic bulletin board".... you can read these biographies on this page of the Cardinals' Nest web space.

More to come: The 6th grade recorded their voices to produce an audio companion to the text on the Cardinals Nest gallery. We're trying to figure out the best way to accomplish this. Also, look for a similar gallery on the 5th grade page.

Q & A: What is Web 2.0?

More than a few people have asked me this question in one form or another, and for a variety of reasons, so I thought it merits an answer here in the CESTJ.

Here's a pretty good entry from Wikipedia:

Web 2.0 is a term describing changing trends in the use of World Wide Web technology and web design that aims to enhance creativity, information sharing, collaboration and functionality of the web. Web 2.0 concepts have led to the development and evolution of web-based communities and its hosted services, such as social-networking sites, video sharing sites, wikis, blogs, and folksonomies. Read more >> (source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Web_2.0 , accessed 6 October 2008)

OK, but what does "Web 2.0" have to do with CES?
Quick Answer: communications, collaboration, sharing

Tell me more...How is CES using Web 2.0 applications to enhance/extend learning at CES?

This CES Tech Journal newsletter is actually a blog published using Google Blogger. Did you know that you can subscribe to articles posted on the CESTJ? Click on the subscribe button and choose how you wish to receive the articles using your RSS reader.

We're publishing student-produced multimedia on the Cardinals' Nest, which uses a collaborative publishing tool called a wiki. Not much on the Cardinals' Nest yet, but be sure to check back during the year for more student-produced video, webcasts, images. Think of the Cardinals' Nest as the Tech Department's bulletin board....except we can post slide shows, sound and video!

Another promising Web 2.o technology is the social networking tool Ning. The families in Mrs. Beaudoin's preschool Bugs class have created their own Ning to share photos, communicate with each other, post calendar items, and more. You must be a member of the Bug's Ning (approved by the Ning administrator) to view any of the content, so there are safeguards in place.

What can I do to understand these technologies better?
From my experience, and in talking with parents and teachers within and outside the CES community, the best way to understand these technologies is to jump in and test the waters, so to speak. Be prudent about your content, practice good Internet safety, and consider how you can apply these tools to add value to your extended network.

Your comments are welcome.

Learning Networks @ CES: Big and Small

First, the BIG...

CES is fortunate to have Mr. Jack Shabe's expertise this school year. Mr. Shabe has contributed a considerable amount of time helping us troubleshoot technical problems with our computer network, classroom computers, and other "techie" things. He and Mr. Eric Jorgensen, CES' network administrator, are contributing professional services to the school valued at more than $20,000 (!!!)...certainly a significant amount of savings to the school. And their work is often done behind the scenes without notice. For their BIG contribution to our school's technology infrastructure: THANK YOU!

Now, the small...



Mr. Shabe set up the school's digital microscope in the middle school science lab. The microscope is connected to a computer that enables students to see items on slides, capture images and video, take measurements, and explore the world at a smaller scale.


Perhaps our 6th graders will make an video featuring our friendly neighborhood protozoa and post it to their 6th Grade Video Arcade???

6th Grade Video Arcade, Featuring Frank's Music Animation

Sixth Grader Frank M. produced a music video that brings his stick figures to life. For all of you Jonas brothers Fans, here's an opportunity to see a fun animation choreographed to a good tune. See below, or check it out on the Sixth Grade Video Arcade page on the Cardinals Nest web space.

Good work, Frank!