Wondering what your child is doing at school with technology? Feeling like they are on technology fast forward and wondering how to catch up? Looking for a place to discuss these issues and learn more about the exciting new tools your children are using in school?
Then please join your ES Technology and Literacy Team in the Learning Hub Technology Zone for our Technology Coffee Mornings! The sessions will run on the first Wednesday of each month at 7:30 (as listed in the school calendar) and our first session is Wed, September 3rd!
Our first session will be a brief overview/introduction of our technology and literacy team and our approach to technology education at ISB, as well as an introduction to some of the new technologies that are changing the face of education around the world. Get ready for an exciting introduction to the world of Web 2.0!
What: An introductory session to technology and literacy at ISB, as well as the world at large! When: Wednesday, September 3rd at 7:30 am Where: The Learning Hub Technology Zone
We are thrilled to see so many students and parents enjoying our fabulous Learning Hub! Over the course of the school year we will keep you updated about exciting events, news and information related to the Hub via Panther Paws parent e-newsletter as this blog.
To start off the year we have a few important announcements:
Date Change: Starbooks: Our first evening event in the Hub, Starbooks, will now take place on Thursday, 25 September at 18:30 due to a scheduling conflict. Our apologies for the change.
Parent Tech Coffee Mornings: On the first Wednesday of every month we will host an informal coffee morning for parents to share new and exciting developments in the world of technology that we will implement here at school. Recaps of each session will be posted here on the Connect 2.0 blog and in the Panther Paws. Our first session will be Wednesday, September 3 at 7:30 am in the Project Zone. All are welcome to stop by and join the discussion!
Hub Expectations:Creating a Culture of Learning in the Hub: We know that the Hub is a popular place after school, and we love to see students and parents reading and learning together. We kindly request that all parents, drivers, nannies and mae bans model appropriate behavior in this space. It is important that students do not see adults “napping” or “chatting” or just “hanging out” in this space, so that the focus on learning is modeled at all times. If adults need to wait for children after school, we kindly request that you please use the benches outside the Elementary Office.
E-mail and Computer Access for Parents: We understand that technological connections are essential for all families, especially those that are new to ISB and Bangkok. Stephen Lehmann, our IT Director, has implemented a wireless laptop zone dedicated to parent use in the Cafeteria and Main Library. Please bring your laptop to the EdTech Office for access. Computers are also available for parent use in the Main Library. We are asking that the computers in the ES Learning Hub be used by students and teachers only.
Please help us continue to focus the culture of our space by reminding students that the Learning Hub is a place for learning – not a playground. We look forward to seeing you here, learning!
This morning we hosted our final Parent Coffee Morning of the year. We shared a brief overview of the 21st century tools that we’ve been using here in the ES all year, along with an introduction to some of these exciting tools.
The first tool we discussed is blogging:
We love blogging as a tool to extend classroom conversations beyond school time, to engage students in authentic writing for a real audience, to develop communication skills, and to document reading and writing development. There are quite a large number of class, student and administrator blogs here in the ES – check out all the links on the sidebar at right to read them!
Next we talked about wikis:
We love wikis for collaborative knowledge building and working together on a focused task with partners around the world. We talked about the benefits of being able to view the entire history (every edit of every wiki page) of all wikis to track student growth, the ease of using the discussion feature to communicate with others beyond our classroom about our learning, and the many different ways to track changes on a wiki through e-mail updates or RSS.
Then we covered RSS:
We love RSS for bringing all the information we want directly to us! We talked about using RSS to track any work your children do with web 2.0 tools at school by setting up a Google Reader account, you can actually follow along with any blog posts, wiki pages, or podcasts that your children create, as soon as they create them. This is a great way to change the typical after school conversation starter from “What did you do at school today?” to “I saw that you added a new blog post at school today, why did you choose to post about that topic?” The possibilities for staying connected with their learning are endless!
Finally, we discussed podcasting:
We love podcasting for the ability to build oral language skills, increase depth of understanding about oral communication, and the ease with which you can take podcasts with you wherever you go. Podcasting has made a huge impact on the language development of our ESL learners here at ISB and is an easy way to have students reflect on their learning in a format that is exciting, engaging and comfortable to them.
As you can see, there’s a lot going on at the ES! You can keep track of all these exciting learning experiences here on the Connect 2.0 blog.
Get ready for more Parent Coffee Mornings on the first Wednesday of (almost) every month next school year! These events will be formally noted in the official school calendar to make it easier for you to plan ahead. We hope you come back from your summer holidays rested, refreshed and ready to learn even more about 21st century literacy here at ISB!
As with every year, we are ending this school year in the Learning Hub with a full inventory of all materials.
Our inventory process will begin on May 26th, which means that all items borrowed from the Hub (books, audio books, everything) must be returned no later than May 16th.
In addition, we will stop checking out books on May 16th. This means that there will be no check-out from May 16th until June 9th (at the latest).
Please ensure that you return all Learning Hub materials by this important deadline.
The LH Team thanks you in advance for your support!
After another successful Parent Coffee Morning (a recap of last week’s session due to popular demand), we are ready for our final Coffee Morning of the year!
Our final discussion will take place on Wednesday, May 21st at 7:30 am in the Learning Hub Project Zone. Thanks to the creative participants in our session this week, we have decided our theme for the final session will be “a year in review.” We will cover some of the most important topics of the year, share some of the most important tools that are being used in our ES classrooms, and highlight some fantastic student work that utilizes these tools.
Even if you haven’t come to a Coffee Morning yet this year (or if you’ve been at every one!) you definitely don’t want to miss this session! Please join us on Wednesday, May 21st at 7:30 am in the Learning Hub Project Zone!
Have you ever heard of TED Talks? If not, here’s a brief introduction from their website:
TED stands for Technology, Entertainment, Design. It started out (in 1984) as a conference bringing together people from those three worlds. Since then its scope has become ever broader.
The annual conference now brings together the world’s most fascinating thinkers and doers, who are challenged to give the talk of their lives (in 18 minutes).
Our mission: Spreading ideas.
We believe passionately in the power of ideas to change attitudes, lives and ultimately, the world. So we’re building here a clearinghouse that offers free knowledge and inspiration from the world’s most inspired thinkers, and also a community of curious souls to engage with ideas and each other. This site, launched April 2007, is an ever-evolving work in progress, and you’re an important part of it. Have an idea? We want to hear from you.
The TED Conference, held annually in Long Beach, is still the heart of TED. More than a thousand people now attend — indeed, the event sells out a year in advance — and the content has expanded to include science, business, the arts and the global issues facing our world. Over four days, 50 speakers each take an 18-minute slot, and there are many shorter pieces of content, including music, performance and comedy. There are no breakout groups. Everyone shares the same experience. It shouldn’t work, but it does. It works because all of knowledge is connected. Every so often it makes sense to emerge from the trenches we dig for a living, and ascend to a 30,000-foot view, where we see, to our astonishment, an intricately interconnected whole.
Sir Ken Robinson’s talk is so engaging and entertaining, and so clear in the need for revising our understanding of school and education. After watching the video we talked about the need for both teachers and parents to embrace and encourage children’s creativity, to provide outlets for exploring new avenues for learning, and to develop a more open-minded outlook about education.
In fact, the video is so good, we were encouraged to run it again next week!
So, on Wednesday, April 30th at 7:30 am in the Learning Hub Project Zone, we will show this talk again! Please come by for this excellent video and some stimulating conversation about the future of education!
Just in case you can’t make it, or you’re curious about the other fantastic presentations available for free by TED, you can easily subscribe to these talks using the TED website, or the iTunes store (for Mac and PC).
Our final Parent Coffee Morning will be on Wednesday, May 21st at 7:30 am in the Learning Hub Project Zone. Please join us!
Last week we had another successful Parent Coffee Morning – this time we covered some of the basics of web 2.0: blogging, wikis, RSS, social bookmarking and social networking.
We started out by watching and discussing some great, quick videos, by Common Craft:
Blogs in Plain English
We have quite a few student and teacher blogs here at school. We use our blogs to connect with a wider, authentic audience. The power of having a wider audience for our writing is both exciting and motivating for students and teachers! You can find all of the ES blogs linked on the sidebar to the right. Please feel free to check them out and leave some comments!
Wikis in Plain English
We are using wikis in several classes here at school. You might want to visit a few to get an idea of how they are used. One of the most recent projects has been the 1001 FlatWorld Tales project completed by Mrs. M’s fourth grade class. Check out their persuasive stories here!
Social Networking in Plain English
We are using social networking in grade 5, grade 4 and grade 2 to connect our students with others around the world to discuss our learning. Our grade 5 Ning is focused on engaging highly able readers through discussion about books, themes and characters. Our grade 4 Ning is focused on delving deeper into our science curriculum by presenting, sharing and discussing big issues about water. Our grade 2 Ning connects our class with a partner grade 2 class in the US to learn more about intercultural understanding. All of our Nings are password protected and private – meaning only students, teachers and parents involved in the project can see the work the students are doing.
As an extra bonus, we watched two more videos that cover some other web 2.0 tools that our students are not using yet (but they will be soon!):
RSS in Plain English
Social Bookmarking in Plain English
Now that we’ve covered the basics of web 2.0, the homework assignment for this session is to leave a comment here, on this blog post! You can leave a comment about something interesting you learned during the session, or a further question, or an idea for the topic of our next session, or anything else you’re interested in! We look forward to continuing our discussion here!
Our next session will be: Wednesday, April 23rd at 7:30 in the Project Zone of the Learning Hub. Please join us!
Then this is the session for you! Due to popular demand, we will cover the basics of web 2.0 in this one hour session. The perfect introduction for web 2.0 beginners!
Please join us at our next Parent Coffee Morning on Wednesday, 12 March 2008 from 7:30 – 8:30 in the Learning Hub Project Zone!
We know our kids are communicating and collaborating online as a regular part of their lives – in fact, their online “lives” are just as real to them as their “physical” lives. So, what happens online can be just as hurtful as more traditional playground bullying.
The Talent Show:
The Kitchen Table:
Basically, we’re dealing with a new playground: the digital playground.
These videos are great conversations starters – both at home and at school – for discussing appropriate online behavior, and online safety. Here at school we have had some fantastic discussions with students after watching these videos – often it takes an entire hour (or more) to really build student’s understanding of these short public service announcements.
If our kids are out on the digital playground every day, using tools like instant messaging, Facebook, cell phones, and blogs, then:
Who is teaching students about responsibility online?
When do we start to teach these skills?
What role do parents play?
Here at school we are discussing these big issues with our students. However, it is critical that these same types of discussions are happening at home as well. The message of online safety and appropriate behavior needs to be infused into any online activity that students participate in – both at school and at home.
Often even casual conversations while playing online can prompt a real, influential learning experience for students.
We know that:
Cyberbullying is harmful to children, and it happens more often than we know.
Educators and parents must teach children Cybersafety from an early age so that they can safely interact with others online
Communications and conversations with your child/student is important in deterring and detecting cyberbullying.
It’s important to realize that there are a variety of ways that students can experience cyberbullying. Here are 8 forms of Cyberbullying:
Flaming: Using inflammatory or vulgar words to provoke an online fight
Harassment: Continually sending vicious, mean, or disturbing e-mails to an individual
Denigration: Spreading rumors, lies or gossip to hurt a person’s reputation
Impersonation: Posting offensive or aggressive messages under another person’s name
Outing: Posting or sharing confidential or compromising information or images
Trickery: Fooling someone into sharing personal information which you then post online
Exclusion: Purposefully excluding someone from an online group
Cyberstalking: Ongoing harassment and denigration that causes a person considerable fear for his/her safety
Along with cyberbullying, we need to think about online safety, another excellent video to prompt conversations is Think Before You Post:
Action Items for Parents:
Where is the computer in your home?
What sites do your children visit often?
Does your child have their own cell phone?
Who are your child’s friends online?
Do you talk about these things at home?
Keeping the computer in a commonly used space, and being a part of your child’s online life are the first steps to preventing cyberbullying and teaching online safety.
Web links to help parents talk to their children about online safety:
This month we had another interesting discussion about how to use technology to enhance student learning. We started by watching a very short video by Beth Kanter and her son, which demonstrates how to delve deeper into curricular topics by using YouTube in a parent-mediated learning experience:
Watching this short video led to discussion about:
The way that the nature of information and learning has changed. As parents, we are used to looking to books (or other traditional media) for information, but our children and students more frequently reference the interactive, multimedia resources available online. We need to be well-versed in all of these options to be able to facilitate a safe, mediated online experience – especially for our younger children.
Learning can continue outside the classroom with our easy access to a wealth of online resources, but it takes time and digital literacy proficiency to find appropriate information. Not only do adults (teachers and parents) need to learn how to find this information and evaluate it for effectiveness, but they also must model appropriate use for their children.
Our students are increasingly connected – not only to those they see every day, but also to those students they may have moved away from during their international experience. Social Networking websites like Facebook, MySpace, Friendster, and many others, provide a way for students to stay in constant contact – even if they are no longer living in the same city. It is essential for parents to understand this online environment so that they can be involved in their children’s lives, both online and off.
Homework: Join Facebook to see what it’s all about!
Our next session will be Wednesday, January 23rd at 7:30 am in the Learning Hub, please join us!
Have you ever wondered:
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