What are Smartboards?

Some Smartboards have been installed in Franklin's classrooms and more are being requested in the capital budget. What is a Smartboard and how does it work in the classroom?

These two videos will provide an overview:






"Interactive white boards" is the better description for this tool. Smartboard is also a brand name which is becoming like Kleenex and used to refer to tissues.

In the News - social networking, water quality

How towns use social networking sites

from The Milford Daily News News RSS by Krista Perry/Daily News staff

Twitter accounts:

Franklin Police - http://twitter.com/franklinpolice
Franklin Fire - http://twitter.com/FranklinMAfire

Franklin Matters - http://twitter.com/FranklinMatters

A listing of Franklin, MA Twitter accounts: http://twitter.com/GraydonSmith/franklin-ma

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Stepping up water quality efforts in Franklin

from The Milford Daily News News RSS by Ashley Studley/Daily News staff

Student safely navigating online

Through the Google Public Policy Blog I just learned about a series of three videos created by YouTube for the purpose of educating students about online behavior. Each of the three videos are roughly two minutes in length. Each video provides clear narration and visual aids. The three videos are Detecting Lies and Staying True, Playing and Staying Safe Online, and Staying Safe on YouTube. These videos could be used in any classroom, but they really seem aimed toward a middle school audience.

From Free Technology for Teachers is written by Richard Byrne and read by a daily audience of more than 15,000 subscribers.

Information Revolution (video)

Before you celebrate Christmas today, spend 5 minutes to view the latest on the information revolution:



Enjoy!

Note: email subscribers will need to click through to Franklin Matters to view this video.

Intimacy, control and learning environments

Some food for thought

from TED Talks, Stefana Broadbent: How the Internet enables intimacy



Intimacy? Control? Learning environment?

Note: for email subscribers, you will need to clock through to the website to view the video

You need Social Media awareness

You need to be social media aware. With a little time to enable, it is free and easy to monitor.

Why?
Wouldn't you like to know what is being said or written about you? You can be a company, an organization, or an individual. It doesn't really matter. The need is there, the risk of non-awareness or non-response depends upon the nature of what is being said and what you do.

What do you mean?
According to a recent news article, some student let school officials know about a Facebook group that threatened a middle school assistant principal. The article goes on to say that some students maybe suspended for their actions creating the group.

How can I be aware?
The simple way to start is to set up a Google Alert. The alert can be set up for a specific term or combination of words. It will send an email to you each day with a summary of what it found the prior day.

Here is a screen shot of the alerts I use:

If you would like to know some additional ways to listen, let me know.

Resources:
The Milford Daily News article can be found here

Dr Scott McLeod has the Eight Stages of Listening here


Chris Brogan has Five Tools I use for listening

Beth Kanter has listening tools on her social media wiki here

Watch Know

The Internet is full of useful information, but it's disorganized and often unreliable. Despite its problems, the potential of the Internet for education is especially huge. Imagine tapping into that potential.

Imagine collecting all the best free educational videos made for children, and making them findable and watchable on one website. Then imagine creating many, many more such videos.

Just think: millions of great short videos, and other watchable media, explaining every topic taught in schools, in every major language on Earth.

Finally, imagine them all deeply and usefully categorized according to subject, education level, and placed in the order in which topics are typically taught.

WatchKnow—as in, "You watch, you know"—has started building this resource.

Click through to view the WatchKnow site here

A sample video on photosynthesis from Bill Nye - The Science Guy:



The one key advantage is that all the videos are categorized according to topic and age appropriate for viewing.

Enjoy!

Curriki - collaborative open source curriculum

For the education community amongst us, this site I recently found seems to be quite good. It's about page tells us:

Curriki is more than your average website; we're a community of educators, learners and committed education experts who are working together to create quality materials that will benefit teachers and students around the world.

Curriki is an online environment created to support the development and free distribution of world-class educational materials to anyone who needs them. Our name is a play on the combination of 'curriculum' and 'wiki' which is the technology we're using to make education universally accessible.

Curriki is built on the XWiki platform, an open source development platform and "Next Generation Wiki" application developed in Java and released the LGPL open source license.

Curriki is a non-profit 501(c)(3) corporation.

Go explore Curriki here

Links to share

I have some catching up to do with so much happening around so I'll tease you with a quote and a link to follow.

1 - Instant messaging in the classroom:

Every single upper junior class that I have taught has loved instant messaging (IM). It is probably the most popular use of technology at home. But does that mean it needs to be used in the classroom? It falls into the same category as console gaming does and seems to spark differing reactions from people in education. I believe it can engage learners and much more.

 Read the full article here

2 - Free options to publish to the web

In the course of a school year, most teachers will have students produce written content that they think should be shared with other readers. Other times teachers create writing projects with the goal of having students share their work publicly. The web offers many ways to publish written work, the following are six of my favorite free options.

Read the full article here

3 - Guide to talk with your kids about being online

On Guard Online offers a fifty-four page PDF guide to talking with kids about being online. Net Cetera: Chatting With Kids About Being Online offers numerous suggestions for having conversations with students about online behaviors. The guide offers differentiated suggestions based upon the age of the children with which you're talking.

Read the full article here

4 -What you should know about the flu.

This week Commissioner Auerbach and DPH Medical Director Dr. Lauren Smith appeared on a special addition of Hopkinton Community Television’s "Physician Focus" titled "The Flu: What You Should Know."

Commissioner Auerbach and Dr. Smith joined Erin Tracy, M.D., an obstetrician-gynecologist at Massachusetts General Hospital and Vice Chair of the Massachusetts Section of the American Congress of Obstetricians and Gynecologists and Bruce Karlin, M.D., a primary care physician in Worcester and Vice Chair of the Medical Society’s Communications Committee to discuss important flu related topics including the difference between H1N1 (swine) flu and seasonal flu, vaccine safety and supply, how to protect against the infections, and what to do if you get sick.

"Physician Focus" is The Massachusetts Medical Society’s monthly educational program on health care. In addition to being distributed to local public access television stations across the Commonwealth, the program is available for viewing online at http://www.hcam.tv/series/physicianfocus/flu/index.shtml. This page also contains two public service announcements produced specifically for the show. The first contains messages about the flu for pregnant women and the second provides guidelines on when patients should go to the emergency room.

Click through to view the show on the web here. 

Franklin did a similar H1N1 update in September and you can view that here

5 - And finally, the Laughter Club meets on Monday

Relieve some of your holiday stress, attend The Let's Laugh Today monthly laughter club that meets at the First Universalist Society in Franklin Meetinghouse, 262 Chestnut St. in Franklin, on Monday, Nov. 23, 7:15 to 8:30 p.m.

Additional details can be found on the Franklin Gazette here

The digital natives are restless

Wesley Fryer, writing on his blog "Moving at the Speed of Creativity" has a wonderful post this week:

These are my notes from Robyn Treyvaud’s workshop, “The Natives are Getting Restless: Growing Up and Learning in a Web 2.0 World” at the 21st Century Learning @ Hong Kong Conference on 18 September 2009. MY COMMENTS ARE IN ALL CAPS. Robyn is the author and owner of www.cybersafeworld.com. Her wiki on digital citizenship (created with WetPaint) is http://digicitizen-wiki.com.

You ca read the full post here.

There are two videos worth viewing within the post. One I have shared here previously. One is new to me and I will share here:




Recall the discussion at a recent School Committee meeting about limiting the electronic interactions between teachers and students.

What would you do to foster appropriate digital behavior?


Note: email subscribers should click through to view the video on the website.

Twitter search

The folks at Common Craft have released another great explanation video. This time they explain how searching Twitter makes the information more valuable.



This is another in the continuing series on Web 2.0 tools.

Thanks to the folks at Common Craft for helping to make this possible.

Internet Safety - 5/19/09 - 7:00 PM

The Franklin Community Health Council

Presents Worldwide leader in the area of online safety and parent and child Internet Education

Tuesday, May 19, 2009

7:00 PM

Horace Mann Middle School Auditorium

Parry Aftab is a security, privacy and cyberspace lawyer, as well as an author and child advocate. Ms. Aftab is Executive Director of WiredSafety.org, the largest online safety and educational program in cyberspace that provides important information and programs for children and teens, educators, law enforcement, parents and librarians for all matters related to children online, including online safety and privacy.

Parry Aftab is frequently called as an on‐air expert by all major news services, including CNN, Fox News, MSNBC, ABC News, The O'Riley Factor and CBS News. She has been used as a resource for 20/20, Dateline, Oprah, Inside Edition and 48 Hours. She has also appeared on Good Morning America, The Today Show, and the CBS Morning Show.

For more information please a contact: Lisa Keohane at lkeohane@dean.edu or call 508‐553‐4821

Internet Safety - 5/19/09 - 7:00 PM

The Franklin Community Health Council

Presents Worldwide leader in the area of online safety and parent and child Internet Education

Tuesday, May 19, 2009

7:00 PM

Horace Mann Middle School Auditorium

Parry Aftab is a security, privacy and cyberspace lawyer, as well as an author and child advocate. Ms. Aftab is Executive Director of WiredSafety.org, the largest online safety and educational program in cyberspace that provides important information and programs for children and teens, educators, law enforcement, parents and librarians for all matters related to children online, including online safety and privacy.

Parry Aftab is frequently called as an on‐air expert by all major news services, including CNN, Fox News, MSNBC, ABC News, The O'Riley Factor and CBS News. She has been used as a resource for 20/20, Dateline, Oprah, Inside Edition and 48 Hours. She has also appeared on Good Morning America, The Today Show, and the CBS Morning Show.

For more information please a contact: Lisa Keohane at lkeohane@dean.edu or call 508‐553‐4821

Communication and social media

Governor Deval Patrick making the announcement earlier this week about the latest revenue adjustments. This was posted to YouTube. His use of Twitter and YouTube to spread his message is commendable!

Should you use social media to spread your message?

As long as there is a conversation required to sell your services, then there is an opportunity for you. Come to the NewBCamp at Providence College today to start learning about these possibilities.



Can't make it to NewBCamp, then contact me and we can arrange a mutually convenient time to review the possibilities.

"Nobody called a meeting"

From Scott MacLeod writing at Dangerously Irrelevant:

Here’s what I think is the money quote from the article:

The first time chlorine was used in an improvised explosive device in Iraq, someone created a wiki page asking what intelligence officers and others in the field should do to collect evidence of the usage. "Twenty-three people at 18 or 19 locations around the world chimed in on this thing, and we got a perfectly serviceable set of instructions in two days," says Tom Fingar, who headed the National Intelligence Council from 2005 to 2008. "Nobody called a meeting, there was no elaborate 'Gotta go back and check with Mom to see if this is the view of my organization.' "

Read the full post which includes a link to the TIME article from which he found this quote.

World Wide Web in Plain English

As part of our continuing series on Web 2.0 technologies, the folks at Common Craft have come up with a new video to explain the world wide web in plain English.



Enjoy!

5 Fun, Interesting, and Educational Things on Twitter

Sent to you by Steve Sherlock via Google Reader:

5 Fun, Interesting, and Educational Things on Twitter

via Free Technology for Teachers by rbyrnetech@hotmail.com (Mr. Byrne) on 4/2/09

This is now the fifth day of posting my five favorite Twitter finds of the day and I've now decided on a format these posts. In each post in the "5 Fun, Interesting, and Educational Things on Twitter" series I will try to share a tip for improving and building your Twitter network.

A simple thing that can help you build your Twitter network is to occasionally retweet something that you find interesting or useful. In your retweet include the original tweeter's name. The person who's tweet you retweet will appreciate it, it helps that person get noticed, and in turn that person may reciprocate down the road. Even if the other person doesn't reciprocate, it's still a good thing to do as it shows others that you're willing to contibute to a learning network.

Here are 5 fun, interesting, and educational things I found on Twitter today.
1. Internet Safety Videos for Teens from @nycrican2
2. Find Your Teachmate from @angelamaiers
3. What 4th Graders Know About Money from @HaydenTompkins
4. Global Best Practices in Financial Education from @chollingsworth
5. Connectivism Education Ning from @Darcy1968

Things you can do from here:

• Subscribe to Free Technology for Teachers using Google Reader
• Get started using Google Reader to easily keep up with all your favorite sites

YouTube Edu - 100+ Colleges on YouTube

Sent to you by Steve Sherlock via Google Reader:

YouTube Edu - 100+ Colleges on YouTube

via Free Technology for Teachers by rbyrnetech@hotmail.com (Mr. Byrne) on 3/26/09

It looks like YouTube is making an attempt to be a little more school friendly. YouTube recently launched YouTube Edu. As Read Write Web reported, YouTube Edu is the aggregation of more than 100 college and university videos from the institutions themselves. The videos include college campus tours as well as lectures from professors. YouTube Edu can be searched by institution, by popularity, or by topic.

Applications for Education
If YouTube is not blocked in your school district, YouTube Edu could be a nice resource for those involved in helping students research and select a college to attend. The lecture videos could provide a nice complement to instruction in a high school setting.

If YouTube is blocked in your school, you may want to look at some of these alternatives:
20+ Educational Alternatives to YouTube
Six More Educational Alternatives to YouTube
Academic Earth
Next Vista

Save 20% on all books & DVDs from National Geographic!

Things you can do from here:

• Subscribe to Free Technology for Teachers using Google Reader
• Get started using Google Reader to easily keep up with all your favorite sites

Saving Money in Plain English

In our continuing series on learning, the folks at Common Craft have come up with a new video on saving money. They explain the difference between putting money in your piggy bank or into a savings bank.




Enjoy!

History of the internet

Thanks to the folks at Common Craft for pointing out this cool video history of the interent by PICOL. The foks at PICOL are developing a common picture library to help make communications easier and simpler to understand.

Watch this history video and see if they are successful:


History of the Internet from PICOL on Vimeo.

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