June 2005
June 29, 2005
Saskatoon Catholic Cyber School
The new look website is up and running...check it out.
Saskatoon Catholic Cyber School
June 28, 2005
Universal Learning
All, regardless of race or class or economic status, are entitled to a fair chance and to the tools for developing their individual powers of mind and spirit to the utmost. -- A Nation at Risk (NCEE, 1983)
Hardly could the framers of the quotation above--serving for the National Commission on Excellence in Education and writing from a rather nationalistic perspective -- have imagined more than two decades ago the global applications of this marvelous sentiment that would be possible come the new millennium. Through online and other distance education models, a fair chance at higher education for all is no longer a visionary's dream, but a visible reality within our peripheral sight.
Universal Learning at a Distance: Can We Plug It In?
Individual Student Characteristics and success.
This study examined various student characteristics to determine their relationship to success in an online undergraduate business course at a community college. All students who had taken this online course during a three-year period of time were included in the study (n=179).
Pearson product--moment correlations found significant relationships between students' grades in the online class and their GPA, attendance at a class orientation session, the number of previous course withdrawals, ASSET reading scores, the number of previous online courses, age, and ACT English scores. Regression analysis found that two variables serve as the best predictors: attendance at an orientation session, and the student's grade point average.
Given the higher dropout rates often found within on-line courses, these findings could be used to counsel students regarding their decision to take an online course. Students who are older, have better GPAs and college entrance exam scores, have few previous course withdrawals, and who agree to participate in a class orientation session, are more likely to be successful in this on-line business class. Such results could hold true for other online courses as well.
Individual Student Characteristics: Can Any Be Predictors Of Success In Online Classes?
June 27, 2005
Ten best things to say if you get caught sleeping at your desk
By Unkown
10. "They told me at the blood bank this might happen."
9. "This is just a 15 minute power-nap like they raved
about in that time management course you sent me to."
8. "Whew! Guess I left the top off the White-Out. You
probably got here just in time!
7. "I wasn't sleeping! I was meditating on the mission
statement and envisioning a new paradigm."
6. "I was testing my keyboard for drool resistance."
5. "I was doing a highly specific Yoga exercise to
relieve work-related stress. Are you discriminatory
toward people who practice Yoga?"
4. "Darn, why did you interrupt me? I had almost figured
out a solution to our biggest problem."
3. "The coffee machine is broken . . ."
2. "Someone must've put decaf in the wrong pot . . ."
And the number one best thing to say if you get caught sleeping
at your desk . . .
1. . . . in Jesus' name. Amen."
Rules for the boss
Little Sarcastic Rules for the Boss:
1. Never give me work in the morning. Always wait until 4:00 and then bring it to me. The challenge of a deadline is refreshing.
2. If it's really a rush job, run in and interrupt me every 10 minutes to inquire how it's going. That helps. Or even better, hover behind me, advising me at every keystroke.
3. Always leave without telling anyone where you're going. It gives me a chance to be creative when someone asks where you are.
4. If my arms are full of papers, boxes, books, or supplies, don't open the door for me. I need to learn how to function as a paraplegic and opening doors with no arms is good training in case I should ever be injured and lose all use of my limbs.
5. If you give me more than one job to do, don't tell me which is the priority. I am psychic.
6. Do your best to keep me late. I adore this office and really have nowhere to go or anything to do. I have no life beyond work.
7. If a job I do pleases you, keep it a secret. If that gets out, it could mean a promotion.
8. If you don't like my work, tell everyone. I like my name to be popular in conversations. I was born to be whipped.
9. If you have special instructions for a job, don't write them down. In fact, save them until the job is almost done. No use confusing me with useful information.
10. Never introduce me to the people you're with. I have no right to know anything. In the corporate food chain, I am plankton. When you refer to them later, my shrewd deductions will identify them.
11. Be nice to me only when the job I'm doing for you could really change your life and send you straight to manager's hell.
12. Tell me all your little problems. No one else has any and it's nice to know someone is less fortunate. I especially like the story about having to pay so much taxes on the bonus check you received for being such a good manager.
13. Wait until my yearly review and THEN tell me what my goals SHOULD have been. Give me a mediocre performance rating with a cost of living increase. I'm not here for the money anyway.
14. Delay my raise 2 months and then make it retroactive to make it look like I got more than I really did.
June 25, 2005
Podcasting in Academic and Coporate Learning
So what's the big deal? Why is podcasting becoming such a hot trend? As blogger Dave Jennings wrote, it's doing for audio what blogs did for text. The MP3 files generated by podcasters are relatively easy to create and don't require high-priced equipment, allowing amateurs to record a program without a large investment of time or money. In addition, the RSS technology that downloads new blog entries automatically to an aggregator program, keeping readers from having to visit each individual site, enables automatic download of new podcasts as well (once listeners have subscribed to the "feed" source). Then the podcasts can be listened to on a computer or, more frequently, transferred to a portable digital audio player, Pocket PC, or mobile phone that can play audio files.
Trend: Podcasting in Academic and Corporate Learning
World Wind
World Wind lets you zoom from satellite altitude into any place on Earth. Leveraging Landsat satellite imagery and Shuttle Radar Topography Mission data, World Wind lets you experience Earth terrain in visually rich 3D, just as if you were really there.
Forest Service
Most National Forests and Grasslands offer online maps or instructions on how to obtain a printed map. To find a map, please click on one of the National Forest, Grassland or other area links below.
USDA Forest Service - Caring for the land and serving people.
June 24, 2005
101 Ways to Combat Prejudice
Shortly after the Columbine High School tragedy in 1999, Barnes & Noble Chairman Leonard Riggio met with Abraham Foxman, ADL National Director. Disturbed by the alarming increase in school shootings and hate crimes, the two wanted to find a way to work together that would help counter this destructive trend. The result is "Close the Book on Hate," a joint effort of Barnes & Noble and ADL that is designed to use education to help break the cycle of prejudice and hatred. The program kicked off in September 2000, and has successfully involved thousands of people around the country.
Close the Book on Hate: 101 ways to Combat Prejudice
NGA Kids
National Gallery of Art | NGAkids home page
June 23, 2005
Teachers at Work
teachers at work education web sites Mark Teadwell
June 21, 2005
Information about media and children
Our research tells us that many parents, caregivers and professionals in the child development and health arenas are concerned about the effects of the media on children. This section provides research grounded, up-to-date information about these effects. We have included, where appropriate, strategies to counteract the potentially negative impact of inappropriate use of the media by children.
YMA - Information about media and children
June 20, 2005
Crossword compiler
Crossword Compiler 7 has everything you need to create great educational, professional, and fun crossword puzzles. The program can make a vocabulary puzzle from your own words in seconds, or fill in one of the many supplied grid patterns from a word list.
Crossword Compiler: Crossword Puzzle Maker Software
Digital Games for Online Learning
Here's a community where you can meet other educators and trainers who are interested in using games to enhance learning. It's a place to share ideas, experiences, resources and best practices.
Welcome to Digital Games Community at WebCT.com
Quandary Action Maze
Quandary is an application for creating Web-based Action Mazes. An Action Maze is a kind of interactive case-study; the user is presented with a situation, and a number of choices as to a course of action to deal with it. On choosing one of the options, the resulting situation is then presented, again with a set of options. Working through this branching tree is like negotiating a maze, hence the name "Action Maze".
Games2train.com
Games2train stands out in the world of learning and training for its Game-Based Learning approach - the ability to marry the fun of playing a videogame or computer game together with all the information needed to accomplish learning or training objectives.
games2train.com : Serious Training in a Game Environment
EclipseCrossword.com
It's never been simpler--just give EclipseCrossword a list of words and clues, and it does the rest. In seconds, you'll have a crossword puzzle with just the words you want. Half a million people can't be wrong. (Well, okay, they could, but that's just silly.)
Quiz Game Master
June 17, 2005
Museum of Retro Technology
Techno Geeks all over will enjoy this site
June 16, 2005
Good grade for online learning
Most people considering online education believe the quality of online education equals or is better than taking classes in an actual classroom setting, according to research conducted by Feedback Research, a division of Claria Corp.
Survey: Good grade for online learning - 2005-06-15
Learning Innovations
I have just spent a couple of days at a small highly-focused symposium titled "Innovations in E-learning." It was put together by the US Naval Education and Training Command and the Defence Acquisition University (DAU), who have among the best and brightest training minds that the American taxpayer's money can buy. They are not short of budget, manpower, or technology, and they get to mess with lots of experimental stuff. I decided to participate because the future of learning matters to me, and because a couple of my virtual colleagues were pretty much dominating the presentations in one stream.
Parkin's Lot: Learning innovations
Paradigms in E-Learning
Stephen's crystal ball always amazes me...
In 1998 I wrote an essay called The Future of Online Learning. ( Nice PDF version here: Link ) In that essay, I described many of the features of learning that in the eight years that followed have come to pass. In that essay, I offered a very concrete account of what was meant by online learning - not with a pithy one-line definition but with a detailed description of the technology, process and methodology.
Stephen's Web ~ by Stephen Downes ~
Thought for the Day
Thanks to one of my office staff for this one...I will be keeping off the stairs today.
Some people are like Slinkies...
Not really good for anything, but they still bring a smile to your face when you push them down a flight of stairs.
I like this one as well...
"If your parents never had children, chances are you won't, either."
Free-ed.net
The mission of Free-Ed.Net is to provide quality distance education at no cost to the user. Free education is a dream whose time has come. Never in history has so much information and so many learning resources been so widely available at such a low cost.
Free Education On the Internet -- Free-Ed.Net
June 15, 2005
Instruction as if students mattered
My friend Melanie and I have been talking about this over at her blog and elsewhere. She relates the story of a child she knew who never fit in at school and eventually committed suicide. Now granted, I don't have all the answers -- maybe none of them -- but it seems pretty obvious that schools aren't really meeting the needs of a great many students.
Random Thoughts: Instruction as if students mattered
The Blogger Problem
I got an e-mail from a teacher who had just done a Weblog training using Blogger, and the issue of the "Next Blog" button in the top right corner came up, as in what if students click through to some inappropriate site?
Weblogg-ed - The Read/Write Web in the Classroom :
2006 SCCS Website Award
Bishop Murray High School in Saskatoon Saskatchewan is the winner of the 2005 SCCS Website Award. This yearly award is voted on by the student of the Saskatoon Catholic Cyber School.
Job Futures
Job Futures is a career tool to help you plan for your future. It provides useful information about 226 occupational groups and describes the work experiences of recent graduates from 155 programs of study.
Exploring Occupations
Good career decisions require good information--about your personal traits and preferences and about the world of work. Career counsellors can get you started by helping you to identify and articulate your skills, aptitudes, values, personality traits and interests as they relate to career choice.
Analyzemycareer,com
We have an extensive careers' database which contains detailed descriptions of thousands of different types of careers.
Aptitude tests, personality tests & career tests. Use aptitude scores to find the ideal career.
Standard Grade Bitesize
BBC - Education Scotland - Standard Grade Bitesize
June 13, 2005
How effective is Online Learning?
As more and more people are using computers and the Internet for a whole host of different life tasks -- such as shopping, banking and booking holidays - the National Institute of Adult Continuing Education (NIACE) is conducting a research project to find out how effective learning online is.
With over 3000 courses now available to study online - in subjects as diverse as languages, IT and fork lift truck driving -- this form of learning is often seen as convenient for learners and, as such, it is anticipated to become ever more popular. However NIACE is keen to hear about the experiences -- good and bad - of learners who have chosen to study online, so future learners can benefit.
How effective is Online learning?
June 10, 2005
Best of Berkeley Blogs
The best of the Berkeley blogs
Why students should blog.
We're beginning to see several PR student and junior PR practitioner blogs. Here are some reasons why they're a good idea (and a few words of warning, too).
PR Studies: Why students should blog
The Principals' Partnership
Union Pacific recognizes the vital role that high school principals play in our nation's education system, and we are committed to their growth and success. To fulfill this commitment, we have created The Principals' Partnership, a program designed to assist principals in selected Union Pacific communities to meet their leadership needs and professional growth objectives.
Learning from a Legagy of Hate
This web site explores two legacies from Indiana history. The first is a legacy of intolerance, highlighted by the Ku Klux Klan's powerful presence during the 1920's. The acts of hate that continue to occur across Indiana bear witness to this painful legacy.
Learning from a Legacy of Hate
Surfnetkids.com
This website contains a pile of tidbits to make your school website more exciting.
Google 3D mapping truck
Google plans to use trucks equipped with lasers and digital photographic equipment to create a realistic 3D online version of San Francisco, and eventually other major US cities.
June 9, 2005
Robots will build 'whiz kids'.
Ten teenagers anxiously huddled over a Transformer-like robot in a humble classroom are pioneers in Japan's initiative called "super science" - a nationwide effort in public education to nurture future leaders in technology.
At a time when fears are growing that Japan is being overshadowed by the clout of China as well as increasingly successful businesses in other Asian nations, hopes are high for the program, which grants high schools money to fund their own original technology curriculum.
Honoring Student's Voices
As educators, we spend most of our professional careers looking for that one stroke of teaching genius that will change a child's life forever. We don't want to find ourselves approaching retirement feeling frustrated that that special moment never happened. Looking back, we want to be able to say, "I know I have made a difference." And when it does come it sends chills up your spine and brings tears to your eyes every time you think about it.
Techlearning > > Honoring Student's Voices > June 1, 2005
June 7, 2005
Using Instant Messaging
Once again something from Darren's Teaching and Developing Online has caught my attention. This entry on the students use of instant messaging in the schools (see "Fighting for Attention"). In this post, he directs us a message that Sebastien Paquet has posted on the topic (also see "Fighting for Attention"). The main thrust of Sebastien's entry are comments made by Stephen Downes (see "Should We Ban Instant Messaging in Schools?").
Virtual High School Meanderings: Using Instant Messaging
How computers make our kids stupid (cont.)
I was scanning Darren Cannell's Teaching and Developing Online, which usually serves as sources of inspiration for my entries on my Virtual High School Meanderings blog, and came across this entry "How Computers Make Our Kids Stupid".
Breaking into the Academy: How computers make our kids stupid
GrayHarriman.com
Information on e-learning, online learning, distance learning, blended learning, adult learning, and related resources.
E-Learning Resources at Gray Harriman.com
Distance Learning Resources
It is learning takes place when the instructor and the learner are not in the same physical location. It can also take place if the instructor and the learner are in the same location but not at the same time. Today distance learning is carried out via a number of media ranging from postal mail to teleconferencing or the Internet.
Distance Learning at GrayHarriman.com
Online Learning
Online learning, also referred to as Web-based learning, is learning that takes place via a computer connected to the Internet. Typically the learner logs into a system and accesses information from an instructor or tutorial. The learner then follows an established sequence. At each step the learner interacts with the computer to access more information or supporting resources from the Internet.
Online Learning at GrayHarriman.com
E-learning Resources
E-learning is the effective learning process created by combining digitally delivered content with learning support services.
E-Learning at GrayHarriman.com
Blended Learning Resources
Blended learning combines online with face-to-face learning. The goal of blended learning is to provide the most efficient and effective instruction experience by combining delivery modalities.
Blended Learning at GrayHarriman.com#1
More Preschoolers going online.
Before they can even read, nearly one out of every four children in preschool is learning a skill that even some adults have yet to master: using the internet. Some 23 percent of children in nursery school--kids ages 3, 4, or 5--have gone online, according to an Education Department (ED) report. By kindergarten, 32 percent have used the internet, typically under adult supervision.
Professional Development Tips
The best way to help your teachers is to identify what they really need to ensure student success and to improve their teaching practice. How do you do this as a professional developer? Many times we do not have the luxury of time to get to know our teachers. Yet there may be a way we can do this as part of the professional development.
Techlearning > > Professional Development Tips > June 1, 2005
Diversity fuels student enrollment boom.
Fueled by rising immigration and the baby boom echo, U.S. public school enrollment has surpassed the previous all-time high set in 1970 and is expected to increase steadily to a peak of 50 million students in 2014, the U.S. Census Bureau and Department of Education reported June 1.
National Education Technology Plan
The National Center for Educational Statistics has recently released information on computer and Internet use among children in nursery school and students in kindergarten through twelfth grade.
National Education Technology Plan
June 6, 2005
Two wolves (Wisdom)
Two Wolves
One evening an old Cherokee told his grandson about a debate that goes on inside people. He said, "My son, the battle is between 2 "wolves" inside us all.
One is Evil. It is anger, envy, jealousy,sorrow, regret, greed, arrogance, self-pity, guilt, resentment, inferiority, lies, false pride, superiority, and ego.
The other is Good. It is joy, peace, love, hope, serenity, humility, kindness, benevolence, empathy, generosity, truth, compassion and faith."
The grandson thought about it for a minute and then asked his grandfather: "Which wolf wins?"
The old Cherokee simply replied, "The one you feed."
June 3, 2005
Shutting Out Blogs
So here is the update from the heartland: blogs, wikis, Flickr...almost anything where kids can post content online is being blocked by schools. An elementary school teacher told me that the schools just don't want the potential problems of students doing this.
Weblogg-ed - The Read/Write Web in the Classroom :
Macromedia Flash
Here's a summary of my view of the strengths and weaknesses of Macromedia Flash. Macromedia Flash is a powerful piece of software that allows designers to create animations and interactive interfaces.
e-Learning Acupuncture: Macromedia Flash
Digital divide has not disappeared
If you read only the big picture statistics, you might be fooled into believing that the digital divide has indeed been bridged
Digital divide has not disappeared
June 2, 2005
Grocery Store Wars
May the farm be with you.
Just silly...but funny.
Grocery Store Wars | Join the Organic Rebellion
These factors retard digital teaching.
What's holding back the digital curriculum? A lot of things: too few classroom computers, poorly conceived professional development, and a lack of time to research and plan--to name three big factors, according to a new report from the nonprofit Education Development Center
Too Much Homework?
Looks like a pair of researchers have gotten around to proving what many students have argued all along--too much homework may result in less prepared students.
Too Much Homework = Less Prepared Students | Kairosnews
Blog Guides
Anil Dash for ProNet points up two potentially useful resources available at Yahoo: A comprehensive RSS users guide and their employee blogging guidelines. Cheers Anil!
June 1, 2005
June websites
End of Year Activities
June Holidays and end of the Year Activities
End of School
End of School Lesson Plans
End of School Year
End of the School Year Activities - Blackwell's Best
Wind Up Learning
The last few days of the school year are upon you, and you're at a loss for what to do. Do you emphasize fun or attempt to squeeze in some last-minute learning? This week, Education World offers suggestions for keeping kids focused during the last hours of the school year. Included: More than a dozen great end-of-year ideas!
End of the Year Activities
The Teacher's Corner - Teacher Resources - Lesson Plans
Comment Ideas for Report Cards
When Teachnet Contributor, Chantal Latour, sat down to personalize her students' report cards, something was missing. The list of report card comments that used as starters and had spent years compiling was gone.
Chantal explained her situation to the members of the Teacher-2-Teacher forum and was overwhelmed with responses. Over 300 adjectives and phrases are available here for your use.
End of the Year | Comment Ideas for Report Cards
End of the Year Tips
Check out these great end-of-the-year ideas to help you and your class experience a successful transition from school to summer.
Scholastic - End-of-the-Year Tips
End of the Year Page
Thanks to the The Online Learning Centre (OLC) who invites you to continue exploring our growing collection of FREE resources!
Can you believe the end of the year is already here? It has gone by so quickly. Your hard work has paid off an your students will graduate on to the next grade! Here are some fun ways to finish out the year with your class! I hope you find an idea or two you can use in your classroom to make the end of the year fun & educational for your students. They worked hard and so did you. Congrats on a great year!!!
End of the Year Lessons, Ideas, Printables, Gifts For Students & Teachers, & more!
Association of On-line K- 12 Schools
Newsletter #2 of the Association of On-line K-12 Schools is now available for viewing at: Newsletter #2
