I started a wikispaces page today to collect resources for teaching the Michigan Core Curriculum at the Elementary grades. There is a page for each subject area. Check it out and contribute if you can.

TIBW – Tech IceBreaker Wikispace

Thanks

Here’s a project idea for students to show their knowledge of two dimensional and three dimensional geometry. This site provides a few patterns for students to use in building kid size furniture using cardboard boxes and other simple supplies.  Students could build the sample patterns and then create their own furniture.

Check it out.

Fold School 

Information Literacy has changed.

It happened this afternoon. I was responding to an email I had recieved asking about a particular book a friend had mentioned. I knew the title but wasn’t sure of the spelling of the author’s name. So I typed the name into my google toolbox on Mozilla FireFox and as I typed it suggested keywords. About halfway down the list was the author’s name.

Imagine what it is going to be like for our students as adults.

As cellphones become more computer like, our students will be able to access much more information than they’ll ever be able to remember. Will they have the skills to know how to find information, assess its accuracy and relevence and know what to do with it? How are we preparing them for that world?

As a student, I would have had to go to the library to find the answer or if I was really lucky one of my parents would have known it.

Information Literacy has changed.

Here’s a couple of quick ideas I came up with during the MACUL conference today. I attended the following presentations as well as the keynote: “Tell the World Who You Are!” By Peter Reynolds, “From Information Literacy to Information Leadership” and “A Web of Connections: Why the Read/Write Web Changes Everything” by Will Richardson.

- In Peter’s presentation he makes the point that blank books are his favorite books and that this gives the student a great opportunity. With today’s web tools, an enterprising teacher could have his students create with Blank books and then upload the results to one of the small book publishing companies online. This would allow the students to not only get the benefit of producing a real book but also the opportunity to reach a wider audience.

- An addition Peter’s story of his seventh grade teacher noticing him and how that changed his life ties in rather nicely with the story of the Dancer from Sir Ken Robinson’s Talk at the TED Conference. In each case an interested adult or teacher noticed something in a child and this attention made all the difference in that child’s life.

- This idea has been floating around in my head for awhile. Use the Google personalized home page as a classroom portal. A teacher could use some of the tools (Word of the Day, Wikipedia, This Day in History…) as daily content for classroom discussions. During Will Richardson’s presentation I thought a teacher could also use the RSS feed from Google News search engine to bring in content related to topics studied in class. This would provide a way of modeling Web 2.0 skills for the whole class. For example if a class was studying Endangered Species the RSS feed would bring in articles having to do with Endangered Species from around the world.

What do you think? Brainstorms or just drizzle…