Life is Like a Cup of Coffee

CAS Interview at Portland Community College

Today, I have the opportunity to interview for a CAS Instructor position at Portland Community College on the Sylvania Campus of PCC. This campus is located just 10 minutes from downtown in southwest Portland. As part of the interview process, I taught a short lesson in Excel on relative and absolute cell references. At the end of the demonstration, I would like the members of the interview committee to complete this short feedback form. This form was created in Google Docs and is one example of obtaining gauging the students' comprehension of the day's lesson.

Personal Learning Networks

In the classroom, I have been sharing with students the importance of developing a Personal Learning Network to learn from peer and colleagues in their future occupation.  Students can also reap the benefits of tapping into their PLNs.  Here is a wonderful video called “The Networked Student” that shows how on-line networking can enhance students’ 21st century skills.

Also I have presented workshops for other teachers about PLN.  Sometimes these are also called Professional Learning Networks.  Over the last year, I have benefited from the wealth of knowledge and experience of those in my PLN.  For educators, I have included a Voice Thread recording of other educators discussing their PLN.

State of Blogosphere - MakeUseOf.com

Making Curriculum Pop--Ben Harper "I'll Rise"

Twitter and Seniors

This clip was shown on the Jay Leno show. Thought the business educators who are learning about Twitter and their PLN would enjoy:

Great Presentation About Shifting to 21st Century Learning

An Introduction to the Principles of 21st Century Learning and Web 2.0

View more presentations from Credenda.

Twitter in the classroom

Thanks to those teachers who attended my presentation at the BMIT Conference in Indy today. Here is a link to the video interviewing the principal who encourages his teachers to use Twitter in the classroom.

Blogging resources for the classroom

During a recent presentation at IBEA's state conference, I presented web 2.0 tools for teachers. Here are some additional resources for blogs in the classroom:

Learningweb2 - table of tools for blogs & wikis
MiddleWeb - has a list of middle school blogs to follow and a simple guide to RSS feeders
Additional (school-friendly) sites to create blogs:
21Classes
Gaggle Blogs
Education 2.0-Edmodo A private social platform for teachers and students to share ideas, files, events and assignments.

Web 2.0 Literacy Tools Master List Fall, Naomi Harm, Innovative educator Consulting 2009

Finally, SupportBlogging.com - is a great resource of blogging ideas and links.

Using a Wiimote as a Whiteboard

One of my favorite blogs to follow is Free Technology for Teachers written by Richard Byrne. Recently, there was a post of Johnny Lee presenting how to take a Wiimote and turn it into a whiteboard. Amazing!! For about $50 in hardware and a projector and laptop, you can have a whiteboard. For details, go to Johnny Lee's website or check out this video of his presentation at TED.

Example of an Animoto video--Web 2.0

I am presenting at the BMIT Conference in Indianapolis on Saturday, November 21. This is a sample video to show the attendees how easy it is to create a video with Animoto. The presentation is call, Building a PLN with Web 2.0 Tools

Student Video Production

Check out this student created video recently posted to YouTube.

Strengths listed in student evaluations

This semester I am working to refine the CAPP130 course. Recently, I gave an online mid-term evaluation using a form created in Google Doc. One of the questions in most evaluations is professor's strengths. This is a word picture of what the students wrote on the evaluations. Sometimes we need to remember our strengths:

Mobile Searching using ChaCha

Blogging

Blogging is therefore to writing what extreme sports are to athletics: more free-form, more accident-prone, less formal, more alive. It is, in many ways, writing out loud.

Andrew Sullivan

www.theatlantic.com/doc/200811/andrew-sullivan-why-i-blog

www.flickr.com/photos/adampiggott/2562599160

Say goodbye to a great show.......

Butterfly in the sky, I can go twice as high,
Take a look, it's in a book—a reading rainbow...

How many of you grew up watching this popular children's show. According to a recent interview in usnews.com Reading Rainbow will end its 26-year run. I know my children learned "Why" reading was fun through this show.

Generation Y

i m gen Y

View more presentations from drtrupti patel.

The Amazing Internet

The Amazing Internet- Watch more Videos at Vodpod.

Developing your Personal Learning Network (PLN)

There is a lot of discussion today about developing a personal learning network. Through many social network sites such as LinkedIn, Facebook, Nings, wikis, blogs, and more, students and teachers are able to connect with other in their field and share resources. This summer, one of the ways I have expanded my social network has been using Twitter, wikis and Ning. I am a member of a wiki called Twitter for teachers where I found many contacts of educators to follow and gain valuable resources for the classroom. One of the other wikis in which I belong is called Wikis in Education. Here is a picture depicting someone's PLN.

You're only as good as your community

Welcome new students in CAPP130

One of the first sites we visited this semester was wordle.net. Students created wordles including their names and other terms to describe themselves. This wordle was created from the course syllabus.