This presentation highlights the use of Google Maps and Google Earth (and Picasa photo)to create a fictional “Heroic Journey” story. The unit is tied to literature (The Odyssey, The Lightning Thief), writing (creating an original story with episodes of adventure) and technology (integrating online tools into the classroom). The presentation includes some sample student work from sixth graders but I encourage you to follow the links to the website where the student journeys are posted.

The Heroic Journey Project by Kevin Hodgson

The K-12 Online Conference invites participation from educators around the world interested in innovative ways Web 2.0 tools and technologies can be used to improve learning. This FREE conference is run by volunteers and open to everyone. The 2009 conference theme is “Bridging the Divide.” This year’s conference begins with a pre-conference keynote by classroom teacher and international educator Kim Cofino the week of November 30, 2009. The following two weeks, December 7-11 and December 14-17, over fifty presentations will be posted online to our conference blog and our conference Ning for participants to view, download, and discuss. Live Events in the form of three “Fireside Chats” are listed on the events page of our conference Ning and Facebook fan page, and live events will continue in 2010 through twice-monthly “K-12 Online Echo” webcasts on EdTechTalk. Everyone is encouraged to participate in both live events during and after the conference as well as asynchronous conversations.

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This presentation will center around the Eracism Project (the newest Flat Classroom Project), which was proposed by students at the 2009 Conference and will be an international middle school debate project held in September – December 2009, planned and conducted entirely by students. This presentation will have two phases: 1) An enhanced podcast or full video presentation with Vicki Davis, Julie Lindsay, Bernajean Porter, and Peggy Sheehy discussing the practical pedagogy and outcomes of connecting students globally in a way that begins with the objective and ends with the selection of appropriate technology tools for the task, centering around this particular project as the example, but also including other projects planned by each presenter. This will be a 20 minute presentation. 2) The culmination of the Eracism project, which will have preliminary debates hosted on voicethread will provide K12 online participants a venue to observe students in their final virtual world debate competition, but with k12 online participants allowed to observe and reflect in real time using a private backchannel. This will be the culmination of the Eracism project. 3) Student voicethreads used as part of the debate will be provided for participant viewing.

Inside the Global Collaborative Debate: Eracism by Vicki Davis, Bernajean Porter, Julie Lindsay, Kim Caise

Myths and realities of copyrights as they relate to multimedia projects in the classroom with Mathew Needleman.

Steal This Preso! Copyrights, Fair Use, and Pirates in the Classroom by Mathew Needleman

As the first decade of the 21st century comes to end and blogs, wikis, and podcasts have become more mainstream, it is important that educators step back to see how we, as professionals, are best using these tools to serve our students’ learning needs. If these modern technologies are going to be sustained in contemporary pedagogy, it is time that we “kick it up a notch” and tie these tools to both a higher theme and to learning theories. In other words, rather than using technology for technology’s sake, we need to rest on a new 21st-century foundation of teaching, learning, and assessment theory. Through a screencast, webcam, and Power Point video, “Googlios” offers not simply a “how to” but a “why to;” it introduces a model of how one educator has come to understand and organize these tools to support a 21st-century constructivist and connectivist approach to “bridge the divide” in educating our digital natives. More specifically, this presentation will shed light on a model that demonstrates relationships between emerging tools and learning theories and between Personal Learning Environments (PLEs), Personal Learning Networks (PLNs), and ePortfolios. By using Google Sites as a main dashboard that “mashes up” multiple Google Apps like Blogger, Youtube, Google Reader, Google Maps, Google Docs, and iGoogle into an ePortfolio, students can build and organize their own Personal Learning Environment (PLE) simultaneously with “building bridges” through their Personal Learning Network (PLN)–all while supporting e-portfolio authentic assessment. One last word of caution: “Googlios: A 21st-Century Approach to Teaching, Learning, and Assessment” seeks to ignite an educational renaissance.

Googlios: A 21st – Century Approach to Teaching, Learning, & Assessment by G. Alex Ambrose

Neil Stephenson believes in the power of technology to bring the past into the future. Empowered with 21st century tools, Stephenson’s Grade 7 students reinterpret events from five periods that have shaped Canada’s current historical landscape. Called the Cigar Box Project, Stephenson’s students collect and analyze historical images and artifacts, and then use graphic design principles to digitally assemble new cigar panels, each one revealing a unique, visual perspective of an historical event or time from Canada’s past. At the end of the year, students physically build their wooden Cigar Boxes, creating their own historical artifact that pulls together the story of our country. Along the way, students encounter a variety of assessment practices, create mini-documentaries about their artifacts and meet a number of experts who support their historical learning.

Remixing History: The Cigar Box Project by Neil Stephenson

This presentation explores a range of ideas that teachers could use to make a real-world task richer and more meaningful for their students. Using a large public art event as the focus, it looks at a number of ideas for enriching student learning with technology… ideas that could be modified and applied to nearly any learning context.

The Heroic Journey Project by Kevin Hodgson

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