Apologies

Sorry I haven't been posting lately. I've been involved in three days of training for the Celebrate Oklahoma Voices (COV) project. What an awesome experience! Teachers from more than 15 districts who teach all grade levels and subject areas came together to learn about creating videos and sharing them on the COV website. They will return to their classrooms this fall and help their students create their own videos. Today was show and tell, and I must say some wonderful videos were created this week. Check out the COV website, and watch some of these great stories.
http://celebrateoklahoma.us/

Cool Web Site

Reading Radar is a great mashup site created by John Herren that features information from the New York Times and Amazon.com. You can check out the latest best sellers without wading through information you don't need. http://readingradar.com/

High-Speed Internet As Vital As Electricity, Gas, and Water

The Washington Post reported today that British Prime Minister Gordon Brown said Tuesday that high-speed Internet access has become as "indispensable as electricity, gas and water." Is high-speed that essential?

The New iPhone Is Coming

Alas, rumors of a keyboard were unfounded, but the new iPhone will reportedly have much greater speed, built in GPS, and voice recognition. http://www.slate.com/id/2220032/

Barriers to 21st Century Skills in Schools

How can we teach 21st century skills to students when we're not allowed to access most of the collaborative tools available online? See the following: http://bjansen.edublogs.org/2009/06/07/schools-sensessly-block-web-20-tools/

Is the U.S. missing the boat on this?
http://tinyurl.com/nsut95

Web 2.0

Check out this great word cloud on web 2.0 from Wikipedia
http://tiny.cc/1RPo7

Google Squared

Google, perhaps in an attempt to compete with Bing, has released Google Squared http://www.google.com/squared

It offers searchable results which expand your search. Pretty cool - check it out!

Preliminary Results Comapring Microsoft's New Search Engine to Google

An Irish programmer named Paul Savage has done some preliminary testing comparing Microsoft's new search engine, Bing, to Google. See the story from the Washington Post. http://tinyurl.com/ngqz2n

21st Century Classrooms

Fayetteville, Arkansas is beginning a program to convert their classrooms to "21st century classrooms". http://nwanews.com/nwat/News/77035/
This is great, but they don't mention training the teachers to use the new equipment or to facilitate the collaborative and independent learning they envision. Training is the key to the success of such programs.

Zimbio

Top Stories

A Great Idea

Kim Cofino shares a great idea on her blog (http://mscofino.edublogs.org). Once a month, she and two other educators at her school host a parents' technology coffee. They share information with and encourage discussions by parents concerning technology and their children. What a wonderful way to get parents on board as we begin to integrate 21st century skills.

Book challenges are on the rise. This article discusses problems in one middle school http://tinyurl.com/lylzlq

Are you digitally challenged? Check out the following story http://tinyurl.com/lu52pp

Is the written word soon to be a thing of the past?
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/05/31/AR2009053102119.html?wpisrc=newsletter
What do you think?