I thought I had posted about this before but I can't find it. This is a post from Michelle Krill in her Finding Common Ground blog. She has a Youtube video embedded there that I think you should watch.

This is a young performance artist in her school who does a wonderful piece for Martin Luther King, Jr's birthday celebration. This is one talented young lady. How nice it is that she was not only capable of doing this, but that she was given the opportunity to do it.

I heard another story recently of a class that was studying a novel together. They had to come up with some sort of project. I forget the details of the assignment. One boy brought in his clarinet. He had written some original music that he thought fit the characters in the story. He would play the short piece and then ask the class which character it was. The class got EVERY ONE of those characters right. I was told that a couple students would occasionally disagree about which character it was about, but (and this is the cool part) they had great discussions about WHY. "That music sounded ...., but the character is ...." Interesting, no?

The moral of the story is this: What if the kids were given the opportunity to show their understanding of your content in ways that were meaningful to them? Hard to know how to grade it, for sure, isn't it? But, do you think that the connection would be deeper? I do.

I just downloaded and skimmed through the latest Horizon Project Report. (or here) I always like to see which technologies they feel are most likely to have a significant impact in the way we live and learn. Do yourself a favor and download the document and read it. It always puts things into a great perspective.

Here is the part that I found most interesting - the Critical Challenges. I'll list just the key concepts, but you really should go read the entire thing.

1. There is a growing need for formal instruction in key new skills, including information literacy, visual literacy, and technological literacy. Wow, how long have folks been saying this? Kids may be good gamers and texters, but as for being literate, they're NOT there.
   
2. Students are different, but a lot of educational materials is not. And, later in that same paragraph, "Assessment, likewise, has not kept pace with the new modes of working, and must change along with teaching methods, tools, and materials." Can I hear an 'Amen!"?
   
3. Significant shifts are taking place in the ways scholarships and research are conducted, and there is a need for innovation and leadership at all levels of the academy. All levels.
   
4. We are expected, especially in public education, to measure and prove through formal assessment that our students are learning. Then, "Current systems are not capable of managing and interpreting real time information flows..."
   
5. Higher education is facing a growing expectation to make use of and to deliver services, context, and media to mobile devices.

Please go read the full report. Take a look at the trends that it things are just a year or less out. (Mobile computing and cloud computing) Then see what they predict for further out.

No, this won't raise a test score, perhaps, but it WILL give you a sense of what's happening in the world and how it will impact education - or SHOULD.

So, how long do you think it'll be before the word aggregator no longer gets flagged as being misspelled?

(Yes, I know I can add it, but that's not the point.)

I just LOVE the gearthblog. This post is yet another example of why I think it's a must-have in almost ANY teacher's aggregator.

There, the gearth team reposts an announcement that something BIG is coming to Google Earth very soon. Here's just a little quote from their post:

"Another clue for this announcement was some other speakers for the announcement: Sylvia Earle - Explorer-in-Residence for National Geographic Society; Terry Garcia - EVP for National Geographic Society, and Greg Farrington, Executive Director for California Academy of Sciences."

Stay tuned, science teachers. From the sounds of that clipping this may be HUGE for you folks!

I love good timing, don't you?

This evening, while browsing my reader I discovered this post by Dr Scott Mcleod in his Dangerously Irrelevant blog. It's not about cyberbullying but it does go along with the notion of the need to teach our children (well) about the dangers of living online.

Please read this one, too.