Sparta Connections

Here are our slides from today's meeting. Feel free to join in on the conversation.



Join us in the chat to ask questions and push our thinking. Also, here is the link to the wiki where we created the curriculum.

If you are not busy today....

Today marks a big day for us in terms of our movement towards a more transparent school community: we are broadcasting a student-led conference on the environment live via Ustream and inviting you, your students, and your colleagues to watch us and interact with us through the chat.

Laura Sofen, a 7th grade Language Arts teacher and I sat down about a month ago and worked through our ideas and made this happen for our students. As Laura said, they had worked so hard, inquired so much and grown through this research process, that allowing them this outlet to show the understanding they have gained was a fitting reward.

Our goal tomorrow is to engage in dialogue, to pull you (and your students) in from wherever you are. We want our students to see "Global Warming" as truly "global," and not just something they are reading about because we are in an election cycle here in the states.

The times are 9:30am, 11:00am, and 1:30pm EST in the US (GMT-5). Please take the time to drop in and bring your students if you can. The students are in 7th Grade, so they are not quite high school age, but in listening to them practice today, they have done their homework and are ready for a global audience.

Here is the address for my Ustream channel where will be live from. Hope to see you there.

Flickr image credit: "What Global Warming?" from maistora's photostream

Technorati Tags: environment, globalwarming, conference, sparta, education, technology, edtech

Some Great Writing

I would hate for this to seem as if it were self-promoting, but since I am actually promoting the work and writing of others, hopefully you all will excuse it. We have a district technology blog in Sparta called Tech Dossier, which until recently was managed and written solely by me. Last week, I asked a quorum of teachers and administrators to begin contributing posts as co-authors. A few interesting things have happened:

• the readership has increased by at least 50%
• participation in the form of comments has increased, well, it actually never really existed before, but now every post has at least three comments
• there is lively, conversation and diverse conversation going on.

These things are all things I could not accomplish on my own in over a year as the sole writer of this blog. Now, with the aid of three teachers and two administrators, this blog has vitality and life like it never had before. Please go and check it out and add your expertise to the conversation.


Technorati Tags: sparta, edtech, education, njecc0708