// Langwitches Blog

In this video presented by Mobile Learning Institute:
Alan November tours his hometown of Marblehead, MA and comments on the historical global vision of his community. Alan challenges us to think about the emerging role of “student as contributor” and to globalize our curriculum by linking students with authentic audiences from around the world. (For more, [...]

I am guest blogging on My Wonderful World Blog (National Geographic Education Foundation) in honor of Geography Awareness Week 2009 the week of November 15 – 21!
This year’s theme is “Get Lost in Mapping: Find Your Place in the World”.

I wanted to share a successful geography lesson that continues to grow throughout the school year.  [...]

Cross posted on TechLearning Advisor Blog
Just as I was about to create a Math Wiki and work with all Middle School students, I ran across the following article by Ruth Reynard in The Journal ” More Challenges with Wikis: 4 Ways to Move Students from Passive to Active”

Setup
Project Management for Wikis
Requiring Synthesis
Rewarding Engagement

The first paragraph [...]

Last week I posted a lesson with the Middle School social studies students, “News Events Assignments with a Twitst“.
Students and their teacher have really taken to this assignment with incredible enthusiasm and creativity. Since each grade level has started entering current events onto their map, they have discussed, edited, and revised their entries. The printed- [...]

2nd Graders have moved on from their Maps and Globes unit to learning about communities. Their investigation started out with looking at a map of our planet Earth at night.

We zoomed in to look at urban and rural areas and compared cities, like Jacksonville and Buenos Aires. the teacher then guided the students to come [...]

So, what is that digital footprint everyone keeps talking about? Wikipedia defines the term:
Digital footprints are traces left by someone’s activity in a digital environment. There are two main classifications for digital footprints: passive and active. A passive digital footprint is created when data is collected about an action without any client activation, whereas active [...]

Over the years (from Elementary to High School) , I cannot tell you HOW many times each of my own daughters had to find news articles to bring in to class to share. These assignments came in all shapes and sizes. Sometimes they were required to write a summary, print out a representative image and [...]

As I was writing my last blog post about “The Need for Storytelling Skills“, the connection to the problem of Information Overload surfaced.
Wikipedia attributed the term “Information Overload” to Alvin Toffler:
which refers to an excess amount of information being provided, making processing and absorbing tasks very difficult for the individual because sometimes we cannot [...]

Daniel Pink in “A Whole New Mind” describes how the need for storytelling skills in the information age has increased.
As information and
facts are  ubiquitous, nearly free and available at the speed of light [...] What begins to matter more is the ability to place these facts in context and to deliver them with emotional impact.
Jason [...]

A few days ago, I read a tweet with a link to the following video clip from  Rachel Maddow’s The Revolution will be Digitized. If I remember correctly, the original sender’s intention was for the clip to be shown to any reluctant educator who insists that there is no need for change in what and [...]