What do Dominican 4th grade students have in common with 4th grade students in Kodiak, Alaska?
It isn’t a joke, its a question and good one too. We will be investigating this throughout the year as we add friends in Kodiak to our blogpals.
From Bangkok to Kodiak and back to Santo Domingo the opportunities that blogging makes available to our students are truly endless. Our four fourth grade teachers are lucky to be teamed up with BlogSuperStar Kim Cofino and some fantastic new teachers in Alaska – all of us are pushing our comfort zones and growing because of it!
- more on this next week- after some soul cleansing (read:kitesurfing) this weekend
The idea of an election is much more interesting to me than the election itself…The act of voting is in itself the defining moment.
- Jeff Melvoin
How do you get a class of Dominican’s (all of them seniors) interested and fired up about studying AP US Politics? This was the challenge presented to one of the teacher’s here and over the last two years Tina Schuster has done exactly that. This year her AP students will be traveling to California as part of an exchange to witness the election taking place. In preparation for the trip students are sharing ideas, thoughts and opinions with their Californian counterparts through this wiki.
When Tina came to me looking for integration ideas a wiki seemed to be the obvious choice. Neither teacher had used a wiki before and i am thankful for their willingness to leap into something entirely new. We scratched out some ideas and came up with a rough structure that was shared with Mr. Chavez in California. He added to it. It was set-up and live in less then a week and after three weeks all three of us are astounded by the work that these students are coming up with. After watching Obama speak in California i jumped on the wordle craze that was dominating my twits and added a page for discussion as extra credit. The student knew this had nothing to do with their grade, but the ball is rolling now – it isn’t about grades any more. Ms. Schuster and Mr. Chavez of ignited something bigger, something real and much more long lasting then grades…a real desire to know all that they can about the election and the candidates involved in it. They jumped all over it and one of them “beat me to the punch” of posting a second wordle (from McCain).
What if nothing exists and we’re all in somebody’s dream? Or what’s worse, what if only that fat guy in the third row exists?
- Woody Allen
Moodle and the potential benefits that it offers students, teachers, schools and parents are no secret in the EduBlogging community. It is also not a new phenomenon; but it is new at CMS and truth be told we are only in a trial period – teachers who have volunteered. It is major goal of mine; as it supports my position representing the Tri-Association on the World Virtual Schools project. I have thus monitored this launch pretty closely and will continue to so. I am hearing things that really make me feel motivated: “why can’t all of our classes be like this,” “this class is so cool,” and “i didn’t know chatting could be be part of school”. Words that make the work so worthwhile.
Yes there are great teachers piloting the project, yes their classes would be “cool” without this online environment because of the way the set up their questioning with real world problems that uncover the curriculum, but it is no less great to hear. Recognizing that this is still just the start of the school year (when motivation is at its highest) i want you to take a second and read the posts in the AP Economics Forum. I was really impressed with the level of thinking going on so early in the course. As Mr. McCollough says in his final post students addressed the social concerns while staying focused on the economic issues. Great stuff! If you make it that far also look at the incentives program in the course – quite original and the students LOVE it!
Kind of the same simple equation i have been discussing here:
real problem+real questions+real discussion/real people (aka students) = real learning and understanding
Never, never, never believe any war <construction project> will be smooth and easy, or that anyone who embarks on the strange voyage can measure the tides and hurricanes he will encounter. - Sir Winston Churchill
Incredible progress was made on our new media center over the summer and going into hurricane season we are on schedule (and budget). This is an amazing feat anywhere these days and on an island famous for “island time” and its laid back atmosphere this success is a testament to our school engineer Rafael Piña. Of course there are an incredulous amount of people working on this project at all level who equally deserve our thanks – gracias.
Of course schools are not about buildings and never should be. This construction is well timed as it is accompanying our community’s better understanding of the role of technology in every aspect of education. There can be no question that the pedagogical face lift that is being constructed in classrooms, labs, moodle rooms, staff meetings and in the teachers’ lounge is the most important aspect and the central focus of the technology department – but we won’t object to a state of the art new facility to call home.
Nothing is as certain as that the vices of leisure are gotten rid of by being busy. - Seneca (5 BC – 65 AD)
If Seneca was right, i have no need to worry about the vices of leisure these days. I am not sure if it is the second child (pictured) or just trying to make too many changes in the school at once, but i am slammed down here (I fit right in as we appear to be in full hurricane season and i am not the only one getting slammed on the island). I have a post-it note full of ideas for posts and just can’t seem to find the time to write them… Well here goes a short one, to give me a little room on the post-it for today’s excitement…
The nuts and bolts of this one is that after a tonne of hard work by some great people here at CMS we have officially launched our Problem Based Learning experiences (PBLe) in 6th, 7th and 8th grade. The launch session was a huge success; it was collaboratively created by Bill Farren, Mark Richards and myself. We were a little nervous of how it would go over, we were saying some pretty powerful things with some wide ranging implications; we had no need to worry, some great conversations were started yesterday we will work to ensure that these continue – all to the betterment of middle school education here.
We are thankful to have the support, understanding, and flexibility of our administration – in the project and are confident that as our community witnesses what comes out of these units we will continue to gain speed in our move towards uncovering curriculum instead of covering it.
We modeled GoogleDocs (a future post) in the work and you can see our slideshow here:
We tried to emphasize that this isn’t anything terribly new, our school is already beginning to face this direction with its commitment to the Senior Extended Essay, its comprehensive benchmark re-writing, its adoption of the principles outlined in Understanding by Design, and our push for more video conferencing (collaborating as part of a larger global community) – to name only a few. So we have been working towards this for quite some time…this is merely a small step in a great journey.
a class of Dominican’s (all of them seniors) interested and fired up about studying AP US Politics? This was the challenge presented to one of the teacher’s here and over the last two years Tina Schuster has done exactly that. This year her AP students will be traveling to 
or just trying to make too many changes in the school at once, but i am slammed down here (I fit right in as we appear to be in full 
