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DC West Training
1-19-2008 ESU#3

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You viewed a video clip entitled, "What Does It All Mean?" What does it mean to you both personally and professionally? How do we help students decipher fact from fiction on the web? What could Learning 2.0 look like in the classroom? What does it mean to be a global student? How can we give our student a more global education? Ho do values and points of views in the Media influence beliefs and behaviors? How can we prepare our students to thrive in professions that are undergoing rapid change and outsourcing?
 * //Reflective Questions for your consideration:// **

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**1. Learning 2.0 2. Life and careers 3. New Kind of Literacy****4. What it means to be a global student? 5.** **Information Media Skills**
 * Here are the 5 Gallery Walk & Talk Stations: **

Some Gallery Walk Stations were created based on this Time Magazine article: [|Time Magazine Article]

=**Station 1 - Learning 2.0/Web 2.0**=
 * ===**1. Read This First**===

The chairman of Sun Microsystems was up against one of the most vexing challenges of modern life: a third-grade science project. Scott McNealy had spent hours searching the Web for a lively explanation of electricity that his son could understand. "Finally I found a very nice, animated, educational website showing electrons zooming around and tests after each section. We did this for about an hour and a half and had a ball--a great father-son moment of learning. All of a sudden we ran out of runway because it was a site to help welders, and it then got into welding." For McNealy the experience, three years ago, provided one of life's aha! moments: "It made me wonder why there isn't a website where I can just go and have anything I want to learn, K to 12, online, browser based and free." His solution: draw on the Wikipedia model to create a collection of online courses that can be updated, improved, vetted and built upon by innovative teachers, who, he notes, "are always developing new materials and methods of instruction because they aren't happy with what they have." And who better to create such a site than McNealy, whose company has led the way in designing open-source computer software? He quickly raised some money, created a nonprofit and--voilà!--Curriki.org made its debut January 2006, and has been growing fast. Some 450 courses are in the works, and about 3,000 people have joined as members. McNealy reports that a teenager in Kuwait has already completed the introductory physics and calculus classes in 18 days.

Curriki, however, isn't meant to replace going to school but to supplement it and offer courses that may not be available locally. It aims to give teachers classroom-tested content materials and assessments that are livelier and more current and multimedia-based than printed textbooks. Ultimately, it could take the Web 2.0 revolution to school, closing that yawning gap between how kids learn at school and how they do everything else. Educators around the country and overseas are already discussing ways to certify Curriki's online course work for credit. ||

**2. As a group, read aloud each scenario listed.**
Communicating with students and parents is very important and the communication tools at our disposal continue to grow. Think about the communication tools that you presently use to communicate with parents and share those with the group. What communication tools/strategies do students use to communicate with others? Using the questions below, poll your group and write the totals on the wall poster (leave space for other groups rotating around to add their numbers). If time permits, discuss your decisions.
 * < **Scenario #1: Topic of Communication**

Yes/No/Maybe/Don't Know Enough to Answer Question: Would you… A. Use e-mail to communicate with students and their parents B. Use texting or instant messaging to communicate with students and their parents? C. Use facebook or myspace to communicate with students and their parents? || During homeroom, you hear students talking about YouTube videos that they have been viewing--often sharing the name, web address, and sometimes even asking to use your computer to show others. Knowing that this is something that interests your students, you went to YouTube and looked at the offerings and found that there is a wide variety of material available--some good and some bad. With an upcoming unit, you decide to use student interest in YouTube during the unit. Using the questions below, poll your group using the Yes/No/Maybe/Don't Know Enough and write the totals on the wall poster (leave room for the other groups rotating around to add their numbers). If time, discuss decisions.
 * < ======**Scenario #2: Use of Web 2.0 Tool YouTube**======

Yes/No/Maybe/Don't Know Enough to Answer Question: Would you… A: Go to YouTube and find a video that you decide is appropriate and use it as an introduction to the unit? B. Allow older students to go to YouTube and find a video about the Industrial Revolution to share with the class? C. Allow students to create a 2-3 minute video to post to YouTube that could be viewed by others? (after you have viewed it first of course!) ||

|| **Yes** || **Maybe** || **No** || **Don't Know Enough to Answer** || E-mail students and parents ||  ||   ||   ||   || Texting and instant messaging ||  ||   ||   ||   || Facebook and myspace ||  ||   ||   ||   || Teacher Use ||  ||   ||   ||   || Student Use ||  ||   ||   ||   || Student Creation ||  ||   ||   ||   ||
 * **Scenario**
 * Scenario #1A: Communication
 * Scenario #1B: Communication
 * Scenario #1C: Communication
 * Scenario #2A: YouTube
 * Scenario #2B: YouTube
 * Scenario #2C: YouTube

=**Station 2 - Life and Careers**=

=**Station 3 - A New Kind of Literacy**=


 * ===**1. Read This First**===

The juniors in Bill Stroud's class are riveted by a documentary called ‘Loose Change’ unspooling on a small TV screen in urban Astoria, N.Y. The film uses 9/11 footage and interviews with building engineers and Twin Towers survivors to make an oddly compelling case that interior explosions unrelated to the impact of the airplanes brought down the World Trade Center on that fateful day. Afterward, the students--an ethnic mix of New Yorkers with their own 9/11 memories--dive into a discussion about the elusive nature of truth. Raya Harris finds the video more convincing than the official version of the facts. Marisa Reichel objects. "Because of a movie, you are going to change your beliefs?" she demands. "Just because people heard explosions doesn't mean there were explosions. You can say you feel the room spinning, but it isn't." This kind of discussion about what we know and how we know it is typical of a theory of knowledge class, a required element for an international-baccalaureate diploma. Stroud has posed this question to his class on the blackboard: "If truth is difficult to prove in history, does it follow that all versions are equally acceptable?"

Throughout the year, the class will examine news reports, websites, propaganda, history books, blogs, even pop songs. The goal is to teach kids to be discerning consumers of information and to research, formulate and defend their own views, says Stroud, who is founder and principal of the four-year-old public school, which is located in a repurposed handbag factory.

Classes like this, which teach key aspects of information literacy, remain rare in public education, but more and more universities and employers say they are needed as the world grows ever more deluged with information of variable quality. "We kind of assumed this generation was so comfortable with technology that they know how to use it for research and deeper thinking," says Egan (Educational Testing Service). "But if they're not taught these skills, they don't necessarily pick them up.” ||

**2. Visit the websites below:**

 * [|Save the Northwest Tree Octopus]
 * [|Dehydrated Water]
 * [|Zombie Attack]
 * [|Dihydrogen Monoxide]

**3. Discuss: How do/or will you teach your students to be discerning consumers of the information?**
=**Station 4 - What it means to be a Global Student**=


 * ===1. Read This First===

Quick! How many ways can you combine nickels, dimes and pennies to get 20 cents? That’s a challenge for students in a second-grade math class at Seattle’s John Stanford International School, and hands are flying up with answers. The students sit at tables of four manipulating play money. One boy shouts “10 plus 10”; a girl; offers “10 plus 5 plus 5,” only it sounds like this: “Ju, tasu, go, tasu, go.” This public school has taken the idea of global education and run with it. All students take some classes in either Japanese or Spanish. Other subjects are taught in English, but the content has an international flavor.

Before opening the school seven years ago, principal Karen Kodama surveyed 1,500 business leaders on which languages to teach (plans for Mandarin were dropped for lack of classroom space) and which skills and disciplines. “No.1 was technology,” she recalls. Even first graders at Stanford begin to use PowerPoint and Internet tools. “Exposure to world cultures was also an important trait cited by the executives,” says Kodama, so that instead of circling back to the Pilgrims and Indians every autumn- children at Stanford do social-studies units on Asia, Africa, Australia, Mexico and South America. Students actively apply the lessons in foreign language and culture by video-conferencing with sister schools in Japan, Africa and Mexico.

Stanford International shows what’s possible for a public elementary school; dozens of U.S. school districts have found ways to orient some of their students toward the global economy. Many have opened schools that offer the international baccalaureate (I.B.) program; a rigorous, off-the-shelf curriculum recognized by universities around the world and first introduced in 1968—well before globalization became a buzzword. Courses offer an international perspective, so even a lesson on the American Revolution will interweave sources from Britain and France with views from the Founding Fathers. Says Jeffrey Beard, director general of the International Baccalaureate Organization in Geneva, Switzerland; “These are students who can grasp issues across national borders. They have an understanding of nuances and complexity and a balanced approach to problem solving.” Despite stringent certification requirements, I.B. schools are growing in the U.S.—from about 350 in 2000 to 682 today. The U.S. Department of Educations has a pilot effort to bring the program to more low-income students. ||

3. Test your “Global Technology” knowledge. Try to match each technology fact to the country. Lift the sheet to check if you were correct.

 * [|Nationmaster.com]

**Station 5 - Information and Media**

VIDEO CLIP: Vision of K-12 Students Today media type="youtube" key="_A-ZVCjfWf8" height="344" width="425"