John Hendron

Director of Innovation and Strategy

Archives for October 2009

Scratch-ing Article

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Many of our teachers know I’m a big fan of the MIT Lifelong Kindergarten Group’s Scratch application for Mac and Windows. Today, I found a new article about the program and how it is transforming education in so many places.

We know students today live in a digital society, but it’s one where communities are forming online and millions of people enjoy the re-use or re-purposing of the content they find.

The Scratch Web site has become a vibrant online community, with people sharing, discussing, and remixing one another’s projects.

When students are working on Scratch projects, meaningful learning takes place. Scratch was designed so that student projects can diverse in nature and personable by the ability to add graphics and sounds students create. The latest version even takes advantage of the cameras built-in to everyone of our computers in Goochland County.

For Scratch to succeed, the language needs to be linked to a community where people can support, collaborate, and critique one another and build on one another’s work. Understanding how to interact within an online community taps into a number of 21st century skills. Scratch helps bring the concept of digital fluency into the lives of students where they can design, create, and remix content that’s ubiquitous and digital.

Safari Search

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Did you know that when you use the Google search bar in Safari that it is also treating this as a search? Easily find the relevant part of a Google result, you can press Command-G (usually for search again in most text editors) to search for your Google search query on one of the pages that comes up after your search. What? Just go read it and then try it out.

You won’t use this all the time, but it’s a great tip for finding what you need on pages that are long and complicated. Your search term will light up and be easy to find.

Flickr to Write

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British educator Tom Barrett recently shared an interesting post on the use of Flickr to inspire writing for students. I follow Tom on Twitter and learn a lot from him, often jealous that his school day is ending hours before my own.

But beyond using digital images, he talks about the power of technology and that it can be an effective friend of teachers, even when it is used simply, and you’re not planning to geek-out. It’s a sober reminder for me, too, to look not only up at the glittery innovations, but for all the ways tech in schools can make a positive improvement.

Cyberbullying

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While I will be attending next week’s conference in Richmond to learn about a new DOE initiative, a recent article in THE Journal talks about cyberbullying.

Some 40+% of students report being affected by bullying through the Internet. And only 10% of teens ever bring up the topic with their parents.

I would encourage students at GMS or GHS to use our Eagle and Bulldog websites to report any incidents that take place at school. This is an issue that needs to be discussed in every classroom when issues of Internet safety take place.