Category: Events

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Join PDX Educators at edcampPDX April 12

edcampPDX-april-14

Calling all teachers, instructional technologists, IT directors, principals, admins and teacher librarians who live in the NW:  edcampPDX – Saturday, April 12, 2014 More info
Meriwether Lewis Elementary School | 4401 SE Evergreen, Portland, OR 97206 | Map

What is edcampPDX?
An edcamp is a unconference-style day of professional development organized and given by the local participants. Sign up to attend here!

What should I bring?
Bring a friend and a device (either a laptop or mobile device) with wireless internet access to view the website, see the sessions, take notes and view online resources discussed throughout the day.

Kids are welcome at EdCampPDX! Please bring them and their perspective. Make sure to add them to the list so they’ll get a lunch. Don’t worry, we’ll put them to work!

Do you tweet?
 Yes! Twitter updates about #edcampPDX. Follow @EdCampPDX on Twitter.

What does it cost?
The day is FREE!!!

edcamptweet

What are the goals of edcampPDX?

  • Networking: Connect educators in the Portland / Oregon area
  • Instructional Practices: Learn new curriculum ideas, best practices,
  • and/or tech integration ideas from other educators
  • Personalized: You customize your own PD by suggesting, facilitating and attending sessions about topics that interest you!

edcamppdx-app

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See You At integratED Conference #iPDX14

I’m looking forward to presenting at integratED Portland 2014 February 26–28, 2014
Sheraton Hotel Portland Airport Portland, Ore. It’s a premier edtech conference features active hands-on sessions with an impressive team of presenters. I’m honored to be doing two workshops.

integratED Portland

Getting Started with iBooks Author
You’ll leave with workflow secrets for using iBooks Author, confident in your ability to create and share your own iBook. Here’s your chance to see how easy it is for students and teachers to create multi-touch iBooks using iBA. We’ll demonstrate the key steps in designing an iBook that can be published to iTunes or shared within your school. BYO Mac loaded with iBooks Author and some content you’d like to work with (text files, images jpg or png, Keynote decks, video m4v, audio m4a). You’ll learn efficient workflow strategies for creating and sharing your own multi-touch iBook. You’ll leave with a demonstration iBook and the confidence to keep going.

Right From the Start: Infusing Tech and PBL in Teacher Prep
Many are critical with the quality of teacher prep in the US. Here’s my attempt to get it right by infusing his University of Portland social studies methods class with practical tech applications and community-based PBL projects. Students utilized tech tools to support instruction and collaboration – LearningCatalytics, WordPress, Evernote, Learnist.

They served as consultants to the Oregon Nikkei Legacy Center – a Japanese American History Museum in a variety of projects – designing curriculum for traveling exhibits, building an online museum, and a iPhone app walking tour of Japantown PDX. (In collaboration with PDX mobile app developer – GammaPoint) Student also collaborated on developing an iBook showcase of their work. Some of the grad and undergrad students will be on hand to discuss their reactions to the course and lead participants in a LearningCatalytics – powered reflection on their own teaching prep experience.

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Best Sites for Primary Documents in World History

Common Core offers an incentive for teachers to use historic documents to build literacy skills in a content area while empowering students to be the historian in the classroom. But document-based (DBQ) instruction in this context requires four key elements to be successful:

  • The right documents.
  • Knowing how to look at them.
  • Letting students discover their own patterns, then asking students to describe, compare and defend what they found.
  • Basing the task on enduring questions, the kind that students might actually want to answer.

I’ve assigned my pre-service social studies methods class the task of designing some DBQs and I assembled a list of some of my favorite sources for finding historic documents in World History. More on my assignment here.

All these sites feature good search engines and the ability to download documents for use in classroom projects. Here they are – in no particular order. Feel free to comment with links to your favorite sites. Click here for best sites for American History.

avalon project

Avalon Project
The Avalon Project contains a vast collection digital documents relevant to the fields of Law, History, Economics, Politics, Diplomacy and Government. All documents are in text format and easy to copy / paste. Search by era or collection.

Royal 10 E.IV, f.58

Medieval and Renaissance Material Culture
A vast collection of source material on a diverse array of topics relating to the material culture of the Middle Ages and Renaissance – not merely things, but occupations, clothing, animals, tools, eating-utensils, children and motherhood, games and pastimes, crime and punishment… even suggestions for books which may help you learn more about such matters. (Another section of the site covers clothing and material culture of the 18th century.)

Musicians and an acrobat, Smithfield Decretals (Brit. Lib. Royal 10 E IV, fol. 58), c. 1340

web gallery of art

Web Gallery of Art
The Web Gallery of Art is a virtual museum and searchable database of Western (European) fine arts of the Medieval, Renaissance, Baroque, Neoclassicism, Romanticism, Realism, and Impressionism periods (1000-1900), currently containing over 32.500 reproductions. Artist biographies, commentaries, guided tours, period music, catalogue, free postcard and mobile services are provided.

Internet History Sourcebooks Project
The Internet History Sourcebooks Project is a collection of public domain and copy-permitted historical texts presented cleanly (without advertising or excessive layout) for educational use. Includes sourcebooks on ancient, medieval and modern history as well as regional and thematic collections.

Weighing CottonThe Commons / Flickr
The goal of The Commons is to share hidden treasures from the world’s public photography archives. Includes material from museums and archives all over the world. Fully searchable by theme, keywords or tags.

Title: Weighing Cotton, Bombay
Creator: Johnson, William; Henderson, William
Date: ca. 1855-1862

kimbo2

World Digital Library
World Digital Library provides multiple ways to search and browse content, including by place, time, topic, type of item and contributing institution. And every item can be viewed with state-of-the art zoom features in order to catch all the fine detail. To date, there are about 1,460 digital items included in the World Digital Library, in a variety of formats – books, photographs, films, sound recordings, manuscripts and maps.

Kimbo In 1839, the Spanish slave ship Amistad set sail from Havana to Puerto Principe, Cuba. The ship was carrying 53 Africans who, a few months earlier, had been abducted from their homeland in present-day Sierra Leone to be sold in Cuba. Drawing by William H. Townsend Around 1839 CE – 1840 CE

Korean-Women-Going-Out

The Retronaut
The Retronaut is an eclectic collection of images from around the world. Tagline “See the past like you wouldn’t believe.” Search by year, category and clusters. I guarantee you will get lost in the unusual ephemera found in this site.

Korean women going out c. 1904
“The inscription imprinted on the postcard in Japanese characters indicates an outing of ‘Pyongyang’ women. The big objects over women’s heads were used to hide their face and to protect from sunshine or rain.”

Google Cultural Institute
Google has partnered with hundreds of museums, cultural institutions, and archives to host the world’s cultural treasures online. Here you can find artworks, landmarks and world heritage sites, as well as digital exhibitions that tell the stories behind the archives of cultural institutions across the globe.

Hans Holbein the Younger - The Ambassadors

The Google Cultural Institute includes :
Art Project
Google Art Project is an online platform through which the public can access high-resolution images of artworks housed in the initiative’s partner museums.The platform enables users to virtually tour partner museums’ galleries, explore physical and contextual information about artworks, and compile their own virtual collection. The “walk-through” feature of the project uses Google’s Street View technology. Users can log in with their Google Account to create their own collection.
Hans Holbein the Younger’s The Ambassadors
Art Project on YouTube

World Wonders Project
World Wonders brings modern and ancient world heritage sites online using Street View, 3D modelling and other Google technologies. Explore historic sites including Stonehenge, the archaeological areas of Pompeii and the Great Barrier Reef as if you were there. World Wonders on YouTube

warrior wearing a mail coat

Historic Moments
Explore Historic Moments, Cultural Figures, Science & Technology, and other categories to browse through photos, videos, manuscripts and documents on a wide range of topics.

Detail from an Anglo-Saxon casket from around AD 700-750
British Museum London
Historic Moments

Hat tip to Peter Gallagher for lead on Google Cultural Institute

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Learn, Share and Win an Apple TV at edcampPDX

edcamppdxCalling all educators! Here’s your excuse to come to Portland Ore and have a great time while expanding your PLN. I’ll be there with a very talented group of Pacific NorthWest educators who are interested in sharing ideas for creating engaging classrooms. You’ll have a good time and leave with loads of great ideas for the classroom. 

Creative educators + free lunch + shot at an Apple TV + hanging out in Portland = best PD around

Join us for EdCampPDX, the FREE, unconference-style, collaborative, educator-driven, customized professional development day. Enjoy a day of sharing ideas, networking, and collaborating with your peers – teachers, administrators, pre-service teachers and anyone interested in teaching and learning.
Lunch is provided by an awesome sponsor. And yes, there are door prizes, including an Apple TV. 

Wednesday, August 7, 2013
9:00 to 4:00
at LaSalle Catholic College Prep
11999 SE Fuller Rd.
Portland, OR 97222 MAP

Photos from previous edcampPDX
Follow Twitter updates at #edcampPDX
Join the edcampPDX Google Group to network and keep up with our news and notes.

Here’s a few of the sessions we’ve got planned so far – but it’s an edcamp, so who know what else we’ll add when we get there?

  • Using apps such as Minecraft (coming soon to an ORVSD server near you!)
  • The new Google Maps, and Notablity in the classroom
  • Getting started with iBooks Author – bring your iPad and I’ll give you a copy of Recruiting Rosie – my latest iBook
  • Using iPads and Chromebooks with Vernier probeware
  • How to make a living in education outside the classroom
  • Thinking differently about education via SAMR (Substitution, Augmentation, Modification, Redefinition)
  • PBL lesson planning hack-a-thon
  • Creating a professional learning plan incorporating SAMR and CRCD frameworks
  • Speed-Geeking App share
  • What are the best tools to create infographics in the classroom? How do you incorporate them into the classroom?
  • How do we use high tech and no-tech strategies to keep our students engaged and self-selecting reading material? Discussion open to all grade levels.
  • EdmodoCon hookup
  • Learn how to use Celly
  • Beginning with Tech in Your Classroom
  • Your PLN is Yours!
  • The STEM Lab of the Future
  • Scoot and Doodle collaboration tool

Invite your friends, colleagues, and administrators by simply forwarding this email!
Sign up here and while you’re there, please add your session ideas on the session page.

Invite your friends, colleagues, and administrators! Hope to see you there!

Cool boots from November’s edcampPDX. But it’s summer, I’ll bet we’ll all be in flip-flops.

Cool boot optional

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Innovation Challenge – 22 PBL Mind Workouts for Teams

There’s a great new iBook that I highly recommend as a source for project based learning and team building activities for middle school students through adults. “Innovation Challenges – Mind Workouts for Teams” is available free at iTunes. 

It tells the story of a great program at Saint Louis University, designed to promote creativity, innovation, and the entrepreneurial mindset through novel challenges. The book is a detailed how to for 22 challenges – team supplies, facilitator supplies, tips, learning outcomes and variations. It’s a treasure trove lavishly illustrated with photos and videos. Challenges run the gamut from STEM to marketing and sustainability. The iBook also details how to replicate the competition at your institution.

The books notes :

The goal of the innovation challenges is to promote the entrepreneurial mindset through multiple exposures to innovation process in a competitive, multidisciplinary, team-based, creative environment. Just as everyone is encouraged to exercise everyday to keep the body fit, innovation challenges are designed to keep the mind fit. It’s a mind workout. The Innovation Challenges help participants to exercise their creative side, work in multidisciplinary teams, and experience the team dynamics. They learn to tackle a novel situation under intense competitive time pressure, while networking with others outside their disciplines, and most importantly, fine-tuning their entrepreneurial skills.

Here’s more about the Weekly Innovation Challenge at Saint Louis University from their website:

Every Wednesday, Saint Louis University students have a chance to compete in the Weekly Innovation Challenge from 12-1pm in the Rotunda at Parks College. Students must form teams of three—these teams must include at least one engineering student and up to one faculty member. Most importantly, all participants must be from different majors/disciplines. The students are given an impromptu challenge and have one hour to compete. Whichever team completes the challenge successfully first wins $300 ($100 per teammate). Additionally, participants are asked to submit a weekly reflection on the challenge and one winner will be rewarded an additional $100.

The events are sponsored by the Kern Entrepreneurship Education Network, the Coleman Foundation and Saint Louis University. The goal of the competitions is for students to exercise their minds and creativity, just as they would their bodies. Challenges have included a wide variety of topics—from designing the tallest free-standing structure using spaghetti sticks to creating a “green” toaster box design. Winning teams have been from all sorts of disciplines. The first team to win was three female sophomores, including an aerospace engineering, political science and investigative medicine major.

Image credits: iBook / Innovation Challenges – Mind Workouts for Teams