Such statements speak to the need for greater attention to middle school students and support for teachers of these grades. For our December NSDL Brown Bag, Mary Henton, Director of Integrated Media Initiatives for the National Middle School Association and Dr. Kim Lightle, Director of Digital Libraries at Ohio State University shared other data related to the needs of both students and teachers for the middle school years and how the work of the Middle School Portal will continue to address those needs as a social learning network for middle school level educators. Thirty-one people attended the live webinar on December 10, 2009. An archived version of the webinar will be available soon.

The NSDL Brown Bag Series is a free professional development webinar scheduled monthly. These 60-minute programs highlight trends and best practices in STEM education with programs at both K-12 and higher education levels.

The January webinar directed at college level educators, Supporting Connections Between Research and Learning,will feature Dr. Laura Bartolo, a professor at Kent State University and PI for the NSDL Materials Science Digital Library on January 29, 2009 at 1pm Eastern.

For more information, contact us through the NSDL contact form.

We’ve used a Diigo list, a social bookmarking site to list these resources. Diigo allows you to save bookmarks right off of your browser. You can then send them to your colleagues, make annotations and notes on the bookmarked sites and join groups that share links together.

Title: Middle School-What Do We Know?
Date: Thu, Dec 11, 2008
Time: 1:00 PM EST
Duration: 1 hour
Host(s): NMSA and the NSDL Resource Center

Description:
National Middle School Association in collaboration with the National Science Digital Library invite you to this NSDL Brown Bag focusing on middle school math and science:
What do we know about current trends, activities and issues around middle school teaching in terms of the needs of students and teachers? Find out how these trends relate to your work and how (MSP)2, the NSDL Middle School Pathway is responding to these trends.
Join Mary Henton, Director of Integrated Media Initiatives for the National Middle School Association and Kim Lightle, Director of Digital Libraries at Ohio State University for this current view of the middle school classroom and the online resources available.

Click here to register for this meeting:

Questions? Contact Robert Payo, NSDL Outreach and Professional Development Manager, at rpayo@ucar.edu

“Youth Voices” will kick off in January, with a series of three informative webinars for student filmmakers.

Want to learn more? Go to the WGBH Lab for details.

Past winners include:
Woodchurch Science:
Resource lists and recommendations related to science content

SMART Board Lessons Podcast:
Tips and ideas of integrating the use of SMART Boards

The Fischbowl:
High school teachers examining 21st century skills. See the post voted “most influential” for 2007: “Is it okay to be technologically illiterate?”

Don’t forget these other blogs from NSDL Expert Voices and other NSDL favorites:
Beyond Penguins and Polar Bears
Exemplary Resources for Middle School Math and Science
Sciencegeekgirl
Weblogg-ed

Our ability to form groups through the use of 2.0 tools signals great change for our society. We are experiencing “tectonic change akin to the invention of the printing press” in the way we are able to share information and mobilize groups in unprecedented ways. Read Clay Shirky’s book, Here Comes Everybody. Shirky examines our ability to form groups of interest and purpose quickly and with greater agility.

Examples of how this change has affected different sectors of society:

Obama’s election campaign: Use of social networks, over 8,000 affinity groups within the Obama campaign. A 21st century model of campaigning.

Fundraising: A senator candidate had the idea of posting a request for $8.19 from people wanting to contribute to his campaign to raise $25,000 and ended up raising $90,000, with many people contributing increments of $8.19 in a matter of days.

Media: Christian Science Monitor has announced it will stop its printed version of publication. Articles in general are now blog posts that people comment and discuss.

Business models: New models are needed as well as new ways of conducting business. “Businesses are not about products. Businesses are about conversations about products” e.g: customer reviews of products on Amazon.

Transparency: IBM has open blogs and wikis
“The more they publish, the more they can mine that intelligence—sharing out their information to become smarter.” Wikinomics: The more you give, the more you get.

Education needs to change as well. Are we preparing our students not only for today, but for their future? “Kids are changing without us.” Barriers to technologies that kids use in their lives outside of school are not finding their way into the classroom for effective use and for the purposes of teaching them how to use them safely.

What are our students’ “digital footprint”? Is their classroom limited to the physical location of their school or does it reach beyond through the use of 2.0 technologies in order to open their own personal classroom to include people across the world?

View of Richardson’s “classroom”: People from around the world that follow and contribute to his blog, URL are represented by dots on a Google map. This is his classroom and his digital footprint.

Students need to find their own teachers and teachers need to facilitate that process and help them identify those teachers that come from a global community. We need to teach students how to validate and edit content. Content is constantly changing, so teaching kids how to be good editors and find the most current information is important. We need to incorporate mobile technology as a part of our curriculum. This should not be taught as a unit on information literacy, but integrated in how we teach—“This is how we do business.”

Examples of use in the classroom:
A blog from students in Manitoba, Canada discussing and sharing information from a village in Africa that is greatly affected by HIV.

A multimedia magazine, a newer approach using interactive media: FLYP media

Richardson’s students learning Scratch, a code language by a teacher identified through Richardson’s blog from Scotland who happens to be twelve years old. We should not let the walls of the classroom restrict our ability to find teachers for our students.

Secret Life of Bees: Richardson had his students write comments and questions on their blog related to this book that the author responded to, giving them first-hand interaction with the author.

Concluding remarks: Yeah, buts….

Richardson acknowledges that there are barriers of time, technology, school politics and more that keep teachers from using these types of tools of communication in the classroom. He challenges teachers to try these tools for their own personal use as a way of introducing themselves to what is possible as a starting point. “How will we add dots to our own [digital footprint] map?”

An image from “Candles at Halloween–Periodic Table of Videos.”

Have you ever wondered what was happening in the burning flame of a candle? The University of Nottingham invites viewers to find out in a seasonal video that details the chemistry of candles here–just in time for Halloween!

The University of Nottingham hosts a series of 118 videos that correspond to Periodic Table elements on You Tube and on their web site (if You Tube is blocked) that have been watched 2.9 million times. This particularly charming and informative example, starring Martyn Poliakoff, a research professor at the University of Nottingham and a pioneer in the field of green chemistry, is about Halloween candles. You may subscribe to the Periodic Video RSS through You Tube.

No Child Left Inside…

We are in the midst of Earth Science Week 2008 (October 12-18)! Take the opportunity before the week is over (as well as beyond it) to access the valuable materials for teachers and students at the American Geological Institute’s (AGI) Earth Science Week site. With the theme of “No Child Left Inside,” activities and resources for teachers and students, include:

* Earth Science Week Newsletter
* Geoscience Careers Webquest
* Best in AGI Earth science education products and services
* Contests
* Events near you
* 2008-09 Activity Calendar

Also, each day of the week, NASA Goddard Space Flight Center scientists address five big Earth science questions via 2-minute videos on these topics:

* Introduction and How is the global Earth system changing? 10/13/08
* What are the primary forces of the Earth system? 10/14/08
* How does the Earth system respond to natural and human-induced changes? 10/15/08
* What are the consequences of change in the Earth system for human civilization? 10/16/08
* How will the Earth system change in the future? 10/17/08

This Windows to the Universe program is an international citizen-science event that encourages everyone, astronomers and non-astronomers alike, to measure their local light pollution and report their observations online. The Great World Wide Star Count, part of the Dark Skies Awareness cornerstone project for the upcoming International Year of Astronomy, is designed to raise awareness about light pollution as well as encourage learning in astronomy.

No prior experience is necessary–all information needed to participate is on the Star Count Web site, along with a downloadable activity guide available in eight languages. All observations will be available online via Google Earth and as downloadable datasets.In 2007, people from 64 countries contributed more than 6,600 observations to the inaugural Star Count. Spread the word for this year’s count!

Some of the questions addressed in this year’s survey: How are students, teachers and administrators using technology in schools? What are the characteristics of the 21st century classroom? What are the emerging technology trends to watch? How do we improve student achievement in science? How do we foster media and information literacy skills?

Information and registration are available on the Project Tomorrow website.