21st Century Learning

Just Came Across These...

Picked this up via MiddleWeb's biweekly newsletter-

EVERYBODY LOVES FREEBIES
http://snipurl.com/1vd88
You may have visited the Teachers Pay Teachers website in the past.
It was started a couple of years ago by teacher Paul Edelman, who
eventually sold it to Scholastic and is now the site's general
manager. Good pay, we'd guess. Anyway, you may not know that the site
features nearly a thousand free teacher-products (in addition to
5000+ you can buy for fairly small change). This link leads to a
search engine for the no-cost stuff. While you're there, you might
look into sharing or selling some work of your own.

   
Digizen.org
Digital citizenship isn’t just about recognizing and dealing with online hazards. It’s about building safe spaces and communities, understanding how to manage personal information, and about being internet savvy - using your online presence to grow and shape your world in a safe, creative way, and inspiring others to do the same. This site includes curriculum and videos about cyberbullying awareness.

Smart Board on the Cheap

Thanks to Will for the point to Tim Wang's elearning blog via Twitter.

Check this out! First question you should ask yourself is-- what in my current curriculum would have nurtured this creativity and innovation in this student? Ok. Now watch! Wiis aren't just for gaming! I am running and buying extra Wii remotes today!

"The high-end smart board / screen overlay can cost as much as the LCD or data projector itself (up to $2000-$3000 easily). Then a much cheaper and yet more powerful solution came across (thanks to Ulrich Rauch), it seems one can convert a Wii remote into a multi-point infrared reader, with a few infrared sensors, you can turn any flat surface (Plasma TV, LCD, Projector Screens and even a coffee table) into a smart board!"

Here is Johnny Lee's Wii Tricks Site Look at this one-  the next video where Johnny takes this Wii Remote hack up a notch - Minority Report technology in real life for less than $100!

The Next-Generation Research Tool

Thanks to Terri Willingham for the link:

http://www.zotero.org/

Zotero is an easy-to-use yet powerful research tool that helps you
gather, organize, and analyze sources (citations, full texts, web
pages, images, and other objects), and lets you share the results of
your research in a variety of ways. An extension to the popular open-
source web browser Firefox, Zotero includes the best parts of older
reference manager software (like EndNote)—the ability to store
author, title, and publication fields and to export that information
as formatted references—and the best parts of modern software and web
applications (like iTunes and del.icio.us), such as the ability to
interact, tag, and search in advanced ways 

Robo Cup 2007 in Atlanta

Georgia Tech hosted the annual Robo Cup in Atlanta this week.

According to Slashdot, "RoboCup is an international robotics symposium and competition whose goal is to advance the fields of robotics and artificial intelligence to the point that in 2050 a robot soccer team can defeat the human world champions. This year, RoboCup is located on the Georgia Tech campus in Atlanta, GA, marking the first time a university is hosting it and only the second time since it began in 1993 that it is located in the United States."

For soccer fans it was incredible to watch the robot goalies dive to make the save. The seamless way these robots get back up after a fall and use intimidation of their fellow robots players was just too real.

As someone who has been a fan of robots since the Rockem Sockem days

this gathering of all things robotic makes me wish I had attended.

Here is the Flickr pool and the YouTube library that is beginning to form.

The most advertised event was the brand new " Nanogram Demonstration challenges", where robots in the 10s to 100s of micrometers in size, are required to manipulate objects and perform certain tasks. The competition took place under a microscope (!) and was broadcasted to large screens for the audience to see.

For robots to play soccer, various technologies have be developed including artificial intelligence so the robots know who to pass to and how best to defeat an opponent as well as sophisticated robotics and sensors. RoboCup is a stunning international joint project that promotes AI (Artificial Intelligence) robotics. As you watch this clip, keep saying to yourself- this isnt remote control this is artifical intelligence. Amazing.

Now, tell me why you do not feel compelled to rethink what we are teaching in school? And why again is it you do not feel the urgency to adopt 21st Century teaching and learning skills?

TalkShoe

TalkShoe is a new podcasting service! I talked with the creators today and it seems to have great potential! Wouldnt it be great to host a radio show style podcast around a particular content area for your students? Or how about a virtual PTA style meeting with panel experts to answer questions. I can see this being used for teacher professional development as well, espcially in the area of change and the read, write, Web. Check it out!