Please join us on Thursday, November 5 from 7:30 to 8:30 PM for a conversation with Dr. Pam Moran, the Superintendent of Schools in Albemarle County. Dr. Moran and a member of her faculty will address issues related to balancing standards, technology and project-based learning. We will be using Elluminate for the session which should allow for a lively interactive discussion. The URL for the session is
http://tinyurl.com/lcparticipant.
Elluminate o…
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Added by Karen Richardson on October 27, 2009 at 10:09am —
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Just a quick post this morning...we had a great group at the book discussion last evening! Thanks to everyone who participated. Even if you can't make it to Second Life, you can still participate. Please join the Understanding by Design Group in this Ning and jump in with the discussion.
As a reminder, we'll be meeting two more times this summer On July 27 we'll discuss Chapters 4 - 8 and on August 24, we'll finish us Chapters 9 - 13. I'm encouraging folks to work on a unit as they go through t…
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Added by Karen Richardson on June 23, 2009 at 7:21am —
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This summer, I'll be facilitating a book discussion group on VSTE Island in Second Life. We'll be reading Understanding by Design by Grant Wiggins and Jay McTighe as lots of folks expressed interest in learning more about this instructional model. I'm looking forward to it because I'll be teaching a course next spring that will include UDB! We'll all be learning together. In addition to talking in SL, we can set up a group in the Ning for more extended conversations and sharing.
For now, get th…
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Added by Karen Richardson on May 12, 2009 at 3:19pm —
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I just wanted to make sure everyone saw the new date for the VSTE fall conference. It will be held November 30 through December 2, 2009, at the Hotel Roanoke in Roanoke, Virginia. Head to the
VSTE website and click on the conference link to learn more.
I am particularly excited about Kathy Schrock's virtual participation in the conference. She's always been one of my favorites with such great ideas for how technology can support teaching and learning.
I know l…
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Added by Karen Richardson on March 23, 2009 at 12:27pm —
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First, a thank you to those of you who have welcomed my undergraduates to this space. You've given them advice, shared your wisdom, and just generally made them feel like a part of the community. Thanks!
This semester, I added Voice Thread to my course and I'm glad I did. I thought this group would be interested in seeing them as they are all tied to the Standards of Learning. Most of my students are planning to use them as part of their student teaching experience.
Here's the list with the li…
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Added by Karen Richardson on October 10, 2008 at 8:30am —
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Greetings, VSTE Ningers! Next week, I will begin teaching the two-credit technology course for pre-service teachers at William and Mary. I have taught the course for over five years now, and it has changed significantly in those years. When I inherited it, it was primarily a technical course where students learned how to use word processors and spreadsheets, and the final project was always a webquest. Now the course is more about using technology in the classroom. While students still learn a f…
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Added by Karen Richardson on August 23, 2008 at 5:30pm —
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First, an apology for being AWOL for a bit. I've been following the action in Netvibes and am so happy to see many old and new faces joining the VSTE community. I haven't been absent from the world but been concentrating my efforts over at
In Another Place. But, this morning, as I ate my breakfast before heading out for a workshop, I came upon a VERY interesting exchange between some grown ups and one of those digital natives we're all talking about. Fo…
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Added by Karen Richardson on July 10, 2008 at 8:00am —
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I must say up front that I start feeling my age when people talk about using cell phones in education. Prensky did not convince me at last year's VSTE keynote, especially when I read the article in Education Week about students using the phones to record teachers in less than flattering moments and then posting them to the YouTube.
Then, Hall Davidson showed two great uses of cell phones, one using Gcast to have folks record their responses on a website and another using text messaging to tell…
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Added by Karen Richardson on March 9, 2008 at 9:16am —
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So, I tried sharing my netvibes tab via html, and we ran into some difficulties...a reminder that this is pretty new technology. Meanwhile, I've been intrigued by that text box on my ning page and what kinds of widgets I might use. I found one by
SpringWidgets that allows you to add multiple RSS feeds and even organizes them for you. I posted it to my ning page and it's included in this post. While I prefer the netvibes layout this does seem to be a wa…
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Added by Karen Richardson on February 29, 2008 at 1:31pm —
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Sean had the very good idea to collect blog URLs and share them. I've grabbed all the ones that we're added to his blog entry along with a couple more and put them into Netvibes. I'm trying to share it using the html code feature. Figured it was easier than emailing everyone. There are plenty more great blogs out there but this will be a good start. I think you should be able to click on the button and add the tab to your netvibes.…
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Added by Karen Richardson on February 28, 2008 at 9:40am —
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I spent Sunday and Money volunteering and presenting. But, this morning I'm at a session...and, at 8 AM at that! We do have very intrepid presenters and attendees, don't we?
I couldn't resist this session because of the title. And, I am not disappointed. Alice Hixson from Arlington did a very interesting project with her elementary school students. I really appreciate her approach. She started with the research, then described how she integrated the project into the elementary curriculum. Her s…
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Added by Karen Richardson on February 26, 2008 at 9:00am —
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His theme is thinking big as the world gets smaller. He suggests there is a geographic and a temporal shrinking in the world.
Hall works for
Discovery Education. The group is a virtual company so they've used blogs, wikis and other Web 2.0 tools to connect. He showed a snapshot of his desktop...Skype, IM, and other connection tools. When he was on the Board for the California ISTE affiliate (CUE) they started experimenting with video conferencing…
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Added by Karen Richardson on February 24, 2008 at 5:59pm —
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OK, I saw Tina Coffey's twitter feed and had to add mine. I included my friends, too.
Want to add yours? Just head to your
Twitter page and click the Badges link at the bottom.
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Added by Karen Richardson on February 24, 2008 at 11:53am —
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Last September, I had the chance to interview Glen Bull, Director of the Curry Center for Technology and Teacher Education. He was one of the founders of VSTE. I'll be showing a longer video during the annual meeting on Tuesday but thought this group would be interested in a few of the shorter clips. I've added them to the video database here at VSTEonline but they are housed at Teacher Tube: http://www.teachertube.com/uprofile.php?UID=2831
Now, I really need to put my bags in the car and get o…
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Added by Karen Richardson on February 23, 2008 at 9:34am —
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It is a crummy rainy day here in the 'burg. I am happy to say that I am packed for VSTE; I bought a very cool new rolling backpack and all my electronics fit. I'm bringing my digital video camera and will be stationed most of the time near the ETAN booth, asking conference participants to share their thoughts about Why Technology Rocks in Virginia. I'm planning to put together a short "Voices of VSTE" video for the closing session. For those of you who cant' attend the meeting, I'll post it here…
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Added by Karen Richardson on February 22, 2008 at 3:41pm —
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Greetings, fellow VSTE Ningers! I've been lurking around for a little while (sorry, that really sounds terrible) but I am happy to see activity on the site. Now, I have a request for the group.
One of the areas that the VSTE Board is exploring is "advocacy." We want to tell the positive story about educational technology and how it can effectively and safely support teaching and learning. We did a survey so we know the general areas in which you want us to work. But we also need some go…
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Added by Karen Richardson on January 24, 2008 at 6:51pm —
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