End of Year Ideas

For the junior/senior English class, I want to end the year with at least the following:
1. A unit on Argument & Persuasion
The goals for the students would include:
a. engaging in mini-debates about controversial issues
b. offering their critiques of political speeches
c. writing a persuasive essay
2. A Senior Graduation Newsletter
This would integrate Apple Pages to help students create a graphic & text display of their current accomplishments and upcoming celebrations, especially those related to their imminent graduation and the endeavors that will follow. It would be ideal for the students to be able to print these in color and distribute them with (or in lieu of) their graduation announcements this June.

My Year End Plans

1. We'll continue with learning about Frida Kahlo's use of self-portraits to tell her life story.

2. Students will write their own personal history (or self portrait in words.)

3. Hopefully an outing or two.

Graphing & Sketching

Ever needed to design graphs, charts or diagrams for a lesson or class project?
OmniGraffle is a quick and easy tool that is very flexible and gives great results.
Get it here.

end of year plans

1. do several fun labs (map/goldfish)
2. contact struggling students parents
3. fish on pier with students
4. productive garden
5. super duper food fair
6. staff pot luck
7. get thru end of year with a little grace

From Comics to Second Life

A lot has been said and written of late about the benefits of online virtual worlds for education.

In preparation for this week's professional development, please reflect on possible uses of multi-user networked environments to enhance or diversify your classroom practice. In order to do this, download Second Life and install it on your computer (if possible). Then, create an avatar and begin to explore.

Also, please answer the questions below:

1. What are some viable opportunities to engage your students in this virtual world? (e.g. collective action, debate, cooperation, self-expression, creation of artifacts ...)
2. How can this virtual world complement your face-to-face interactions with students?

some guys have all the luck

Kiss of Life

professional development session 4.11.08

Comic Life- Featuring Rick and Hillary

Digital Publishing I: Creating Comics

Today you will learn the basics of digital publishing by taking pictures, importing them, editing them (cropping, filtering, annotation) into a story format of your choice (advertisement, poster, comic, graphic novel, publication).

Download comic life.