Posts Tagged ‘Kimbra Power’

Now that the hardware is connected……

We must socially connect!!!!!

And what better way to connect than telling the world what you are up to. As educators especially elementary, the use of newsletters is one way we keep the school community connected. It’s great to be able to see what everyone is up to and look at the wall of newsletters, but why not start your own blog and keep us up to date a little more regularly?….This doesn’t mean that you post daily, it just means that you post when you want. One week you may post  only once the following week twice, maybe three times….it’s up to you.

SAS has many bloggers, and the software for you. Of course your elementary tech guys Mike Romard and I are blogging but, so are staff all over the campus, from teachers to admin! Check out the following…. Kimbra in grade 5, Amanda Decardy in Middle School, Principal Ron Roukema, Deputy Super Andy Torris, Shaun McElroy, Alfred Olivas, just a few to get you started. Once you have visited these few I suggest turning your attention to educators blogging all over the world that contribute to education and pedagogy allowing you to view things differently and incorporate new ways of doing things into what you are already doing…check out the following bloggers…..Jeff Utecht, David Warlick, Jenny Luca, Tim Munnerlyn, Viki Davis

Some links won’t work here in China…mostly anything that has bloggerspot, wordpress.com etc in its URL. I would suggest downloading hotspot shield a free nifty little thing that is a vpn…much like a secure bank line out of China that can’t be read by the amazing firewall “protecting” us all in the PRC.

Now to read all of these can take some time and we can talk more about this in a future post….but start thinking about putting some of your energy into creating your news online rather than paper. And ask questions, we are more than happy to help one and all!

Tags: Alfred Olivas, Amanda Decardy Mike Romard, Andy Torris, blogging, David Warlick, Jenny Luca, Kimbra Power, Ron Roukema, SAS, Shaun McElroy, Tim Munnerlyn, Utecht, Viki Davis
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Google Earth in the classroom

Everywhere I look at the moment I seem to be seeing amazing examples and ideas of how to use Google Earth. GE for me in the past has been more of a novelty….finding my house and friends houses, but after seeing it used by Jeff Utecht with Kimbra Power’s grade 5 students discussing migration in 4 easy lessons and students at Shanghai American School plotting their own migration path I am now totally hooked! These students plotted their own maps in class placing markers on where they have lived, then Jeff combined all the maps into one. Amazing seeing the results. After a quick search, I found some amazing resources….interestingly though I thought I would have found more on the Google Earth Education page, but no GELessons.com is a fantastic site that has great resources, lesson plans, and nifty tricks. I plan to start the year with grade 5 students and Google Earth and getting the tech savvy students up to speed and spending the rest of the year incorporating GE into projects and work…letting the students decide if it could work for them in a project or two. Learning to fly and whiz around your home city showing the rest of the class some major landmarks as Jason Welker explained will be my first lesson plan with the students. If you can think of ways to embrace or already have some neat lesson plans or ideas we could collaborate on, let’s hook up, I’ll fly by your city and take a look…virtually of course, the price of real Jet fuel is way too expensive!

Tags: GELessons, Google Earth, Jason Welker, Jeff Utecht, Kimbra Power
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