Greetings Indiana Educators! I hope everyone has had a relaxing and inspired Summer and are now settling back into the school routine. No more Brussels Sprouts philosophy this week. I’m back into the groove and ready for some new, exciting, free/cheap, and engaging 21st Century Accessible Technologies! …hope you are too!
PATINS Project Island Main
With limited time this summer, I decided to devote much of my free time to building on the PATINS Project Island in Second Life. I’m pleased to let you know on this beautiful Friday morning that the Second Life PATINS Project Island is up and running and ALMOST ready for Indiana educators to come check out! For much of the past 2 years, I’ve blogged about Second Life and many other online, immersive, 3D spaces available for the purpose of professional learning networks, technical training, 3D workshops, etc., for educators as well as for student learning, role playing and social scripting. It’s exciting now that PATINS is almost ready to open our island up to Indiana educators looking for a safe and secure space in which to do these things. What I’m looking for NOW is a group of 5-10 educators interested in participating in some preliminary trainings/meetings as the facilities are developed and fine tuned. If you are one of these educators, contact me via email, phone, skype, SL or simply leave a response here on the blog.
UDL: For any of the current or former PATINS UDL Pilot Teams, here is a free training opportunity: BCSC UDL Flyer September 17-18.
Register Quick! The PATINS-Project Assistive/Accessible Technologies Overview Course tends to fill up fast! Registration for the Fall 2009 Course is now open. As always, this course is free and provided by the PATINS Project. It will run from 9/28 through 11/6. More info here:
2009 AT Overview Coarse FAQ
2009 AT Overview Course REGISTRATION FORM
SCRATCH IT! Over the Summer I was introduced to a program called Scratch, or more specifically, Scratch for Second Life. In short, what this FREE program does is allow you to create scripts or programs that you can attach to just about ANY object in Second Life, causing it to become animated and/or controlled by your commands. This is very exciting news for educators in Second Life! What this means is that you can create, buy or find any object in Second Life and use Scratch to animate it without having to know anything about programming! It’s all drag & drop and copy & paste. …Super simple and highly effective! This brings modeling, teaching, learning and networking in an online environment to a whole new level! Oh, and did I mention, it’s FREE? Check it out for yourself:
http://web.mit.edu/~eric_r/Public/S4SL/
I’m planning to do a few workshops this year, both in Real Life and Second Life, where we’ll be working with Scratch to create some teaching and learning tools! Keep a look out!
Mr. Glass
Great Teacher Featured: Last week I spent some time in Warsaw doing some hands-on trainings and came across a teacher named Rick Glass, who reminded me that there are so many incredible teachers out there doing amazing things who have so much to offer, but often don’t get to share beyond their own school district. Mr. Glass made several comments in response to various questions I asked during the workshops and it became obvious to me that he’s had Brussels Sprouts on his grocery list for some time now. So much of what he’s been doing in his classroom NEEDS to be shared with other educators. When I asked Rick for permission to write a little about him in this week’s blog, he agreed and shared, “I am excited about the ways I have been permitted to teach my students. What is most fulfilling is seeing their excitement grow as they take responsibility for their own learning. I love teaching them to learn to love learning. Please feel free to share anything I might be doing that could encourage others who read your blog. All the best, Rick” What I specifically wanted to share with you this week about Rick is the Global Virtual Classroom project he and his students are a collaborative part of. Along with a school in Illinois and a school in Israel, Rick’s class works on this collaborative project-based learning initiative as a way to engage his students in reading, writing social, technology and community oriented skills. Their website can be explored here: http://gvc0801.gvc08.virtualclassroom.org/
…I hope to include a little more from Rick next week and if YOU know of an Indiana educator doing amazing things with accessible technologies and Universal Design for Learning who’s ideas should be shared, please do let me know!
Article 7 Learning Opportunity: For those of you in the Anderson area, INSource will be offering some free training next week.
Article 7–Getting a Fresh Start in the New School Year”, 7 on August 27, 2009. This is a 2.5 hour training and open to the public, but registration is requested. More information and registration here: http://insource.org/forms/08-27-09MM-Gen.html
