Library kicks off the new school year: Sharing Summer Reads

What can be better than sharing book discoveries with friends and colleagues? In the week before students came to school, teachers got together to discuss books they were fascinated with over this summer. Everyone feels that conversations like this unlock the enjoyment of reading and contribute to professional growth. Can't wait to meet again!

A 'Market Place' as Professional Development.

Last Friday, October 1, WBAIS held an in-service day lead by  Teacher Professional Development Group. One of the activities the group suggested was a 'Market Place'. Teachers were encouraged to come up with  ideas and projects they thought would be beneficial for others to know. Teachers who wanted to present any technology tool, idea or a teaching unit arranged their 'marketplace' to engage visitors and exhibited their educational materials in the library.

The 'Market' in the library looked and sounded like a true Oriental market, at least as the one that we have here in Jerusalem. It was a great experience.
Visual Thesaurus, 23 Things, Sky Drive, Conflict Management in the Classroom, iEARN, using the new HP Tablet laptop, Silent Conversation & Wonderful Words; Lies, Damned Lies and Statistics; Word of the Day, Using Prezi, distributing research responsibilities in the one-to-one classroom, iGoogle, teaching French with technology, teacher/librarian collaboration and some others were topics presented by teachers. Read more about each of them on ais-sharing wiki.

23 Things and VoiceThread.com

Lifelong Learners... Is it a term that we use describing what we want our students to be? Do we set it as a goal for ourselves?

To check where you are and keep growing professionally visit "7 1/2 Habits of Highly Effective Lifelong learners" - lesson 1 out of 10 of "23 Things" course run by Peggy Knudson http://k12learning20.wikispaces.com/1-habits

Today I joined a group of our teachers "playing" with a new collaborative tool - VoiceThread.com. It's a multimedia slide show that holds images, documents, videos, and audio file and allows people leave comments in 5 ways - using voice, text, audio files, or video. While talking, users can doodle drawing listeners' attention to what is being said.

Educators can open a free educator account and distribute their assignments via VoiceThread. Students can have their own accounts and work independently, develop their portfolio of works, submit their homework.

Join us now and catch up when you have time! Listen to Peggy's VoiceThread and leave a comment.

Other examples:
Urie Salant: Voicethread can be used to start a conversation or introduce some ideas to students, and inviting them to write a note or using their own voice to comment on the images or text that you present. http://ed.voicethread.com/share/343925/
You will need to register if you want to leave a comment within the presentation itself. Urie