One Day on Earth

Be watching for more news about the One Day on Earth global collaborative project. This is one in which you should definitely have your students involved! They can become a part of living history.

Join the Wiki for 21st Century Schools

Please join us on the new Wiki for 21st Century Schools. This is another place where we can collaborate, design, create and share news. Join today!

Please sign up to Follow this blog!

We are seeing many visitors to our blog today, and we are thrilled!

PLEASE click the Follow tab at the top of the blog so that you will receive all the updates. Also, please register to receive updates on Posts and Comments via RSS.

Finally, we really want to see your comments. Post comments! Thank you.

ARRL Field Day is June 26-27, 2010

Many educators do not think of "ham radio" as a 21st century tool. Often, it is the only form of communication possible when disaster strikes. Amateur radio plays a significant role in everything from disaster relief to weather reporting.

For the classroom, it is a wonderful way to engage students. They love talking to people around the world and even talking to the astronauts on the International Space Station!

Once a year the ARRL celebrates Field Day, and many student groups around the country participate.

ARRL Field Day is the largest on-the-air operating event in Amateur Radio. It draws tens of thousands to the airwaves each year. Everyone is welcome, hams and non-hams alike.

ARRL Field Day is the single most popular on-the-air event held annually in the US and Canada. Each year over 35,000 amateurs gather with their clubs, friends or simply by themselves to operate.

ARRL Field Day is a time where many aspects of Amateur Radio come together to highlight our many roles. While some will treat it as a contest, most groups use the opportunity to practice their emergency response capabilities. It is an excellent opportunity to see Amateur Radio demonstrated and learn how you can become an Amateur Radio Operator.

For many clubs, ARRL Field Day is one of the highlights of their annual calendar. To locate a Field Day site near you, use the Field Day locator!

Also see our ARRL page for information on free teacher workshops, and on classroom applications. It is a great, and important, activity for after school and summer programs!

San Antonio Summer Institute

Our 2010 Summer Institute will be held in San Antonio this year, at the La Mansion del Rio, an Omni Hotel.

The River Walk alone is worth the trip. But you will love the professional development, and it will definitely prepare you to start the next school year better prepared and with a more 21st century, exciting unit than ever before.

July 12 & 13 - Media Literacy, an In-Depth Investigation.

July 14 - Greening the Classroom and the Curriculum

July 15 & 16 - Designing the 21st Century Classroom

Register today to join us in San Antonio!

New York City was fantastic!

New York City was a fantastic experience! We had a very talented international group of educators from Arizona, Arkansas, Florida, New York, Michigan, New Jersey, Canada and India! The sense of community, the level of dedication and intelligence, and just a great group of people made this one of the best weeks ever. They worked hard. They learned and they laughed. They created!

(That was a one second video of them laughing - what an irony - I am teaching a media literacy workshop and I mess up on filming that group's presentation. As you can see, we enjoyed it. I think I bumped the pause button and didn't notice. Darn! It was an incredible production.)

We did two workshops in NYC - one of them was our Media Literacy workshop. In this workshop the participants learned the basic concepts and principles of media literacy, then applied them as they filmed and edited a movie, designed a television commercial, and they created and performed skits as performance-based assessment demonstrating their knowledge of media literacy.

The movies they created were truly awesome. The variety was wonderful. They were creative and intelligent.

The other workshop was Designing the 21st Century Classroom. That too, was fun and hard work. In the end, the participants left with some incredible ideas for units which they will implement at their schools. These ranged from a second grade unit on the month of May, a first grade unit on Weather, a 12th grade project based upon technology and Habitat for Humanity, a middle school unit on the Roots of Rap and a 6th/8th grade global classrooms project! Impressive!