21st Century Schools

Tread Softly on the Dreams of Our Students!

2010-09-03T03:13:00.000-07:00

HAD I the heavens’ embroidered cloths,
Enwrought with golden and silver light,
The blue and the dim and the dark cloths
Of night and light and the half light,
I would spread the cloths under your feet:
But I, being poor, have only my dreams;
I have spread my dreams under your feet;
Tread softly because you tread on my dreams.

W.B. Yeats (1865–1939)

Ken Robinson read this quote at the end of his last talk at TED. He reminds us that we should not tread on the dreams of our students. And we surely have been doing that, collectively, as part of the national educational system.

Please see the next post related to the state of education today.

Race to Nowhere

2010-09-02T14:59:00.000-07:00

2010-11 Workshop Schedule and back-to-school discounts

2010-08-12T12:43:00.001-07:00

Our 2010-11 Regional Workshop Schedule is online! We have some cities back on the schedule that we haven't visited for while - San Francisco and Washington, DC.

Our first city this school year is Las Vegas where we will hold the following workshops:

Media Literacy - an In-depth Investigation on Oct. 20 and 21.

Designing the 21st Century Classroom on Oct. 22 and 23.

And to sweeten the deal for you we are (for a very limited time) offering huge discounts on paid registrations received by August 30!

The regular fee for each two-day workshop we offer is $525. But you will pay only $425 for any two-day workshop on the schedule - provided we receive it on or before August 30!

The regular fee for each one-day workshop we offer is $299. You will pay only $225 for any one-day workshop on the schedule - provided we receive it on or before August 30!

21st Century Schools Wallwisher by anneshaw21

2010-08-02T13:55:00.000-07:00

21st Century Schools Wallwisher by anneshaw21

Voki

2010-08-02T10:00:00.000-07:00

Hi, everyone. Visiting some other blogs today - as a result of my becoming a group member at Classroom 2.0 - I discovered a fun tool called Voki. It's the character you see to the right in a cowboy hat. You can create your own character using your own voice. A nice way to make your blog or web page more personal. Try it!

Check out the Baby Mail, too!

A Salute to Some Special Educators

2010-07-26T13:30:00.000-07:00

It's been a busy summer, and school will be starting before we know it. I've enjoyed some travel this summer to work with educators in fantastic Paducah, Kentucky, fabulous Upper St. Clair, PA, and awesome Newaygo County in Fremont, MI. I'm looking forward to my trip to Elyria, OH next month! And it looks like I will be making some international trips this year, as well - India, England and maybe others!

Additionally, I greatly enjoyed the opportunity to meet and work with some very dedicated educators from three residential schools attending our Summer Institute on the River Walk in San Antonio. We had teams from Girard College in Pennsylvania, from Boys Ranch ISD in Texas, and from Virginia Episcopal School! But let's not forget one incredible math teacher from Manitoba, Canada! It was one great week of building community, learning together and teaching each other, and creative collaboration! Thanks to all of you who were there for making July 12-16 a wonderful experience for me and everyone else!

Global Collaborative Classrooms Project - Join Today!

2010-06-20T20:23:00.000-07:00

Join our new Global Collaborative Classrooms Project - Food and Culture!

This is not your typical pen-pal type of collaborative project. It's much more. Students will be engaged in authentic, meaningful and rigorous research focused on real-world issues from fitness, health and nutrition to cultural studies, environmental studies and social issues.

Your students will be collaborating with students from around the world. Our goal is to have students from every country on the planet participating!

Whether you have one class period a week to devote to the project or you want to make it a six-week unit or a full-year project, it's flexible enough for you to participate meaningfully. It's also a great project for an After School program!

The curriculum will be aligned to the United Nations Millennium Goals, to the United States White House Issues, and to national standards for the USA. We invite additional information on alignment to standards in other countries or to programs such as International Baccalaureate.

Students will develop critical 21st century skills such as collaboration, creativity, problem solving, adaptability, multicultural skills and this project provides them with a way to make the content of the curriculum relevant. Service learning and multiple literacies will be built in as well.

One Day on Earth

2010-05-31T18:31:00.000-07:00

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

2010-05-31T18:28:00.001-07:00

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!

2010-05-26T13:09:00.000-07:00

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

2010-05-26T11:02:00.000-07:00

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

2010-05-26T04:40:00.000-07:00

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!

2010-05-26T02:42:00.000-07:00

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!

Jamie's Food Revolution

2010-04-16T14:05:00.001-07:00

Fresh food not French fries! Sign the petition to make school lunches better. http://bit.ly/JOfoodrev Plz RT. #foodrevolution

Earth Hour and Earth Day 2010

2010-03-01T09:56:00.001-08:00

It's time to start working on Earth Hour and Earth Day projects. I have created an Earth Day wiki where people can collaborate to bring together the most resources - web links, films, images, recommended reading, children's literature, etc. Please join our wiki and enter your resources.

Earth Hour is on March 27, 2010 from 8:30 to 9:30 pm. People all over the world, entire cities, will turn off all their lights for that hour!

Earth Day is April 22, 2010!

Anne

http://earthday2010.wetpaint.com/

Share This!

2010-01-16T14:56:00.000-08:00

We finally have a "Share This
" button at www.21stCenturySchools.com

We hope you'll visit and share our web site on all your social networks.

Sincerely,

Anne Shaw, Director
21st Century Schools

A Green New Year

2010-01-04T06:23:00.000-08:00

Happy New Year! And new decade!

I have decided to make some changes by focusing more on Green (education, cities, and living). As you know I recently relocated back to Austin (from Pensacola). The cityscape is totally changed from when I left 3 years ago. And not for the better.

Austin, of course, is much larger than Pensacola. There are several new very tall buildings shaping the Austins skyline now, dwarfing, actually rendering invisible, the Capitol Building.

And driving around the city I couldn't help but be struck by the seemingly endless miles of plain brown roofs on huge apartment complexes (which are plentiful here), and the rising walls of steel and glass on our new downtown. NO GREEN ANYWHERE!

After having conducted intensive studies on green living during the past six months, I was particularly dismayed - and disgusted - that apparently no one (or very few) buildings in Austin are actually taking advantage of the many possibilities there are to make our environment not only healthier, but more beautiful.

I learned about green roofs which can provide assistance with heating and cooling, flowers, food, reduce stormwater runoff, provide water for use in the building, areas of retreat, rest and recreation for workers or children in day care (yes, we would have fences). I learned about vertical gardens (indoors and out) - actually, the fantastic Whole Foods store downtown has an impressive inner vertical garden. I learned about vertical farming - on skyscrapers!

Instead of green, it seems that the Austin landscape is an endless array of brown shingles, glass and steel all just soaking up the heat from the sun (and, by the way, a very noticeable lack of photovoltaics!)

I think I'll investigate this more.

AND I am in the process of creating a new curriculum unit on green living and education, and I have an idea for a new global collaborative classrooms project - very exciting stuff!

Happy New Year!

We're back in Austin!

2009-11-23T08:49:00.000-08:00

Sorry about staying away so long. We have been on an extended temporary relocation to Pensacola, FL (as you can see from our posts below during Hurricane Ike), but as of November 12, 2009 (my birthday, by the way!) we are back home in Austin!

Sea Turtles, Robotics and Art!?

2008-10-22T12:10:00.000-07:00

"When Dr. Reagan Flowers, Founder and CEO of CSTEM, steps to
the microphone, a wild cheer goes up. Close to 1,000 people have
gathered to celebrate the kick-off of the annual Sea Turtle Robotics
Challenge, an opportunity for children to experience hands-on
problem-solving and project-based learning.

"Many of the children have never stepped foot on a college campus.
On this day university deans welcome them and announce that they
are the future of science, mathematics, technology,
communication, and art. They explain to the audience that the
young people standing right here—the ones with backpacks and
baseball caps—will help to solve the problems of the world and
usher us into a new era of innovation, creativity, and possibility."

If you want to see your students excited, and making incredible achievments in CSTEM - Computer, Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics - please join this wonderful project organized by Dr. Rae Flowers, Founder and President of CSTEM.org in Houston!

The Sea Turtle Challenge Professional Development Training counts towards 27 G/T Contact Hours and schools participating will receive a scholarship of $7,500.00 that covers the competition fees.

Read more about it at www.CSTEM.org and watch the video!

From The Sea Turtle Robotics Challenge: CSTEM’S Answer to Hands-on, Project-Based
Education by Marcia Chamberlain (in print)

No Child Left Inside

2008-09-18T08:46:00.000-07:00

"One night, a nine-year-old woke me up. She had to go to the bathroom. We stepped outside the tent and she looked up. She gasped and grabbed my leg. She had never seen the stars before. That night, I saw the power of nature on a child. She was a changed person. From that moment on, she saw everything, the camouflaged lizard that everyone else skipped by. She used her senses. She was awake."

This story, from Last Child in the Woods - Saving Our Children From Nature-Deficit Disorder, by Richard Louv, was shared by a woman as she described an experience from her first counseling job in which she took children with AIDS to the mountains who had never been out of their urban neighborhoods.

Richard Louv is the recipient of the 2008 Audubon Medal. He is credited with sparking the No Child Left Inside movement, which is growing in momentum. The book includes cutting-edge studies that point to direct exposure to nature as essential for a child's healthy physical and emotional development. It cites a growing body of evidence linking the lack of nature in children's lives to the rise in obesity, attention disorders and depression. His message has galvanized an international back-to-nature campaign. The book also includes 35 Discussion Points for book groups, classrooms and communities, as well as 100 Actions We Can Take - for parents, schools, businesses and governments.

Educators and parents will find wonderful examples of place-based education programs with evidence demonstrating that these programs not only are highly motivational for students, they increase parent and community involvement, increase student learning and result in incredible increases in standardized test scores.

It contains wonderful resources for environmental education programs as well as wonderful activities for parents and their children!

See Richard Louv's article, No Child Left Inside.

Two educators who work with 21st Century Schools have made major contributions to education in their communities by creating environmental, place-based education programs and implementing a schools sustainability plan.

Matt Schlein founded the Willowell Foundation and runs the Walden Project in Vermont (see video).

Ian Smith, as the Executive Director for Youth and Children's Services for Tameside Metropolitan Borough schools in Manchester, England, has organized and implemented a district-wide (100 schools) intensive sustainability program! All 100 schools joined our Global Johnny Appleseed Project this year! (Be sure to view the PPT here.) These two educators will be presenting our newest workshop, Green Education.

Other resources:

The Edible Schoolyard and a video of one of the projects featured at the George Lucas Education Foundation web site.
KidsGardening
The Center for Ecoliteracy
Orion Magazine
Photo by Kate Anderson

Hurricane Ike

2008-09-12T14:20:00.000-07:00

This is what Pensacola Beach usually looks like. Today is different.

It is Friday, September 12. Hurricane Ike is about to landfall on Galveston Island.

I live in Pensacola, FL. Ike is so huge (it covered nearly the entire Gulf of Mexico) that it is impacting us here in Pensacola. In addition to tropical storm force winds we are experiencing very high surf. We went to Pensacola Beach today to take a look at the surf; it was incredible.

I took a short video with a cell phone so that I could share it with you. The waves are about 15-20 feet tall. The sounds you hear are the wind and the waves breaking on the sand bars and the beach. It was a spectacular experience.

Unfortunately, the weather forecasters are making predictions similar to those for Hurricane Katrina, and I know that there will be a great deal of suffering for many through property loss and damage, as well as personal injury and death. I do not mean to make light of the suffering when I state that the sights and sounds are beautiful - they really are.

Nature can be both destructive and beautiful at once.

Also, please watch these brief, excellent videos of Ike at Pensacola taken and posted by others; in some of the videos the sun is shining. In some it is cloudy, and the air is full of blowing sand and spray from the waves, making it difficult to see. You could stand away from the water and become soaked and encrusted with sand; it was like being sandblasted!

I would like to see your comments:

Hurricane Ike - 4 Wheel Surfing

Pensacola Beach during Hurricane Ike

Hurricane Ike waves at Pensacola

Hurricane Ike vs Cop (another video that shows what happened without breaks)

Hurricane Ike ATV (a third video, taken from above on the Pensacola Beach Pier)

102 Minutes That Changed America

2008-09-11T13:20:00.000-07:00

The History Channel has a new program called "102 Minutes That Changed America" It airs tonight at 8:00 PM central time.

There is a link that has unedited video from 9 different people taken from 10 different areas around the Trade Center. The link to the interactive map is below.

http://www.history.com/genericContent.do?id=60326&HPF_rid=3898339&HPF_mid=1530_T1_Url13

National PARK(ing) Day - September 19, 2008

2008-09-11T12:15:00.000-07:00

I am passing along this information from an email I just received. It sounds like a very good project, although now there is very little time to prepare! But someone may be interested, or want to plan for next year.

"People for Parks is hosting a National Park(ing) Day event all day on Sept 19th, 2008.

On National Park(ing) in cities across the country folks are creating temporary parks in places normally used for parking cars. This event will demonstrate the value that green space adds to our quality of life and the health of our community."

For more information, including how to participate in National PARK(ing) Day, a how-to manual and license, photos and videos, and frequently asked questions, go to www.parkingday.org

Also the the Trust for Public Land web site has more information.

Regional workshops - professional development

2008-09-09T11:00:00.001-07:00

We are asking for feedback from educators as to the type of professional staff development they need, and will be seeking, this school year. We have a wonderful curriculum design workshop, Designing the 21st Century Classroom, in which you will learn the strategies to design and deliver a unit of curriculum for a 21st century student. This workshop is being offered in Los Angeles in October, and in Seattle and New York City in November.

See our entire schedule of regional workshops online, and let us have some feedback from you on what you want this year!

Other workshops include:

Service Learning - Academics in Action
After School Programs for the 21st Century Student
Smaller Learning Communities
Want a Million Dollars for Your School? - Go Get It, Here's How! a workshop on how to fund your dream school or project
iKids - Multimedia and Technologies in the Classroom
The Global Classroom
Green Education
The Arts - Bringing Creativity Back into the Classroom
Classroom Management and Student Motivation
Social and Emotional Learning
Brain-Based Learning
Multiple Literacies - it's now just the 3 R's any more!
Teaching Students How to Think

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About this blog

2008-09-09T10:54:00.001-07:00

Some visitors to this blog may have come across it by other means than our web site or newsletter. If this is your first visit, welcome, and please join our conversation.

We want to expand our discussions to include a comprehensive and integrated approach to education in the 21st century. Various threads in this blog will focus on various aspects of 21st century education: service learning, after school programs, curriculum design, multimedia and Web 2.0 tools in the classroom, the arts and creativity, the global classroom, and much more.

We will also post information from time to time regarding our regional workshop offerings and other forms of professional development: from on-site to online!

Visit us at www.21stCenturySchools.com, and please join our blog.

Anne Shaw
21st Century Schools
Director@21stCenturySchools.com
Phone 850-457-2946

Free iPhone for Principals?!

2008-09-09T10:47:00.000-07:00

In case you did not see it on our web site or in our newsletter, I wanted to tell you about a fun promotion we are doing at 21st Century Schools. We are offering to give your principal a free, new iPhone for each team of 10 people they register for one of our two-day workshops. To qualify, paid registrations must be received in our office no later than September 20.

If you're interested, you may contact us at Director@21stCenturySchools.com or by calling 850-457-2946.

View our Workshop Schedule online.

Newsletter

Web 2.0 discoveries

2008-09-06T13:40:00.000-07:00

Thank you for visiting our new blog at 21st Century Schools. We assume you received the enewsletter we sent out today, and that you followed the link to this blog.

As you saw from the newsletter we've been discovering and exploring the tools of Web 2.0, and the possibilities for application in the classroom are astounding. I am very excited about designing new curriculum units and using these tools to take student learning and motivation to much higher levels!

I am absolutely positive that these technologies can be utilized effectively even with kindergarten children. At the age of 2 my grandson was whipping around online at PBSkids.org and Nick.com, and I was amazed at the way he seemed to intuitively know how to use the technologies. The same when I bought my new iPhone. I handed it to him and he used the touchscreen to slide it to the unlock position, and then began taking pictures.

There was so much more that I wanted to share with you in the newsletter, but as it was, it was very long and full. I know they should be quick to scan for the information you need, since we all receive so many emails every day. So I will be adding more on this blog and on other sites as together we explore the possibilities of new web 2.0 tools.

Welcome, and stay active.

Anne

21st Century Schools

2008-07-26T13:02:00.000-07:00

Welcome to the 21st Century Schools blog!