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!

Jamie's Food Revolution

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

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!

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

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!

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!?

"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)