The Innovative Educator’s Birthday Wish – Help Me Fund Innovative Classrooms By Supporting My Donor’s Choose Giving Page

A year has gone by since I had not 1, not 2, but 3 SPECTACULAR 40^TH birthday celebrations with family and friends in Napa Valley, Las Vegas, and the North Fork of Long Island. I spent nearly an entire month where all those close to me celebrated ME and I felt truly blessed and thankful. A year later I’m turning 41. I’ve had enough of celebrating me.

For my 41^st birthday, the best gift I can get is funding innovative educators. As @kevinhoneycutt rhythmically explains in this YouTube video, students need their teachers to learn and there are teachers who are stepping up to the plate. Please take a minute to take a listen.

Honeycutt shares this message with teachers in his video, “Kids are changing any fool can tell and the ways that you’re teaching have to change as well.”

Unfortunately, even though it is the 21st century, equity and access to modern resources is considered a privilege rather than a right and even students who have their own personal learning devices are banned from bringing them to school in many districts. Fortunately there are teachers ready to take on the challenge of preparing students for the 21st century, but they need our help. You may have noticed a recent addition on the right side of my blog where the DonorChoose.org widget has been established for just this purpose. When you click on the widget you are brought directly to The Innovative Educator's Giving Page at DonorChoose.org. All the projects are specifically focused on innovation. You can help grant my birthday wish by going to The Innovative Educator's Giving Page and clicking on the below widget on the right-hand side of my page or below.

My birthday is on September 20th and I’m asking for all my friends, colleagues, and readers, to make a tax deductible donation in increments of $41 dollars for my 41^st birthday. Early presents and late presents are encouraged! If you fund a project you will get photos and a letter from the teacher and his or her class too. My goal is to help educators raise $1000 dollars toward helping them incorporate innovative practices into their teaching and learning.

I’ve started off the process by donating my $41 dollars to a project called "Getting In-Touch With Our Latino Community". I have helped 125 students through this project and already received my thank you letter. Pictures will be coming once the project gets underway.

If you are an innovative educator who is looking for funding for your classroom please include your project on DonorChoose.org and I will add you to The Innovative Educator's Giving Page. Simply share your link and your request for donations as a comment to this post or email me with a request. You can challenge your friends and family to support the work you are doing with your students too. Everybody wins!

DonorChoose.org is a fantastic organization that I began using close to a decade ago as a literacy coach. I worked with teachers to write proposals to fund classroom libraries. Every project was fully funded. For my birthday wish, I invite you to please join me in supporting teachers who are doing this important work.

If you're an innovative educator who would like to spread the word about DonorsChoose.org I've created a short video overview that you can share.

Free online screencasting tool

Like Classroom 2.0? Try Gov 2.0.

by Dana Lawit

Innovative educators know that web 2.0 technologies have added another dimension to the ways we teach and learn. Whether using a Ning to spice up an ELA literacy circle, or GoogleVoice to engage English Language Learners, web 2.0 technologies have the potential to engage students, when they might otherwise not be. Political campaigns over the past few years have increasingly embraced web 2.0 technologies seeking to engage more voters. Viewing candidates' websites in the 2008 presidential election felt more like visiting a social network than a mere parking lot for platform text and publicity photos.

In a recent blog post, I asked: How educators and schools can prepare citizens and netizens for a world of work and private life infused with information and communication technology.

A recent summit organized by O'Reilly Media (widely attributed with the coinage of the phrase web 2.0 in 2005) called Gov 2.0 asked the following questions:

• How can we use technology to make government more transparent and accountable?
• How do we bridge the culture of web innovation, forged around the world and in Silicon Valley, with the culture of political innovation?
• How do we focus the power of the technology community on solving the nation's most pressing problems?
• How can Web 2.0 approaches such as crowdsourcing and collaborative development create new models of public-private partnerships?
  

(source: http://www.gov2summit.com/gov2009/)

There is a lot of worthwhile material from the summit. I recommend starting with watching Tim O'Reilly outline his thoughts about Gov 2.0:


For me, whats most compelling about O'Reilly's argument is the notion that communication technology can awaken civic engagement. If using a Ning learning network over the summer can engage students in reading (a task that all year they had difficulty with), then perhaps this new web culture of contributing to social networks, producing content, and connecting with others can help to increase engagement of individuals with their communities and governments.

Innovative and FREE Strategies to Support English Language Learners in Becoming Information Consumers and Producers

I was a bit intimated about providing a keynote presentation at the NYS Teachers of English to Speakers of Other Languages (TESOL) conference this month because of my own rather unpleasant memories of being made fun of for my "white" accent in high school, and later in college, Spanish classes. I always envied those who could roll their tongues and speak with a proper accent. I can not. I speak with one accent. It is very Caucasian and often laughed at. I remember when I took Spanish in high school how uncomfortable I was when we had to speak out loud. The other kids seriously laughed out loud at me. I laughed too, because I really did sound ridiculous. Because of this experience, I hated speaking Spanish. Years later, my experience speaking the second language of Spanish gave me a little insight into what English Language Learner (ELL) students may feel. The fear of embarrassment and the trepidation about sounding wrong or different kept me, a normally outspoken kid, pretty quiet. Even though I wanted to learn another language, my discomfort, combined with less than effective instruction, were not a recipe for success. When I went to school to get my master's degree in education, again I was told I'd have to have completed 2 years of language study. Gulp. I couldn't handle the idea of my embarrassing accent so instead I came up with a solution to all that...I took sign language.

The inability to feel comfortable when trying to speak another language has been an issue for me most of my life, that is until I became The Innovative Educator. Today, as an adult, I can read, understand and communicate in more than a dozen languages with some fluency. But it is not because my language acquisition skills have improved, but rather because as innovative educators, we all have a number of resources available to us to support us in understanding and communicating with basic fluency in our non-native language, for free, and without Rosetta Stone.

I have broken the strategies I believe innovative educators will find useful into two categories:

1. Innovative ways for speakers of languages other than English to CONSUME content.
2. Innovative ways for speakers of languages other than English to PRODUCE content.

As you read about these strategies, please reflect on ways you can use what I am sharing in your work and consider publishing your feedback, experience, and ideas in comments to this post.

To set the tone for those wondering if I can really speak multiple languages with an accent that is not laughable, please allow me greet you in a few different languages at Global Welcome from The Innovative Educator. If you speak any of the languages in my greetings, you'll notice that while not perfect, the accent is respectable and you can understand the intent of my message. I've come a long way! There's much more available to provide affordable and innovative resources to students to enable them to break the language barrier and become effective consumers and producers of information. To follow are ideas I find particularly promising.

SUPPORTING ELL STUDENTS IN BECOMING INFORMATION CONSUMERS
One of the best ways to help students get excited about learning anything is by helping them discover and explore areas of deep personal interest and passion. (To learn more read these articles from ISTE Connect - Engage Me or Enrage Me! (Pt.1) / Engage Me or Enrage Me! (Pt.2).

Ideas for ELLs @ school / home.

• Technorati

  • Help students by showing them how they can use technorati to find people who are blogging about topics of interest.

• Convert Text to Speech

  • We all know that student’s listening level is higher than their reading level. How about enabling them to access more difficult material by suggesting they find websites that read passages with tools like Odigo. While the voice is rather robotic, it does provide students with the ability to access the content. Here are some useful text to speech (tts) tools to help students consume information.
  • Odigo for Websites and Blogs
  • iSpeech - For any text
  • Online Translator - for performing real-time translation for various languages
  • TTS Voice presented by animated speaking characters will read the text in the most realistic, human-sounding way in a variety of languages: English U.S., Chinese, French, German, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Brazilian Portuguese, Russian and European Spanish.
  • Why: Educational Value of Text to Speech (TTS)

• Google Translation Tools

  • Google Webpage Translation Gadget: Since your students are ELLs recommend they find blogs that use translation tools such as The Google Translation Gadget or BabbleFish. These tools let you take any blog and translate it into more than a dozen languages. If the blog does not have a tool for a blog or site that may be valuable, a student can write to the author asking them to install this tool.
  • Google Translate: If your student is reading content that does not have a translation tool, use Google Translate to translate the entire page.
  • Google Translated Search: Enter a search phrase in your own language to find information in other languages.
  • Google Toolbar: Or your student can use the translate tool in the Google toolbar to translate specific words by hoovering over them.
  • Google Reader: Show them how to subscribe to these blogs using Google Reader.

• KidsClick

• Sort materials by reading level.

• dotSub

  • Some say video is the new text, but if you don’t know the language very well, it may be hard to access that information.

  • Watch videos with subtitles in your language, upload your videos, create your own subtitles!

  • Click here to learn more and view tutorials on "how to dotSUB"

  • Here is a sample video. Experiment with different subtitles.
    

• ESL LISTENING COMPREHENSION EXERCISES: Movie Clips

  Learning through media (movies, music, etc.) is one of the best ways to learn a new language. The clips below will improve your listening comprehension skills, helping you to learn and practice English as spoken by normal people every day! These particular clips are from recent movies. Good luck!

Ideas for ELLs on the go.
Note: If your school or district has policies banning personal learning devices, you can still empower students to harness the power of technology away from school i.e. as part of their toolbox for life as well as homework.

• G-O-O-G-L-E Text (466453)

  • Define
  • Translate
  • Currency Converter
  • Calculator to Convert Metric System

• Polleverywhere Text (99503)

  • Give students a voice with survey and open response polls
  • Try it here: Vote by visiting http://tinyurl.com/TESOLVote. Your results will show up immediately in the chart below.
    
    Replace audience response hardware with Poll Everywhere
  
  

SUPPORTING ELL STUDENTS IN BECOMING INFORMATION PRODUCERS
One of the best ways to help students get excited about learning anything is by helping them become content producers in areas of deep personal interest and passion.

Ideas for ELLs on the go.

• Google Voice

  • Use Google Voice and set up a widget and have students enter their phone number where they will receive a call from their teacher's Google voice account. Ask them to please leave a message with their spoken one minute report about their selected subject. Here's an example of what this looks like.
    
    
    
  • To get a Google Voice Account visit I received my Google Voice Invite and You Should Too!

Ideas for ELLs @ school / home.

• Microsoft Word - Word Talk

  • Text to Voice
  • Students can check their writing by having the computer read it back to them.

• Google Translate

  • Enables students to draft their thoughts in their own language and translate to English. This enables them to participate in all types of online communities such as discussion boards, blogs, chats.

• Xtranormal

  • Text to movie!
  • If you can type, you can make movies!
  • You can encourage students to rate and comment and one another's work providing authentic assessment.
    Here's an example of what a movie looks like
    

    Xtranormal in the classroom from José Picardo on Vimeo.

  • Read more at Xtranormal in the classroom

• Voki

  • Voki provides a great way for students to record their own voice and make talking Avatars that can convey messages, thoughts, ideas.
  • Voki can speak in a number of languages and accents enabling students to communicate in multiple languages.
  • Students can comment on one another's Vokis with their own Vokis.
    Here's an example
    
    

• dotSub

  • Assigned advanced students the task of creating their own subtitles to existing videos.
  • Have students create and upload videos in their native language and work with other students to provide English subtitles.

• Blogging

  • Blog Commenting (this is the best place to start)

  • Blog Producing (this is for students with deep fluency in their Native language)In native language which can be translated to EnglishIn English which can be translated into their native language

• Learning / Social Networks

  • Live Mocha

    • "A powerful opportunity for people around the world to connect with language partners" - New York Times

    • Social Language Learning - Online!

    • Learn languages online at your own pace with fun language lessons

    • Connect with foreign language partners around the world

    • Livemocha blends engaging online lessons and the world's largest language learning community to create the most natural way to learn a language.

  • Facebook

    • Communicate with friends who speak other languages.Lurk to read their walls with status updates

  • Ning

    • Set up a school social network for students age 13 and up

    • Encourage students to communicate and connect

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• Virtual Worlds
• Second Life
  

• The 3D virtual world "Second Life" is full of places to practice a foreign language - you can speak with real people all over the world. In 2007 Second Life introduced a voice system, so you can now talk with people just like in real life.

  Best of all - it won't cost you a penny! Second Life is free to use, so you can travel to foreign countries, practice a language and make new friends - absolutely free - all from the comfort of your computer.

• Read more at ESL in Second Life - Learning English in Second Life
  

• Physical Worlds
• Meetup
• Do something • Learn something Share something • Change something
• Helps learners become independent
• Join or start

Funding Innovation
Providing students with access to innovative learning tools and resources is a right, not a privilege. It is up to educators to help students gain access to resource that will help them learn, consume, and produce content. In some schools you will find that students already own and have access to a number of personal learning devices. It is the job of the educator to support students in harnessing the power of their personal learning devices at and away from school. If districts and schools allow, teachers should be incorporating student-owned devices into instruction and supplementing that with purchased devices. Today you can get a highly functional low-cost laptop for between $300 - $500. You can read a nice comparison of brands here.

Just as we wouldn't allow a hearing impaired student to be without a hearing aid and/or other assistive technology, or a visually impaired student to be without glasses, schools must do whatever they can to provide their students with innovative technologies that will support their learning. Here are my top two suggested ways to fund innovation at your school.

Funding Source 1

A tremendous resource for funding innovation that includes funding news, grant deadlines, and more.

Funding Source 2

Email me and I'll feature your project on The Innovative Educator's Giving Page at Donor's Choose.

Write a guest post for my blog about what you'd like to do and I'll publish it.

Planning for Innovation
Once you've determined some ideas for educating innovatively, it is time to incorporate that into your unit plan. This handy Technology Integration Planning tool is the perfect resource to get you or your school started. It is a Google collaborative document so you can plan for innovation across your school. The tool also supports teachers in aligning their curriculum to both content and technology standards.

Final Thoughts
As a Spanish Language Learner, I was embarrassed by my accent and as a result didn't practice much publicly or with native speakers. This in part is why I never attained basic literacy in Spanish, however, I have shared innovative strategies that provide non-native speakers with a safe space to practice and communicate in a new language. They can participate as much or as little as they choose. Innovative educators and family members can embrace ideas such as these to support students and themselves in communicating, collaborating, and connecting with those whom they do not share a native language. As students gain comfort and fluency, teachers and families can work with students to become active and authentic consumers and producers of information in ways and in areas that are meaningful, important, and authentic.

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Blogs for further reading:

Larry Ferlazzo’s Websites of the Day…
…For Teaching ELL, ESL, & EFL

ELL Classroom

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Share your thoughts about topics in this post:
Use your phone to text your feedback at Polleverywhere by visiting: http://theinnovativeeducator.wikispaces.com/ELL+Keynote+Polls.

President Obama's Innovative Back to School Challenge for Students

On the first day back to school in New York City and other districts, the U.S. Department of Education will ask students to respond to the President’s Back to School challenge by creating videos, up to two minutes in length, describing the steps they will take to improve their education and the role education will play in fulfilling their dreams in the “I Am What I Learn” video contest for students. This is a great opportunity for innovative educators to showcase their students, school and teachers. This could also serve as a possible activity that students and families can do together promoting family involvement in student learning.

For more information about the “I Am What I Learn” video contest for students visit http://www.ed.gov/iamwhatilearn/index.html.

School Starts Next Week--Time to Get Real About Innovation

Writer's Note: This blog post is inspired by the upcoming first day of school. Having spent the summer reading, reflecting, and generally thinking big & abstract, reality set in when I had to wrestle with a photocopier earlier this week. This post is my attempt to link some big ideas about educating innovatively with some practical considerations, programs, and technologies I'll be using and writing about this year. It is my hope that this begins a conversation towards identifying the fundamental skills and values we will need as netizens.

by Dana Lawit

Live from the the Whitestone bridge this post comes to you as I sit on a bus to Boston which has wireless internet. I'm able to use my 4-5 hour journey to follow up on email, do some planning, and figure out how I'm going to get from the train station to where I'll be staying. 5 years ago I sat on the bus to Boston with different tools. book and an iPod to keep me company. In just a few short years it is clear, the world is changing.

Today, employers expect their employees not only can use Microsoft Office, but many Web 2.0 applications that connect and support collaboration. Students gain most of their information instantly from laptops. In our personal lives, we tag ashare photos with our grandparents on Facebook and track down friends from elementary school that we haven't spoken to in years. Technology is enabling us to curate our public and private lives.

The world is changing is nothing new, but I suspect that the rate of change is accelerating. This is problematic for those of us working in schools. On my bus ride 5 years ago, I never would have speculated that today I would be able to writing this blog post. And even now I'm behind the times, I'm writing from my clumsy PowerBook; I don't even have a SmartPhone. Which makes me wonder:

How do we prepare our students for an ever-changing world?

In trying to answer this question, I came upon Project New Media Literacies, a research initiative out of MIT's Comparative Media Studies program. The project's white paper outlines new essential skills:

1. Play— the capacity to experiment with one’s surroundings as a form of problem-solving
2. Performance— the ability to adopt alternative identities for the purpose of improvisation and discovery
3. Simulation— the ability to interpret and construct dynamic models of real-world processes
4. Appropriation— the ability to meaningfully sample and remix media content
5. Multitasking— the ability to scan one’s environment and shift focus as needed to salient details.
6. Distributed Cognition— the ability to interact meaningfully with tools that expand mental capacities
   
7. Collective Intelligence— the ability to pool knowledge and compare notes with others toward a common goal Judgment— the ability to evaluate the reliability and credibility of different information sources
   
8. Transmedia Navigation— the ability to follow the flow of stories and information across multiple modalities
   
9. Networking— the ability to search for,synthesize, and disseminate information
10. Negotiation— the ability to travel across diverse communities,discerning and respecting multiple perspectives, and grasping and following alternative norms.
    

Of these skills, what is new? And what is missing? These skills echo Bloom's Taxonomy (introduced in the 1950s) higher order thinking skills of evaluating and creating. Following the 1983 release of A Nation At Risk: The Imperiative for Educational Reform, schools were called upon to focus on "critical thinking" to better prepare students for a new and changing workplace. So perhaps the skills themselves aren't as novel as the setting in which we ask ourselves and our students to apply them.

So then what is missing? If one of the functions of education is to prepare citizens to contribute to the communities in which they reside, then how are we to prepare netizens? Beyond skills, what are the values and understandings students need to contribute to the virtual communities in which they thrive? Here's my tentative list:

1. equity- we must expect and demand equal access to information and technology
2. creativity- individuals must be driven to find solutions and ways of expression despite limitations
   
3. responsibility - we are connected to our natural and virtual surroundings and the other individuals who populate them
   

So how will all of this inform my practice? This year I plan to do the following:

1. have conversations with my colleagues and students about how they use technology. What uses enhance our life? --stronger collaboration and sharing of information, connecting with friends. What uses cause stress and potential threats?-- my relationship with our school's photocopier, online safety, privacy and the security of information.
   
2. make stuff. And help others do so as well. Technology clearly has the potential to engage kids. Armed with a flip video camera, digital voice recorders, I plan to capture some of the great moments of learning--recording a student performance, creating video art, documenting field work...
3. make time for play. Show students enriching and engaging ways to use the internet (Pandora and GrooveShark instantly come to mind). I plan to find time during advisory to talk to kids about multitasking and using the web to work faster and smarter. They'll need to experiment and play.
   
4. reflect and connect. I will be writing about many of these initiatives on this blog, hopefully you will continue to share yours

Even though the world is changing more quickly than before, it has always been changing much faster than schools have kept up with. Innovation, is our attempt to close that gap.

Taking Risks and Upgrading a Little Too Fast, Maybe…

Editor’s Note: Today I am at a workshop for Writing Matters, an innovative program that provides teachers with powerful new ways to improve student outcomes in writing. We were asked to write a memory snapshot. So, I share with you below, a peak into an embarrassing memory of the pre Innovative Educator as a teenager.

My parents raised me to know that as soon as I was legally old enough to work I would need to look for a job. In Las Vegas I was able to work at the age of 16 where I began work at a doctor’s office. Not coincidentally this is exactly what my parents had hoped for since they also raised me to believe I wanted to be a doctor (sorry it didn’t work out mom). While working for Dr. Hoffman I had the opportunity to do all sorts of things from weighing patients, to bringing Dr. Hoffman patient files, to even doing things like holding the metal tray for him to take his doctor equipment from.

Dr. Hoffman also had me do errands for him. One day he needed his car washed. I was soooo excited. I was only 16-years-old and I was getting a chance to drive as they say on The Price is Right, “a brand new car!” My current car was a used, beat up Pontiac Sunbird that cost less than $1000. I was now making an upgrade to a new long, sleek 1985 Mercedes Benz 500 Series Sedan that was really expensive. I was sooooo proud to be able to drive around my town in this new model fit for a Doctor.

I got the car washed and drove back to the office. Dr. Hoffman trusted me with his car. I felt very special. I was dreaming about all the errands I would run in the Mercedes. I bet I could even borrow the car if Dr. Hoffman went out of town. Maybe drive it to school. "I could definitely get used to this,” I thought.

When I went to park the car in the garage I realized that the space I had simply backed out of was REALLY tight. There was a huge cement pole on one side of the space and the corner I had to drive around was sharp! Really sharp. I made a few attempts to no avail. I couldn’t line the car up right. I was getting nervous. Suddenly I noticed a couple people in the garage. I felt like they were all starring at me. My palms started getting sweaty. I went from feeling so proud to be in this expensive adult car to feeling like a dumb kid who didn’t know how to park.

Ugh. I had to do this. After pulling in and out for what seemed like forever, I thought about what my mom had always told me about the best way to remove a Band-Aid. Maybe the same thing applied here. Don’t think about it too much. Just do it quickly and maybe that will work. So I decided to just back up again, gather up what little bit of self-esteem I had left and pull right into the spot. Guess what??? Just like the rip of a band-aid coming off a wound, the next sound I heard was, “Scccrrrraaaaaappe!!!!” Oh my gawd! The door scraped up against the pole. I quickly looked in my rear view mirror hoping no one heard or saw. I didn’t know what to do. I wished there was an undo button in life (though I don’t think those had been invented yet…even for computers).

I was so upset and embarrassed. I was just hoping I could delete the people in the parking lot because I couldn’t bear to have them speak to me. I wanted to just shut down then and there, but alas, that was not an available option. As I sat alone in the car I wondered how I could possibly go back into the office admitting what I had done. I couldn’t and I didn’t know what to do. So, I got out of his car and downgraded back into my clucker and did the hard drive to my mom’s office.

She had a client. I told her secretary that this was an emergency! I had to speak with her. My mom asked the client to excuse her for a few minutes. My mom looked at her usually stoic, rather pain-in-the-butt kid and as our eyes met, I suddenly broke down in tears and told her what I had done. She suggested I go back to work and talk to Dr. Hoffman about what had happened. “No! I can’t. I’m too embarrassed,” I cried. “Please mom. Help.”

An accomplished accountant, my mother had already processed the facts and numbers before picking up the phone. “Ahem, Dr. Hoffman. This is Joyce Nielsen, Lisa’s mother. First, I really don’t think it is safe or appropriate for you to be giving a teenager the responsibility of driving a brand new car, but you’re the boss. Second, I hate to tell you this, but there’s been a crash. My teenager hit the door of your car on a pole in your parking lot.” I heard Dr. Hoffman responding. He didn’t sound like he had short circuited on the other end of the phone, more like he was taking it all in and trying to process what had happened. I couldn’t really hear what he was saying, which was good. He wasn’t screaming. After all it wasn’t that bad I guess. I mean there was a way to restore the vehicle and no one was hurt, right?

So, my mom said, “If you agree with me that this might not be the best decision, I propose that we assess the damage and you each split the cost for repair. If you disagree, let me know what you think is fair.” My mom hung up and shared, that Dr. Hoffman agreed with her proposal. She said he wasn’t angry. Accidents happen. He was happy I was taking responsibility for what had happened (well kind of) and that he thought this was fair and I should come back to work.

Still, I was sooo embarrassed. I didn’t think I could ever go back to the office. But I did. I tried to stay composed and I did at first until Dr. Hoffman said he would like to see me in his office. I broke down again ashamed, embarrassed, and let down that I wasn’t able to handle the upgrade. I asked him to keep this private. I’m not sure if he did, but I never spoke about it to anyone. Dr. Hoffman deducted a small portion (about 10%) of each paycheck to be used toward the $500 dollar damage I owed him. Eventually it became easier and easier to look Dr. Hoffman in the eye. I still know Dr. Hoffman today, in fact last year he came to my 40^th birthday party. And, while today I can look him in the eye, I still never talk about the day I was unable to handle the upgrade.