Our students are used to gathering information on the web.  This generation accesses emails, watches TV & movies, downloads & listens to music, gets directions and pinpoints where their friends are at anytime, anywhere.  With technology today, this can all be done in a dynamic environment…not just at home on the home computer, but “on the go” through various mobile devices.  Even the very young are quite adept at using these tools.  In fact, the “help desk” for many adults on how to text, access their email and learn other cool stuff about their mobile device usually comes from kids.

Now, students at Pleasant Ridge can learn anytime and anywhere thanks to a grant funded by both The Saline Foundation and the Pleasant Ridge PTA. Pleasant Ridge is taking the concept of Flat Stanley to a new level….a digital level, so to speak.  Flat Stanley is going mobile and Pleasant Ridge is driving the bus by piloting a Digital Flat Stanley iPod Touch Program this spring.

The concept is that our 15 iPod Touches are basically mini, pocket-sized computers that have been flattened, similar to the Flat Stanley storyline.  Due to their flat and compact size, the set of iPod Touches can easily take multiple trips daily/weekly to classrooms all over Pleasant Ridge to support and extend classroom learning experiences for over 490 students.  Just last week we trained our teachers on how to use the iPod Touches and we also added 40 educational apps, 14 audiobooks and a couple of podcasts for staff and students to use during the pilot. 

Do you ever wonder who comes up with all of those cool doodles when you use the Google search engine?  Google actually has a team of "doodlers" on staff.  It’s amazing how creative and innovative some of the colorful illustrations are woven into the word "Google".  I especially loved the doodles displayed during the Olympic Games.

Well, now it’s our students’ turn.  Google is hosting a Doodle 4 Google competition for all K-12 students through March 31st.  Google is looking for oodles of doodles to choose from.  Help your students find their inner da Vinci, Monet, Picasso or van Gogh.  This year’s theme is "If I Could Do Anything, I Would…"  The winning student’s school gets $25,000 for a new computer lab, and he or she wins a $15,000 college scholarship along with the chance to have his or her design on the Google.com homepage for a day for millions of people to see.

To participate in this event, somebody from your school building must register by March 17th.  All doodles need to be collected by one person in each school that has registered.  Each participating school can send up to six entries to Google.  Click here to check out all of the Doodle 4 Google program particulars including video highlights from their 2009 event.  Before you send your students to the drawing board, be sure to show them past Google Doodles via an internet image search.  It’s a great chance for our students to think and dream big!

It’s been a fun-filled two weeks of the Winter Olympic Games.  The medal count is over.  A whole new group of national heroes have earned their way into the imaginations of aspiring athletes and children around the world.  The competitions were fierce, sometimes friendly, but always intriguing.

What’s awesome about the Olympics in this day and age is that the Games have been captured digitally and readily accessible.  That’s a great thing for the education community.  You still have a chance to incorporate the Winter Games into your lessons.  If you’ve already started to, you can continue to do it throughout the remainder of the school year.  If you haven’t started, it’s not too late.

As we know, the Olympic Games offer natural tie-ins to curricular content within education from math to science to writing to music to world languages to life skills to character education.  The Games represent relevant learning opportunities for all age levels.  From the littlest learners who might question why flags are a certain color, to elementary students eagerly tracking the medal count all of the way up to high school students figuring out the sheer economics of hosting the games.  The teaching and learning possibilities are endless.  Don’t forget to team up with technology when incorporating the Games into your lesson plans from research to group work to product creation.

The concept of Olympism, a philosophy of life that is founded on the education of the body and mind through sport, is alive and well.  The spirit of the Olympics can enlighten more than just national pride and athletic spirit.  The educational connections are a great way to help students learn something while taking in one of the great spectacles of sport.  Help your student go for the GOLD!

French and English are the official languages of the Olympic Games.  Coincidentally, they are also Canada’s two official languages.  America and Canada are tremendous allies.  Visitors to either country have an easy time traveling since there is a limited language barrier.  That said, despite a common language, there is some vocabulary that gets lost in translation between American English and Canadian English, eh?

There are some words that are familiar with Americans that mean something very different to our friends in the Great White North.  For instance, if a Canadian said to "Get off the chesterfield, grab a bunny hug, some dainties and a double-double, we have to jump in the van, go to the ABM to get a couple of loonies," what does this mean?  No, it doesn’t mean to stop smoking, grab a rabbit, some fancy clothes, two double cheeseburgers and jump in a truck to go to the Anti-Ballistic Missiles and get some cartoon characters.  If a Canadian said that to an American, it would mean to:  get off the couch, grab a hooded sweatshirt, some cookies and a coffee with double cream double sugar, we have to jump on the caboose of the train and go to the ATM to get some money.

You and your students can check out Wikipedia’s Canadian English webpage to determine the meaning of the words listed below:

• van
• reeve
• solicitor
• My Lord or My Lady
• camp
• parkade
• gasbar
• bachelor
• tin
• cutlery
• tap
• chesterfield
• converter
• eavestroughs
• garburator
• loonie
• toonie
• runners
• toque
• packsack
• bunny hug
• chips
• poutine
• dainties
• rubber

While researching those words, you might want to take a look at Canadian Colloquialisms or Canadianisms as well. 

Heaven forbid if the Canadian you are talking to decides to speak French.  As Steve Martin famously said, "it’s like the French have a different word for everything".  So, whether you are speaking English, French, Canadian English or Canadian French, there are different words and meanings for everything.  The use of language is the key to communication around the world and throughout the Olympic Games.  Whether you order your meal as a cheese omelet or as an omelet du fromage, you can have a lot of fun using the Olympics to help add some savior faire to your Language Arts curriculum.

All of our senses are stimulated while experiencing the Olympic Games.  The sights and sounds are obvious.  With all of the HD channels available, you can almost smell the pine trees and feel the cold as the athletes toil through their events.  The full competition allows you to taste victory as your favorite Olympian pursues gold.  The 2010 Vancouver Olympic Games Website offers a number of online multimedia resources that can engage your students in language arts through reading, thinking and writing.  Listed below are some ways you might integrate the Olympic Games into your Language Arts studies.

Poetry

• Athletes in Motion:  How many ways can you describe athletes and how they move?  How are they graceful and beautiful?  How are their aesthetics expressed through movement?  These and other questions can provide the framework for your students’ exploration of poetry in motion of athletes who are participating in the Vancouver Olympic Games.  Have students examine examples from their own experiences playing in sports and don’t forget to visit the Olympic Games website to show your students videos from the Olympic Games to draw additional ideas about the aesthetic elements of athletics.  As a group, create a Wordle to capture all of the adjectives that describe movement.  Consider having students journal in Moodle or conduct additional research and work in collaborative teams to create a multimedia poetry presentation.  Want to go out on a limb, check out video cameras from your Media Center and have students act out their poems or host a poetry slam.
  
• Onomatopoeia Mania:  Have students explore different poems written about sports.  As a group, generate a Wordle of sounds used in sporting events.  Tie in the Olympics by watching a few videos posted on the Olympic Games website to hear & record real-life sports sounds.  Using the Wordle and ideas from the videos, students can create their own onomatopoeic sports poems via a Google Presentation, Glogster, Podcast, GoAnimate!  Or as a class, create a digital book in Google Sites.

Story Prompts

Consider using the Olympic theme to develop students’ expository and informative writing skills.  During the Games, students can respond to daily writing prompts about the Olympics.  You can even add a tech twist by journaling via Moodle, Google Docs or even have students create a Google Site to maintain a written ePortfolio with prompts such as:

• If you could meet a current Winter Olympian, who would it be and why?
  
• If you could try any Olympic sport, what would you try and why?
  
• Which Olympic event are you scared to try?  Why?
  
• If you could create a new Winter Olypmic sport, what would it be?  What would you have to do to compete?  Where would it take place?  How do you win–timed, scored, or judged?  How do you play?  Why would this be a great Olympic event?  Who wins?

Role Playing

• Olympic Reporter - have your students try their hand at being Olympic reporters.  Track a sport or athlete and have your students Tweet, Blog or Podcast about the "happenings" of their sport or athlete.
• Olympics in Review - students can practice their informative writing by composing newspaper-style articles.  Teachers can have students watch an Olympic event for homework and take notes on it.  Students can use their notes to write an article about the event for a classroom digital book via Google Presentation or Google Sites.
  
• Olympic Historian - have your students play the role of an Olympic Historian and research and write biographies or hero/heroine stories.  Use Google Docs to create, collaborate and share out student stories with their peers, families and friends.

As the Olympics stir all of the senses, the Language Arts content area offers the opportunity to stir all of the creative juices and create a perfect tie-in for reading, cognition and writing.  Don’t miss the opportunity to capitalize on this great event as it enters its final week.  Make sure that your students go for gold in their pursuit of knowledge, understanding and of them seeking to be understood.

Sometimes science is hard for students to understand.  Maybe it’s the big words, the confusing laws and principles or even the perceived lack of relevancy to every day life by our students.  Science is definitely best learned through experiencing it rather than through reading a textbook or listening to a lecture.  Science is something that gets explored, experimented and discovered.

So, as Thomas Dolby says, “She blinded me with science, and hit me with technology”.  Stay tuned…Language Arts is on deck.

What’s math got to do with the Olympics?  Everything!  There are numbers everywhere.  From scores to times to lengths to order of finish to medal counts for each country, math is all over the Olympics.  Think about how you can incorporate Olympic data into the content area of Math.  Below is a hodge podge list of Olympic style math possibilities sans a worksheet:

• Number Hunt - this is kind of like an "I Spy" of numbers with an Olympic twist.  Make this a family homework assignment for your younger students.  Have families watch a few minutes of the Olympics and write down when and where they saw each number they recorded.  Have students compare answers in class the following day.  Look for similarities and differences of where the numbers were found.  Make predictions about other places they might find numbers in different Olympic events.  Make connections to other places numbers might appear.  Want to remember your hard work?  Create a number slideshow with images from the Olympics or have your students each draw a picture(s) of the numbers they spied for repeat viewing another day.
• Ski Measuring - bring in an old pair of skis to measure against student heights and record all data.  Discuss and plot the data by asking questions, i.e., Is everyone taller than half of the ski?  How many skis do you think most adults would be?  Move on to measuring common classroom objects and create simple graphs of your findings.  Want to push the envelope a bit?  Pull up online images of landmarks such as the White House, Statute of Liberty and some Olympic venues as well.  Have students use their estimation skills to figure out how many skis make up the height of the landmarks.
• Graphing Favorites - start close to home with this activity and graph your class favorites, i.e., sport, medal, country, athlete, etc.
• Graphing Olympic Gold - keep track of the number of gold medals awarded by visiting www.vancouver2010.com/.  Have students create graphs either by using chart paper or check out a computer lab and have your students input their data into Excel, Google Spreadsheet or even use a free online graph maker like Create a Graph from the National Center for Education Statistics.
• 5-8 Grade Math Olympics WebQuest- have your students experience an Olympic simulation involving a problem that requires research, statistics, teamwork and a presentation of their recommendations.  Please note that this is not a brand new WebQuest.  Therefore, some links toward the bottom of the WebQuest might not work.
• Others worth a quick mention:  consider tracking and graphing the weather throughout the Vancouver Olympics, convert metric measurements of games to their U.S. equivalents, calculate probabilities, figure out the mileage of driving from different points in the U.S. to Vancouver, or create a Math Meet and arm your students with a clipboard, calculator, pencil and paper and pepper them with math tasks.

The Olympic math tie-in list could go on and on and on.  What I love about any of the activities listed above is that there isn’t any pre-made worksheest to use.  It’s all teacher facilitated and student created work.  Another lap down…look for a new content area to be unveiled tomorrow.

Bringing the 2010 Vancouver Olympics into the Classroom

Our job as educators is to be that coach, trainer and mentor that brings out the best in each of our students.  One way to connect with students is to leverage the Olympics and provide real-world “teachable moments” in the classroom.  It’s more than just cheering for a country or a particular Olympian, it’s about capitalizing on an amazing current event and tying it directly to existing K-12 curriculum.  During the next two weeks, this blog will be devoted to offering up curricular ideas and web links with an Olympic twist.

Today’s focus - Social Studies

Interested in incorporating the Olympics into Geography?  You might consider any of the following:

• Continents & Countries Study - have students locate and label past countries that have hosted the Olympics.  You can up the ante and activate higher order thinking and have your students look for patterns in countries that have hosted summer and winter games, countries that have hosted the games multiple times, continents that have hosted the games, countries that have never hosted the games, etc.  Wrap-up your lesson(s) by having students develop geographical hypotheses on why some countries and continents consistently host the games while others don’t.  Have students prove their theories by using maps, websites and other resources to create podcasts, collaborative Google Presentations, GoAnimate!, Glogster posters, etc.
  
• Latitude & Longitude Practice - the Olympic Torch Relay ran from October 30, 2009 through February 12, 2010.  It was the longest relay ever held in the borders of a host country.  Take your students on a road trip to plot the route of the Olympic Torch through coordinates provided to them.  Click here to view the route.
• Country Map Skills Practice - consider having students track medals awarded to each country throughout the games.  You can color code the gold, silver and bronze medals.  Use different types of maps and have students look for patterns in the medal count.
• United States Map Skills Practice - have students mark the home towns of Team USA athletes on a map.  Click here for a Team USA athlete resource list.
• Going for the Gold - take your students on a geography webquest about 5 Canadian cities vying for the Olympic Games.

Looking for an History Olympic spin?  You might consider:

• Olympics Through the Ages - take your students on an visual tour of ancient and contemporary Olympic Games.  Consider what the atmosphere at both might have been like for the athletes, their families & friends and the watching audience.  Put your students in the moment and have them create a Facebook page, an Announcements Google Sites Page or even Tweet or Blog their story.

Interested in an Olympic Economics focus?  You might consider:

• The Economics of Hosting the Olympics - take your students on a journey of the economics related to hosting the Olympics.  The NY Times have run a couple of articles on the Olympics from the perspective of the US hosting and what happened in Beijing post-hosting.  By studying the current and past Olympic hosting sites, have the students create an economic portfolio for the next host city or pretend Detroit is the next host city.
  

Finally, looking for general web resources to create your own Olympic/classroom curriculum connections, take a look at the following:

• Kid Friendly Olympic Info
• Vancover 2010
• Official Olympic Website
• When researching consider using:  Google News Timeline, Google Wonder Wheel, Panabee, Search3, Bing 

Stay tuned, this blog is only on the first lap of a 1000 meter speed skating race…more Olympic curriculum connections coverage to come…

You’ve heard of Web 2.0 sites like Facebook and MySpace.  They are social networking services that are often viewed suspiciously by educators because students seem to spend a lot of time wired to them.  Students use them to communicate & collaborate with their peers and believe it or not sometimes even use them for educational purposes.  Whether we like them or not, virtual social-networks are here to stay.  They are a part of a digital native lifestyle, so we’d better figure out some uses for them in our classrooms.  In Saline Schools, we have an educational version of Facebook and MySpace.  It’s called Ning.

No, it’s not the merciless villain from Flash Gordon nor is it an ancient Chinese dynasty. 

A Ning is:

• a secure way of allowing students with common interests to share ideas and learn from one another inside and outside of a classroom
  
• a platform for creating social networks where members are able to upload material, make comments and share ideas and experiences relating to a particular topic
  
• like a group of people together in the same room discussing similar interests–except it’s done using virtual environments and not in "real time"

Using Ning at the Middle School & High School enables students to learn in a multitude of ways including:

• discussion forums which encourage students to contribute to ideas and ask questions without feeling intimated or embarassed
  
• allowing students to refine their ideas and questions before putting them to the rest of the class since learning is not done in "real time"
  
• providing an ever-growing knowledge base which students can refer back to anytime to continue expanding on their own ideas

Ning is essentially a shared learning space to learn about new subjects and special interests.  A Saline Schools Professional Ning was started in 2008.  So far, we’re up to 12 special interest groups.  Last fall, Mrs. Schick & Mrs. Gates at the Middle School ran very successful online book clubs with over 230 students.  Currently Mrs. Moyski is running a Ning for her Literature Circles at the Middle School. 

Consider becoming a member of the Ning dynasty and:

• organize a class or social action project
• run an online book club or literature circle
  
• encourage educational debates on specific topics or areas of interests
• organize a creative writing club
• host a constitutional convention
• run a civil rights or Holocaust history project
  
• host a biology or geometry study group
• promote scientific investigations
• dream up a project to support academic growth
  

A Ning is a great way to promote, support and model creative & innovative thinking and encourage 21st century communication skills.  If you’re ready to take the plunge, give Dale Arden (Heather) or Dr. Zarkov (Troy) a call to help you set-up your very own classroom Ning.