Gearing up for September--best ideas?

[Joyce Valenza]

I would love to hear what brilliant ideas you are planning for this coming school year. What 2.0 excitement is brewing? What new bulletin board ideas do you have? How will you be greeting and orienting your new learners? Please share any special, nifty ideas for the greater good.

[karenklieg]

Hi Joyce!
I am an elementary school lms. I have a Web 2.0-exciting project that my fourth grade students will be doing that is open to any 4th/5th grade class to join. Description follows:

Project Name: On the Trail of the First People

URL: http://eev.liu.edu/KK/na/index.htm

Description: On the Trail of the First People is an online, collaborative standards-based social studies unit that seeks to incorporate information literacy skills with communicative technologies for 4th and 5th grades researching Native Americans. Classrooms located in the Northeast, Southeast, Plains, Southwest, California, Far Pacific Northwest, and the Far North are invited to research tribes indigenous to their area and then share their knowledge with all through the use of Wikis, Blogs and Social Mapping. Register soon - project begins in soon! Contact project coordinator, Karen Kliegman [e-mail], to register.

[Lesley Edwards]

Ahh, back to school. This year I plan to find one really good blog to share with each of my departments. I will recommend Nick Senger's Teen Literacy Tips to the English department. http://www.nicksenger.com/blog/
I'm still on the lookout for comparable blogs in science, math, socials and French. Any ideas?

I usually start the year out with a display of postcards which teachers have sent in from their summer travels. I put a business card with the school's address into all the staff mailboxes just before school ends in June to remind staff. When their postcards come in I photocopy the back of each card to display alongside the front. The kids love reading about where their teachers have gone and it's a great conversation starter. Now if I could only get the kids to send in cards as well!

[Heather Heck]

I plan on getting into Google Docs for sharing and collaboration, safe social networking for both my kids and my teachers, and maybe even dig into some of the video stuff to help kids with research projects. I'm also going to try and influence more collaboration amongst my staff and really encourage the use of web-based technologies and heavy-duty use of my library for something besides TESTING.

[Donna Forester]

Orientation2008.wmvThe best new thing that I did this year for orientation: I created a Photo Story file for my orientation speel to all the 3rd, 4th, 5th and 6th grade classes--you know, those things that you have to say every year? In a school our size, that means I would have to say it 24 times for those grade levels! But this year, I only said it once when I made the Photo Story file and then played it for each class. SO much easier!
I will attach it, but please know that I will redo the sound for next year because it was not loud enough--I don't have much experience with this program and should have spoken up more when recording. But I wrote a script, so it will be easy to fix.
Donna