Category: inspiration

More Advent Calendars: Student created, creative, and imaginative!

Kelly Tenkely4 Comments on More Advent Calendars: Student created, creative, and imaginative!23013 views

After my last post I found some new advent calendars that I just had to add to the list.

First is an advent calendar created by eighth graders at ASLS who’s teacher Mr. Akerson (@mra47) I follow on Twitter.  What is so neat about this advent calendar, is it is made up of pictures of the students and teachers.  Each day that you click on delivers a new devotion written by one of the eighth graders.  I have NO idea how they created this site, each day all of the students pictures look a little different direction so that they are focused on the person on the date of the day (that is a total of 2200 pictures!!).  Genius! They are making Weebly do things I am sure it wasn’t intended to do.   The students at ASLS have a goal to get someone from every state in the US to view their advent calendar.  I think we can help them out with that and do one better, let’s get them views from around the world! This student created calendar is not to be missed! This calendar is a fun one to use with your students, but why not blog lift their idea and create a similar calendar with your students?  Since we are already into December maybe yours is a 12 days of Christmas calendar or a unique lead up to your schools winter break.  Students could create a “word a day” calendar, math problem of the day, featured student art, story of the day, poem of the day, fact of the day…the possibilities are endless on this one. Ask your students, they will have great ideas!

The second calendar is one that is sure to spark your students imagination and creativity.  Send Felicity is a beautiful idea and way to celebrate all things imaginative.  Every day Felicity From Thin Air will surprise your students with fun activity ideas that are illustrated by some of the best children’s book illustrators in the world.  The idea behind the Send Felicity and the illustrations are enchanting.  Currently ideas are being shared on the Send Felicity website.  There is an accompanying application for the iPhone/iPod Touch/iPad that is soon to be released.  This complimentary (read free) application will guide students in creativity and imagination.  Eight arts and crafts ideas will be interspersed throughout for students to complete with their families or at school.  All creations can be submitted to the Send Felicity gallery.  Felicity from Thin Air is meant to be a new way of learning and engagement for the mind. It is about creativity, collaboration, and sharing with a global audience.  In addition to the daily activities, there are magic surprises.  I don’t know what the magic is but I am assured I will know it when I see it 🙂  Get your students families engaged in some fun holiday spirit.  Instead of homework for the month of December, why not give your students (and parents) the homework of following Felicity from Thin Air and engaging in creativity as a family.  I guarantee that the positive effects will be much more lasting than any worksheet you could send home.  Today’s Felicity from Thin Air activity is Fancy Dress for Dinner.  Pick any theme and invite the whole family to show up for dinner dressed for the occasion.  Costumes can be as silly or creative as you like!  Following Felicity at school?  Adapt the idea for a Fancy Lunch or Fancy Math class and have your students create impromptu costumes out of classroom items.  Don’t have time for the cut/paste? Have your students draw their costume.  The goal is to let kids be creative and imaginative!

Librarian extraordinaire Shannon Miller of VanMeter shared the Polar Express advent calendar with me.  This calendar includes the beautiful Polar express illustrations and combines it with fun activities and give away opportunities.  Enter a chance to win the giveaways for your class (for example yesterday was a chance to win the Polar Express bell from Santa’s sleigh) and complete the activities together.  Each day is a new surprise!

How to integrate Interactive Advent Calendars into the classroom: The season of Advent is always filled with eagerness and expectancy. Build some of that anticipation into your school day by allowing students to unlock a new secret on the advent calendar each day.  Use these advent calendars with the whole class on an interactive whiteboard or projector, or set them up as a quick center activity that students can visit.  Use the advent calendars that reveal a story to practice looking for foreshadowing clues, using context clues to guess what will happen next, or as story starters for students own stories.

Tips: Each of these advent calendars has some fun goodies and hidden surprises, find the one that best fits your classroom needs.

Thank you to all of you who have spread the word to fellow teachers about my Web 2.0 advent calendar, I am glad you are enjoying it!

Donor’s Choose Change the World Project

Kelly Tenkely7 Comments on Donor’s Choose Change the World Project2761 views

Right before Thanksgiving I announced that I was using the money from my Change the world project to help fund a (some) Donor’s Choose Projects.  I have had great response from teachers submitting projects that they would like funded as well as some generous readers who wanted to help out by donating.  I am giving everyone until December 1st to submit your Donor’s Choose project to vote on, if you have a project that needs funding, head over to this post and leave a comment.

If you would like to donate to the project you can do so via pay pal to ktenkely at gmail dot com.  I am so thankful for so many generous readers who care about education!  Every little bit helps (hence the “change” in Change the world).

After December 1st we will put the projects to a vote…details to come.

Happy Thanksgiving! – Anyone have a Donor’s Choose Project?

Kelly Tenkely23 Comments on Happy Thanksgiving! – Anyone have a Donor’s Choose Project?5424 views

Happy Thanksgiving to all of my American friends!  For those of you who won’t be celebrating with us in the States, let me assure you that I will eat a piece of pie on your behalf 🙂

This week has been relatively quite on iLearn Technology as I wrap up projects, start some new projects, and get ready for the holiday.  Just because I have been quite here doesn’t mean that I have been slacking; here is what I have been up to:

  • The Community of Learners Dream Team– my first post on the Cooperative Catalyst blog.
  • In October, I joined @adambellow of edutecher.net in his Change the world campaign.  You can read more about that here: EduTecher Change the World post. I am cheating and calling it a day early so that I can post the results and not have to worry about it tomorrow.  From October 1 to today I have had 54,656 absolute unique visitors to iLearn Technology (according to Google Analytics). Truly amazing!  That works out to $546.56.  Now, like Adam I had to cap my contribution at $400 (teacher who is not employed makes even less than a teacher who is!).  I would love to use my contribution to fund some teacher Donor’s Choose projects.  If you have a project on Donor’s Choose that you would like funded, please leave a comment below.  If I get an overwhelming response, we can put it to a vote.  If anyone would like to donate to help reach the $546.56, or would like to match in any way, please leave a comment.  Help me to fund projects and dreams that will change students lives and make learning a richer experience!

I am truly thankful for all of my readers, you all encourage me regularly!  Have a wonderful Thanksgiving!

Seedlings Podcast: Show 98

Kelly Tenkely4 Comments on Seedlings Podcast: Show 989231 views

Last Thursday I joined the team over at Seedlings for their 98th podcast. You can listen to the recording below to hear me talk about the history of iLearn Technology, more about my post on Dreams of Education: When Hunches Collide, and my dreams for #twitacad.  Thank you to Bob, Cheryl, and Alice for having me!

Seedlings @ Bit by Bit Podcast: Show 98
November 11, 2010

Links from the show:

“Geek of the Week” Links for 2010-11-11

Chat Transcript from EdTech

Edublog Award Nominations 2010

Kelly Tenkely6 Comments on Edublog Award Nominations 201011986 views

It is that time again, Edublog Award nomination.  This is a time of year I look forward to…and dread.  It is a great time to learn about new blogs/educators/resources as the nominations go out, but it is also becoming increasingly difficult for me to nominate.  My Google Reader is packed full of favorites.  I need many more categories than those that edublogs supplies!  After much deliberation, here are my nominations:

Best individual blog- @TheNerdyTeacher http://www.thenerdyteacher.com/ for his epic posts on all things education and pop culture. Saved by the Bell is a favorite.
Best individual tweeter – @ShellTerrell I have no idea how Shelly does it, but she is incredible!
Best group blog – http://coopcatalyst.wordpress.com/ This is an incredible group of educators, I love their individual blogs but when they come together it is magic.
Best new blog – http://gret.wordpress.com I love reading each of Greta’s posts, I am so glad she decided to start a blog!
Best class blog – http://alfordnews.wordpress.com/ Kelly does such a great job with her class blog, I love the way she creates Smilebox creations of what her kiddos are doing to share with parents.
Best resource sharing blog – http://freetech4teachers.com Richard is a resource sharing rock star.
Most influential blog post – http://www.johntspencer.com/2010/02/i-hope-he-stays-lunatic-for-life.html To be fair most of John’s posts are inspirational to me. I think this one sticks out because it reminds me of conversations with my dad about the moon and growing up.
Most influential tweet / series of tweets / tweet based discussion – #cpchat  I have loved seeing this group of administrators come together.
Best teacher blog –@whatedsaid http://whatedsaid.wordpress.com/ Edna always leaves me thinking and working to make myself better. Plus the visual learner in me loves her Toon Doo cartoons for each post!
Best librarian / library blog – My favorite librarian @shannonmmiller http://vanmeterlibraryvoice.blogspot.com/
Best school administrator blog – @gcouros http://georgecouros.ca/blog/ George provides honest reflection and inspiration around every bend.
Best educational tech support blog- http://jasontbedell.com/ Jason did an outstanding series/ebook about tech integration.
Best elearning / corporate education blog – http://thegatewayto21stcenturyskills.blogspot.com/
Best educational webinar series – Reform Symposium (not sure if I am allowed to nominate this one since I was involved, but want to nominate the rest of the awesome team, it was incredible!)
Lifetime achievement – @cybraryman1 Jerry has an incredible collection of knowledge and resources that he has added to for years. It doesn’t matter what you need or are looking for, Jerry always has it at the ready (including personalized birthday webpages).

That is beyond hard for me!  If you want to see who I would nominate if I could include all of my favorites, check out these Google Bundles edublogger alliance 1 and edublogger alliance 2.

Want to nominate your favorites?

In order to nominate blogs for the 2010 Edublog Awards you have to link to them first!

  • Nominations: Close Friday 3 December!
  • Voting: Ends Tuesday 14 December!
  • Award Ceremony: Wednesday 15 December!

1. Write a post on your blog linking to:

You can nominate:

  1. For as many categories as you like,
  2. But only one nomination per category,
  3. A blog (or site) for more than one category
  4. Any blog or site you like but not your own blogs (sites) :)

2. Email edublogs the link to your nomination post

Happy nominating!

Qwiki- transforming the search into a story

Kelly Tenkely9 Comments on Qwiki- transforming the search into a story6381 views


What it is: Have you seen Wall-E?  Remember the scene when the captain finally starts taking charge and goes to his wall of computers to learn about Earth?  He tells his computer to “define Earth” and a wall of images of Earth pop up complete with computer narration.  In the definition of Earth he hears about the sea and interrupts the explanation so that he can have the sea defined.  This concept of information presentation is a reality…or nearly a reality.  There is a new way of information searching called  Qwiki.  Search using Qwiki and instead of coming up with a list of links to websites, images, and videos, a slide show of images and videos begins complete with computer voice narration.  It is truly an incredible experience.  Why are we still using textbooks again?

Qwiki is currently in Alpha which means that you have to request an invitation to get the full version of Qwiki, flaws and all. It is worth requesting an invitation; it is jaw dropping!  Even without an invitation, you can head over to Qwiki and get an idea of what it does. There are a few preloaded Qwiki searches that you can check out.  Qwiki believes that “just because data is stored by machines doesn’t mean it should be presented as a machine-readable list.”  Qwiki has transformed the search into a story.

How to integrate Qwiki into your curriculum: Qwiki is limited in its search capabilities right now (in that it won’t necessarily come up with a result for EVERYTHING you want to search), but the current Alpha version of Qwiki gives you more than enough great material to start using it in your classrooms.  I have searched everything from mitosis to the solar system to rational numbers to Romeo and Juliet to Shiba Inu to Google and World War 2.  Each had fantastic content, images and information.  Qwiki is going to revolutionize the way that we search and receive information.  The way that it pares a search down into a story is brilliant.

Use Qwiki on classroom computers as part of a center activity, students can dig deeper into science, math, history, geography, or literature using Qwiki to search.  Your students can learn more about any topic by searching related topics.  Use Qwiki to introduce new concepts to your students using a projector connected computer or interactive whiteboard for whole class learning and discussion.  Do you have reluctant or struggling readers?  Allow them to read along with Qwiki on their favorite topic or subject.  Teach older students? Involve them on conversation about the implications of making our searches “more human” while relying on a computer.  What could this type of searching mean for Google?  Does this type of searching change their views on learning?  Does this type of search feel too much like entertainment without offering enough information? What would they change or add to Qwiki?

Tips: Qwiki is currently in Alpha, that means if you would like to access the full version, you will have to request an invite.  I got my invite within 5 minutes of requesting.  As you run across features that you wish Qwiki had (the ability to slow down the narration, the ability to change voices) be sure to let them know.  If you run across glitches, report those. When a product is in Alpha, it gets better and better when people use it and comment on their experience.

What do you think? Are you as bowled over as I am? What implications do you see a tool like Qwiki having for education? How will you use it in your classroom? Leave a comment!

Gettysburg Address Animated

Kelly Tenkely3 Comments on Gettysburg Address Animated5113 views

Gettysburg Address from Adam Gault on Vimeo.

What it is: Today I learned about the Gettysburg Address animated video from my husband, @jtenkely.  This animation beautifully illustrates the famous words of Abraham Lincoln that kids around the United States learn and memorize every year.

How to integrate Gettysburg Address Animated into your curriculum: This animated video illustrating the Gettysburg Address, brings the famous speech to life in a memorable and meaningful way.  Discuss the artists choices with students, what imagery is used to convey the tone and meaning behind the speech?  What would they have done differently?  I remember reading the words of the Gettysburg Address in a government class and thinking that the words were dry…this because I was asked to memorize it out of a textbook.  I would have relished the opportunity to be introduced to the speech this way.  Beyond just viewing and discussing this video, use it as a source of inspiration for your classroom.  Ask students to take a famous speech (MLK’s I have a Dream or the Preamble to name a few) and create a video that conveys the meaning behind the words.  Students can create using stop motion techniques and Jay Cut, Animoto, VoiceThread, Go Animate, or Xtranormal.  Hold an inspirational viewing day where students have the opportunity to watch and discuss each other’s creations.

Tips: Vimeo blocked at your school? Download the video for offline viewing using Zamzar, Vixy.net, or KeepVid.

Please leave a comment and share how you are using Gettysburg Address Animated in your classroom!

#Twitacad Twitter Academy: Starting a School

Kelly Tenkely26 Comments on #Twitacad Twitter Academy: Starting a School8082 views

There are some things, that when presented to you in life, you want to run away from.  In my experience, those things I want to run away from, are often a window into my future.   My immediate reaction is to resist, but in the end, as I get more comfortable with the idea, I end up embracing it with passion.  Over the past 3 years, I have been approached by different people, in different walks of life, to start a school.  The first time conversation headed in this direction I was intrigued and, if I’m honest, totally terrified.  What do I know about starting a school?  I continued the conversation because I love talking education and learning and thought I might learn something in the process.  Last year, my mindset about starting a school began to change.  I can’t pinpoint exactly what caused that change, maybe it was being in a private school and realizing that even there, education isn’t what it should be.  Sure there are more resources, money, involved parents, more freedom, but education is still being done the same way it has been for nearly a century.  We have tools and resources at our disposal that would make customizing education a much easier task than it was even 20 years ago and yet the direction we are heading in is to standardize more and individualize less.

Somewhere in the span of a year, I decided to really take this on.  Even if the end result wasn’t a school, I wanted to really intentionally re-imagine education.  I wanted to re-imagine what a school is.  I brought together a few teachers who share my passion for education and learning and a passion to improve education.  Two of us decided to pursue what it would take to make our ideas a reality and start a school.  We brought an entrepreneur into the mix who has no background in education but knows how to build a business.  That may seem like a strange thing to do, but we both felt that an outside perspective is needed.  Sometimes we are too close to education to get a clear view of the possibilities that exist because we can build up walls that are unnecessary.  The three of us are coming to a place where we are ready to invite more voices into the mix.  I would relish your input in the formation of this school.  This is your opportunity to help shape education!  I think the best way to ask for that input is through Google forms.  I will be throwing out Google Forms with questions about education, learning, school design etc. over the next few months, I hope you will help out when you can.

First I should give you a 10,000 foot view of what we are looking to accomplish.  I don’t want to give away too many details just yet because as I am asking for input, I want it to be separate from our ideas and biases.  We are looking to create a replicable school model that could eventually take the place of public education.   Right now it is our feeling that public education is beyond tweaking.  Education needs a major overhaul and re-imagining.  To try to do this within the current system is going to be slow at best.  We want the school to be free for everyone (tuition-free) but private (not government-funded).  I will post more later about our ideas for how to accomplish that.  The focus of the school will be building up a community of learners.  I will be adding more details and fleshing this out for those who are interested in later posts.

With this in mind, I would love your help with the first round of questions.  If you can take a minute to help out it would be greatly appreciated.  This first Google form focuses on the learning environment.  Don’t feel like you have to answer each and every question, answer those that you have an opinion about or are passionate about.

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You may be wondering what the title of this post is all about… about a month ago @cybraryman1 and I came up with the idea of Twitter Academy, the ideal school created and shaped by educators on Twitter.  As I progress with this project, I will be using the hash tag #twitacad on Twitter to follow conversations and progress.  Please feel free to add to that conversation by adding #twitacad to any of your tweets.  @cybraryman1 has started a page on his awesome site for Twitter Academy.

BeMused- Museums and Art Galleries: Watch. Look. Do. Discuss

Kelly Tenkely2 Comments on BeMused- Museums and Art Galleries: Watch. Look. Do. Discuss3717 views

What it is: Bemused is another site from the Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery.  BeMused helps students be excited, aware, informed, amused, and involved in the Birmingham Museums and Art Gallery.  Through videos and activities sections students can discover more about the museum and gallery.  Students can get involved by visiting the Your Say section or submitting their own artwork to the online Gallery.  Students can watch videos including an introduction to the Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery and short poems created by kids inspired by the issues surrounding slavery and Olaudah Equiano’s life.  The online gallery holds beautiful artwork created by students.  Your students can create and submit their own artwork for the online gallery.  The activities section has interesting quizzes and activities about art, history and museums.  In one activity, students try to find the faces in famous works of art as quickly as possible.  The Your say section gives students an opportunity to talk about history, art, and museums.  Students can add to an existing topic or start their own topic for discussion.  Currently discussions include what would you like to see in an art gallery?; who is your favourite artist?; and Is graffiti art?

How to integrate BeMused into your curriculum: Bemused is a good place for students to be inspired by art and history.  This site encourages student interaction.  Students can join into forum discussions about art or history and even submit their own artwork to the online art gallery.  In the video section, students can watch a video of student created poems centered around history.  Use the video for classroom inspiration.  Your students can create and write their own poetry inspired by history.  If your students have visited many of the Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery sites, they may enjoy challenging themselves to the quizzes in the activities section of the site.

Tips: BeMused was created for the Birmingham Museum and Art Collection.  They have several excellent websites that I will be reviewing.

Please leave a comment and share how you are using BeMused in your classroom!