Engaging Today's Digital Learners - Where Do We Begin?

Ashley had just returned from a skating practice preparing for tomorrow’s skating competition, when I met her. So of course, we talked about skating, school, the latest movies, and other things ten year old girls talk about, including technology. As an educator, I was interested to hear about how she used technology at school, but she was more interested in talking about technology in her world outside of school – and I’m so glad she did.

I wasn’t surprised that Ashley likes digital photography, and that Ashley has her own blog, or that she spends time in a social network called WebKinz. But what I was surprised at was that she spends time in WebKinz with her grandpa. Ashley bought and mailed her grandpa a Webkinz and then helped him learn to navigate the world of Webkinz so they can play together. They can go over to each other's Webkinz houses and check out the new room decorations. Webkinz also has game rooms where they can meet to play online games. They can even send gifts and notes to each other through Webkinz post. Now that they have Webkinz in common, when they have a chance to visit, they talk about the latest Webkinz games or items they have purchased. They usually spend time together at the computer doing Webkinz. Her grandfather wasn't very tech savy and this gave him a way to share in Ashley's world.


We all know that technology can help grandparents and grandchildren who live hundreds of miles apart stay connected. I’m fortunate enough to have face to face playtime with my grandson in my basement filled with toys he loves. But for many, technology is the way kids and their grandparents stay connected. My grandson could answer a Skype call from great grandma when he was two. My mom learned to use Facebook so she could stay connected with her teenage grandchildren spread across the country. But it wasn’t until I met Ashley that I thought about playtime with grandpa happening on line. For those old enough to have a Facebook account, there are lots of ways to replicate the checkers game with gramps we remember from our childhood. But who would have thought about inviting gramps to your online playground?

Ashley’s brilliant solution of using technology to solve a challenge in her life, sent me off thinking about how often we look for ways to use technology in our classrooms that is limited by our awareness of the technologies available along with limited understanding of how today’s learners are truly different than those of previous years. How many of us try to find technologies that FIT into our way of teaching, instead of increasing our understanding of new ways kids who have grown up digital learn and interact with their world. What is our responsibility as educators to understand our new audience and learn new methods to reach this audience? I remember the first time a young lady with Asperger's Syndrome joined my class; her special educator provided me with materials about teaching kids with Asperger's Syndrome and I took my professional responsibility very seriously to increase my understanding of what learning was like for her. Infinite Thinking blogger, Julie Duffield, enlightened me about how technology can help us understand learners with autism. Most recently I rearranged the computer lab and installed new software to make it more accessible for a blind student in one of our fifth grade classes. His teachers and I are learning many new techniques (including new technologies) to make learning accessible for him.

But where do educators begin to increase their awareness of new learners, and of new technologies available to engage and reach those learners? Where do we begin to blend our content knowledge, our understanding of good teaching, with increased awareness of new technologies and new types of learners? Where do we find the time admist a teaching day jammed pack teaching children and fulfilling professional duties? I know very few teachers who don’t want to better understand today’s students or new ways to make learning relevant to them. Can we take this challenge to our students? Ashley found a very creative way , that very few adults would have thought of, to connect with her grandpa – I bet she was lots of ideas about how teachers can make learning relevant for her. Have we asked her for help in solving this challenge?

(P.S. I’d like to do a follow up post with ideas from readers about ways we can work on this challenge)

My New Year's Wish - Let's Revisit COPPA

Happy New Year! Tis the season for resolutions, reflection, and renewals. Every year about this time, I spend some time reflecting on the past year and thinking ahead to the new year. What worked well? What are my wishes for the new year? What resolutions do I have to make for those wishes to come true? It’s also a time of purging, organizing and letting go. As I clean closets and drawers and remove things that no longer fit my lifestyle, I make room for the new toys, exciting adventures, and increased possibilities in the new year.

This year I have a wish that would involve some purging and cleaning out of outdated regulations that are barriers to access to some of the wonderful learning tools available in a digital age.

Ten years ago, the Children's Online Privacy Protection Act was created to protect children’s privacy. One of its goal is to prevent websites from collecting personal information from children under 13 without parental consent.

Although the need for protecting children’s privacy and safety has not changed, the way we live and learn online has changed in the past 10 years. Ten years ago, many feared that online shopping was unsafe; today more and more of us are not only shopping online, but also banking online. Not so long ago, many feared putting any private information on line; today more and more of us are using Facebook and other social networking sites to communicate with family and friends. Security and privacy are still very important issues, but new security measures and increased awareness about privacy settings have increased the functionality of the Internet as a tool throughout society. Why not encourage increased awareness of privacy and use security features available in online tools to protect children, rather than a blanket statement aimed at keeping children under 13 away from these tools.

Could it be that ten year old regulations aimed at protecting our children's privacy need to be updated? Wouldn’t the first year of a new decade be the perfect time to remove one of the barriers to using 21st century tools in today’s schools?
Photo by Giuseppe Bognanni taken from Diane Cordell's Blog Post Beyond the Wall

Website owners’s fear of noncompliance with COPPA has resulted in terms of service so complex and restrictive that they block the doorway to 21st century learning possibilities. COPPA states that websites are not allowed to collect private information from anyone under 13. It does not state the site cannot be used by members under 13 years old, but it does prevent the owners of those websites from collecting private information from those under 13 without parental permission. Since the owner of a website cannot prevent someone using their site from sharing identifying information in a post or profile, the easiest way to comply with this part of COPPA is to include an explicit statement that prohibits anyone under 13 from using their site. This creates several barriers.

1. It discourages (and usually prevents) the use of many valuable learning
   resources from being used in today's 21st century classrooms.
2. It discourages teachers themselves from exploring and experiencing new ways of
   learning and including many 21st century resources in the design of learning
   experiences.
3. It stifles innovation in the design of learning. Few companies would invest in research and design of products that be challenged as noncompliant.
   

There are fabulous resources and opportunities for students to learn using online tools that are not available to children under 13 due to fear of non-compliance.

A group of middle school students and their teacher recently stumbled across the popular website Shelfari. The site allows you to “create a virtual shelf to show off your books, see what your friends are reading and discover new books”. The enthusiasm of students for reading and talking about reading is exactly what every teacher and librarian tries to foster in children. And yet, these children and their teacher’s desire to use Shelfari was met with a black and white statement on the sites’ privacy guidelines that prevented the teacher from moving forward her student’s request to create online bookshelves of the books they were reading. The statement “This Site is not intended for use by children under 13” was surely included by Shelfari’s lawyers to protect them from COPPA noncompliance. The children and their teacher looked for similar sites that would allow them access to similar 21st century learning tools for creating online bookshelves and discussions about reading. Two other similar sites, Library Thing and Good Reads included similar statements. Photo Credit: Mr. Allen's Class Blog

Surely COPPA was not aimed at sites that promote reading!

Even though, the law does allow children under 13 to participate with parental permission, many website owners do not have a vehicle for verifying parental consent, thus include the blanket (nobody under 13 statements) as the easiest way to comply with COPPA.

Considering the fact that research supports social learning, such as talking about books, and considering that we currently possess the technology to engage students using online learning tools, might it not be a good time to take a second look at COPPA and update it to allow website owners to make engaging tools available to K-8 students and still protect the privacy and safety of our children.

The Broadband Data Improvement Act S 1492 100th Congress Section 215 as already amended the legislation to require elementary and secondary schools with computer access to the Internet to educate minors about appropriate online behavior, including online interactions with other individuals in social networking websites and in chat rooms and cyberbullying awareness and response. Then why not also update legislations to make websites that promote learning a resource by which to educate our children.

Currrently a few websites have taken the lead in making their tools available to students. Sites like

• Glogster (digital poster making)
• Animoto (digital slideshows and videos)
• Diigo (online bookmarking)
• Voice Thread (digital conversations around artifacts)
• PBworks (wiki with classroom accounts feature)
• Google (k12 collaboration applications)

now offer features and classroom friendly acceptable use policies that support the use of their tools in education. They have turned the responsibility for verifying parental permissions and educating and supervising students to educators. They have added features that allow educators to monitor the behavior of their students and teach students how to be a safe and ethical digital citizen.

My wish for the New Year would be that we remove some of the barriers for students to learn using digital tools. Perhaps its time we take a second look at COPPA and revise it so it stops being a barrier to access to 21st century learning for our children. Surely this 10 year old regulations could use a facelift to reflect the realities of how we live and learn today. Could we not revise this regulation in such a way that would encourage website owners to create classroom friendly features of their website and encourage teachers to use exciting online tools to motivate student learning and shape the next generation of digital citizens.

Back to School in a Web 2.0 World

The sight of big yellow school buses and children with backpacks walking the sidewalks are emerging throughout the United States and several other countries. In many schools, teachers have already been working in their rooms for weeks preparing for children to fill their classrooms. But the preparation is no longer limited to an isolated teacher sorting through the bulletin board supplies alone in his or her classroom; more and more teachers have been using Web 2.0 tools to reach beyond their classrooms to prepare for a successful year.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/cookipedia/ / CC BY 2.0

About a month ago, Steven Anderson, (aka as web20classroom on Twitter ) sent out a tweet looking for some great First Day Back activities. He also put this request on his blog. For those who have heard of Twitter but not tried it yet, check out this great Twitter in Plain English video from the folks at Common Craft.

Steven's personal learning network did not let him down. Within a few weeks over 50 people had filled out the simple GOOGLE FORM with wonderful tools, tips, tricks, resources, and advice for the first day of school. (It's not too late to add your own first day favorites.)

As soon as you fill out this form with your own advice, the results automatically appear in Steve's Google spreadsheet. With just a couple keystrokes Steve was able to share these suggestions with you by making his spreadsheet visible to the public over the Internet. This simple easy to use way of collecting information is being by used educators daily to collect and display data from their colleagues and students.

Steve used his blog to highlight a few of his favorite suggestions such as the way Ms. DeSilva uses
http://stixy.com/ to "post a welcome sticky on the board explaining to students that I would like each of them to drag a sticky to the board and on it to introduce themselves and tell us something about themselves that they would like to share with the class." Steve also shares the full list of suggestions with you by linking to the published Google spreadsheet.

Within minutes of exploring these suggestions I found myself gleaning lots of advice from educators from every discipline sharing their First Day Activities on a collaborative First Day Wiki set up by geometry teacher Dan Myer's (not to mention all the first day suggestions offered within the comments of Mr. Meyer's First Day blog post.

If your first days of school activities got your year off on the right foot, why not share them with other educators by adding to this wiki. If you've never contributed to a wiki before, here's your chance to share with others outside your school wall. Commoncraft video “Wikis in Plain English” offers an excellent introduction to the world of wikis.

And if your first day didn't quite turn out as well as you planned, don't despair, many of these suggestions can be used any day or even help you start over as suggested by Alice Mercer, Larry Ferlaza and others on the Starting Over Page of the First Day Wiki.

As we move beyond the world of Web 1.0 (the sermon) and surround ourselves with the tools of Web 2.0 (the conversation) , I encourage you to experiment with tools like Twitter, wikis, and blogs to join the myriad of educators who are changing the culture of teaching from one of the loneliest and most isolated professions to one connected with colleagues from all over the world and with rich resources provided by YOU using today's collaborative tools. For more information in creating this culture, check out Alan Novembers article "Creating a New Culture of Teaching and Learning or just jump in, reach out, and connect and get your school year off to a roaring start.

Sound It Out!

How often have you told your students to “Sound It Out”?

When Ms. Gottchalk tells her students to "sound it out" she is not encouraging students to use sound to SPELL the words of their story correctly, but instead is encouraging students to tell a story using only sounds. Students can either search for sounds online or create their own. Either way the activity develops several literacy skills.

They have discovered FindSounds.com to search the web for sound. The student friendly website allows users to search a growing database of sounds collected from the Internet. The folks from from Comparisonics comb the Internet for sound effects (excluding songs and speech) Not only does the search engine return sound clips that match using keyword descriptions, but they also allow you to do a second search finding “like” sounds using the Comparisonics “sound search” algorithm.

Ms. Gottchalk’s students quickly refine their search skills and literary skills as they seek the perfect sounds. When the word “walk” returns no sounds, they try “footsteps” and get a variety of options. Refining their search skills also helps them shape their writing to include stronger and more varied vocabulary. The students then use Audacity, a free open source audio editting program, to create their soundscape stories.

Later that year, Mr. Podd, used a similar technique to have fourth graders collaborate to write a group story. The story, ”A Boy Named Bob” was constructed by each student adding the next phrase or sentence. The students each recorded their section as a new Audacity track, along with a sound effect they created or discovered on FindSounds.com. The elements of writing became part of the conversation as the story progressed. Watching the sound waves and other parameters as they used Audacity to mix their story offered additional opportunity to integrate science concepts. Later in the week, students were working together to write the lyrics to a 12 bar blues, comparing the elements of songwriting to the elements of writing.

In the classroom next door, Mr. Allen’s students are using SCRATCH to tell their stories. Scratch, a free program, developed by the Lifelong Kindergarten group at the MIT Media Lab, is a user friendly tool that can be used to write interactive stories, by creating characters (sprites) that can change costumes while they move on a stage with a variety of backgrounds. Scratch allows students to easily record or import sounds to help tell their story. Some students are using some of the advanced features of Scratch to turn their story into a computer game.

Down the hall, Mr. Galle’s younger students are using Windows free Photostory program and pictures he pre-selected using Flickr and Google’s Creative Commons search to create their stories. The students are getting ready to add sound, but first they brainstorm adjectives that describe the type of sound that matches their story. . They start using Photostory’s built in “create music” feature which allows even non-musicians to create musical soundscapes. Later in the week they expand their ability to use precise and powerful adjectives to communicate as they work with a guest musician who plays music based on their descriptors to help tell their story. Photostory’s built in narration recorder makes it easy for the young students to capture their new “film score”. The guest musician talks about film scoring and quotes George Lucas explaining that "Sound is 50% of the motion picture experience."

Later in the year, some students will have a chance to create their own compositions during music class. Ms. Jarvis’s students learn music composition using Sibelius Music software. Many participate in the Vermont Midi Project, which offers students a password protected online space to collaborate with real music composers. The Vermont Midi Project’s recent collaboration with the Young Writers project models yet another way to integrate sound with writing. Their recent 6 x 6 x 6 project yielded six 1 minute compositions to accompany 6 six word stories created by young writers using collaborative online environments.

A new online music composition environment, called Noteflight, promises to be an exciting collaborative tool students can use to create original music composition and save for a variety of multimedia uses. The free version of Noteflight can be used by anyone with Internet access to collaborate while composing music.

Noteflight has offers Noteflight Learning Edition, an online subscription program for schools. Individual teacher accounts allow up to 750 student accounts and do not require student e-mail addresses making this a perfect solution for elementary and middle level classrooms. This course management system integrates seemlessly with the Noteflight online notation program.

Programs like Garageband by Apple or MixCraft by Acoustica (for PC) provide additional tools for using digital music loops to create soundscapes. These programs are very popular and engaging, even for students without music notation skills.

Books like MixCraft for the Classroom available through Soundtree.com can help even teachers without music background to use Gardner's multiple intelligences principles to engage students in all subject areas using today’s new technology tools.

If your school doesn’t have access to these tools, students can search for free Creative Commons music loops online and use programs like Garageband or Audacity to remix their own soundscapes. Sites like Garageband.com has free and fee based music loops that students can download without login. Sites like RoyaltyFreeMusic offer some free sounds and loops to students with a classroom login. What free music options have you discovered?

The sound of creativity, collaboration, and fun coming from any classroom I’ve seen use today’s sound technology tools has convinced me that these tools are often an untapped resource to engage students across all curriculum areas.

Even before digital audio, the sound effects methods developed to accompany Ancient Greek theatre or the pianist or organist that accompanied talking films were integral parts of the storytelling process. And with today's technology, integrating sound into story has become an art mastered by musicians and sound designers and today's 21st century learner. Won’t you share creative ways you have made sound part of your classroom experience?

Teachers Without Borders off to Africa

While many educators use Web 2.0 tools to make global connections, some educators are actually making these connections by traveling directly to countries where resources are scarce equipped with XO laptops, digital cameras, Flip Cameras, and incredible commitment to bridging the digital divide. I've invited Sharon Peters to be a guest blogger for Infinite Thinking this month to share with you how she and fellow educators are making global connections through Teachers Without Borders, and how you and your students can participate in their efforts to bridge the digital divide.

---- from Guest blogger Sharon Peters ----

Teachers Without Borders is off to Africa

At 59 million, teachers represent the largest group of educated professionals in the world. If you are able to read this blog post, very likely you are NOT one of the millions of those teachers who lack access to professional development and enrichment resources. Teachers Without Borders (Canada affiliation) is an organization of teachers helping teachers in order to foster and promote adequate teacher training in areas of the world that desperately need it.

In my experience, teachers are also those with the biggest hearts. During the last 12 months, I have had the incredible privilege of working shoulder-to-shoulder with inspiring teachers from Canada, the U.S., South Africa and Kenya as we rolled up our sleeves together and shared resources, methodologies and practices. I have learned so much more from my new colleagues than I contributed and I can see a substantial difference in my own teaching approaches. Last July and August, I served with a team of Canadian teachers facilitating workshops for science, math, English and ICT (Information, Communications and Technology) educators in South Africa and Kenya over a period of six weeks. We were the first teams of TWB Canada to be deployed. My experiences profoundly changed my world view, my priorities and my attitudes about learning - and ultimately affected how I ask my students to consider becoming global citizens.

Frankly, I cannot imagine more effective professional development than to work cross-culturally with other dedicated teachers from around the world. We return to our own educational communities greatly enriched and empowered. To develop relationships with teachers in politically and economically challenging situations permits us to give voice to teachers we may otherwise ignore due to lack of media attention or awareness.

Over a period of nearly seven weeks in July and August, I will be returning to South Africa and Kenya as a team leader of ICT teachers who will facilitate workshops for educators ranging from newly appointed elearning specialists to teachers who have never touched a computer before . Our team faces enormous challenges and will be stretched to the limit in ways we cannot yet imagine. Our team of Americans and Canadians will be joined by in-country facilitators this year. Many of these educators have not yet had the opportunity to facilitate professional growth for their colleagues. Our model is to ask increased participation of in-country educator facilitators every year so that by the fourth year of our presence in a community, we can hand over the PD to the in-country educators.

As an educational technologist, I see the incredible potential that online tools and environments offer to educators to connect, collaborate and share on a global level. Many teachers may not yet have access to the technology or they may lack adequate instruction on how to harness and exploit the tools available to them. Meeting teachers face-to-face in their contexts and creating relationships with them greatly facilitates the possibility of sharing resources and approaches. I witnessed many educators who eagerly desired to learn more technology and computer skills when I was in Africa. There was a profound sense of a need to "catch up" to the developed world, in terms of skills and access to the Internet. My experiences have also forced me to recognize and question how culture and ideology is implicitly embedded in technology tools and approaches. These are very important issues that must be considered as we facilitate content for our workshops. We are in new territory here where there are few guidelines or "how-to" manuals. Fundamentally, though, I think we are on the right track through the model of partnering with in-country educators who provide cultural and historical interpretation.

We need your help!

Teachers Without Borders is a relatively young organization. We are working on a model to build capacity and sustainability. Not all teachers are able at this time in their careers to consider going abroad and working on an overseas team. There are certainly other ways in which you can help.

• Consider making a tax-deductible donation. TWB raises money through grants and donations to cover our on the ground expenses while we teachers are asked to raise money toward our travel costs to the host country. As you know, most teachers are not able to pay for this out of pocket. Please consider making a tax-deductible donation to help us cover our travel expenses. If you are in Canada, you can give donations here. If you are in the U.S., please go to this link and be sure to specify that the donation is directed toward the TWB-Canada team members.
  
  
• Consider making donations of used digital cameras, laptops or flash drives. I will be at NECC in Washington D.C. (probably hanging out at the Bloggers Cafe) in late June and will be happy to connect with anyone who would like to pass resources along to me. John Schinker, another team member, and I will be leaving from NECC to travel to Africa.
  
  
• Consider making a donation of a Flip camera (or similar camera) to kick off a classroom exchange between your students and students in South Africa. We are partnering with Edunova in the townships of Cape Town to establish classroom-to-classroom partnerships. If you pass along a camera, perhaps with some embedded content on it from your own students, we will give it to a committed teacher in South Africa who will establish and maintain contact with your class.
  
  
• Consider joining our TWB community to communicate with other global educators and to develop resources for teachers in other parts of the world.

For more information or for an American or Canadian address to which you can send equipment, you can contact me at speters at twbcanada.org and you can follow our blogs throughout July and August:

Jody Meacher:

Zac Chase:

John Schinker - http://www.tasteoftech.net

Lois McGill-Horn

Sharon Peters: http://wearejustlearning.ca

Noble Kelly: http://twbcanada.ning.com/profiles/blog/list?user=noblek

We Need Our Earth

A group of fourth graders from Thomas Fleming Elementary School have been busy rounding up signatures for their petition. The petition was not about getting to wear hats in school or extending recess time (all very worthwhile pursuits). This petition which includes a cover page of a hand drawn earth with a handwritten title "Google Earth- We Need Our Earth" has two goals:

• get Google Earth upgraded to the latest version in their school
• get more time to play with Google Earth
  
  
  

I learned about these marvelous and curious students while helping a colleague plan a workshop featuring Google Earth uses in elementary and middle school. I learned so much working with David Davidson, tech integrator in Essex Junction, I'm not surprised that the students in his schools are petitioning for more Google Earth time and resources.

The first thing most everyone does when introduced to Google Earth is find their house. But what next? Everyone needs time to explore a new tool, but with this Google Earth Scavenger Hunt, David has students looking for their school, a very tall mountain, a very long river, or the Egyptian pyramids. Using Google Earths "copy image" feature, the students copy and paste their "finds" right into their Scavenger Hunt worksheet as evidence. Not only do the students explore Google Earth, but the teachers take the opportunity to debrief about search techniques or geography concepts.

David helps teachers at his schools use Google Earth to introduce elements found in different physiographic regions. A simple worksheet like this helps their students make observations about population density, tree cover, urban vs. rural, physical features, elevation, etc of different regions of their state or country.

One teacher who has skillfully layered her overhead transparencies to show students connections when you add data to a map now enjoys using premade layers of volcanoes, earthquakes, populations, tectonic plates to create those "Aha" moments.

David, his teachers and their students do not limit their Google Earth uses to the classroom. Students at Hawiatha Elementary School recently completed a community walk with sketchbook in hand to draw sketches of historic buildings in their town. Completing a Google Maps and Google Earth Version of their Community Walk not only allowed students to complete their sketches after the tour, but also gave parents and community a window into the activity.


With the use of a camera and GPS and a pioneering teacher, David helped the students at Westford Elementary School create a virtual multimedia map of the trails in their backyard. Although, creating waypoints is probably not an entry level skill, with the right support the students made a significant contribution to their community.

David is exploring new features such as Google Earth Sky or Google Earth Ocean to expand the activities he helps teachers create to places below and above the earth's surface. He's also pondering the possibilities that Google Earth's TimeLine View will bring to the classroom as it allow you to move back in time.

About the only place David had not taken his students and teachers to using Google Earth, was to the world of make believe. "Finally I have something to add to the planning session," I thought as I described how a group of 7th graders used Google Earth to go beyond the boundaries as defined by today's political maps, and create their own country. After hearing Jim Moulton challenge students at a leadership conference to take on the role of bringing new tools into their classrooms, four 7th grader students in St. Albans Vermont asked their teacher if they could use Google Earth to complete their "Create a Country" assignment (create maps of a fictional country whose characteristics follow the laws of nature based on where you place it on the globe). While their peers created their fictional country using markers and construction paper, these students used Google Earth layers to create maps that showed the physical, political, climate, population, energy uses and more. Their teacher's appreciation of differentiation and the students practice of leadership skills resulted in a 21st century design for a project that's been part of the curriculum for years.

After sharing our own experience and examples and highlighting other fabulous examples such as the award winning Google Lit Trips or the inspirational San Francisco Project, Dave and I concluded our workshop by pointing to just a few of the many resources for educators wanting to use Google Earth in their classrooms. And if you don't find what you want by combing sites like Juicy Geography, Real Word Math, CIA Factbook, Google for Educators, Google Earth Education Community or Google Earth Gallery, you can always use Google's advanced search feature to search by filetype (kmz or kml) on practically any topic you can think of.



But don't wait until you find the perfect Google Earth Lesson or have mastered all the features of Google Earth to explore the power of Google Earth in your classroom. Find one idea that looks interesting and explore it with your students -tap their infinite thinking skills and turn them into curious 21st century explorers of our world using Google Earth.

Friday Five - Tools for Teachers

Sometimes as teachers we are so busy looking for the perfect resource for our students, that we forget to take care of ourselves. By nature, teachers are caretakers and we do often take care of others needs before our own. This week, I was at a face to face meeting with a regional group of tech integrators where we spent some time sharing some tech tools that help us be more successful at our job. I couldn't wait to go home and try some of them and have picked the top 5 I learned about today to share as this week's Friday Five (plus one more cool tool that is coming out of beta this week). And best of all, these tools will not only help you as a teacher, they are great tools for students, too. (Photo Credit: Flickr J O I D)

1 . http://mail.google.com/mail/help/tasks/

If you have not discovered Google Tasks, you should visit the Gmail Lab (under Settings) to turn on TASKS. When you read an email that includes a new item for your to do list, or important information needed to complete that tasks, just click on the Label button to assign this email to a task. Your task list will now contain items that are linked to any email related to that task. And the most satisfying part is being able to check off the tasks as you complete them. Learn more about how to use the Tasks feature in Gmail or on your mobile device in Google's Help Section.

2. http://www.sticky-notes.net/

Whether you use a ToDo list such as Gmail's Tasks or other program to stay organized, there is something about a Sticky Note that helps us with priorities. This little gem is the perfect tool to keep certain items on your radar anytime.

3. http://jingproject.com/

Jing Project is a very helpful program that can be used to make screen captures as still pictures or short 5 minute videos. A picture is worth a thousand words and taking a picture of what is on your computer screen and being able to add lines, arrows, highlights, and additional text really helps increase understanding or provides assessment documentation in digital format. I know some teachers who encourage students to take a screenshot of their work on a popular math game as evidence of learning. I use this tool all the time to create tutorials for students and colleagues. I've even seen some educators document a tech error using Jing and attach it to a help ticket. For $14.95 a year you can go pro which allows the movies to be saved in mp4 format and also saves the videos in smaller file format. This comes in handy when using Jing to gather assessment artifacts.

4. http://www.screencast-o-matic.com/

If you want a similar tool that does not require you to install a program, try Screencast O matic.

This tool allows you to create a video of your screen (screencast) without requiring you to install anything. The product is in beta right now.

5. http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/bb897434.aspx

Zoom It is a very small utility that you can install on your computer or keep on a flash drive that will allow you to ZOOM in to any part of your screen at the stroke of a key. Those with Apple computers have had this ability for a while; PC users can now enjoy this capability with Zoom It. You can also provide it to visually impaired students to facilitate their use of computers. There are tools that provide more features for work stations used by visually impaired students, but this handy program on a thumb drive gives them the flexibility of zooming in when using other computers.

6. http://prezi.com/

And for an even more spectacular zooming experience, you need to try Prezi. And starting April 5, you'll get a chance since Prezi goes out of private beta and will be available for you to try the free version of sign up for a Pro account. It allows you to fly around a map of an image, screen shot, and even videos. You can click on an image to zoom in on it or use the mouse to fly around to show different perspective (from big picture to minute details).

Enjoy these tools. Model how to use them effectively for teaching and learning for your peers and students.

Friday Five - Finding Ada (Role Models of Women in Tech)

How quickly can you answer the question "Who are the leading women in tech?"

This week's Friday Five will not only help you anwer this question, but will also challenge you to contribute to the number of female role models students and adults are exposed to as they explore the areas of science, technology, engineering and math. (often referred to as S.T.E.M.)

How many of you had Ada Lovelace's name at the tip of your tongue?

Ada Lovelace wrote the world's first computer program for the Analytical Engine, a general-purpose machine that Charles Babbage had invented. She also wrote the very first description of a computer and of software. Ada died an early death in 1852 at the age of 36 and never had a chance to explore her understanding of computing. The high level computer language "Ada" developed by the U.S. Department of Defense was named after her.

If you were not familiar with Ada's significant contribution to the computer world or had trouble naming at least 10 leading women in tech, this week's Friday Five will serve you well. It includes a list of sites where you can easily locate names, pictures, stories of female role models to share with your students or colleagues. And best of all the list is about to expand exponentially!

March 24, 2009 has been designated as Ada LoveLace Day, an international day of blogging to draw attention to women excelling in technology. On that day, thousands of bloggers have pledged to publish a blog post about a women in tech who they admire using the tag AdaLovelaceDay09 for Delicious, Technorati etc. or #ALD09 for Twitter.

The data continues to show that the challenge of attracting women into technology related careers continues. While the causes are complex and the solutions are many, everyone agrees that female role models have a huge impact on the career choices of girls.

“Outstanding women can function as inspirational examples of success,
illustrating the kinds of achievements that are possible for women around them.
They demonstrate that it is possible to overcome traditional gender barriers,
indicating to other women that high levels of success are indeed attainable”,
(Penelope Lockwood, University of Toronto)

One of the most rewarding activities I organize to provide girls exposure to female role models year are the Power Lunch with Women in Tech offered at annual TechSavvyGirls activities. The female role models who attend continue to talk about the value they feel being able to offer advice and inspiration to girls in their formative years. Not only do the girls leave the luncheon with enough pictures, audio, and video to create a webpage about their new role model, but they often refer back to the advice and inspiration they received that day in 'college applications', 'scholarship applications' or in their own mentoring of younger students.

If you desire to organize an activity that will connect girls to role models face to face, organizations like the Society of Women Engineers , AAUW, or other networks of women are great resources for role models. The National Girls Collaborative can help you get started by providing resources, a program directory of organizations and projects and mini grants to support collaborative projects between organizations. The Anita Borg Foundation Tech Bridge Program has compiled a fantastic guide called Get Involved to help prospective role models inspire girls in technology filled with practical suggestions and strategies.

I challenge you to consider how you might use this week's Friday Five Resources to design a classroom activity that introduces female role models to your students (both girls and boys). The images and stories of women in tech are beneficial to all students, and to society as a whole. The next generation of innovators will come from the curiosity and spirit of innovation we inspire in today's students. Helping girls see their future as women in tech will give birth to a more diverse wave of infinite thinkers. What can we as educators do to help?

• Perhaps you might display some of the photos on your school bulletin boards.
  
• Perhaps you might assign reading or writing assignments from the collection of stories featuring women in tech
  
• Perhaps you might brainstorm with your students ways to publish your own blog post for AdaLoveLace Day. If you don't have a place to post a blog, you can always post an entry in the comments of this section. Don't forget to tag it--AdaLovelaceDay09
  
• Perhaps you might introduce a lesson on using Technorati or the way "tags" can work to assimilate collective knowledge using the power of tagging.
  

So I challenge you to use the comments sections to share your ideas of how to use AdaLoveLace Day or to add to the collection of post that will be published. Looking forward to having you join me in fulfilling my #4 on my New Years Resolution post.

Friday Five - Sites with Role Models of Women in Technology

1. http://www.passionit.info/albums.php
   Probably the most impressive and global collection of role models were free albums from all 7 continents.



2. http://www.fastcompany.com/magazine/132/the-most-influential-women-in-technology.html
   The most influential women in technology according to Fast Comapny is broken up into the following categories
   

   Women in Tech: The Executives
   Women in Tech: The Entrepreneurs
   Women in Tech: The Gamers
   Women in Tech: The Evangelists
   Women in Tech: The Activists
   Women in Tech: The Bloggers
   Women in Tech: The Brainiacs
   
   

3. http://www.fastcompany.com/articles/2008/11/influential-women-web.html
   Fast Company's 2008 picks as Most Influential Women in Web 2.0



4. http://www.pinkstinks.co.uk/role_models.php
   Although, this project appears to be a newcomer and has a smaller collection of role models in the technology area, it uses design elements with higher appeal to younger students.



5. http://www.sallyridescience.com/for_girls
   This collection of role models from the Sally Ride Science Web Site includes role models in several S.T.E.M. careers including
   -Contributions of 20th-Century Women to Physics Website:
   www.physics.ucla.edu/~cwp
   -Role Model Project for Girls sponsored by ACM's Committee on Women in Computing http://women.acm.org/
   -The Archives of Women in Science and Engineering Iowa State UniversityWebsite: www.lib.iastate.edu/spcl/wise/wise
   -Women of NASAWebsite: www.quest.arc.nasa.gov/women/intro.html

Friday Five from Wee Web Wonders

This week's Friday Five come from a group of stellar students from Sahuarita Intermediate School and their rock star teacher, Dr. Jackie Gerstein.






In my recent visit to Arizona, the colors of the flowering cacti, were a notable and inspiring contrast amidst the sparse and arid dessert backdrop- gaining my respect for all that not only survives, but thrives within the parameters of the Southwestern U.S. In a similar fashion, the vibrant classroom of Dr. Jackie Gerstein and her students, was exciting and inspiring against a backdrop of daily newspaper articles featuring stories of budget woes by surrounding Arizona schools, aging computers, inadequate bandwidth, and exhausted supplies where students are bringing in printer ink and paper from home to be able to continue using classroom printers.

Within minutes of arriving at Sahuarita Intermediate School, both Dr. Peggy George and I, we were greeted by two very poised 5th grade students who lead us to a classroom filled with evidence of constructivist learning- a fertile ground for nurturing the infinite thinking machine.

Every student was fully engaged in activities that challenged them to take charge of their leaning. One student was putting the finishing touch on a miniature piano made of craft materials, while her partner was busy programming Pico Cricket sound sensors to play the melody they had composed as part of an interactive digital story they were writing. Another was demonstrating how the hot Arizona sun could be used as solar power in a windmill created with legos. Two fifth grade boys huddled around an aging computer debating the plot of the digital story they were writing using Tikatok's online book publishing site. At other computer stations, students were exploring Tux Paint – an open source software. Others were using the forums in Think.com to critically analyze the potential of Web 2.0 sites for learning. Storyboards and backdrops made of legos, clay, science kits, and other craft materials filled tables and shelves, each to be used with student's original writing in a long term digital storytelling project.

One classroom wall was lined with student created newspapers as evidence that the students had developed interviewing skills to learn more about each other. Another wall was lined with colorful 3-D representations of FIVE word questions that was to guide a self directed research project. In the middle of it all hung a student created hand painted Wordle that captured the essence of the type of learning that filled their day and avatars of the students who drove that learning. The avatars were enlarged versions that the students had traced and colored of the actual avatars these students use to safely participate in collaborative learning environments outside their classroom using a variety of Web 2.0 tools made available to them through their classroom wiki- Wee Web Wonders. Here are just five of the many web sites we saw student using during our visit with Dr. Gerstein and her incredible infinite thinkers.

1. http://www.tikatok.com/

When we arrived in Jackie's classroom, students were using Tikatok to write and
publish their stories. Teachers can set up classroom accounts and manage their
own student accounts. The site includes story starters, prompts, and
collaborative options. Students can share the stories with coauthors, family,
friends. Parents can order printed copy of the students book in hardcover or
softcover.

2. http://www.shelfari.com/

Jackie's students proudly showed us the books they've read using Shelfari
bookshelves. They have become experts at putting widgets that display the books
they read on their project wiki. They also use the site to read reviews of books
or write their own.

3. http://atlantis.crlt.indiana.edu/

During computer time, some of Jackie's students collaborate with students all
over the world in a 3D environment helping the council of the virtual world,
Atlantis, solve problems impacting its water, air, health, and animal life. As
an active member of the Second Life Educational Committee, its easy to
understand how Jackie found Quest Atlantis a very compatible technology tool to
her constructivist teaching.

4. http://www.think.com/

As I walked around the classroom, I noticed one of my favorite sites, Think.com,
on some computer screens. The students were using this very safe social
networking site to post reviews about new web 2.0 links their teacher had
posted. The site is especially supportive of teachers, parents, and students who
want a more private place to collaborate. Oracle has very stringent rules about
participation and offers teachers a setting that allows their students to
interact ONLY with those from the same school. Oracle also checks each teacher's
credential and school affiliation before activating accounts. Teachers are
required to carefully monitor their classroom Think accounts.

5. http://www.mystudiyo.com/

One of the most impressive examples of learning and student leadership I
witnessed during my visit was students using the projector to lead their
classmates through group participation in student designed quizzes about the
topics they were studying. Students used My Studiyo to create quizzes, embed
them on their research wikipages, and then facilitated group decision making
about the answers to each question as they proceeded through the quiz using the
classroom projector. These student presentations were far from the traditional
student presentation. They had mastered the concept of “engaging” the audience.
It was obvious that they had witnessed good modeling from their teacher – Dr.
Gerstein who doesn't know the meaning of “sage on the stage” when it comes to
teaching. These students are defintiely in charge of their learning, and their
teacher is a superb 'designer of learning environments.

I wish I could share all of the great ideas and websites, I learned about during my visit to Sahuarita Intermediate School, but I think I will follow Jackie's philosophy of letting the students be the guides and leaders. Follow their evolving project pages at weewebwonders.pbwiki.com/
and see for yourself the evidence of student centered learning, and if that doesn't blow you away, brace yourself and visit their fantastic role model of self-directed learning by visting Dr. Gerstein's own learning space.



P.S. Thanks to my Personal Learning Network powered by powerful Web 2.0 tools like Twitter, I had the pleasure of meeting both Jackie and Peggy face to face and you have the opportunity to meet their students virtually. Special thanks to Jackie for inviting us into her classroom, and for Peggy to driving all the way from Phoenix to join me in this visit.

Friday Five: Create, Express, Learn with Primary Source Material

This week, I'd like to share some powerful web resources that use the increasing amount of primary source materials online and have the power to engage students using digital tools and their desire to express themselves.

As an educator who believes in teaching students to honor intellectual property, I'm always looking for sites that include materials students can use to create multimedia projects. Fair use guidelines gives us some flexibility in using multimedia inside our classroom. But in the world of Web 2.0, the audience for these media projects has expanded outside our classroom, with more and more interest in publishing for an authentic global audiences. All one has to do is look at the popularity of You Tube and other video sharing sites to know that young people are highly motivated to express themselves to audiences outside the classroom. Thanks to the Creative Commons license, more and more materials are available online that students can use to create and publish their multimedia productions for a global audience.

This week, I'd like to share 5 sites that go one step further than Creative Commons materials. These sites host primary source materials and encourage young people to use them to produce and publish their own creations. Some even include online tools to help students with the process.

1. http://www.remixamerica.org/

This site was created by a voter registration organization who wanted to keep the young people they registered involved and engaged. To do this, they provided them with free online tools and raw materials through “America Now” and “America Then” playlists. Remix America encourages students to draw parallels between the present and the past. They hope that viewing seminal speeches and events from American History will inspire young people to express themselves and take action on the issues that matter to them.

Teachers around America have stumbled across Remix America and incorporated the materials in their classroom. One teacher asked her students to take a quote from Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar and apply it to the 2008 election. Another asked her students to create PSAs on the issues that matter most to them – censorship, war, civil rights. You can browse through “Favorite Remixes” section to see some of these great remixes!

2. http://www.nasa.gov/audience/foreducators/diypodcast/
   
   NASA has done something similar to engage students in science, technology, engineering and mathematics. The NASA's Do-It-Yourself Podcast activity provides students with audio clips, video, and photos related to space. Students can use the NASA materials to produce their own audio or video productions.
   

3. http://www.primaryaccess.org/

PrimaryAccess is a web-based tool that offers teachers and students access to digital images and other materials that enable them to construct movies using tools provided by the web site.

Although many of the primary source materials are photograph and still images, the tools provided on the website allows students to add motions to create a movie effect. I first learned about Primary Access while listening to Glen Bull's presentation during the 2008 K-12 online conference.

4. http://take2videos.org
   
   This project is slightly different in that it not only provides the raw materials for students to produce a video, but also complete an advocacy event. The project requires schools to register and the topic is more focused. According to the project web site “Each year, Take 2 shoots 2-3 months of high definition footage in a different conflict region and creates extensive supporting and background documentation then licenses the package free of charge to qualified educational institutions. Participating schools will complete one small task to help grow Take 2’s infrastructure and undertake at least one advocacy event upon completion of their projects
   
   
5. http://www.kitzu.com/

   This website is not yet populated with lots of materials, but has promise in offering students free, educational, copyright-friendly media resources. According to the project website “Students and teachers around the world can access pre-made collections, or "kits," of various digital assets - still images, background music, narratives, video and text. Each kit is built around a common theme, or curricular topic. For students, this becomes the construction paper of the 21st century --allowing them to create reports and projects filled with rich, immersive media for communicating their vision of whatever subjects they chose. AS they master the technology, they will progress from building projects with supplied materials to projects where they find or create their own resources -- a strategy that results in truly authentic assessment as measured by the projects produced."

Have you discovered similar collection of primary source raw materials and tools that encourage students to create and express themselves? I'd love to find more of these.

Friday 5: 21st Century Skills

This week, it's my turn to come up with a thoughtful list of resources for teachers, and I have chosen the theme of 21st Century Skills. Recently, in the main stream press and in the edublogger/eduTwitter world,  there has been debate about the validity of such a skill set. This particular blog post will not do justice to this ongoing argument, but I do have one observation to add. 

I recently had the amazing opportunity to travel to Singapore to visit schools and assist with the 2008 Apple Distinguished Educator Asia Institute. A more comprehensive blog post about my experiences will follow one day (I'm still mulling over everything I experienced), but I was really struck by the attitudes of the people I encountered. It seemed to me, from my conversations with administrators and teachers from Singaporean and international schools, that many agreed with the basic idea that students and teachers today are require to employ a different mindset and set of abilities in this changing world. There was no ongoing debate; it was accepted that education had to change in light of this, and that this change happened through collaboration and exploration of global best practices. 

In my opinion, U.S educators need to stop arguing semantics on this topic and need to get down to the business of educating our peers about teaching and learning in the 21st century. Here we are, nearly 10 years into this new millennium, poised to start making meaningful, substantive change happen. Let's get on with it, people! We've got hard work to do!

That said, I'm off my soapbox and I recommend the following resources for investigating the idea of 21st Century Skills:

1) The Global Achievement Gap by Tony Wagner (Tony's website: http://schoolchange.org)

http://tinyurl.com/globalachievementgap

2) The Partnership for 21st Century Skills

http://www.21centuryskills.org 

3) 21st Century Literacies: Tools for Reading the World

http://www.noodletools.com/debbie/literacies

4) 21st Century Learning

http://tinyurl.com/21stcenturylearning

5) The Emergent 21st Century Teacher, Mark Treadwell

http://www.i-learnt.com

6) The Metiri Group: What's So Different About the 21st Century?

http://www.metiri.com/features.html

Feel free to offer any other recommendations in the comments here!

Lucy and Lucie's Friday Five - Cellphones in Education

Earlier this school year, I decided to follow in the footsteps of fellow educator, Lucy Gray, by posting a weekly list of websites, called the Friday Five, within my school. Lucy started the Friday Five tradition on her website back in 2006. This list has turned out to be one the most successful professional development methods I've tried this year. It seems like in a world where we are overwhelmed by choice, "more" is not always better. Just ask Barry Schwartz, author of Paradox of Choice. In a world, where the cookie aisle at your store has 285 types of cookies and Google yields millions of results for most queries, educators are welcoming a "short" list of websites related to a theme.

Therefore, Lucy and I have decided to pool our efforts to bring this Friday Five feature to the readers of Infinite Thinking Machine. We hope you will enjoy a 'short' list of five or so websites around a topic or theme related to using technology to help you shape your students into Infinite Thinking Machines.



This week's list comes on the heel of the Horizon 2009 report's predictions, and includes links ranging from broad predictions of the role of cellphones in our future, ways to use them in education, and reminders of the need for increased discussions about safety around their use.
Photo Credit: Flickr Creative Commons: Deeknow

1. 2009 Horizon Report » One Year or Less: Mobile
   wp.nmc.org/horizon2009/chapters/mobiles/
   
   The whole Horizon Report is a MUST read for anyone interested in technology, change, new media, and education. Take note of the biggest prediction for ONE year or LESS: MOBILE
   An accompanying web site focusing these issues on education is1.
   http://horizon.nmc.org/k12/Main_Page
   
   
2. From Toy to Tool: Cell Phones in Learning
   www.cellphonesinlearning.com/
   (and related interviews or podcast with the author of this site)
   
   Cell Phones in Education - An Interview with Liz Korb - Interviews -
   cellphones.org/blog/interviews/cell-phones-in-education-an-interview-with-liz-korb
   
   Cell Phone Books - Reading Is Reading :: The Education Business Blog
   www.educationbusinessblog.com/2008/02/cell_phone_books_reading_is_re.html
   
   
   
3. Good Web Post from Wes Fryer with thoughtful insights and resources
   http://www.speedofcreativity.org/2008/01/30/opening-minds-about-cell-phones-for-learning/
   
   
   
4. Guidelines and Instructional Uses for Cellphones in Education
   
   http://teachdigital.pbwiki.com/cellphones
   Explore reasons some school districts are embracing the use of cell phones for learning both inside and outside the classroom and examine specific guidelines school districts are utilizing for student cell
   phones.
   
   
5. E-School News article about risky behaviors by students related to cell phone use
   http://www.eschoolnews.com/news/top-news/news-by-subject/safety-security/index.cfm?i=54064
   A good article in Eschool News about how schools are handling some of
   the more recent riskier behaviors related to cell phones.
   

I hope this collection of sites is useful to those of you currently discussing cellphone use in your school community. And Lucy and I look forward to bringing you next week's Friday Five. Feel free to offer your own related websites in the comments, or suggest some topics for future Friday Fives.

Tuning into Educon 2.1, you can, too!

Last January, I had the privilege of attending and blogging about one of the most invigorating events of my educational career, Educon 2.0 held at the Science Leadership Academy (SLA) in Philadelphia. This exciting event is again being hosted by SLA this weekend (January 23 - 25, 2009).

At Educon 2.1, you will find some of the most well-read, most challenging thinkers and doers in the world of education and technology gathering in Philadelphia for conversations around the following Axioms:

• Our schools must be inquiry-driven, thoughtful and empowering for all members.


• Our schools must be about co-creating -- together with our students -- the 21st Century Citizen.


• Technology must serve pedagogy, not the other way around.


• Technology must enable students to research, create, communicate and collaborate.


• Learning can -- and must -- be networked.

Unfortunately, this year I'm not in Philadelphia, but home with flu symptons, but thanks to today's technology I am joining many others by participating virtually. You can, too!

I've been watching a steady stream of snippets from the conference, ranging from links, quotable quotes, and Aha's from my Twitter network. You can, too!

I'm watching a live video stream from Clay Burrell's blog. You can, too!

I will surely, be watching more videos from the conference which will be archived on Educon's conference wiki. You can, too!

Would love to hear from both attendees and virtual participants of Educon about some of your experience with Educon, including reflections and aha's.

Inauguration 2009

There is certainly no lack of educational activities available for students to participate in celebrating this historic day. Both Lucy Gray and Lucie deLaBruere were unable to limit their weekly Friday Five list to only this week.

But even with this plethora of activities, I saw an opportunity to demonstrate the engagement potential of using a Smartboard and the variety of "game show" type templates that can be downloaded online to teachers in my school. So at the midnight hour, I added content to this PowerPoint Game from http://jc-schools.net/tutorials/PPT-games/ creating a Historical Inauguration Jeopardy Game that you can download to use in your school.

The questions are challenging for even those who've been around for a while. So you might want to modify the rules to engage your students by teaming them with adults who have seen a few Inaugurations. Here are some ideas for playing this Historic Jeopardy Game.

• Give students a chance to use the Internet to search for answers. Perhaps use the Jeopardy Music as a timer.
• Have two classes challenge each other with their ‘teacher’ where the students picks the question and has the choice to let the teacher answer it for “half the points”.

You might want to start the activity by watching this National Public Radio Slide Show of “First” for Inauguration Day.

This historic day also generated opportunity to show the power of Voice Thread in student learning. a VoiceThread is an online virtual space that has a unique commenting environment for shared media like images and videos. Students can comment by webcam, microphone, telephone, or text. The Inauguration Day Voices project has encouragd educators who have developed VoiceThread projects that capture the voices of individuals exploring and expressing their own perspectives on this historic event to tag them with "inauguration09". Help your students find their voice today by participating in one of several Inauguration Voice Threads or create your own. If your new to Voice Thread, take some time to explore Collette Cassenilli's Voicethread 4 Education wiki, which is filled with tips and tricks for teachers interested in using this powerful tool.

And if you have not stumbled upon the New York Times Interactive Inaugural Words, stop everything you're doing and go check out one of the best examples of how technology provides the tools to redesign learning activities. This site takes a look at the language of presidential inaugural addresses from 1789 to present. The most-used words in each address appear in an interactive chart, sized by number of uses. Words highlighted in yellow were used significantly more in this inaugural address than average. Just hover over each word to see how many times they were used and click on the word to see it used in context (through the years). I challenge readers to use the comment section to share the "questions" they used with their students that challenged their capacity as "Infinite Thinking Machines".

I leave you with a last gem I discovered during my exploration of Interactive Inauguration Activites - the blog of Larry Ferlazzo. Larry's talent for combing the Internet and discovering the best websites for teaching ELL, ESL, and EFl has earned him numerous awards, but more importantly it is filled with invaluable resources for teachers of ALL students on a variety of students, including the Inauguration.

I hope you enjoy this last minute goodies and share how you and your students celebrated this historic day in United States history.

.