Jamestown Elementary-ROCKS !!!!

Jamestown Elementary-ROCKS !!!!

As the new school year begins, my conference schedule starts to heat up. We are 5 weeks into the school year and my Frequent Flyer miles are adding up quickly. Over the past 2 months I have received many phone calls about out new IVC (Interactive Conferencing) Professional Development Series. We use IVC equipment and connect to your school and do a live Interactive 21st Century Skills Workshop. Most are 3 hours in length and staff and teachers can ever receive certification credit or Graduate Credit for attending the workshops. This saves the districts travel costs and keeps the cost of Professional Development low.

I have completed sessions with Bangkok, Thailand, Colorado, Texas and Virginia. I recently completed a session with Jamestown Elementary in Arlington Virginia. Camilla Gagliolo is the Instructional Technology Coordinator for the Arlington Public Schools.

Her e-mail is: camilla_gagliolo@apsva.us

We are doing a series on 21st Century Skills including, Web 2.0 tools, Blogs, Wikis, Global Communication and Visual Literacy.

When you provide 21st Century Skills Professional Development, you never know if you have generated a spark, to get the staff fired up using 21st Century Tools in their classrooms or if the flame goes out. The session this week started a FOREST FIRE.

We started with the Wiki and discussed the applications, why to do one, how it works in their individual classroom and how to build one. Then we continued with “Blogs” answering the same questions. You never know what will happen after the class but, I want to share examples of their excellent work.

Second grade teachers completed Podcast projects called “The Best Part of Me.” The student selects a part of their body they are most proud of and then tells about that feature. The teachers took digital photos of the part of the body and than make a Podcast of each student. Check out the work here. Great job. Here is a note from Camilla.

“Hi Howie,
I want you to see the first products from our workshop, 2nd grade podcast on my favorite part of me at http://web.me.com/jamestownelementary/Favorite/Welcome.html
Photos with voice recording from iPod and strung together with Garageband end published with iWeb.
Camilla.”
Congratulations to Chrissi Weaver and Helaine Ortiz.

One of the Kindergarten teachers, Guye Turner made a Blog that really has everyone talking. Check out his K Blog here. Check it out at : http://turnerkindergarten.blogspot.com/
This is what he had to say.
“Welcome to Mr. Turner's Super Kinder Blog. We are a kindergarten class at Jamestown Elementary School in Arlington County, Virginia. Our class has 23 students, a lead teacher (Mr. Guye Turner), and an assistant teacher (Mrs. Valarie Kuehn). This Blog will serve two purposes. The first one is to give our parents an insight on what we do in our classroom. The second is to give us the opportunity to connect with other kindergarten classrooms around the world! My students are extremely excited and we are ready to start sharing with the world what we do.”

My special thanks goes out to Camilla and Laura Annan Glascoe, Principal, for their vision of providing 21st Century Skills for the staff and students and providing their staff a Professional Development Model for the 21st Century Classroom.

Jamestown “ROCKS”…all of you are great…Keep up the SUPER work…

I am traveling over the next 3 weeks to Dallas, Michigan, Arizona, California and then to Denver and Jamestown will be in all of my Keynotes. What a great example of teachers implementing 21st Century Skills in THEIR classrooms.