One of my students gave me a DVD last week called “The Secret”. I actually thought it was a movie to sit down and watch over the rainy weekend and I might possibly need my trusty box of tissues – you know the kind I mean? – a “chick-flick”.

Well, was I wrong. Seems I’d really missed the boat about this “Law”.   To be honest – I hadn’t even heard of it.
So I went looking for some answers.  Wikipedia had this to say about The Law of Attraction.

After more searching I found this video on YouTube: Law of Attraction: Michael Losier (Making the Secret Work)

Then I found this video – An Inspirational Video – The Law of Attraction.

After that movie there was this comment posted:

_{Wonderful for every seventh grader (How do I see myself in this video?) and repeat in 12th grade (How have I grown in the past six years?)}

And I began to wonder what my students might make of this? I wonder if they would want to prove the theory right or wrong? Then I began to wonder if this would encourage great debate in our class and if our new Inquiry Learning approach could be a perfect springboard for examining this in greater depth ending in the production of our own response movies to the “Law of Attraction”. I’m just wondering if I’ve been using this theory already …… and didn’t know it.

I’ve just been introduced to Jing Project by Jeff (very clever man) Lebow  during our first session in the Webcasting Academy 2.2.1

Check out the Video Tour – it provides an excellent demo of what this nifty programme can do.  Both a Mac and PC version is available).  It enables you to do screen captures and share them online almost instantly.  You can share an image version or you can share a video version of your screen capture. 

I’m imagining my students using this to create small tutorials for each other ………. it’s that easy!

I’ve applied for a one-month Language Immersion Award for Teachers, sponsored by AFS New Zealand.  Spain was my first choice, Chile, my second choice.

Applications closed on Friday 20 July 2007.  And yes, I put an application in (ages ago)!   Now I wait.

I accidently stumbled across this after logging into my edublog this morning.  It showed up as an incoming link to my blog and I was curious to check out why.

Kolabora is a website that describes itself as …..

An online collaboration authority – Breaking news, commentary, Forums, Expert Advice, Tools review and Guidelines on How to Best Present, Communicate and collaborate online.

It appears to be chocka-block full of goodies – and I’m knee-deep in the links regarding Web Presentations.  I’ll let you know if I find anything good!

It never ceases to amaze me, the power of student voice during our 3-way Conferences held mid-way through our academic year.

We’ve just spent the last three nights on 3-way Conferences where the student, the teacher and the parents meet for 15 minutes.  Who does most of the talking?  Not me!  Each student manages to blow me away (and for some of them – their parents too) when they share what learning they are most proud of and why, and then discuss, very articularly, how they think their year is progressing, what some of the highlights have been and some of the challenges they have faced in their learning.  Without any direction from me except for the words strengths and weaknesses, students then go on to share with their parents a work habit goal that they have identified needs attention and why, and a learning goal that they have identified and why it needs to be a goal.  Out of 32 students – only one learning goal was modified (and that was because she was being extremely tough on herself!). 

What’s good about 3-way Conferences?  It is so encouraging to hear students explain what learning went on with a certain piece of work and how they went about learning it.  It’s so encouraging to see the look on parent’s faces when they hear their child discuss their successes and their challenges (for some – it’s the very first time of hearing such detail).  It’s so encouraging to see students are able to take responsibility for their own learning and identify what it is they need to do and what it is they need help to do.  It’s so encouraging to have 32 positive 3-way conferences.   It’s so encouraging to have a student tell their parents about their learning, both successful and unsuccessful, instead of me.

Seems I just scratched the surface with mind42.com!

Check out the comment left on my earlier blog post Another Visual Tool from

Vic
http://www.mind-mapping.org
The master list of mind mapping &
information management software

The list is extensive and pretty impressive! (Why is there only 2 days of the holidays left when I find these things!!??)

This afternoon I stumbled upon another visual brainstorming tool that might be useful – especially via our IWB.

Mind42.com is a browser based online mind mapping application. There is no need to install mindmapping tools as you just open the browser and launch the application when needed. The advantage of this mind mapping application would be that students could do their brainstorming in pairs or groups and no longer have to be in class to do it as this tool allows for online collaboration, or students could work alone. The possibilities brainstorming during International Collaboration projects make this a tool worth considering. At first try, it’s clean, user friendly, and easy to get a brainstorm up and going.

I’m extremely excited, grateful and nervous after reading an email that just arrived in my inbox!

I recently registered interest – (thanks to a post on Vicki Davis’ blog) in the next intern session of Webcast Academy.

Today I have been invited to be a member of the Webcast Academy Class 2.2. And it will be facilitated by Susan Ettenheim (TeachersTeachingTeachers / Youth Voices) and Cheryl Oakes (WOW2) – two fabulous, talented ladies. I can’t wait!! I have so much to learn.

The goals of the Webcast Academy include:

-increasing the number of people who are capable of producing live,
interactive webcasts
-applying the open source community approach to skill development
-creating a place that formally recognizes proficiency, excellence, and
innovation in these new media skills.

Roll on the 25 July!!

Thanks to Vicki Davis who thanks to Graham Wegner, I now know about and can get ready to use three very snazzy looking visual tools for our new area of PD – Inquiry Learning.  They caught my eye because we are lucky enough to have an IWB in our classroom and I have been looking for something visual to help teach my students how to brainstorm and search for information “smarter”.

Tool #1: TouchGraph

A free Java application to explore the connections between related websites. ( I tried my own URL and the result was very sad – but then I tried the word “blogging” and got this:

Tool #2: Quintura for Kids

Excellent for brainstorming a topic and it’s visual – great for the IWB.

Tool #3: KartOO

Kartoo is a meta search engine which presents its results on a map.

KartOO is a metasearch engine with visual display interfaces. When you click on OK, KartOO launches the query to a set of search engines, gathers the results, compiles them and represents them in a series of interactive maps through a proprietary algorithm.

It’s possible for this particular tool to encourage class discussion as you can decide which direction to take your query after the search gives you a few topics to consider.  Way cool!

Considering that my students have difficulty with brainstorming and struggle at times to narrow their searches for information, I can see that these three tools will be invaluable to us and we begin our journey into an Inquiry Learning approach to our next two terms of the school year.

Exciting!!   And it’s all because of the generous, willing nature of educators to share (through blogging and conversations) what’s being used in their classrooms!

Vicki mentioned visuwords  -an online graphical dictionary.  That looks like it would be great through the IWB too.

I love school holidays – not because I’m not teaching – but because I can do things like listen to the awesome ladies of WOW2.0 broadcasting through Worldbridges and EdTechTalk, Tuesday nights at 9pm EST. (Which is our Wednesday afternoon at 1pm – GMT+12). This week’s show features four top Australian educators:
Graham Wegner – Teaching Generation Z – Judy O’Connell - Jo McLeay – The Open Classroom – and Jason Hando – Clever Learning. Now that’s a show that will be worth listening to. I’m sure the chatroom will be spectacular too! I can usually listen to the live stream from school (as it’s my lunch with no duties) but I can’t access the chatroom unless I’m at home. So if you get a chance tomorrow – tune into this show – because it sounds like a “goodie”.

Thanks to Judy O’Connell’s blog post on a podcasting toolbox, I came across another toolbox
Video Toolbox: 150+ Online Video Tools and Resources. There is a wealth of links in this mashup, from How-tos to Online Video Editors to Online Video Converters – everything you could need for using Video in your classroom programme! I was really impressed with the Mashable Social Networking site that these two toolboxes came from. Definitely worth a longer look at. Gee I’m glad I’ve still got a few more days of holidays left!