Beginnig of the year edition of It's Elementary Webcast. We are moving our format to one informal chat and one interview per month.  On this occasion, we shared some educational conferences coming up both on the East Coast (Educon 2.2, PETE&C) and West Coast CUE where we expect to go or present. As well as NECC 2010.  We also had a chance to share what we are doing in our classrooms. The fact that there isn't a lot happening that is new and inovative but rather, just using some tools like voicethread and our classroom blogs. For a tech use in the elementary classroom perspective, join is the 2nd and 4th Monday of every month. Check the ETT calendar for up to date information.

Link to Text Chat

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"Film in NOT the language of the 21st century. It is the language of the 20th century and schools are just now thinking about catching up." Mathew Needleman

Have a listen as the It's Elementary Team discusses video in the elementary classroom with our guest Mathew Needleman.  We talked about how far behind education is in re: film/video. Still most teachers just show kids films instead of having them make them. Mathew then shared how he started using film making in his classroom and how this met educational goals on writing, critical thinking, and they understand about how the are being persuaded propagandized by media. They need to know it.  From experience, kids learn more and at a higher level by making videos.  We described some uses and genres. There was a long discussion about organizing and planning and finally, resources were shared. Make sure to tune in the 2nd and 4th Mondays of every month for another edition of It's Elementary Webcast. 

Link to Text Chat

Have a listen to a special edition of It's Elementary Webcast / Earthcast09 Echo / 350.org promo show.  This is a call to the Edtechtalk community to global action to save our planet. Please join our sister site Puente Al Mundo in putting together 350 podcast of up to 350 seconds each on message to world leaders on saving the Earth.  All interested please send us your podcast link to twitter @coordinatortwo. 

Listen as the It's Elementary Team dicusses our summer activities such as NECC 2009, Building Communities, Edbublogger Con and local conferences. We also had a special song by Kevin Honeycutt "Love Them and Let Them Go".  Hope you enjoy the show and remember we broadcast the 2nd and 4th Mondays of each month. Our next show will be Monday September 14th where we will dicuss; "Bringing it Home", how we take what we learn in our online spaces with to our day job.  See you then.

Join us, as we talk about elementary student blogging with our guest Jan Smith, a sixth grade teachers in British Columbia, Huzzah! http://huzzah.edublogs.org/  She started with a strictly controled class blog, but found that it lacked conversational give and take.  She started again with an edublogs account, and this time she encouraged a more "conversational" approach both in student's writing, giving them a voice, and how they interacted with each other.  She started a practice of "gradual release" giving students more authority, and control over their blogging and blogs as they showed responsibility until many had earned their own blogs and were self-moderated.  She also shared how she dealt with problems and conflicts when they came up, respecting students, and making them responsible. 

Link to Text Chat.

We talked about various projects we are doing with our students. Some are in classes during the school day, and some are outside of school hours.  We're building connections with our peers, both far away and in our schools and districts. We're filling in our network, and making some rich and surprising connections   Link to text chat

We talked about Logo programming language and math in the elementary classroom with our guest Colleen King.

In this edition of It's Elementary we discuss Interactive whiteboards with our guest Lisa Parisi and our in house expert Maria Knee.  Our conversation centered around the use of the interactive whiteboards in a student centered curriculum.  We heard example of best practices both for Smart Boards given by Lisa Parisi and Promethean given by Maria Knee.  The discusion and comments coming out of the chatroom were very informative. For more details check out the text chat.

In this international edition of It’s Elementary we are joined by Dennis Newson and Nick Noakes session facilitators for EVOVWLL 2009 and Vance Stevens the original webhead.  We attempted to define what self directed learning is and how it has changed over time. We talked about the importance of learning in a network and building our own Personal Learning Environment (PLE or PLN).  We talked about the structure of the EVO sessions and the role of the facilitators. We evaluated the different tools used in the course such as the wikis, nings and the like. We concluded that it really IS about the people and how we connect in these online spaces. Check out all the great links in the text chat