Using social media to foster student collaboration, learning

A Chicago-area English teacher is using social media to help interest his high-school students in literature and reading. Chuck Moore uses PBworks and edmodo, which both offer free social networks for students to collaborate and discuss assignments. Moore's students use the Internet to further their understanding of books and social networking to discuss books online. "It's like what they're used to doing when they socialize with each other," Moore said.

Lesson Plans for Developing Digital Literacies

Lesson Plans for Developing Digital Literacies is the title of a new text just released by NCTE at its annual convention, here in Orlando. It is a follow up to the very popular Lesson Plans for Creating Media-Rich Classrooms. Tell your library media specialist: both would make great additions to your media center professional collections.

Critical Thinking and Elementary Media Literacy

Here is an excellent write up about a presentation that targeted elementary students: it includes some good links, resources, and streaming video clips.

The Power of Classroom Blogging

"The power of classroom blogging is that students are not merely writing to their teachers, what they think the teacher wants to read, and only for a grade," one educational consultant said. "They are writing with the knowledge that at least their classmates will be reading what they are writing and responding to what they are writing."

Students participate more in class when using Twitter

A study published in a November issue of the Journal of Computer Assisted Learning finds that college students asked to complete assignments and engage in class discussion using Twitter over one semester increased their engagement more than twice as much as a group that utilized a different social networking website for these same assignments.

Makingof Website Will Satisfy Film Teachers and Students Alike

MakingOf.com is a huge new web resource for those who love film and also those who teach it. (It is promoted in an essay in the Summer 2011 issue of Screen Education.)
The author says: " a few hundred movies are currently on the site, with more regularly added. While some feature nothing more than trailers or clips from the film, others have extensive, highly informative packages specially shot for the site."

The President: Through A Photographer's Eyes

An upcoming PBS documentary (November 24, The President's Photographer: 50 Years in the Oval Office)could be used both by American History teachers as well as those who teach visual literacy.

An excerpt from the program's press release says: "To a documentary photographer, every presidency has defining stories, and those images are often how we remember a president."

The documentary also has a companion book: http://shop.nationalgeographic.com/ngs/browse/productDetail.jsp?productId=6200676
Some images from the book can be found on Amazon's web page for the book:
http://www.amazon.com/Presidents-Photographer-Fifty-Inside-Office/dp/1426206763/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1289145935&sr=1-1
More images from the White House can be seen on the White House's official Flickr site
http://www.flickr.com/photos/whitehouse
Note: just this week, former President Bush expressed regret over an official White House photo taken of him in a plane that flew over areas damaged by Hurricane Katrina

CBS' Sunday Morning broadcast (November 6) also had a segment on Pete Souza, the current White House photographer.

Coincidentally, I wrote a chapter on visual literacy in politics in my book: Political Campaigns and Political Advertising: A Media Literacy.

Frank Baker