Rural Education Network

I was reading a review of a concert with Stuart McLean and the Vinyl Café troupe the other day, and was struck by how storytelling appeals to a vast audience. We all have stories to tell and we all seem to value the stories of characters we know and love. Maybe that’s what brings us closer to each other – that shared time of experiences we can understand and appreciate. A website a colleague brought to my attention, CogDogRoo , has instructions on how to: Design a basic story concept that can be created in a web 2.0 tool using images, audio, and/or video. And then create it quickly using one of 50 different web tools that are free to use. This kind of approach can be very motivating for all writers. Audio and video and image files can be embedded in these stories, and the range of possibilities is endless. His steps: Step 1 - Outline a Story pick an idea (he has a number of ideas on how to do this) write out the elements of the story in point form for each bullet, list possible ideas ...

(Adapted from the Wandering Ink blog) Book shelves are filled with personal help and development books. All lead to common goals of happiness, success and fulfillment. Using Leonardo da Vinci as an example, Michael J. Gelb presents 7 habits, world views and critical principles that helped lead a renaissance man to success. I wonder if these can be transferable to our classrooms and schools? What do we do to help promote these ideals? How to Think Like Leonardo da Vinci by Michael J. Gelb http://www.amazon.com/How-Think-Like-Leonardo-Vinci/dp/0440508274 1. Curiosita What is it? Intense and insatiable curiosity; constantly learning due to a desire to ask and answer questions. Does this ever happen? In schools, for the most part, students learn only what the teacher decides they will learn. Student questions will often go unanswered if they lead away from the material (go off-topic), or if there are time constraints on what must be learned that leave no time for these questions in class...

I recently read an article from eSchool talking about how cyberbullying is on the rise. The report states that : As many as one in three U.S. children have been ridiculed or threatened through computer messages, according to one estimate of the emerging problem of cyber bullying. Another new study found the problem is less common, with one in 10 kids reporting online harassment. Regardless of which numbers you cite, at least 10% of the respondents had been victims of bullying online. The article concludes with: “Bullying might be common, but it’s not normal. Teachers, school leaders, parents, and students need to recognize bullying as the antisocial behavior it is and do more to stop it before more children are irreparably harmed”. This article reminded me of a Rant from Rick Mercer's TV show, The Mercer Report. He offers words of hope to victims of bullying. Go to his site, http://www.cbc.ca/mercerreport/backissues.php?season=5 and select the November 27 Episode. His Rant is 2 m...

If you use OpenOffice, this may be useful for your. The OpenOffice.org2GoogleDocs extension imports documents from Google Docs and Spreadsheets to OpenOffice.org and exports from OO.org to GDocs so you can work with your docs both online and off as you see fit. Whether you're primarily a Google Docs or OO.org fan, this desktop-to-web integration seems like an excellent way to take your docs with you whether you're online or off, and if nothing else is a quick and simple way to backup your local documents to the internet. The OpenOffice.org2GoogleDocs extension is free, works anywhere you've installed OpenOffice.org (Windows, Mac, or Linux). Web site DocSyncer is looking to do similar things for your Microsoft Office docs, but right now it's in an invite-only beta. OO.org2GDocs is here right now. http://lifehacker.com/software/featured-download/sync-openofficeorg-docs-with-google-docs-332055.php

Once in a while, all of us face a need to get some text synthesized into speech. Maybe we want to know how someone would pronounce a complicated word, or sometimes we just want an entire passage to be read out to us. These online tools are a great help when you face such a requirement. Some of them will allow you only to synthesize a small passage; others would read out entire PDF or DOC files to you! Vozme : vozMe an online text to speech tool with an ultra-simple interface; a baby could use it! You have a large text box where you type or copy-paste whatever you want to convert to speech, and click the 'Create MP3' button. That's it. A new window would open, and in a few seconds, your MP3 file would start playing. Large chunks of text were translated - the text field seems to accept a pile of text easily. Expressivo : This text to speech conversion tool from Expressivo has a maximum limit of 200 characters. So large chunks or text at one go are out. But it is easy enoug...

Good afternoon folks. The countdown to Christmas is rapidly progressing there are very few days remaining in 2007. Temperatures have dropped, snow has fallen and we’ve all dug out our boots and parkas. Resources and ideas for teachers Edublogs: ( http://edublogs.org/ ) Sometimes you just want a simple way to distribute information to your students, or even other teachers. Edublogs is an education community built on WordPress-powered blogs. It's free, and like most blogging platforms, you can embed video, podcasts, etc. Edublogs offers 10 ways to use an edublog for teaching, which includes class publications and newsletters, online discussions, allowing student blogs, and adding multimedia. If you have a webcam, you can upload video files to YouTube or TeacherTube and embed those into your blog. 10 ways to use your edublog to teach: ( http://edublogs.org/10-ways-to-use-your-edublog-to-teach/ ) There are many ways you can use an edublog in your teaching, here are ten to get you s...