Objectives:

Investigating and learning more about the British electoral system

The first past the post system is often called unfair. Is it because it makes it very difficult for medium-sized or small parties to get any of their candidates elected as MPs if the support for these parties is spread evenly throughout the UK?

Student activites:

1. Read these articles on how Gordon Brown is planning to change this system.
2. Write a commentary on your blog explaining the changes and why you think they may /may not happen.
3. List the views of: The Labour party
4. The Conservatives
5. The Liberal Democrats
6. What is a referendum?

Student activities:

The commercials aired during Super Bowl are always special. Watch these commercials and write a review on your blog where you:

1. Describe the different commercials, pick the 3 you like the best
2. Explain what products they promote, do they have anything in common?
3. Decide on a winner. Explain you choice!..
4. Explain why the Super Bowl is such a big deal in the USA. See celebrity pictures here.

Find 10 commercials here!

Watch 3 parts of Sarah Palin’s speech to the Tea Party Convention in Nashville, (you have to see part 1 and 5) TN and write a comment on your blog were you answer the following questions:

1. What is the Tea Party Convention?
2. How does she start here speech, who is she addressing?
3. Who is Scott Brown and why does she mention him?
4. What does she suggest in the fight against terrorism?
5. In your opinion – what is the best part of her speech?
6. Are there issues were you agree or strongly disagree?
7. What is the Palin plan?

Part 2 of 5

Part 3 of 5

Part 4 of 5

Part 5 of 5

Related articles by Zemanta

• Palin: Obama administration mishandling terrorism (seattletimes.nwsource.com)

Image via CrunchBase

On February 3rd. I was fortunate to be able to both attend and participate at a large ICT conference for teachers in Kongsberg Norway. I think almost 400 teachers and school leaders were there. I enjoyed being able to talk on two separate sessions about some of the cool stuff we do in my class! And I got to show my students’ blogs and say how proud I am of what they do! It is such a privilege to be able to spend time with students who are eager to learn, collaborate and investigate. And to share this with enthusiastic teachers who also are eager to learn more about how the web 2.0 tools can be used in the classroom.

Here are some of the things I talked about:

1. OneNote
2. Photostory klick here for tutorial slow version
3. Glogster
4. Del-is-ious
5. Wordle
6. Powerpoint 2010
7. And my favorite of course: blogs!

Teaching methods:

The whole class collaborating and working together as a group. The students reflections can be found on links below.

Goals:

1. Learning the material, find topics here
2. Sharing the material with the whole class
3. Preparing for test

Strategies:
Divide class into the following groups:

1. Front desk, responsibilities: divide material, prioritize, approve material, give time limits, talk to all groups
2. Research group, find material, and send to front desk, journalists, teachers and designers
3. Journalists, write blogs, and send to front desk, teachers, designers
4. Teachers, make rubrics with criteria for testing, write test questions
5. Designers, make Glogs with material

All the students have to write about the process on student blogs.

Time limit: end product to be finished before deadline set by Front desk group. Remember to rate this day. You will find the Poll on a separate page.

Time frame:

Ideal is a whole day best for schools with block Scheduling

Teacher instructions:

1. Gather the students when starting to assign roles, discuss strategies and so on
2. Have each group assign a leader and have meetings with leaders 2 or 3 times to ensure that they are on task
3. Evaluate and discuss with whole class in the end

Result:

1. This is the material the journalists wrote
2. These are the test questions

TED Talks “There’s a flip side to everything,” the saying goes, and in 2 minutes, Derek Sivers shows this is true in a few ways you might not expect.

more about “Derek Sivers: Weird, or just differen…“, posted with vodpod

Apple CEO Steve Jobs is well known for his electrifying presentations. Communications coach Carmine Gallo discusses the various techniques Jobs uses to captivate his audience.

1. Be a great presenter, find inspiration and wisdoom from other great presenters.
2. Teach your students! This is an important skill.
3. Post your presentations on slideshare, let others use your slides and use others’ too!
4. Read books about the topic, you can find good tips here at Presentation Zen.

When I want to have a quick overview of what Glogster is, I search on youtube. And that is where I found this video shown below “Glogster is the leading creative outlet for students, From ABC.”

It is the new way to learn! Most of your students might be doing it already! If you want to know about something try typing tutorial in the search field in Youtube.When I was in Brazil in November  I really wanted to learn the front crawl! And since I do think it might be possible to learn I typed tutorial swimming in the search field in Youtube and found this video! Enjoy! You might want to try typing tutorial English and see how many hits you get!

1. Another tutorial for using Glogster.

more about “Facts of Congress – The House of Repr…“, posted with vodpo

Let’s look at the House of Representatives, and more facts about Congress.

1. The three branches of government
2. Electing a Us president in plain English
3. Inside the White House, the Cabinet.

As a Microsoft Pathfinder school we are attending Virtual university conferences via net-meeting once a month. Next up is:  Effective Learning Environments by Randy Fielding and Prakash Nash. As a good student I am doing my homework reading up on the 30 strategies for Eudcation Innovation.

Of the 30 strategies I would like to dwell on, the two I for the time being believe in the most are:

1. Multi- disciplinary curricula with block Scheduling
2. Cooperative Learning

I quote:

1. It is true that nothing that is worth learning can be taught or learned in the traditional 45 – minute block that most schools employ. Block scheduling is an alternative way to break up the school day into larger time segments that permit students to enjoy a richer learning experience.
2. Education Week defines cooperative learning as, ” a method of instruction that encourages students to work in small groups, learning material, then presenting what they have learned to other small groups. In doing so, they take responsibility for their own learning as well as their classmates”.  In other words cooperative learning is a system in which students become both motivated and motivators.

I’m happy to say that we have the block scheduling for all our subjects and that we have had several cooperative learning work-shops at our school. I have to agree that they both are important as strategies for Education Innovation!