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I was very happy to be in Adriana Monti's  Brazilian History & Culture class for a video project she was doing on a press conference about the Kaiowa and Kaapor Indians. We had been talking for a while about some tech project possibilities, so this video project became her debut in many technological skills for which she is very proud now. The press conference was a very interesting format as she had different groups preparing to be the Indians and other groups preparing to be the press with specific questions. The pairing of Indians and press was decided on the spot and students had to go off and video record the Q&A press conference using the internalized knowledge from the research. Most groups worked independently on the video editing requiring very few tips from me. As I saw the project developing, my suggestion was to have the videos online so students could check anytime anywhere and could also make comments. We created a Google Site for the BHC class with a page jus

Academic Technology Coordinator and teacher partnerships can take different forms and operate at different levels. The Cell Division project in Grade 9 Biology using stop motion video is one example. The teachers and I were able to have quick chats about a project and with an idea of what the project was about I could provide a sample suggestion for teachers to consider and explore in class. The teachers and students worked independently, and actually, when I stepped into a class I was very pleased to see how students figured it our and had many creative ways of carrying on the project. So all started last semester, when Karem Doersam approached me with the idea of doing her animated cell division using stop motion technology. In past years, she had asked the students to make drawings on a paper notebook and animate by flipping the pages. Now she wanted to do the same process with the support of technology. She had also asked Karin Gunn who shared a site that she created about stop mot

Last week we had a workshop on what I called "Online Collaborative Resources Database".  That is a pretty big name for "social bookmarking".  But the purpose of that big name was to highlight the features of the tool instead of the tool. As it collects bookmarks, notes, images, it becomes a database of resources for a group of people connected to this database. As it is online, it can be accessed anytime anywhere (better than computer-based bookmarks or favorites).  As it allows collaboration, it fosters a great 21st century skill. On top of all that, Diigo allows for collaborative highlighting of bookmarked webpages. Last year, History Internal Assessment experimented with Diigo as a resource database for students. The idea was for each student to add to Diigo bookmarks as they found a good resource, attaching a short note on what the resource was about and tagging it to facilitate later reference. Tagging as a group required students to be mindful of what their pe