It's clear to me that Voxers are some of the most environmentally conscious and creative people out there, which is why I wanted to tell you about Six Apart's “Green by Design” contest. All you have to do to enter is create a Green Badge with an earth-friendly design and/or message.
In April, I told you about a few Green Badges we created for your blogs, and said that when the badges reached 100,000 impressions across the blogosphere, Six Apart would donate $1000 to The Climate Project. Well, as of June 1st, we surpassed that goal by nearly two million impressions. Needless to say, a check is in the mail!
When we realized how many of you were adopting the Green Badges, we thought it would be cool if we came up with a contest that allowed you to put your creativity to good use and make your own Green Badges.
Like the previous badges, the winning badge will link to the One Million Acts of Green brought to you by Cisco website. One Million Acts of Green is a collaborative environmental campaign encouraging everyone to go green. One act at a time. The goal? One million acts of green because, as we all know, we’re more powerful together than we can ever be apart.
Each weekly winner will also receive a one-year subscription to MailStopper, a junk mail stopper service provided by Tonic. Plus, we will donate $150 to a charity in the winner’s name. (For a list of charitable organizations the winner can choose to donate to, please see the contest rules.)
Two runner-ups each week will receive an honorable mention, as well as a one-year subscription to MailStopper.
Plus, when the badges receive a million impressions (and we know they will!), Six Apart will donate another $1000 to The Climate Project.
Here’s what you need to know in order to submit your design:
- The Submission must include a positive environmental message.
- The Submission must be in the JPEG file format.
- The Submission must be 160 x 90 pixels in size at a resolution of 72 dpi.
- The maximum file size of the Submission is 500 kilobytes.
- The Submission must be accompanied by an email address.
- The Submission and each element thereof must be the original work of Participant.
Please email your entry to badgecontest@sixapart.com and don't forget to include your Vox user name and your email address.
There's still time to get your entry in for this week's judging! We're accepting entries until end of day on Friday. If you aren't able to submit by this Friday, don't worry: There's another week left in the contest. The deadline for submissions is June 25, 2009 at 11:59:59 p.m. Pacific Time. Winners will be announced on Everything TypePad; however, if a Voxer wins, we'll also announce it here, of course.
View all contest rules here.
GOOD LUCK!
Looking for a way to show the world how much you love our planet? A Green Theme from One Million Acts of Green brought to you by Cisco is the perfect way to let your readers know just how eco-friendly you are.
One Million Acts of Green is a collaborative environmental campaign encouraging everyone to go green one act at a time. The goal? One million acts of green. Because, as we all know, we’re more powerful together than we can ever be apart. Want to get involved? After you add a new Green Theme to your blog, visit the One Million Acts of Green website and record your Acts of Green. Whether you turn the lights off when they're not in use, carpool to school/work, or just get your friends to start recording their Acts of Green, every single act makes a difference.
What are you waiting for? Visit the Design Area to green your Vox blog today!
For the last two and a half years, we've been providing you with two daily prompts to inspire you when your fingers are frozen on the keyboard: The QotD and Vox Hunt.
We've noticed in the past year or so that while most of you love to answer the Question of the Day, fewer and fewer of you have been responding to the daily Vox Hunts. In fact, it seemed that, if anything, the Vox Hunt was taking away from the Question of the Day, rather than complementing it, as intended. Because of that, we've made the tough decision to remove Vox Hunt and focus solely on the Question of the Day.
We understand that change of any kind is never easy, but rest assured: while Vox Hunt is going away, the ideas and challenge associated with Vox Hunts will still remain, only now you'll find them within the QotD. From time to time, QotDs will ask you questions that encourage you to add media associated with your answer (photos, music, videso), just like the Vox Hunt did.
We hope that by combining the two, we will succeed in inspiring even more people to answer the QotD and in bringing the Vox community together by prompting you to share your vast array of opinions and stories (and the media associated with them) on similar topics.
Today is the last day for Vox Hunt, so take a moment to say goodbye by showing us whatever it is that makes you happy.
If you have any questions or thoughts about this... or anything, you can always send me a message.
Until next time...
Introduction:
During my 8 weeks in the work-place, I have great experience with my Action Research Project in Al-Nouf Secondary School. This school is one of the modern schools in Sharjah. I mean by that it is developed by technology in both learning and teaching. Moreover, it is one of Al Ghaad Schools and the Ministry of Education focus on the learning development progress in the School.
Advantages:
There are many advantages in the school I have notice it. When I did the Interview with the principal note that she is interested in technology and she wants form her school to develop by being up-to- date with the technology and involving with her teacher to attend Professional Development session. Additionally, she is encouraging and helps teachers to learn better through integrating technologies in students learning. Furthermore, she is trying to be connected with her students in the school and she tries to solve their problems in learning. Furthermore, I knew the real life in the school environment. By using my prior knowledge to do professional development to the teachers, I gave them my experience in how to create power point games and put some examples of games on a CD.
Disadvantages:
There are some Disadvantages in the school. One drawback is that I have noticed some teachers are using traditional way in teaching. Students were bored and talking to each other because the teacher only talking and deliver the information by talking. Moreover, some teachers are using technology and deliver the lesson by using PowerPoint all the time. Students were fall as sleep and were lose attention to the lesson and therefore they will lose the information. In addition, one of the teachers were complaining of the extra works that the school giving them other than teaching with the same salary comparative with the government schools. Moreover, I faced other problems such as lack of time.
Conclusion:
To conclude, it was my real experience in the work-place that I face some difficulties but I learn from it much. I was very happy because the administration and the faculty in the school were pleased from my works and my attitude in the school. I showed them what is the role of Educational Technologist is in the education department which it is thing that I should be proud of it. I learned how to be more friendly and social with people and that helped me to be more confidence on myself and my work. In the future, I hope to be an assistant to the teacher or work in the administration of a school not as a teacher because I think that as I'm Educational Technologist I have to improve and develop the style of teaching and to share new ideas in the education.
Overall Reflection
After eight weeks in the UAQ Basic Education school (cycle 2), I realized that this was a rich learning experience for me. I was able to observe the learners in nature and how they are reacting according to their age and characters. I also learned that the new generation has a high intrinsic motivation toward use of technology if they are provided with the appropriate teaching/learning resources. I also noticed that learners react differently in each subject regarding if it’s their favorite subject or not or the teacher has a role in motivating them. Moreover, it was enjoyable to implement my action research with its new approach of teaching and learning in the school and seeing the productive results of my AR.
The school as a learning context:
The learning atmosphere in the school needs to be improved because I noticed that there is less focus on the learning and a lot of emphasis on unnecessary activities and events that have been hold in the school. I agree that some of the activities that some schools set can be related to student’s educational objectives. Unfortunately, I did not see any relevant educational events for student’s learning in UAQ Basic Education School. Therefore, I suggest that the school either rearrange the type of activities with its objectives that should hold for students or put more emphasis on the learning aspect because based on my observation in different classes with different grades I believe students are distracted with events in the school rather than focusing on their learning.
The ICT course:
I discussed the ICT course content issue from the first semester that I went to visit the school and observe ICT classes. I think the ICT course needs to be improved to meet the learner’s needs in the classroom because the CD is focusing on some themes of the ICT which basically the students learnt in earlier grade levels. I also believe that the CD cannot be counted as a curriculum to be taught; it is rather a supplementary resource that the teacher uses within the class resources.
The school administrators and teachers:
I learned about the administration work and how the organization is being runned by the principal. However, I felt the principal needs some counseling in her field to manage her school better and to focus more on the educational aspects rather than the reputation of the school. The fact that the principal is holding activities for the school reputation and inviting important people such as the UAQ Educational Zone director to see the attractive events will not improve the education or student’s learning.
Moreover, most of the teachers are stressed with the extra workload that the principal gave them to prepare for the school activities and take part in it made the teachers more dislikable to provide the appropriate learning support for their learners or even providing a constructivist learning environment.
Implementing my AR:
The blended learning approach aimed to engage the learners in the learning and introduce them into formal virtual learning environment where they can use discussion forums, blogs…etc as educational tools. Some of my findings at the end of my teaching practice are that students liked the idea of having an online and face-to-face learning environment more than the classroom based learning, students were able to express their thoughts through writing and they improved their writing and communication skills.
Myself as a learner:
As far my skills are concerned, I think I improved my problem solving skills when I tried to independent with my colleague Hayat in solving the challenges that we faced in the work environment such as extra work that we were given and classes to teach.
I also improved my communication skills when I communicated with the principal, my SST, the teachers in the school and the learners professionally. I also improved my thinking skills because most of the time I did reflective thinking with my colleague about the school and how should it be improved. Moreover, I feel working in teams make relationships stronger, sharing new ideas with others and learning from others as I did with my colleague.
To conclude, every work experience is valuable to me when I learn and construct my knowledge and improve my skills from this learning experience. This is the last work experience for me in my academic life in the Educational Technology program and I believe it is the start of my career and where I learnt a lot as a beginner researcher to do a small scale research within a school context. I learnt with my students as I taught them through understanding their interests, needs and abilities. I learnt that each individual learn differently than others and therefore I need to vary my teaching strategies to meet their needs. I also improved my communication skills through working in a professional environment.
This was the last week in our teaching practice in Umm Al Quwain Basic Education (cycle 2) School. I did some teaching for my target group and the shared group. I also created an assessment for Grade 7. Moreover I graded student’s performance in the class and their participation in the ICT lessons.
I observed the students using the discussion forums, instant messaging and glossary features in Moodle. In the beginning when I implemented the Moodle project in the class and started using discussion forums with the students. I noticed that some of the students were not used to use this tool within a learning environment even if it was informally and on their own. I also noticed student’s mistakes in using discussion forums by posting a new discussion forum just to reply back to my questions. However, within the implementation time of Moodle in the classroom, I noticed students become familiar with the discussion forum and they learned how to reply back to their friends within the one post that they entered. The main purpose of using discussion forums in the classroom was to engage the learners to work in a collaborative learning setting where they can share their thoughts and discuss it with their peers. I succeeded to make the students work in collaborative learning environment where they worked as individuals and in group to do some class activities. However, now they value the group working atmosphere where they have to become partners in the learning instead of individuals.
In the first week of using Moodle, I found out that the students were exploring the different features of Moodle as viewed for them as students. One of the Moodle’s features that students were interested to use was Instant messaging. I realized that students were using instant messaging to communicate with each other and discuss any ideas or problems that they might have through texting their peers. I think instant messaging is a useful tool because students were able to ask me any questions that had about the lessons that I taught them and it was a direct tool between me and the learners in a virtual world to communicate and solve the problems.
I also used the glossary feature in Moodle to help the learners to know the new vocabulary of the lesson. I intended to put the new vocabulary of the lesson in Moodle before we take the lesson so the students can at least look at it and learn the meaning of the new words. I found an electronic version of the glossary very handy for my students because they were able to access it anytime they want to revise the vocabulary without having the problem of losing their papers.
To conclude, I think the discussion forums, instant messaging and glossary features in Moodle has engaged the learners in and outside the classroom to use Moodle as a communication learning environment where they were able to share their thoughts and collaborate with each other to construct their knowledge.
This was the last week in our teaching practice in Umm Al Quwain Basic Education (cycle 2) School. I did some teaching for my target group and the shared group. I also created an assessment for Grade 7. Moreover I graded student’s performance in the class and their participation in the ICT lessons.
I observed the students using the discussion forums, instant messaging and glossary features in Moodle. In the beginning when I implemented the Moodle project in the class and started using discussion forums with the students. I noticed that some of the students were not used to use this tool within a learning environment even if it was informally and on their own. I also noticed student’s mistakes in using discussion forums by posting a new discussion forum just to reply back to my questions. However, within the implementation time of Moodle in the classroom, I noticed students become familiar with the discussion forum and they learned how to reply back to their friends within the one post that they entered. The main purpose of using discussion forums in the classroom was to engage the learners to work in a collaborative learning setting where they can share their thoughts and discuss it with their peers. I succeeded to make the students work in collaborative learning environment where they worked as individuals and in group to do some class activities. However, now they value the group working atmosphere where they have to become partners in the learning instead of individuals.
In the first week of using Moodle, I found out that the students were exploring the different features of Moodle as viewed for them as students. One of the Moodle’s features that students were interested to use was Instant messaging. I realized that students were using instant messaging to communicate with each other and discuss any ideas or problems that they might have through texting their peers. I think instant messaging is a useful tool because students were able to ask me any questions that had about the lessons that I taught them and it was a direct tool between me and the learners in a virtual world to communicate and solve the problems.
I also used the glossary feature in Moodle to help the learners to know the new vocabulary of the lesson. I intended to put the new vocabulary of the lesson in Moodle before we take the lesson so the students can at least look at it and learn the meaning of the new words. I found an electronic version of the glossary very handy for my students because they were able to access it anytime they want to revise the vocabulary without having the problem of losing their papers.
To conclude, I think the discussion forums, instant messaging and glossary features in Moodle has engaged the learners in and outside the classroom to use Moodle as a communication learning environment where they were able to share their thoughts and collaborate with each other to construct their knowledge.
I observed my SMT in her ICT classes and I noticed that her teaching style has returned to become old fashioned and most of the time she did the talking in the classroom. I believe the change that I noticed in few weeks of my observations for her classes was just a trial show to test it. I asked her what do you think of using games in the classroom. She replied that creating interactive games takes effort and time that she cannot afford for her students and she prefers the traditional approach because it is easier to deliver in the classroom. I think if these old fashioned teachers do not have strong beliefs of change in the classroom; they would go on in teaching boring lessons for rest of their teaching career and the victims will be the generations who are involved in the learning in their classroom.
I observed the students using the blog feature in the Moodle. They were excited to write about their daily activities or events that happened in their lives in their blogs. I believe it is good to give the learners an opportunity to express their thoughts and feelings through writing. It will improve their writing skills. It will also improve student’s writing in English language and they can practice the English language outside of the English class. As one of the students stated “teacher, I like blogs because I can write in English and it will help me in my English writing.”
I noticed two indexes of motivation in student’s use of blogging which are their persistence and effort to write. The National Association of School Psychologists (n.d) defines persistence of learners on a task as “the ability to stay with a task for a reasonably long period of time.” I realized that the blogs feature has captured student’s attention and I noticed their interest through the amount of time students were putting to write their blogs on a daily basis. I also noticed that when I gave them time to write their blogs in the class; students were focused and took long time to write their blogs and read their friend’s blogs. I also found through my reading to student’s blogs that some of the learners has put more effort into their writing either the language was Arabic or English. Through my observations to student’s blogs I found out that they used the blogs as a communication tool among them and were sharing their ideas and thoughts about their daily routine or what happened in the class.
To conclude, I think the blog feature in Moodle has engaged the learners in and outside the classroom when they started writing their blogs at home. The learners enjoyed sharing their thoughts with their peers and what happened in their daily live.
Reference:
National Association of School Psychologists. (n.d.) Motivating Learning in Young Children. Retrieved January 10th, 2009, from, http://www.nasponline.org/resources/home_school/earlychildmotiv_ho.aspx
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