KS Educational Technology Conference

This year’s Ed Tech Conference theme was Hana Pono “to work with purpose/passion.” The passion was definitely evident in some sessions I attended. These presenters remind us that we need to choose what we are passionate about and to take action on it. We all too often get inspired then return to our normal life as we let our inspirations fade away. Our passions don’t need to change the world they just need to change ourselves. Here are a couple presenters whose passions have brought positive change to themselves and others.

The Green Bronx Machine
The opening keynote speaker this year was Stephen Ritz a South Bronx teacher/administrator who gave a motivating, high energy and inspirational talk on the Green Bronx Machine. The Green Bronx Machine is an organization founded by Stephen and his students who focus on healthy eating, growing their own vegetables to reach academic success. The Green Bronx Machine is an inspirational story that started out as an after school program and now has evolved into an award winning K-12+ model that is fully integrated into core curriculum. In addition to academic success their students and the Bronx community also benefit through job creation, community beautification, increased health and fresh vegetables.

Save the Honu
Katelyn Hirata is a six year old Kindergarten student whose was inspired to save the Honu “Turtles” from reading a National Geographic article. Her presentation reflected the depth of her passions through her project-based experiences, presentations, fund raising efforts and visiting real turtles. I think the Ed Tech Conference should have more child presenters like Katelyn that demonstrate not only technology integration, but their passions as well.

Comments

Scratch - OWAU discussion 10/28

Aloha kākou, I while back, I learned about this product from a presentation at the eSchool conference. The speaker was so excited about Scratch and was having so much fun demonstrating it that my mind began racing immediately. "I could use it in `Ike Hawai`i courses and I bet I could use it to develop tons of activities for the A`o Makua `ōlelo Hawai`i courses". Then, reality set in as I returned to work intending to try it out after I finished my "next" task. Well, you know how that goes. 7 months later, I finally took a stab at it out of necessity of course. I really wanted some type of activity to teach my students about different Kapu in old Hawai`i without having them just read a list of them. So, what it Sratch? Simply put, it's a developer's tool (a very inexpereinced developer like myself). It allows you to create activities and games using "coding" that is in a drag and drop format. The codes are pre-written & range from phrases like ...

3/19 Owau: FaceBook CourseFeed & Blackboard

Initially when I first joined FaceBook, it was because I wanted to see what the hype was all about since many of our learners seem to be hooked onto this social networking site. After I set up an account, I didn't do much until my friends from high school, college and even my own family (including my dad) started inviting me to be their "friend" to network together. It was only until recently that I realized why our students would probably prefer logging into Facebook first before even thinking about opening up Blackboard to begin their online course. Once your network of friends is set up, it's definitly an easy way to keep updated on what's going on at a distance. I really haven't done much in Facebook besides the basics, but I thought it would be interesting for us to look at the CourseFeed interface ( http://apps.facebook.com/coursefeed ) that was developed. CourseFeed is a free Blackboard Building Block and Facebook app that alerts students in Faceboook w...

E pule kakou . . .

Aloha all, I was trying to think so hard of a "techie" tip and finally gave up. I even googled "tips and tricks" for various programs and then thought "I can't blog about something I don't actually use!" Then, as I was sitting in my Papa Makua class, doing all kinds of protocal and thought about how we keep looking for a short pule to do to open our meetings. I had `A`ali`i write a pule in Hawaiian. He was worried about the grammar and structure of it so I asked Kelly C. to kökua by editing and doing an audio recording so you can hear the pronunciation. Hope it's helpful :) E ho`omalu käkou E kö mäkou makua i loko o ka lani Mahalo no nä pömaika`i a pau. Mahalo no ke ali`i lokomaika`i o Pauahi a me këia kula nei. E `olu`olu, e kia`i iä mäkou i ke alahele küpono me ka lökahi. Ke nonoi ha`aha`a nei mäkou i ka inoa o Iesu Cristo `Ämene `Unuhi (translation): Let us pray Our Father in heaven Thank you for all the many blessings. Thank you for the gen...

Kamehameha Schools Distance Learning (KSDL) Owau

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