Suzanne Carbonaro

Today I facilitated a presentation on On-line Collaboration with Google Docs. Teachers who participated in this workshop discussed their experiences with collaboration and opportunities to work with their grade level partners, colleagues and students using rich on-line tools. Below is a link list of tools educators can experiment with while learning how they can integrate them in their lessons.

http://udutu.com
http://gaggle.com

http://21classes.net

http://todaysmeet.com

Thanks to all of the presenters and participants for providing excellent advice and feedback on technology collaboration. If you have some open source tools to share, please add your comment below.

Our new Freshman, transfer and Graduate Level Teacher Preparation teacher candidates will embark on Rider this fall.  As orientation details and the idea of attending Rider more apparent, the flurry of activity and questions develop.  One of the important ingredients for newbies is the access and integration of the School of Education’s on-line assessment and ePortfolio tool TaskStream.  Please go to http://www.taskstream.com to open an account and realize the possibilities as you enter your tenure at Rider.  View the presentation with directions and links here.  Congratulations on your acceptance to Rider.

More on creativity in this post which is most definitely enhanced by collaboration. On June 29th-30th at Rider University, the Teacher Leadership Community will be launching its inaugural Summer Institute celebrating the role of the educators in the lives of students and teacher candidates. As a both a coordinator and presenter at TLC Institute, my charge is to inspire collaboration in the classroom by introducing the collaboration tool Google Docs. This presentation brings together some ideas about on-line collaboration and effective uses of Google Docs in the classroom. To view the presentation click:
http://docs.google.com/present/view?id=dfbxj94k_1190dmswjtcr and to view the abstract click: http://docs.google.com/View?id=dfbxj94k_1114d4dr5cc6 Here is a link to the agenda: http://docs.google.com/View?id=dfbxj94k_1197d5fq9zc8 To register for the Summer Institute for 21st Century Teachers and take advantages of these workshops and others throughout the summer at Rider, go to http://www.rider.edu/summer and click on Summer Institute for 21st Century Teachers.

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“Creativity is the ability to generate innovative ideas and manifest them from thought into reality.” Using your talent to initiate creativity or bring happiness to others launches creativity to a whole new level.  The creative spirit is truly selfless, free, airy, and honest.  It is, just natural and it flows like a river moving swiftly and purposefully, carrying all of its dwellers in its current.  Creativity can do that; it can carry the creator and the person engaged by the creativity with such force that it changes you, impacts you for good.  Last month, I had the opportunity to spend a few hours with a group of middle and high school students at Shakesperience, an event organized and produced by a colleague of mine at Rider University’s School of Education.  Getting in the mind of creative students interested in the depth and creative nature of Shakespeare was an amazing experience.  They inspired me to produce a video showcasing their experiences and highlighting the talent of their workshop instructors from the McCarter Theatre in Princeton and Rider University Westminster Campus.  Join me in this creative venture by screening this video and let your mind be open to the spirit of creativity.

How do you keep your life simple in a time when accessories and detailed schedules are the norm? I picked up a basic wrap dress, a staple from the mid-1970s, but more specifically 1976, just the other day. The creator, Diane von Furstenberg had sold more than 5 million wrap dresses back then. She officially relaunched the wrap dress in 1997 after seeing women wearing them again. The dress fits women of all sizes and shapes. So, it is simple, in origin and structure. However, in 2010, is simple enough? The popular retail outlet, White House Black Market, boasts colors as accessories to the basic black, white and the middle shade gray. Is that taking away from the simplicity of basic black and white?

Here’s another scenario: you create a simple schedule for an event with intermissions for breakfast and lunch. You add guest speakers, slots for disciplinary workshops and instruction and then you are asked to “beef” it up. When is it enough?

The plaque in this picture says it: simplify. Weekends are about this. When the baseball games are over, the parties that keep you going and going die down, all that is left is the opportunity to just sit back, reflect and keep things simple. Barbeques with friends with no frills menus, a few candles, a bottle of wine, a genre with selected tunes from Pandora and some shell fish and pasta and you’re done. It’s the conversation that drives the activity. So that begs the question: do the accessories initiate the conversation and trigger the interplay between friends and on-lookers, or is it just the simplicity of the situation?

Using SMART Board is becoming more and more a part of the everyday K-12 classroom. Students from across the United States are being exposed to creative lessons using SMART. Teacher candidates looking to gain entry into today’s schools need to be aware of the uses and opportunities to use this technology with their students. Below are some links to get you started. SMART’s Notebook software is a good place to begin “playing” with the program and embedding your lessons. Go to http://smarttech.com to download a free 30 day trial to get started.

Instructional Technology Wichita Public Schools

SMART: A brief overview

On June 6, 1986, I graduated from a small preparatory Catholic high school in Staten Island, NY. St. Joseph Hill Academy High School is all-girl 9-12 grade institution moments from the Verrazano Bridge. One hundred and six young women graduated on that Friday night in June of 1986 and after the elite ceremony, parties and good byes, I only saw a handful each year. Then I spoke to them over the phone, got an occasional card commemorating special events and finally, only one or two contacted me every so often. The “kids” I spent most of my teen age years with became shadows, distance memories that little every day moments would trigger with conversations about nuns, discipline or French tests.

With the mounting popularity of Facebook, however came a reunion of old friends, the ones that I spent every week day with, in every class, sitting in rows in alphabetical order, knowing each girl by name and interest. There were those who worried about what grade they were going to get on a test, if they could answer the question when called upon, if their cursive writing was legible, or if their skirt was too short. There were others who had infectious laughs, wide-eyed smiles and Aqua-Net glued hair. They were the girls, the Hill girls and they were my friends. I found many of them or they found me on the social networking site, Facebook, and these connections fostered a new generation of friendship- one about children, families, hardships, deaths, births, jobs, promotions. Yet, even twenty-four years later, matured by life and challenges, the girls looked the same to me- like they were frozen in time.

We met, a group of us, at South Fin Grill in Staten Island this week and it was an inspiring encounter. The Hill girls found some time, even if it was just for one cocktail. We traveled from New York City, Pennsylvania, New Jersey or by way of text messages and Facebook, to take part in an evening of laughter and memories. We could not get close enough on the plush lounge wicker seats (either that or the band playing was echoing too loudly in our 40-year-old ears). We shared stories, appetizers and snapshots of yesterday. “Do you remember when you helped me study for the History Regents, or when I traveled across the island to pick you up in my Dodge Dart?” “Remember that one time when we….” That is how the stories began with the next girlfriend finishing the thought with another anecdotal moment.

It was twenty-four years almost to the day of our high school graduation, that evening on the water just by the Verrazano, when the Hill girls dropped their today to step back into the 80s and reminisce about yesterday- the days when we grew up at that high school on the hill. Facebook made the face to face meeting, that was long over due, possible. And I am forever grateful to have had those moments with the girls that helped me become who I am today.

This week I begin the second installment of workshops for the School of Education students, faculty and alumni. These workshops will include discussions of social media, ways to brand using social media and ePortfolios, and technology tools that enable you to develop dynamic sites that will get you noticed. See the presentation here and visit my School of Education site on TaskStream.