Greetings!  It's a blazing hot summer day and it's possible you are keeping cool inside the house, sipping on a cool drink and possibly checking your email.  I thought this would be a good moment for you to check out the new ESU 10 website.  We hope you take a moment and become familiar with it.  Although, I do want to point out to you for those who want to quickly get to the Media Catalog.  Scroll down to the bottom of the ESU 10 Home Page and click on ODIE Login box.  After logging in ODIE click on the Library link on the bottom of the left side bar.  The calendar is ready for you to begin reserving material for the coming year.  You still have a few weeks left of summer, so enjoy!

Happy Spring Language Arts teachers!!!!  I am NOT feeling it... how about you?  Well here are a few links that might bring a little sunshine to your corner of the world!

• Google Tools in Bloom's Revised Taxonomy
• How a Web Search Works
• 10 Resources for Teaching Reading/Literature with Technology
• 5 Simple Things to Help Teachers with Web 2.0
• Video 21 - Are you wondering what 21st Century Skills look like in the classroom?  This is a great list of videos that give examples of different instructional skills.

If you are already using Google at your school or if you are planning to go Google soon, check out these great lesson plans I found.  Use the different Google tools to do these great activities!  These look like a lot of fun and very "21st Century!"  See what you think!

What did you try?  How did it go?
http://www.google.com/a/help/intl/en/edu/lesson_plans.html 

Blog Article - Creative Exercises for Artists and Art Students 

Blog Article - SmartHistory Multimedia Art History Book

Blog Article with links to Interactive Music Theory Lessons

You know how much I love Google!  Well, they have just announced the Google Art Project.  You tour major art museums of the world and includes work from 486 artists.  Check it out at http://www.googleartproject.com/

I have a browser full of links to share this week.  Hope you can use this smorgasbord of resources!

• 11 Art & Music Resources to Try in 2011 is from Ryan Byrne at Free Technology for Teachers which you can subscribe to using your blog reader or you can get his updates in Facebook!
• Interesting Ways to... is a listing of all the Google Presentations done by Tom Barrett who built a beginning of these slideshows and then crowd-sourced them to fill in more ideas.  These are great ways of using particular tools such as Google Docs, Visualizer, QR Codes, Audio, and more!
• 50 Exciting Ideas for the Classroom Using Google Earth 
• Apps Gone Free is a daily posting of iPod/iPad apps that are free for a day.  don't be distracted by the games that they post, there are some for everyone on this site! 
• You Tube Time Machine for finding You Tube videos based on date!  There are some very old videos on there!
• Fun ideas for putting project based learning in your classroom.  Learn Through Projects from Tony Vincent

Yesterday, I had the opportunity to read a couple of articles that I thought you might like to read. These articles talk about changes in education that I think we can no longer ignore hoping they just "work themselves out."

This is the Top 10 Predictions of 2011 from Tech and Learning. Most of them deal with technology.  For you, this may not be a surprise but maybe for some!

This second article is from Connected Principals blog written by David Truss titled, Less is More; Teach Less, Learn More.  This article contains a video that is about 25 minutes long.  This is well worth your time!  I found this most interesting as he spoke of Finland's education system, which is best in the world.  How does it compare to the US?  How does it compare to YOUR district?  This article is not about technology.  This is about instruction.

What did you find most surprising in these links?  Who did you share them with?

I was able to secure a little discount on Animation-ish if you are interested. Let me know and I'll get you in contact with Nicole at FableVision.

http://www.fablevision.com/animationish/

Happy Christmas Break!!
Jason

If you are looking for the notes and agenda from today's meeting or if you missed out on our workshop, take a look here at our Google Doc for more information!

Wish you were here! 

http://www.esu10.org/s/2010decart