Here’s one of those You Tube videos that is so very well done and educational. Having lived in Beijing for 15 years during times of humongous changes….Mark Griffith uses this 5 minutes to sum it up ever so eloquently.
Listen carefully to the words….he’s telling an ever so true story.
Here’s something I found for those who might being trying to survive AP [and college] Biology. Created by a young man who struggled with his textbook and wanted to use other study methods. This site is full of videos, chapter outlines, flashcards, forums and more.
There are even practice tests and he’s developed a system of rewards [for those who register] for using all the study tools….just to get a bit of motivation and satisfaction. Click and earn points, join the Bio community and I’m guessing you’ll be on your way to scoring on 5 in your AP Bio test.
Since late January I have been working and collaborating with a great team who has been very busy re-designing The Collaborative for Educational Services website. The new site was launched July 1! Yeah team.
As I came into the team my involvement has been on several levels; creating wireframes for the architecture [I used Mockingbird], assisting with understanding the business flow and work impact the new website has on the various departments in The Collaborative and uploading content into the Drupal content management platform. Along the way there have been thousands of details to attend to, lots of problem solving with the front end developer, content specialists and our Communications Director.
It has been a lot of fun and I still have content uploading to assist with along with finalizing style guides and user manuals. However, I wanted to share the before and after images of the website.
Can you see a difference? Tell me what you think in the comments below.
Here is what the old Collaborative website looked like:
And here is what the new Collaborative website is now looking like: users can now register and pay for course and events online. Our content is more logically organized and I feel, much nicer to view and move around in.
Look out library, thanks to the work I’ve been involved with in realigning instructional guides for The Collaborative for Educational Services and the Department of Youth Services…I’ve got a new reading list. Some of these titles will be re-visits and other are pages I want to start turning. In no particular order, here’s my new reading list…
Classic Literature
Shakespeare
Raisin in the Sun
Literary Nonfiction
Night
Richard Wright’s Black Boy- pick a chapter
Coming of Age in Mississippi-
When I was Puerto Rican
Global Literature
Chronicle of a Death Foretold
Things fall apart
Chinese Cinderella
Master Harold and the Boys-Athol Fugard
The Namesake
Informational Text
Stiff & Guip by Mary Roach
Nickel & Dimed- Barbara Ehrenreich
Into the wild
Into thin air
Perfect storm
Fast food nation
Salt by Mark Kurlansky
Guns, Germs and Steel- Jared Diamond
The Botany of Desire- Michael Pollan
Outliners and Blink – Malcom Gladwell
The Jim Crow
Contemporary Literature
Their eyes were watching God
The curious incident of a dog in night time
Me talk pretty one day
The absolutely true diary of a part time indian
The lone ranger and tonto fistfight in heaven
How the Garcia girls lost their accent
Pygmalion
Richard Blanco- One Today Inaugural Poem
I’ve been on Google+ for about a year now and recently at PodCamp Western Mass #5 I attended a couple of Google+ sessions which renewed my interest in this social media.
Google+ helps you in many ways:
One big take away, from PodCamp Western Mass #5 is that Google+ is = to ‘What do you think?’
Since last fall I have been organizing a TiE2013 Technology in Education Conference with The Collaborative for Educational Services. Last week the conference was held at Holyoke Community College and by all qualitative evaluations it was a roaring success. The conference was attended by 250 educators and administrators, 10 vendors and 2 keynote speakers. Our quantitative evaluations go out this week….another item on the extensive To-Do list, along with the formal De-Briefing Meeting.
