Ryan submitted a My Portfolio project-based assignment titled "Christopher Columbus: Friend or Foe." Teresa won with her project submission of "World Wide Bug Off." Both projects were creative and engaging and great examples of utilizing resources and features of netTrekker and 21st Century Skills. Look for more about each of these winning projects on netTrekker Village.
netTrekker will soon be announcing a video contest asking you to create a video to show creative and exciting ways that you use netTrekker and other technologies to help every child learn.
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- Best Practice – Lighten Up
- Nearly 5,000 New Resources Being Added
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During the 2008-2009 school year, Forsyth has been prototyping a model for whole school inquiry-based learning with over 2,400 students in grades K-8. The project is called Stepping up Thinking and Academic Rigor for Students (S.T.A.R.S.). Jill Hobson, Director of Instructional Technology, says, "S.T.A.R.S. is about inspiring and empowering students to become joyful learners who problem-solve creatively and exceed all expectations." All teachers and students at Shiloh Point Elementary and Piney Grove Middle Schools are participating in this student-centered inquiry work as part of developing a sustainable culture of curiosity that rehearses both basic skills and higher-order thinking. Bernajean Porter, internationally recognized speaker and author, has served as the lead consultant throughout the year.
"netTrekker has been a critical part of our toolkit," Ms. Hobson states. Students search the thousands of netTrekker resources to gather information in order to answer their essential guiding question. The feature called My Portfolio is used to save resources for revisiting later. When we entered the media-making phase, the students used the image search feature to find appropriate images to illustrate their storytelling."
You can learn more about Digital Storytelling at Jill Hobson's NECC 2009 Workshop: Digital Storytelling: The Tools to Create the Magic.
While many stakeholders are involved in developing policies on the use of Web 2.0 technologies in K-12 education, new research suggests that teachers are the most important group driving adoption. This is a major finding from a national research survey of more than 500 district technology directors that Thinkronize, developer of netTrekker, commissioned along with Lightspeed Systems.
The Consortium for School Networking (CoSN) recently announced its new Board of Directors, and Randy Wilhelm, CEO of Thinkronize, developer of netTrekker, was honored to be selected as one of 3 corporate board members on the 17-person board. The other board members are education technology leaders from districts across the country.
The netTrekker corporate website, www.nettrekker.com, has launched with a redesign intended to consolidate product and support information. A major goal of the redesign was to make the site more functional for our customers. You will have easy access to product information and we pulled together all of our customer support and training resources for you!
- Follow our Steps to Success to assist you in your implementation of netTrekker.
- Learn about our Professional Development options and downloadable training resources to maximize the value of your subscription investment.
- Get your questions answered quickly by accessing netTrekker FAQs. Connect with your netTrekker Customer Support Team or other netTrekker users.
Lighten Up
Alice Sather, St. Bernards' School, MN
Recently I completed NT101, and found it to be one of the most engaging, interesting, enjoyable and totally pertinent classes I have taken online. Before taking the course I thought I knew what netTrekker had to offer. My elementary school is part of a consortium of small northwestern Minnesota schools that have had access to netTrekker for five years. When it became netTrekker d.i., I wondered a bit about the name change but beyond that continued to see it mostly as a good and safe search engine for our students. I paid attention to some features like Read-Aloud and Readability Levels. I mostly thought of these as good instructional resources instead of daily tools for students. Participating in NT101 taught me how to search more effectively using the differentied instruction tools to create a project-based assignment. For the purposes of illustrating this instructional unit, I'll direct you to items on my webpage instead of netTrekker's My Portfolio area where the assignment for the students is housed.
In mid-May, nearly 5,000 new resources are being added to netTrekker across all grade levels with a concentration in Social Studies and STEM subjects. Nearly 400 resources are from American Museum of Natural History, and another 400 are in the areas of Language Arts and Art.
Scientists are discovering places in the world where people not only live exceptionally longer than everywhere else, but are also much happier. They are calling these areas Blue Zones and have created a website where you can take your students on a trip across the world in an interactive learning expedition that cultivates curiosity, collaboration, problem solving and critical thinking while meeting national standards in reading, language arts, health and geography. "Blue Zones believes in empowering kids to Explore, Question and Act." The Blue Zones Educational Program includes ready-to-use lesson plans and a Curriculum Guide correlated to National Standards.
netTrekker recently followed a quest with students to find out why the people on the small island of Ikari in the northern Aegean Sea are living such long lives. Students learned with scientists as they directed a live expedition unlocking longevity's secrets in real time. If you missed this great project read our blog and join discussions in netTrekker Village. Get more information and free resources at http://www.bluezones.com/education.
- View upcoming course sessions. Click Schedule on the left.
- Enrollment with credit card payment or purchase order is now being accepted for the June 10th session.
You may now purchase or renew your netTrekker subscription through Digital Wish, a non-profit organization that makes it simple for anyone to make tax-deductible technology donations to specific schools or teachers. Digital Wish provides alternative financing options in tight financial times. Visit www.digitalwish.org to create your profile, add netTrekker to a wish list, and use donated funds to make purchases.
"Teachers work extremely hard to provide students with the best education possible, but with nationwide cuts to education and school budgets stretched to the limit, they can't get the resources they need to integrate technology," explains Digital Wish Founder Heather Chirtea. "We're excited to give teachers an alternative way to get great products like netTrekker into their classrooms."
"Before taking NT101 I would wander around netTrekker murmuring 'Oh, nice!' but never really grasped the many possibilities, particularly for differentiating instruction. As a librarian, I know that instructional materials are difficult to come by. Midway through the class, my response was 'WOW!' I know our subscription will get much better use as a result of the district paying for a few of us to take this course, allowing us to learn to use all the features and tools of netTrekker to differentiate instruction."
Holly Adams
Media Specialist
Los Alamos Public Schools
Los Alamos, NM
Q: I am a teacher (or a student) and I have moved schools (or districts). My new school has netTrekker, but when I login to netTrekker, my old school name is at the top of the screen. Help!
Q: The website resource I was using now says it is no longer available. Why? Can you help?
netTrekker welcomes our new subscribers who joined us in March and April. Know someone at one of these schools? Share netTrekker Village with them so that they too can hear about best practices and tips using netTrekker!