It is Thursday night. This has been a long week.

Today in school we had a two-hour assembly on the topic of preventing bullying.

The storyteller that Mrs. Gamble invited to speak with our students, Len Cabral, delivered two great presentations. Kids got to ask him questions after he told his stories. He was asked about when he knew he wanted to be a story teller, and he said it was an English teacher who inspired him. Then he went on to tell the students, "Learn as much as you can - About - as much as you can, because you'll never know when you'll need it." That is a good answer for students when they ask teachers, "Why do we have to study ......?"

After the assembly and the activities, students signed an anti-bullying pledge and received a "Stand Strong - Amity" bracelet.

It was a good day.

It is hard to believe that I last posted in July, and now we are starting our 4th week of the 2007-2008 school year.
I spent a lot of my summer-time hours researching other educators' blogs and websites and pondering on how we can bring more 21st Century Learning tools to our middle school. We are involved in a big campaign to infuse reading and writing literacy strategies into all disciplines in our curriculum. We are also looking at digital literacy. Kids spend so much time on the web connecting with others through reading, posting, writing in blogs and IM's, watching videos, uploading videos. We need to harness those energies, and help kids to use those vehicles of communication to increase their ability to communicate in a clear, logical, rich and ethical way.

Toby invited me to give Google Notebook a try. It is a tool available at all times no matter where you are or what computer you are on to take notes on whatever you are researching. I wish I had used a tool like this this summer when I was researching. I didn't always track where I'd been or take notes, so consequently, a lot of what I learned didn't cement in my brain.
What's neat about the notebook is you can share it with one or more colleagues who can comment on topics you've introduced and add topics. I'm anxious to get a pilot test going with a group of kids collaborating on a school project and see what they think of it.

I just found out that David Warlick is going to be speaking at our Staff Development Day on November 6, 2007. He's an expert on integrating Web 2.0 tools into the schools. Hopefully, he'll generate enthusiasm for many more teachers to use these tools with the kids and teach kids how to use them in an ethical manner. In case anyone would like to familiarize him or herself with Mr. Warlick's style, you can check out his blog at:

http://davidwarlick.com/2cents/