UniServity cLc makes the Hong Kong Front Pages

This exciting ePortfolio project connects students in Harrisburg PA with their peers in Hong Kong. It has been a tremendous success and has made headlines in both countries

HK Young Post –

A heartwarming success story from BBC News

If your day job is patrolling the oceans looking for Somali pirates, attending your children’s Christmas play is simply not an option.

So Horndean Infants School near naval stronghold Portsmouth took the decision to broadcast its nativity play over the UniServity cLc to parents serving overseas.

To share the Horndean Infant School team’s success and read the rest of this inspirational story visit http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/education/8425109.stm

High School English Teacher Leading Learning

Jill Schiessl, an English teacher at SciTech High School, Harrisburg, PA is using the cLc with her students to encourage, develop and focus their independent reading.

Jill has created a wiki and given each student their own pages by simply pasting her student list onto the wiki’s front page.

In order to structure the student’s thinking and to scaffold the process Jill has added a template which her students can paste into their own wiki areas. Not only does this map the student’s journey through their independent reading, it also means that all of her students have a common format which supports peer review, peer mentoring and supports comparisson by students.

In order to fully capitalise on the fact that her students are now publishing to an audience within the cLc environment and that in jill’s learning community everyone is viewed as a teacher and everyone is a learner, Jill has begun to model the journey she wants her students to take by ading her own reading to the Wiki. She is going to reposition herself as a student whilst unmistakably leading the learning process. She is also adding herself to the student review schedule so her students can expect to have opportunities to evaluate her work just as she will be evaluating their own.

Finally jill has established routines to ensure that each student gets to evaluate every other student’s work by creating an evaluation / review cycle. She is also going to be making use of the statistics  and article history functions within the cLc to view progress over time, to view learning habits of her students and to measure progress against her rubric.

Kindergarden/ Year 1 (First grade) Books!

I have been working with Project Discovery School in Harrisburg Pennsylvannia for the past two weeks and I have been overwhelmed by the enthusiasm, drive and professionalism of the staff at this K-4 school (UK Years K-4. Note that K class contains UK Year 1 age equivalent children)
Alison Weller is Kindergarden teacher who after just two weeks has been taking advantage of all that the cLc has to offer.

Just one of Alison Weller's excellent books. Click on the image to view some more.

On being introduced to Mixbook (http://www.mixbook.com), Alison went home and produced this superb online book to share with her children linked to her early years curriculum.

The children in her class were thrilled to turn the pages and read the story on the cLc. So much so that Alison decided to create a class library of similar books that can be read at home, in class or in the school library.

Alison now plans to work with the children to develop their own story books, retelling familiar stories and inventing their own.

Luckily, Alison has made much of her work ‘public’ so clicking on the image above will allow you to visit her class and even to copy the code if you would like to embed these masterpieces into your cLc for your own class to enjoy.

A fantastic bank of resources for home and school

Children in Ms Weller’s class can also now benefit from access to a teriffic range of web based curriculum resources. Alison has again made these public so that you and her children can access them without logging into the cLc.

the link on the left will take you to Alison’s home-school area of the project discovery cLc. If you would like to get in touch with Alison or better still have your class connect with heres to share and review each other’s books, drop me a line at phil.stubbs@uniservity.com

In the meantime, enjoy using Mixbook and please let me know how you are getting on.

 

This week’s Web 2.0 application is a huge favourite of mine. Docstoc (http://www.docstoc.com) is an online repository for sharing documents. When used in the cLc, documents can be embedded in a reader within discussion forums such as the example below, in tasks when issuing student assignments or anywhere where you have access to a WYSIWYG editor!

cLc and web 2 0 paper _SH_ -
The possibilities are endless…

In this example a draft bullying policy has been shared within a discussion forum inviting parents to share their thoughts and suggest amendments before the final draft is published.

Harrisburg School District Rises to Obama’s Challenge

Great news from Harrisburg. PA

We have been working with Harrisburg Independent School District, PA to implement the cLc across the district’s highly enthusiastic schools. The article below has just appeared in USA Today and picks up on a significant link made between students in Harrisburg’s SciTech Academy and students in Cairo. this is just one element of an exciting district-wide implementation. The big story for me is that the district have developed a strategic approach, leading learning from the central district cLc hub by setting up professional communities of practice, developing local curriculum focused projects and connecting classrooms within the district to share best practice, encourage professional peer mentoring and sharing of resources, ideas and learning opportunities.

The district are well on their way to providing incredibly robust foundations for schools as they roll out their own instances of the cLc. I am really looking forward to returning to Harrisburg in late October to continue with this really forward thinking project and I am particularly excited about working with the teachers and students as they have now had a few weeks to get started and they are already producing significant outcomes.

The Cairo connection is going to be amazing but our schools in the US are always looking out for partner schools in other parts of the world. i am keen to get in touch with any schools wishing to partner our Harrisburg schools and some of our amazing schools in Texas and the North East.

The UniServity cLc Learning Platform empowers School Leaders in Harrisburg, the State Capitol of Pennsylvania, USA, to become the first School District in the USA to respond to President Obama’s 21st Century learning challenge by developing an online web 2.0 collaborative learning partnership with students in Egypt.

Harrisburg School District (HSD), is at the forefront of using technology to innovate and enrich the learning experience by providing learners with new 21st Century global collaborative learning opportunities. Harrisburg Mayor Stephen R. Reed has announced the new

initiative connecting Harrisburg students with students in Cairo, Egypt, using the powerful social learning tools of the UniServity cLc (connected Learning communities) Learning Platform. Mayor Reed shared his announcement and educational vision to an audience of leading international educationalists and thought-leaders at the National Educational Computing Conference (NECC) in Washington D.C.; the largest Educational Event in the USA.

Mayor Reed’s announcement is a dynamic response to U.S. President Barack Obama’s recent address at the UniServity of Cairo, when President Obama articulated his vision to connect American learners with foreign learners, stating, “I want students in Kansas working with students in Cairo.”

Click on this link to read the full article: http://content.usatoday.com/topics/article/Thomas+Friedman/05Si0BI2Q86FE/4

Welcome to UniServity’s new Blog!

Hello and welcome to UniServity’s new Blog!  The Blog will provide you with best practice examples and tips for using the cLc Learning Platform from the growing connected Learning communities of over 1.5 million learners in 21 countries. In addition, members of UniServity’s Educational Development team will be regular contributors and be sharing their knowledge and insight into the global learning community.  There’s lot’s of exciting news to share in the next few weeks including formally announcing the UniServity Learning Platform Awards for Excellence 2009 Winners, launching our new cLc Parental Reporting and Engagement Solutions and much more.  Watch this space!

Image: Phil Stubbs, Director of Educational Development, UniServity, (left) on a trip to Hefei, China to introduce teachers to the cLc.

cLc Collaborative Projects now available

UniServity’s popular cLc Collaborative Projects are now available for the 2009 / 10 Academic year. ‘It’s a Small World’  is aimed at Early Years and Key Stage 1 learners and now includes a wealth of new activities and teacher resources linked to the new Primary Curriculum. ‘My Million Words’ has evolved to include new themes and activities for Key Stage 2 and 3 learners. Both cLc Projects are available to all schools using the cLc Learning Platform and are a great way of introducing and developing cLc Web 2.0 skills, engaging learners and parents and collaborating with schools around the world.  Find out more and register at www.uniservity.com/collaborative-projects