Veterans Park Academy Media Blog

Something exciting is happening here! VPAA teachers and students are venturing into blogging for the very first time this year, and boy are they excited!Why? Because blogging is a great way to build a learning community beyond the classroom. Learning communities are groups of people who are “actively engaged in learning together”.

What is a blog? A blog is a website where a person (or class) posts articles and other people can comment on those articles. It is different from a web page because a blog invites two-way or multi-way conversation. The word “blog” is an abbreviation for “web log” – a type of journal published on the World Wide Web. Here is a great 3-minute video by CommonCraft called “Blogs in Plain English“.

Why use blogs in school? Blogs provide a public forum where students can share what they are learning, which gives them an authentic audience for their work and invites others to help them learn. Blogging provides motivation to learn more, communicate more effectively, and share what they know and can do.

Using blogging in school helps students to:

• “Own their own learning”
• grow with their peers
• reflect on their thinking
• learn to collaborate
• improve their writing and digital literacy skills
• understand that there are other people in the world who can help them learn even more
• become part of something bigger than their classroom or their progress report
• learn how to use digital tools safely and appropriately
• begin to create a positive digital footprint that they will be proud to share as they get older

Many of these skills and dispositions are included in the AASL Standards for 21st Century Learners as skills we are expected to teach 21st century students.

Who’s Blogging?

Mrs. Tew’s 6th grade science classes have begun blogging about their science experiments at Thoughts From the Lab Bench. After several lessons on “Powerful and Safe Blogging”, the students wrote reflections about an experiment. We then sent a tweet out on Twitter to let our professional learning network of teachers around the world know about the kids’ new blog.

Within a few days the kids had gotten responses from students and teachers all over the United States, and people in Europe and Australia had read their blog. They could tell that because they watched red dots appear on their blog’s ClustrMap. Talk about motivation!

The students have now engaged in conversations with students in Oregon by exchanging comments on each others’ blogs, asking questions, providing new ideas, encouraging each other to continue their  learning – extending their learning well beyond their own classroom. These students are more excited and ready to learn than ever before. Their learning communities are expanding, and along with it, their opportunities to learn – like thousands of other kids across the planet

Several other classes are beginning blogs during 2nd quarter…we’ll keep you posted here so you can see their progress.

Our 4th graders study Florida history. Each year they begin to learn about Florida by creating salt maps and locating and naming important cities and geographical features in and around Florida. This year the maps were outstanding! So, as usual, we put them on display in our libraries for all to see. Here are a few of them. Take a look and tell us what you think.

Thanks to the 4th graders and the 4th grade teachers, Mrs. Johns, Ms. Krystofiak, and Ms. Lach, for sharing your work with everyone!

October is “National Information Literacy Awareness Month“.  So let’s celebrate:

Be curious about the world you live in and…

1. Ask questions
2. Gather information from lots of different sources – books, databases, videos, podcasts, websites, blogs, personal interviews, and more
3. Analyze it
4. Think about it
5. Prove whether it’s true – or not
6. Figure out if  its biased
7. Talk or chat or text with a friend about what you read
8. Organize it
9. Create something (a video, an essay, a song, a story, a podcast, a blog post, a news broadcast, or whatever suits you) to explain what you learned or what you think about what you learned
10. Publish it
11. Solve a problem
12. Make an informed decision
13. Ask more questions
14. Use what you learn to help make the world a better place
15. Explore a new Web 2.0 tool for learning
16. Share it
17. Connect/collaborate with someone in another school, another county, another state, another nation (how could you do that?)
18. Look at your information from a different perspective
19. Have fun with it
20. Do it all over again and again…

And while you’re at it, think about these facts:

• Over 1,000,000 (one million) books are published every year
• Americans have access to over 1,000,000,000,000 (one quadrillion) web pages and 200+ cable TV networks
• More video was uploaded to YouTube in the past two months than if ABC, NBC,and CBS had aired new content 24/7, 365 days a year since 1948
• The average American teen sends 2,272 text messages a month
• Mobile devices (cell phones, etc) will be the world’s primary connection tool to the Internet in 2020.

(Source: Did You Know 4.0 video by Scott McLeod, Karl Fisch, Laura Bestler, XPLANE, and The Economist)

In other words, there’s more information being generated today, and at a faster rate, than ever before. Almost anyone can produce websites, write blogs, and make videos, including students.

This means that is is more important than ever for students and adults alike to have the skills to navigate to the right information, critically evaluate it for usefulness, accuracy, and reliability – filtering out bias and inaccuracies, and use it to make informed decisions, solve problems, create new products, generate new ideas, and engage in intelligent discussions – whether face-to-face or online.

Be ready. Be smart. Be information literate

VPAA students – this is your chance!  We are putting together an order for new library books and we want to know what YOU want to read!

Help us spend our money wisely – suggest a title, an author, a series, a genre. Maybe you’d like audio books you can check out…books that teach you how to DO something, books about famous people or places to travel – what is on your wish list?

You can put your suggestion in one  of the suggestion boxes in either library or post your suggestion as a comment here. You have until October 12th, so speak now!

October 5th marks World Teacher’s Day to celebrate teachers around the world and the work they do to help students through the learning process. We know Veterans Park has great teachers who love their students and work hard to help them learn each day. If you want to thank your teacher or your child’s teacher, you can click on the World Teacher Day link and send a teacher an e-card.

How would you describe your most memorable teacher – the one who made a difference in your life and your learning? Can you sum it up in one sentence? If so, post it in a comment here.

This week, September 26th – October 3rd is Banned Books Week. This week was first established by the American Library Association in 1982 as a way to celebrate the freedom to read and the importance of the First Amendment.  It is based on the principles that, in our country, people have the right to hold any belief and to speak and write about their beliefs in any way they deem appropriate. As a society we also choose to provide access to information and diverse viewpoints, allowing people to make up their own minds about many different subjects and ideas.

It is rare that books get banned in the United States. In fact the last time a book was banned was in 1963. More often, books get “challenged”, meaning someone tries to get them banned so that other people cannot read them. Some governments – the US and other countries – have banned certain books or parts of books because they felt the books did not support their government or the beliefs of their people. Both the Bible and the Qur’an have been banned at one time or another.

One of the things we need to remember about books (or TV shows or videos or any other form of information) is that what may be unacceptable or disagreeable to one person may not be to another.  And even if you disagree with a book, the next person has a right to read it. While some book challenges are more serious than others, this one caught my eye recently:

The book of silly, rhyming children’s poems, A Light in the Attic by Shel Silverstein, was challenged for “encouraging children to disobey their parents and break dishes”.  The poem “How Not To Have To Dry The Dishes” says, “such an awful, boring chore”  then drop a dish on the floor and “maybe they won’t let you dry the dishes anymore.”  Surely most school-aged children understand this as a funny poem and not as a call for breaking dishes. This poem, like so many other stories and books provides a great opportunity for parents to reinforce their family values and expectations for appropriate behaviors. This is just another reason why it is important for parents to read with and to their children.

Learning about the world and understanding different points of view is essential to our democratic society. Allowing intellectual freedom and the freedom to read is what makes our country different from many others, and it makes our country strong. Enjoy your favorite book this week – and be thankful for the First Amendment.

First, I have to say how impressed I am with all the Summer Reading Challenge participants. The elementary students averaged over 11 books each – with two first graders reading 48 books each! The middle school students who turned in forms averaged 1200 minutes of reading with one student reading over 4,000 minutes!

Each participant got a certificate, a bookmark, and a wristband. And last week, we drew names for some bigger prizes. The following students won these prizes:

Jade Duval – Family pack tickets to SW FL History Museum

Danielle Berrette – Family pack tickets to the Imaginarium

Nick Maro & Amanda Bouzos – Il Primo pizza gift certificates

Chelsea DeSilva & Ashley Goodwin – Lozano’s gift certificates

Josie Shelton, Joslyn Rosario, Elizabeth Gonzalez, & Giovanni Sierra-Moeller each won a book.

Congratulations to all of you – and to each Summer Reading Challenge participant!

Thanks to our sponsors for donating tickets and gift certificates to support our Summer Reading Challenge!

Hispanic Heritage Month runs from September 15th – October 15th each year to celebrate the culture and traditions of U.S. residents who trace their roots to Spain, Mexico, and the Spanish-speaking nations of Central America, South America, and the Caribbean. The start date is September 15th because it is the “Independence Day” of five Latin American countries — Costa Rica, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, and Nicaragua. Mexico also celebrates its Independence Day on September 16th while Chile celebrates on September 18th.

If you like to write, you can win a scholarship and a trip to Tallahassee to meet Governor Crist by entering  the FL essay contest for Hispanic Heritage month. Essay contest forms can be found here. The deadline for entries is October 1st.

If you want to read some great books about Hispanic Heritage, try this recommended reading list. Come to the libraries to check out some of these great books and more.

Have some fun with this Celebrate Hispanic Heritage website from Scholastic, too.

We’d love to know what makes YOU proud of your Hispanic Heritage, so please, feel free to post your comment below.

Do you have a favorite librarian in your life? A public librarian that read stories to you or helped you find the perfect book or a Youth Librarian that organized a Poetry Slam or Guitar Hero night at the public library? Do you have a favorite school librarian – someone who helped you do your research project, make a video, learn how to look up information on the computer, or found a book you’d been wanting for weeks and weeks? If you do, you can nominate your favorite librarian for the 2009 I Love My Librarian Award by clicking here.

VPA and other Lee County school students have begun posting responses to two new blogs we have set up for students this year. As part of a national grant, we received 40 beautiful reproductions of American art to display in our school. We are promoting the art and American history by asking students to study one selected work each month and post responses to it on the Picturing America blogs. We’ve set one up blog for elementary students, called Picturing America for Kids. Three Oaks Elementary and Veterans Park students have already posted responses to that blog.  Click the link above and take a look.

The middle/high school blog is called Picturing America in Our Own Words. Ms. Roszell’s and Mrs. Esponda’s students have begun posting responses to the first work of art – a painting of Paul Revere’s Ride. Mrs. Esponda’s Critical Thinking class will be selecting next month’s piece and creating the questions for other students to answer. Thanks to them for taking on this project!

Both blogs are open to all Lee County students for comment.