Feelin' Those Net Vibrations

cc licensed ( BY NC ) flickr photo by patriziasoliani: 

http://flickr.com/photos/55524309@N05/5378314176/

This is my first year at ASM where I teach 9th grade math, movie making, digital art and Global Connections.  Global Connections is a class that the school requires all 6th graders and new middle school students to take for one semester.  By far one of my favorite teaching experiences to date has been the Global Connections class.  Why?  First of all my co-teacher, Carrie Zimmer.  I appreciated her enthusiasm, flexibility and commitment to digital citizenship (especially photo credits) but most of all her collaborative spirit.  We were able to model a partnership for our students and together design a course aligned with our school values: Empowerment, Accountability and Respect.

Our students were little sponges.  They could not get enough of the technology and were willing to discuss, debate and develop appropriate uses.  I did not realize how successful that class was until I started teaching a Digital Art course which has 6th, 7th and 8th graders together.  We use Google Docs to collaborate and students post their artistic process on their Digital Art blogs.  And who leads the way through these projects? Our 6th graders.  A group of them led the discussion on how to comment appropriately on other blogs while in another class it was the 6th graders who reminded students of good naming and password practices.  

And for next year I have added two pieces to the curriculum (so far) that have been influenced by the Flat Classroom Certified Teacher course I am currently enrolled in.  The first is incorporating a global project which in-spite of the name of the course, we did not do this year and the second is teaching the kids about pulling information.  After creating a Classroom Monitoring Portal (CMP) on Netvibes for my digital art class, I realize the power of the portal.  It is a time saver, a guaranteed way to stay on task (almost) - a one stop shop (again, almost because I can't find a way to include Pinterest).  

Here are the screen shots from the page since I created it on a private page and have yet to figure out how to copy it to my public page.  It will be exciting to create these pages with my students in the future.  We just studied Optical Art but I plan to do this with a unit later on to teach them the skills.

Getting Organized page with all links students can put in
for themselves: Gmail, to-do list, calendar, favorite links,
link to class website and RSS feed from class updates

Optical Art in the News

Optical Art in Video

Op Art on Twitter

Image search for Featured Artist Bridget Riley

I was pretty satisfied with Google Reader until I played with Netvibes.  Anyone have a preference?  Share the links to your classroom CMP below in comments.