iTeach Therefore iLearn: the MERIT Summer Institute “Making Education Relevant and Interactive Through Technology” is the philosophy of MERIT, the KCI’s flagship teacher professional development program. MERIT is a year-long program that starts in July with a two-week summer institute. This year, forty-eight teachers engaged in an intensive learning experience that covered a number of educational technology topics, such as problem-based learning, Web 2.0 collaboration tools, technology integration in the curriculum, and the use of the iPod Touch in education. The overarching goal of MERIT is for teachers to develop the skills to transform their classroom into a relevant, student-centered learning environment through the appropriate use of technology. http://sites.google.com/site/kcimerit2010/ In 2010, I was selected to participate in the MERIT Summer Institute at the Krause Center for Innovation, located at Foothill College in Los Altos Hills, California. For two weeks, I was instructed by some of the most innovative teachers in California, along with my classmates and colleagues, who were teachers, artists, librarians, and technology specialists from around the world. We had three teachers from the Big Island of Hawaii, and two teachers from Italy, as well as an El Salvadorean educator. I was one of two teachers from the Southern California area selected, and the only representative from the Los Angeles Metro area. I was proud to have received the recognition among my peers as worthy of this opportunity, but also amazed at the opportunity for working with other innovative teachers in developing more ways in which to integrate Web 2.0 into the classroom. One of my projects is to assemble here on my webpage dedicated to MERIT a gathering of the tools we learned about, so that other teachers may benefit from my exposure to this technology. The other is to use some of these applications to link classrooms with a teacher in Singapore, and several others in Northern California, some of my colleagues from the MERIT program. Please feel free to contact me to seek assistance, if you have any questions about the amazing pages you find here... or to join one of our projects. At MERIT, I developed many networking colleagues who are just as eager as I am to collaborate with others to bring the benefits of Web 2.0 applications to the classrooms around the world.
Got a Picture? Words are not sufficient to describe, so just go to this site, and learn how to make a talking picture, ala JibJab, but based on a still image...none of that funky chicken dancing. I have had problems running this program, but at least it is a cool concept. See what you think.
Turn your photos & videos into pure amazing. Animoto automatically produces beautifully orchestrated, completely unique video pieces from your photos, video clips and music. Fast, free and shockingly easy.
About Us Now in its 45th year, the California Student Media Festival is our nation’s oldest student media festival. Over the past seventeen years, the California Student Media Festival has awarded more than $100,000 to California Schools. It has expanded to include the work of more than 6,000 student contestants from schools across the state. The festival exists to celebrate the amazing media and multimedia projects produced by California’s best and brightest students and teachers — rewarding and acknowledging their successful classroom work at an awards event on Saturday, June 4th, 2011. The Festival showcases what can be accomplished when talented students and dedicated teachers work together integrating media and multimedia into education.
Grade Levels: K-12
Cost: FREE
The Festival believes that...
students are capable of extremely high level work, beginning at very early grades
media and multimedia are excellent tools for students
video and multimedia should be integrated into the regular subject-area curriculum
rewarding exemplary work and good school programs encourages more of both.
Learning Projects Integrate learning projects into your classroom curriculum. Choose a topic, assign students, invite teachers, and collaborate with members around the world.
This is an online resource for creating, storing, and sharing presentations, using the Prezi program, which will need to be seen to be believed! Just go there!
About Scratch Scratch is a programming language that makes it easy to create your own interactive stories, animations, games, music, and art -- and share your creations on the web. As young people create and share Scratch projects, they learn important mathematical and computational ideas, while also learning to think creatively, reason systematically, and work collaboratively.
Educators - Information for educators using Scratch
Scratch is developed by the Lifelong Kindergarten Group at the MIT Media Lab, with financial support from the National Science Foundation, Microsoft, Intel Foundation, MacArthur Foundation, Google, Iomega and MIT Media Lab research consortia.
See the Credits page for a list of people who worked together to create Scratch.
To find books, T-shirts, and other Scratch-related products, visit the Scratch Store.