Avatar Academy! Join us this Summer for a NEW kind of camp...

The Avatar Academy! starts with a 4 hour face-to-face workshop (June 16, 2010 10am–2pm) to help all participants create Second Life accounts and begin to learn basics about the online interface. The face to face day ensures individuals feel comfortable with basic tools including moving, chatting, searching and exploring within Second Life. After the face to face day together, participants will meet online in Second Life to continue the learning! Professional development options online include activities with ISTE (International Society for Technology in Education), Virtual Pioneers (Social Studies Education), NPR Science Fridays, NASA, Virtual Abilities, and dozens of other professional organizations, colleges and universities offering online workshops. This model ensures in-depth learning focused on new teaching and learning methods. Participants will be asked to participate in an online environment to report on their events and travels in the virtual world. For participation in this professional development, participants will receive a certificate for 35 hours of professional development after completion of the online professional learning community. Click here to download flyer.

Take a peek at What Cynthia Calongne/Lyr Lobo was providing in Colorado. ASSET is ready to provide this to you starting this Summer 2010 in Arizona! Join us! Click Here to Register. Believe me... you have never been to Summer Camp like this!

Second Life: Teaching Tips from the Virtual Frontier

View more presentations from Cynthia Calongne.

Interactive Whiteboards - Workshops - and PBS - Oh My!

PBS KIDS (pbskids.org) has launched a collection of interactive SMART Board games for educators. The site offers games for Language Arts, Maths, Social Science and a painting game for Art. Students will enjoy participating in these collaborative, fun and engaging experiences, while exploring curriculum from trusted PBS programs such as Curious George, Super Why and Arthur. Visit http://pbskids.org/smartboard/ for more information.

The ASSET Professional Development Team would love an opportunity to come to your school or district back-to-school trainings and share these research based resources with you and your colleagues! Have you called or emailed to schedule your workshop? 602-496-1104/ asset@asu.edu Workshops can be customized to highlight specific content areas and grade levels. Look for more information about our workshops on our website.

Summer Institute 2009 Plans

We met this morning at ASSET to continue our work on plans for the ASSET Educator Summer Institute 2009 "Think Upstream." I am getting so excited! It is so important you become an ASSET Educator - join as an individual teacher member, so you can reserve your spot at the conference! For $60 membership, you not only get all the great Eight member benefits, but you also get additional educator-only benefits and FREE conference registration!

The featured speakers are set. Austin Vickers will be our morning speaker. He is the author of Stepping Up: to a Life of Vision, Passion and Authentic Power and will focus his talk on Business & Industry Leadership Strategy for Educators. He has worked with corporations like 3M and Intel. We are very excited about the renewed energy and new vision he can bring to Arizona classroom teachers.

"Great teachers can guide us in this process by providing us with enlightened principles and solutions for dealing with the frailties of the human mind and experience. On rare occasions, when inspiration, creativity and purpose conspire, certain teachings told in just the right way can alter our lives forever. They do so when they provide us with an association to wisdom, passion and courage, and help us create our own paths for achieving the same." ~ Austin Vickers

The lunch speaker will be Lisa Henson. Lisa is the daughter of Jim Henson and one of the imaginations behind the new addition to PBS children's programs from KCET and The Jim Henson Company, Sid the Science Kid! Her talk will focus not only on science for preschoolers but also the efforts behind the production and the proprietary Henson Digital Puppetry that goes into the show creation. Institute participants will also have a special visit from Sid the Science Kid himself!

The session strands are designed to have a little of something for any kind of educator. The Project Based Learning strand will include Digital Storytelling, highlights from the Walter Cronkite School of Journalism High School Stardust Program, highlights of educational resources from PBS from programs like "We Shall Remain," and hands on workshops with software from Tech4Learning.

The STEM (Science Technology Engineering Math) strand will include highlights from WGBH's Teachers Domain, WNET's Nature, and KCET's Sid the Science Kid, as well as Arizona State University's School of Sustainability, Adaptive Curriculum, and the Challenger Center of Arizona's mobile science explorer van.

The Early Childhood strand will also feature KCET’s Sid the Science Kid as well as A Place of Our own. Presentations will include PBS Kids Raising Readers—and PBS Kids Island and ASSET/Eight’s Kindergartener In Progress (KIP) online interactive environment.

All the exhibitors will be non-profits who have resources to offer educators, in addition to those for-profit businesses who are ASSET Education Partners. A special wine and cheese reception will be held the evening before, June 5, 2009, hosted by the Challenger Center of Arizona.

So... how can you make sure you reserve your seat at this incredible day? Join ASSET! Become a member and your conference registration is automatically included free of charge! Summer is right around the corner! Professional development certificates will be issued for this day, breakfast and lunch are complimentary, you can have your picture taken with Sid the Science Kid... really... how can you say no?