Visualization is a term that is thrown around somewhat indiscriminately. This webinar is designed as a way to dip into visualization and to help educators get a grip on understanding the subject and think about how it applies to their classrooms. Woven into visualization is the topic of visual literacy, a skill that is considered by many to be crucial to the whole idea of literacy. This webinar will combine the ideas and take the position that visualization is a skill that is specified in Maine Learning Results and 21st Century skills. The MLTI image, and other resources provide tools that can create visualizations and/or help develop visual literacy. Come join us on that Thursday for either of the two sessions.

3:15 session

http://stateofmaine.na4.acrobat.com/mlti031810a/

 7:15 session

http://stateofmaine.na4.acrobat.com/mlti031810e/

Organize those ideas!

How can we help our students pull together all the pieces from their brainstorming, research, and other pre-writing activities to begin writing a draft? This is the question we will explore in this week’s webinar, Organizing and Connecting Ideas and Information. We’ll take a close look at NoteShare and its organizing features and investigate two mind-mapping tools on the MLTI image, FreeMind and OmniGraffle. We’ll also look at some free, online tools and discuss other organizing strategies like story boarding with Comic Life. We’ll end with a discussion of synthesis and how we can help students connect and build on others’ ideas to create something new. And, as always, we’ll invite participants to share their experiences, ideas, and resources.

My special guest presenter this week will be Jim Moulton.

Jim Moulton

Many of you are familiar with Jim’s work as a teacher and presenter at numerous state, national, and international conferences. Currently Jim is a Professional Development Specialist for Apple Inc., working right here in Maine with us at MLTI. You may also know Jim as a writer. His articles and blog posts have inspired teachers around the world and he currently has two published books, Talking With Teachers and Computers Can, Computers Can’t… It’s a pleasure to have Jim bring his expertise as a teacher and a writer to our discussion.

Please join us Thursday, November 19 at 3:15 or 7:15 (or both!). Click on the WebCasts tab at the top of this page to find links for registration and directions for joining the webinar.

Organize those ideas! – Illustration by Ann Marie Quirion Hutton