Brazilian Adilson Dezerto Visits Sun Valley Elementary

Me & Brazilian Adilson Dezerto

Tonda Helms’ first grade students pose with Brazilian Adilson Dezerto.

While at Sun Valley Elementary, Dezerto introduced students to common

Portuguese words and discussed the five different geographical regions of Brazil.

Sun Valley Elementary has partnered with English Second Language (ESL) students at two local universities (Queens University and The University of North Carolina at Charlotte).

Adilson Dezerto, a native Brazilian and a member of ESL, joined the movement to embrace Sun Valley Elementary School by talking with its first grade students. While at the school, Dezerto discussed how his nation’s primary language is Portuguese. He also discussed his country’s food (comida), school (escola), geography (geografia), and favorite sport soccer (futebol). As a resident from São Paulo, Dezerto also discussed the four other geographic regions of Brazil and what made them unique. “Students were excited to learn the capital of Brazil was Brasília, and that they will host the 2014 FIFA World Cup,” said SVES Spanish teacher Marina Sadow.

Through an initiative titled Children Connecting the World, SVES has hosted a variety of international programs including Prince Khalid of Saudi Arabia, the National Trust of Scotland, and more recently the Saudi Students Organization at UNCC, who performed a short play for SVES third grade students.  This presentation had an unexpected Skype phone call from Prince Khalid of Saudi Arabia. Using an iPhone, students visited with Prince Khalid as he watched the Saudi Students Organization perform.

My Top 5 Educational Video Sources

TeacherTube located at: http://www.teachertube.com/ is an online community for sharing instructional teacher videos.  Videos can be used for students and adults.

The Khan Academy located at: http://www.khanacademy.org/ is an open source project designed by Salman Khan to become the classroom of the world.  It has over 1,400 videos on YouTube that coves math, science, language arts, etc.

YouTube EDU located at: http://www.youtube.com/education?b=400 is a collaborative effort from leading colleges and universities.  Content includes but is not limited to: math, science, language arts.

WatchKnow located at: http://www.watchknow.org/ has a very directory of videos for children.  The site is easy to navigate for children and adults. 

Ted: Ideas worth Spreading located at: http://www.ted.com/ offers excellent free lectures from extraordinary people!  Topics focus on global issues, arts, business, and technology to name a few.  

This is a video that I made to help celebrate Africa.  

These are original photos of authentic African reproductions.  

The audio (Waka Waka: This Time for Africa by: Shakira) was purchased using iTunes.

ALA Learning Wiki

http://alalearning.wetpaint.com/

This is a great site for media coordinators to review when trying to keep up with different trends in their field.

Saudi Arabian Prince Talks Again With SVES

Prince Al-Waleed bin Talal, the nephew of the Saudi Arabian King Abdullah King of Saudi Arabia, video-conferenced via Skype into Sun Valley Elementary’s media center onto an iPhone, addressing questions from students and talking about his country.

During the chat at Sun Valley Elementary, Prince Khalid watched a presentation by the Saudi Students Organization at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte that was brought to the school by Children Connecting the World.

Members of the Saudi Students Organization that participated are:  Abdulrahman Saad Alajlan, Ahmed Abdullah Aljohani, Majed Saad Alharthi, Amani Mohammed Alharthi, Ahmed Saleh Alghamdi, Eman Abdullah Kabbas, Ahmed Khalid Alghamdi, and Feras Yaseen Al-Khalil.

Students Learning with Diigo

Students Learning with Diigo at:  https://sites.google.com/site/team8project9440/

This site offers educators a portal to post and share information about using Diigo.

Prezi Rubric

A Prezi Rubric found in Prezi at:  http://prezi.com/icv0isttisg8/prezi-rubric/. 

50 Plus Ideas for Using Document Cameras

Document Cameras in the Classroom at:  http://www.edtechnetwork.com/document_cameras.html is an excellent resource that gives ideas on the different educational benefits of using a document camera. 

Creative Commons

Sun Valley Elementary Media Center by Kevin Vickers is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.

I chose to use a Creative Commons license with my website that I created with my school's media center because of some of the photos that I have created are original.  The American Library Association creates original READ posters but not in digital format.  So, I thought that I would celebrate the same ALA READ campaign using photos of "neighborhood celebrities" and use the Creative Commons license to help identify my willingness to collaborate with others.  This way they would know that it was okay to use my original works without feeling the need to contact me.

The Hung Gar Kung Fu Academy Helps Sun Valley Elementary Celebrate Chinese New Year 2011

The Hung Gar Kung Fu Academy preformed at Sun Valley Elementary School Friday, February 4, 2011 in honor of Chinese New Year that started February 3 and will last for ten days. While at Sun Valley Elementary, the Academy preformed for third grade students in the school's media center. The rest of the school watched on their school broadcast channel.

Third grade students and guests enjoyed a Traditional Chinese Lion Dance which included a drum, cymbals, three different Lions and a Buhdda dancer. Students across the school were captivated by the Academy's preformance. Many found it interesting to learn that a female lion has more fur than a male lion.

At the end of the preformance, Sifu Rick Panico discussed how a traditional Chinese New Year was celebrated and how Kung Fu is tied into all the celebrations due to the Lion Dance. After Red Chinese New Year Envelopes were passed out, students also enjoyed fortune cookies. Questions were asked at the end of the preformance. 

As a media coordinator, this was a fun presentation to put together for our school.  It was also exciting to see the different lion dancers in our media center.  What a great way for our students to connect books with this type of preformance!