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Welcome to the Bangor - Kempsville Teacher Space! What to be a part of it? What to learn what it is like to teach in another country? Want to share ideas, strategies and methodologies? Then click on Project Outline page in the right hand navigation column to get started!


 * March 22, 2011 **

Kempsville Middle School has been involved in the “Sister City Project” for many years. On our most recent trip to Northern Ireland in 2008, we took along a mascot, “Frog.” Frog became quite the celebrity and has since had his [|picture taken with many important people] including Mayor John Montgomery of Bangor during his last visit here to the states. KMS received a gift from Mayor Montgomery last week. An adorable Bear named Hero from the [|Help for Heroes Organization] to watch over Frog in these uncertain times in our world. Here is Dr. Smith with Hero and Frog sending greeting to our friends in Northern Ireland. 


 * March 1, 2011 **

I just watched a great short video** by Josh Stumpenhorst ** a blogger and 6th grade Language Arts and Social Science teacher in suburban Chicago, IL, USA on **innovation in the classroom. ** As teachers, we need to be innovative everyday! We are constantly coming up with ideas on how to engage our disengaged students and how to create interesting lessons that will teach our students what we are tasked to teach.

Louise wrote to me about getting started on some projects between our schools. My personal goal in this first phase was to get our teachers talking to each other because, I feel, if we are to do a project between our schools, it is the teachers who should come up with ideas, not me or our administrations. You are the ones who know what will might work, what you can handle and if you have time. Ask yourselves, “how could a project benefit my class?” “How would a project engage and teach my students?” “How can I add one more thing to an already full schedule?”

Unfortunately I do not have the answers nor can I give you the gift of time! But, perhaps as a collective group we can work on it together. How can we develop a meaningful, collaborative project between two schools in two different countries between students of different ages, cultures and backgrounds that won’t cost our schools a dime and will work with our network security? Talk about innovation and collaboration!

Think of this while you watch this quick video at [] about innovation in the classroom or scroll down; the movie is embedded below.

After you watch the video, visit the Teacher to Teacher Wiki Future Projects page at https://bangorkempsville.wikispaces.com/Future_Projects. Log on, click on the edit button (next to the pencil) and add your ideas and suggestions as to what future projects between our two schools could be. Be creative, be extreme! Go for it! After we get ideas, then we will explore the avenues available to both our schools to accomplish such a project while overcoming such obstacles as: time, money, network filtering and blocking systems and availability or lack of equipment.

We can do it and I am so glad we are working on this together!

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The project is slowly taking shape. We have 18 teachers involved so far. Some great discussion are going on and some even better idea for student collaborations down the road. It is not too late to be a part of it all. The more the merrier!
 * February 24, 2011 **

This will be a common area for the teachers of Kempsville Middle School and Bangor Academy to come together to share ideas, post discussions, upload files and generally keep in touch.

For now to get things started this is a public Wiki (anyone can see it) but only members can edit it. You will have to establish a Wiki account and then ask for membership in this wiki. We will have to approve your membership. After that you can view it anytime. As the project develops and grows it will be possible to make areas of the Wiki private. At that time you will be required to log in to access this area. Naturally when we get to the point when students will be involved, it will all be private.

Please visit the Project Outline page to get yourself started. A link to it is in the right hand side navigation column.

Please feel free to add information. As a member you will have the right to edit any pages, post any discussions or use the in house email system once you are logged in. Just click on the button at the top that says "edit this page." It is just like a word processing program. Once you have typed in whatever, make sure you click on SAVE in the upper right hand corner.

This project is most definately a work in process! Changes and additions will be made constantly, so please check back often. As the project grows and develops we can add more pages and more sites whatever we need to fit our needs.

To get started here is a list of members and their Wiki addresses, and real email addresses:

Diann Caviness - dcaviness, diann.caviness@vbschools.com Louise Hanvey - lhanvey783@bangoracademy.bangor.ni.sch.uk Dr. James Smith, james.smith@vbschools.com

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