more snowy shanghai – record breaking stretch of snowing

《5天创下新纪录!——申城迎来建国以来最大雨雪量》
2008年1月25日下午起,上海地区出现雨雪天气,全市各区县普遍出现了明显的积雪,截止29日8时,市区累计雨雪量已达54.4毫米,市区积雪最深达 4厘米,郊区崇明雪深为17厘米。雨雪量为建国以来最大。市区雪深为1991年以来最大。郊区雪深为1984年以来最大。
1991年12月25-28日的连续降雪,市区雨雪量为18.5毫米,雪深5厘米,郊区金山雪深为10厘米。
1984年1月17、18日连续两天的大雪,市区雨雪量达46.7毫米,雪深5厘米,郊区嘉定雪深为17厘米。
始于2008年1月25日下午的雨雪天气已持续了5天。其持续时间为1964年以来最长。
1964年2月17-24日,发生在上海地区的大雪过程共持续了8天,市区积雪深度达14厘米。
原载上海气象信息网

Growing up Online – A FRONTLINE special on PBS

saw links to this “Growing Up Online” production by FRONTLINE|PBS looking into the life of our youngsters. have not had the time to go through it myself, but i’m believe the issues and concerns raised in the programme would be common to us all teachers/parents and even growing up youngsters themselves? even as we are watching it we too are growing up online in a way isnt it?

here’s a direct link to some of the press responses after the broadcast of the production.

good examples of student(s) blogging?

saw this in another feed, Will’s looking for good examples of student blogs in the classroom, with blogging as defined by “writing that has “Links with analysis and synthesis that articulates a deeper understanding or relationship to the content being linked [to] and written [about] with potential audience response in mind.”
read the post and the many useful feedback which fellow teachers/educators have left under Will’s post.
if you happen to have some good examples to share, you can leave your comments with Will’s post for all the share too 🙂

VoiceThread (and Ed.VoiceThread)

chanced upon this tool “Voice Thread” when i saw it mentioned in one of my blogline feeds (which has been neglected for 3 weeks at least), it’s a pretty impressive tool which allows a teacher to engage students in self-expression or group conversation on some common topic. the ‘topic’ can exist in 14 types of media format (wmv, ppt, gif, pps, pdf, jpg, doc, png, opd, bmp, xls, mov, flv, avi) and the conversation can occur in 5 ways (voice, video, phone, type, upload).

more useful features for teachers include comments moderation, which allows teachers to invite parents, communities to view and participate (students can only invite peers within the community to comment on their work); to protect privacy further (or i think it suits students’ needs to adopt different personalities at different time), they can create multiple identities/avatars when ‘talking’.
would definitely like to experiment with it if i were in the classroom right now, if only …
you simply have to check out the following official intro to learn more about Voice Thread (not juz in written form here):

  1. What’s a VoiceThread anyway?
  2. What’s Ed.VoiceThread?

if you are currently in school teaching, you can ‘go pro’ any apply for a FREE (with some conditions) account and explore it for use with your students! details’ here.
am slow in finding out about this platform, but it’s never too late 🙂