This last summer, I had the privilege of attending the Mobile Learning Institute in Washington, D.C. during the week of July 11 through the 16th. This institute was co-sponsored by the Pearson Foundation and The Smithsonian. State Teachers of the Year (TOY) from 2007, 2008, and 2009 were invited to apply and 12 of us were selected as the Fellows to attend this session. Fellows had the chance to meet with Smithsonian educators and curators, and to explore first-hand the assets and learning materials that Smithsonian museums make available to teachers and classrooms. With this background, we then took part in extensive professional development sessions, during which time we had the chance to explore the latest digital and mobile technologies and to test ways these technologies could be applied to improve teaching and learning in the classrooms. Other sessions held throughout the summer and fall have had attendees representing other teacher and student groups, (and there was another TOY group that flew in the last week of July and focused on resources from the Smithsonian’s US History Museum). Our session utilized resources at the Smithsonian’s National Air and Space Museum (NASM) and National Postal Museum (NPM). We were divided up into teams of 4. My team concentrated on the Skylab Orbital Museum on display at SASM to design a series of related lesson activities around. You can view the series of video clips our group created as a result of our participation in this institute without having to become a member. I am also uploading to this blog, the lesson plans Learning Plan Skylab Pt1 and Learning Plan Skylab Pt2 I created to utilize and extend the learning ideas introduced in the videos. (more…)