Students from two school districts in Connecticut presented at the CECA Technology Expo on April 2, 2008.  Although 42 classrooms from across Connecticut participated, because of space and time limitations, only one teacher and two students from two diverse school districts, a rural elementary and an urban middle school, represented the project at the expo.

Click on the attachments below to listen to interviews with students from Chaplin Elementary School and Windham Middle School.

We absolutely love to use wikis as a collaborative tool for students and a way to develop student writing and voice.  We’ve been using wikispaces since we began creating online projects and still feel that it has features that best fit our needs.  However, there was one aspect that we have been concerned about, which was email.  So, we have decided to move to a private label where we have control over which wiki features are available to our users.  With this move, we can not only eliminate the email function, but we provide a more secure site for our users since the only access they have is to other projects that we add.  They no longer need to go through wikispaces to get to us.  You can check it out yourself by going to our Spice it Up a Notch with Nutmeg! 2009 homepage at http://www.sblceastconn.org/nutmegbooks2009.htm and then clicking on either the intermediate or teen wikiproject.

We have been a little surprised to be receiving requests from individual students to join the intermediate nutmeg2009 wiki, since we hadn’t let everyone know that it even existed yet. These students had become members of the nutmeg2008 wiki project as part of a whole class, but were anxious to get started working on the new set of nominees as motivated individuals. So, we invited them in as members and they have already been actively developing the wiki book pages.  It makes one revisit the concept of what really inspires students to become life-long learners.

So, why might a teacher want to join ePals as part of the Spice it Up a Notch with Nutmeg experience?  Well, a great extension for students, and a fun and authentic way to create background knowledge about the books would be for classes to find “online pen pals” who live in the geographic area where the books take place.  For instance, when reading The Raven Master’s Secret (a Nutmeg nominee from last year), wouldn’t it have been nice to be able to ask students who live in or around London, if they know about and have ever seen the ravens mentioned in the book?  This could start a conversation where students discuss all types of topics that interest them, as well as the literature.

We are so very excited and pleased that ePals, the Internet's largest global community of connected classrooms, has chosen to high-light our Spice it Up a Notch with Nutmeg project on their home page.  This is a wonderful opportunity for us to have students and teachers from all over the world contribute to online discussions and share thoughts and experiences with each other.  Check it out at http://www.epals.com

What is a blog? This is a blog.The word blog is short for web log. It is a place for you to write your thoughts and ideas, like a journal. Other people can read your blog and leave comments.

If you would like to keep a blog while you are reading the Nutmeg books, all you need to do is join this blog on the left. You will need an email address. Click on Create an Account and fill in the information. We will approve your membership. Then, whenever you log in to this blog, you have a choice to write in your own blog as well. To do that, click on Blog entry on the left. Write your entry and then scroll down to Submit it. If you have any problems, just email us at sblc@eastconn.org

Read Rick Riordan's thank you to the young readers of Connecticut!

You can read it here http://rickriordan.blogspot.com/2008/02/thank-you-connecticut.html

Do you have any ideas about how all of us can make 2009 even better than 2008? Do you have any suggestions for new pages that you'd like to see or ways all of us can contribute that will make the experience fun and interesting for all? Click on Add a New Comment below and share your ideas!!

The 2009 Nutmeg Award nominees have been announced. The titles for this year look as exciting as the 2008 titles!

 If you were a member of one of the 2008 wikis, you can join the 2009 wiki by simply going to the wiki and clicking on Join This Space. 

 Click on these links to go to the Spice it up a Notch! 2009 wikis:

Intermediate Wiki http://nutmeg2009.wikispaces.com/

Teen Wiki http://nutmegteen2009.wikispaces.com/

The results are in! LIghtning Thief is the winner of both the Intermediate and Teen Nutmeg Book Award!

You can view all of the results and the new book titles for 2009 here.