Ideas And Inspiration For The K-12 Community - K-12 Internet Resource Center Pinball - Tools for Organizing Ideas Pinball is a suite of fun tools from the BBC for organizing ideas and generating new ideas. In Pinball you will find tools for creating mindmaps, outlines, and simple slideshows. Pinball also has tools to help you brainstorm and generate new ideas. Each one of the six Pinball tools provides options for including text and images in your mindmaps, outlines, and slideshows. If you're struggling to think of new ideas, each Pinball tool has a "lucky dip" button that will serve up a random image or bit of text to prompt you. Applications for Education All six of the tools in the Pinball suite could be very useful for students. Dot Dash is a template for creating webs of ideas. Wild Reels uses a virtual slot machine format for mixing up ideas. Live Wire allows students to organize their ideas sequentially and build a small slideshow.
Remind101: Twitter for Teachers? School Librarians Want More Tech—and Bandwidth | SLJ 2015 Tech Survey Photo by Bob Gathany IPads, maker spaces, 3-D printers, and coding skills top the tech wish lists for 1,259 school librarians across the country, according to School Library Journal’s (SLJ) 2015 Technology Survey. Educators are hungry to bring their students even more—whether that’s robotics classes or Arduino kits. “New computers, tablets, video equipment, all digital tools, instruction on usage, [and] enough bandwidth” count among the must-haves for Andrea Oshima, a school librarian at Aviara Oaks Elementary School in Carlsbad, CA. Currently, 64 percent of school librarians consider themselves tech leaders in their schools—and 28 percent feel that their tech skills afford them increased job security. While school librarians are eager to expand their tech tools, they have concerns about adequate infrastructure and connectivity, budgets, and administrative support. Supporting project creation Applications However, social media access is still not allowed at some schools. Need for bandwidth
Web 2.0 Tools in Education: A Quick Guide by Mohamed Amin Embi Fully Loaded: Outfitting a teacher librarian for the 21st century. Here’s what it takes. Illustration by John S. Dykes What does it mean to be fully loaded? I often consider the notion for my students. In fact, ever since I acquired the first apps for my iPhone, I’ve adopted the admittedly odd habit of pondering which apps I would “load” onto my students. If, indeed, high school students were smartphones or iPads, I would do my very best to fully load them with the critical skills and tools they need to become information- and media-fluent adults. Like many of you, I’m often blessed with the opportunity to mentor preservice teacher librarians. A former nurse who also volunteered with us as a parent, Nora is nearing the completion of her Masters of Education program at Arcadia University in Philadelphia and will soon receive her teacher-librarian credential. But there are gaps, missing competencies critical for contemporary practice. With the understanding that this list will need revisiting every couple of years, here are my nonnegotiable requirements for 2011:
Featured Sites Create a free diagram (concept map, graphic organizer) to represent words, ideas, or tasks to aid in studying, organizing, or problem solving. Link documents to a wise map and share or embed diagrams with other maps. tag(s): concept mapping (21), mind map (24) In the Classroom Users must be able to navigate the icons for editing and creating a mindmap. Assign sections of current curriculum topic to groups of students to map out and explain in detail. There are countless possibilities at this mental mapping site.
Using Technology to Enhance Literacy Instruction This Critical Issue was coauthored by Ann Holum, Ph.D., and Jan Gahala, M.A. Holum's doctoral work on the use of interactive media to improve children's story-understanding skills sparked her ongoing interest in integrating technologies in K-12 literacy settings; she currently is an independent educational consultant. Gahala is a technical specialist in NCREL's Communications department. ISSUE: Educational technology is nudging literacy instruction beyond its oral and print-based tradition to embrace online and electronic texts as well as multimedia. Computers are creating new opportunities for writing and collaborating. Although technology promises new ways to promote literacy, educators' reactions to it have been mixed. Overview | Goals | Action Options | Pitfalls | Different Viewpoints | Cases | Contacts | References OVERVIEW: Literacy instruction traditionally refers to the teaching of basic literacy skills—reading, writing, listening, and speaking. Edyth E. Audiobooks.
How Technology Can Transform Education As co-founder and CEO of Sun Microsystems, one of the predominant companies of the first Internet boom, Scott McNealy was a huge proponent of open source software. Since leaving Sun in 2010, McNealy has turned his focus to the world of education through non-profit Curriki.org and startup Wayin. The former was started inside Sun, applying open source principles to the world of education, creating a wiki environment for teaching materials for K-12 classes. The latter is a Q&A platform that can be utilized by teachers to create a more interactive learning environment. Last week, McNealy went to CES to keynote the HigherEdTECH Summit to talk about how technology can transform the education space. Mashable had a chance to catch up with him beforehand, where he told us about his current projects, the role he sees digital playing in the education space and his view on key technology trends. Check out the video above for McNealy's provocative thoughts on the road ahead.