Technology Front and Center
Innovative Instruction | Feature Technology Front and Center A new high school in Texas will combine technology with project-based learning. By Bridget McCrea03/23/11
thinkfinity
Browse Resources Verizon Foundation proudly partners with some of the country’s top educational organizations to provide you with the latest topics, tools and trends in education. Created by the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, ARTSEDGE provides resources and examples for teachers to teach in, through and about the arts. The site includes lesson plans, advocacy and professional development resources, and up-to-date information on arts programs from around the world. Visit ARTSEDGE
Courses - Global Online Academy
Register now for a Global Online Academy Summer Mini-Course! 2-Week Courses offered June 16-27 This summer Global Online Academy will be offering 4 exciting new mini-courses. From yoga to journalism, these classes are designed to allow students to try new experiences in a supported, enriching, and low-stakes environment.
Where is The Mind?: Science gets puzzled and almost admits a non-local mentalscape.
This will be the last "home-produced" blog entry for a while [save the short "Everyday Spirituality" which will follow it as a sign-off] . West Virginia beckons tomorrow morning and off I will go to whatever that entails. As I said in one of the commentary responses the other day, I hope that reading two journal runs "cover-to-cover" will bring up a few thoughts worth sharing. This day's entry was inspired by two articles bumped into coincidentally which had scientists puzzling about a holographic universe and a non-local mind. Those scientists would cringe to see how I've taken their sign-posts-on-the-path, but that is their hang-up, not mine
Why K-12 schools are failing by not teaching SEARCH
Some rights reserved by flickr ID: miguelavg This past week I had the opportunity to spend a day with some of the faculty at Western Washington University talking about reverse instruction…or at least my idea of what that means. To get started, we did a little reverse instruction of our own where I had them read the connectivism article by George Siemens before I arrived. Once I got there, we then set up the classroom for discussion with collaborative note taking and a back channel chat…both were new concepts to most present. However, as cool as it was to be talking with faculty at a University, I soon found myself appologizing for the K-12 system and its failure in providing students with the skills they need to be ready for college.
Langwitches
I have been a fan of Visible Thinking Routines which were developed by Project Zero from Havard, for a while now. I have used these routines with students, as blogging routines and in professional development workshops. The Visible Thinking Routines website explains that: Routines exist in all classrooms; they are the patterns by which we operate and go about the job of learning and working together in a classroom environment. A routine can be thought of as any procedure, process, or pattern of action that is used repeatedly to manage and facilitate the accomplishment of specific goals or tasks.[…] Classrooms also have routines that structure the way students go about the process of learning
Next steps: getting ready for inquiry
Although we are still adjusting to the routines in our literacy centers, we are ready to begin using the iPads in our content area instruction and inquiry. A little background: our faculty has both studied and been featured in a book/DVD series by Stephanie Harvey and Harvey "Smokey" Daniels entitled Comprehension and Collaboration: Inquiry Circles in Action. Inquiry-based learning has led to increased student choice and engagement, deep and meaningful questioning, and real-world advocacy and action. Our iPad grant proposal centered around incorporating the iPad into all the stages of student inquiry for our first and second graders, in addition to supporting their literacy development. Now that we have a good foundation for using the iPads in literacy centers, we are ready to integrate them into into content area instruction.
Can We Fix Computer Science Education in America?
The tech sector is set to grow faster than all but five industries by 2020. Out of those fields, half of which are related to healthcare, tech pays the best with an average salary of $78,730, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. If technology is the future, however, we are doing a woeful job of preparing our kids for it. Computer science is the only one of the STEM (science, technology, engineering and mathematics) fields that has actually seen a decrease in student participation over the last 20 years, from 25% of high school students to only 19%, according to a study by the National Center for Education Statistics. (MORE: Reboot the School) Meanwhile, tech companies are so desperate for talent that — in the face of a worker shortage partly due to the H-1B visa cap — a company is planning to build an 1,800-person floating city for foreign entrepreneurs in international waters off the coast of San Francisco.
15 Years of Cutting-Edge Thinking on Understanding the Mind
by Maria Popova What mirror neurons have to do with Abu Ghraib, the science of religion, and how happiness flourishes. For the past 15 years, literary-agent-turned-crusader-of-human-progress John Brockman has been a remarkable curator of curiosity, long before either “curator” or “curiosity” was a frivolously tossed around buzzword. His Edge.org has become an epicenter of bleeding-edge insight across science, technology and beyond, hosting conversations with some of our era’s greatest thinkers (and, once a year, asking them some big questions.)
Teaching Tools « tech4teacher
Google Summit South Korea Round One I recently attended the Google Summit in South Korea. After two days of Google Boot Camp training, the conference was a break from the intensity of the boot camp. There have been so many great tools presented.
25 Of The Best Pinterest Boards In Education
Blogs and Twitter aren’t the only social tools out there that can help you keep up with the latest and greatest developments in educational technology. Pinterest is rapidly becoming a favorite tool of educators all over the nation, and many have amassed some pretty great collections of edtech-related pins that teachers and students alike can use to explore new ways to learn, share, teach, and grow. While it would be nearly impossible to highlight every edtech pinboard out there, we’ve shared some of the boards we think stand out among the crowd here. Many are maintained by major educational websites, key figures in edtech, and well-known bloggers, but others were created by teachers just like you who simply want to share resources and tips with others in education. Oh–and don’t forget TeachThought’s burgeoning Pinterest board!
