4 Things That Totally Suck About Using Technology In School [Opinion] I’ve read that e-books are the future of books, and it’s not a matter of if they’ll surpass print books but when. Being still in college, I wondered if that was the case for e-textbooks. There’s certainly more buzz on e-textbooks as they’re cheaper and it means that students don’t have to break their backs with heavy physical books. This whole semester I’ve been dealing with e-textbooks and using just an Android tablet (Acer Iconia A500) to digitize all of my schoolwork to answer these questions. Have An e-Textbook? The argument of e-books versus traditional textbooks books goes beyond whether you prefer the look and feel of an actual book to the more unnatural book-on-a-screen experience. Having e-books and web-enabled devices also limit forms of testing, which is a just a headache for instructors. Students could solve this by printing segments of their textbooks for the exams, but this is usually not permitted per the textbook publisher. Yes, Benefits Do Exist Agree or disagree?
Larry Ferlazzo’s Websites of the Day… - The Best Web 2.0 Applications For Education — 2010 This annual post is always the most popular one of the year. You might want to visit previous editions: The Best Web 2.0 Applications For Education — 2009 The Best Web 2.0 Applications For Education — 2008 The Best Web 2.0 Applications For Education — 2007 (You might also find The Best Ways To Create Online Content Easily & Quickly — 2010 useful) In order to make this list, a site had to be: * accessible to English Language Learners and non-tech savvy users. * free-of-charge. * appropriate for classroom use. * completely browser-based with no download required. It’s possible that a few of these sites began in 2009, but, if so, I’m including them in this list because they were “new to me” in 2010. You might also be interested in exploring the 530 other “The Best…” lists that I’ve posted over the past three years. Finally, you might also want to subscribe to this blog for free. Here are my choices for The Best Web 2.0 Applications For Education — 2010: Meeting Words Titan Pads
Five Ways to Bring High-Tech Ideas into Low-Tech Classrooms Teaching Strategies Flickr:quacktaculous By Sara Nolan Even the most wired classrooms know the screeching silence of that great technological dis: “Unable to Connect to Server.” It’s the 21st century classroom’s equivalent of nails on a chalkboard. More than just stop-gap measures for tech-less teaching environments, these no-tech ideas can actually help students deepen their digital literacy by giving them an opportunity to see, explore, and understand the parts and purpose of the digital media they take for granted – tweets and status updates, for example – by recreating them in an analog context. Put the Facebook page on paper. Sara Porto Nolan is a writer and Language Arts teacher who has worked with Bay Area students in high-need schools. Related
Educational Networking: The Important Role Web 2.0 Will Play in Education iLearn Technology Just a Blog I texted a fellow nominated colleague yesterday that I just might head into the Edublog Award ceremony. She texted back scoffing, not realizing there was a ceremony. She said, “I mean it’s great people take pride in what they do but it’s a blog. No offense to you. I just mean there are way bigger things going on in the world.” True, there are. Well, I don’t feel I am currently in a place right now that I can impact any kind of change in those realms. So, just a blog? This is a vast world with many issues to ponder. Ocean by Matthew S. Like this: Like Loading... Listening to Themselves: Podcasting Takes Lessons Beyond the Classroom Broadcasting Learning: Using Apple's GarageBand, Brent Coley records what his student Joey says into his headset for a ColeyCast, their classroom podcast. Brent Coley's fifth-grade students' eyes light up when they learn that their schoolwork can be heard in Apple iTunes, the program that allows them to compile their favorite artists' music. Although the Tovashal Elementary School students, in Murrieta, California, won't be jamming on guitars or drums in Coley's class, their studies of poetry, the solar system, and the early English settlements in North America become exciting when they're posted on a class Web site and saved in iTunes as ColeyCasts, room 34's take on podcasting. (Download the latest version of iTunes here.) Web distribution of their work motivates students to put their best foot forward. With minimal technology, Coley gives his students a global audience. Access to digital educational content at school, at home, and on the go is growing. Podcasting Defined Story Time
Free Technology for Teachers venspired I have seen the poem “Here’s to the kids who are different...” and have always thought that no matter what field of education you teach in, it will apply in some way. It’s not about just seeing the differences, but in really seeing the child. When you see a child with autism, do you just see their inability to communicate? When you watch a child throwing a tantrum, do you assume they are “spoiled” and fail to see their environment it overstimulating? When you see a child struggling to walk do you assume that their parents did not get them to see the doctors or specialists that might have been able to help? When a child cannot behave in your class, do you fail to see that those behaviors are actually far better and he has come a very long way? When a child is brilliant in math, do you fail to acknowledge it because he cannot tie his shoes? When a child is highly-sensitive, do you complain that she is ‘whining’ and not see the fact that she’s so full of anxiety she needs to talk about it?
9 Ideas for Reinventing America’s Language Education System Early last month I put together a blog post called Sage Advice from 20 Amazing People for the Beginning Language Learner. I asked host of folks to participate and in the end received a lot of really great responses and it was well recieved and an encouragement to many readers. One thinker I respect is Seth Godin and so was extremely pleased to get an insightful and rather Sethesque response just moments after I sent him an email. I did very poorly in language in school. Seth’s response reminded me of a conversation I had had with another friend in the language acquisition field a few years prior and set me to thinking about what it would mean for the public school systems of America to “reinvent” language education. Reinventing Language Education In today’s post then, I want to offer a few of my thoughts as to how we might reinvent the system. Nine Ideas I am not putting forth ideas to ‘reform’ the present system. 1 – The Only Goal 2 – Scrap The Way It’s Been Done 4 – Teachers as Coaches
Mathematics for Teaching RT, MT, HT, via: Giving credit on Twitter | Social Media Certificate Author’s note: Be sure to read my follow-up post to this topic from August 2011. Moreso than other social media, Twitter embraces an ethic of sharing credit. In fact, the more you recognize the work of others, the more you are engaging with the Twitterverse. It began with the simple RT, or retweet. If you liked what someone wrote or posted, you’d copy the tweet in its entirety, add RT along with his or her @name at the beginning, and post to your followers. The retweet became so popular that Twitter eventually incorporated a built-in automatic retweet function. The problem with the manual method is it truncates the original tweet if the message is already 140 characters long. That editing outrages some users, especially when the trimming changes the meaning of the original tweet. If it’s edited for length, MT (modified tweet) is used by some users (thanks to @mathewi, @ljthornton and @JeremyLittau for confirming my interpretation). The issue with MT: It has multiple meanings online.
How to reinvent Language Education - Or is it already? | Disrupt Education Aaron G Meyers, a language coach, living and teaching in Istanbul since 2008 shared some interesting thoughts on his blog: 9 Ideas for Reinventing America’s Language Education System. As Aaron and I share a similar background, I left Germany to teach languages in France, his post made me think, and so I reflected on the past four years that I have spent in online language learning. What did change and do we need to reinvent the system? It also reminded me of my first post for Disrupt Education “The Power of Communities in Modern Language Learning”. In 2007/08 and early 2009 the belief amongst startups and online language teachers was that the real revolution lies in the live teaching over VoIP services like Skype or virtual classrooms. “… inconvenient, more expensive and don’t seem to attract many students compared to self paced offers in the language learning space.” One thing I am thinking about for quite a while now is the curation of learning tools, services and applications.