100+ Online Resources That Are Transforming Education Yury Lifshits is working on algorithms and prototypes of new services at Yahoo! Research. Before that he was teaching university courses in the U.S., Germany, Russia and Estonia. He blogs at yurylifshits.com and publishes his teaching materials at yury.name/teaching. Education technology has become a busy space in recent years. With so many startups on the scene, it is easy to get lost. 1. The education system of the 20th century is built around institutions: schools, colleges, academies and universities. We've now seen the first online high schools (Keystone School), colleges (University of Phoenix, Kaplan University, The Open University, University of the People), certification programs (Alison.com), enterprise training programs (GlobalEnglish.com), art schools (AudioVisualAcademy.com) and test preparation programs (Top Test Prep, GrockIt, Knewton, RevolutionPrep, TutorJam, BrightStorm). 2. To build a new educational institution, one needs to assemble a lot of pieces. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7.
12 Valuable Wordle Tips You Must Read…Word Clouds in Education Series: Part 1 Welcome to a series of posts devoted to the use of Word Clouds. I know you will find new information… whether you are a seasoned user of word clouds, or brand new. I enjoy working with teachers and helping them use word clouds in their lessons because they are a great way to get any teacher started with integrating technology. In this series of posts I will cover: 12 Tips in Using Wordle (Some you may now… but other you may not.)Over 10o ways to use Word Clouds in the classroomThere is more to Word Clouds then Wordle… other awesome word cloud generatorsBeyond word clouds… cool sites and applications to integrate word clouds To ensure you do not miss one of these valuable posts or other resources covering PBL, STEM, 21st century learning, and technology integration please sign up for 21centuryedtech by email or RSS. Word Cloud… Wordle… An Introduction * Do you already know Word Clouds… then go down to the 12 Tips… I am sure you may learn something new about Wordle 2: Making a word cloud?
Sabbath Keeping & Digital Life Our digital lives are our lives – so much part of who and how many of us are, we feel real loss and disconnection when separated from the technologies that support our communities of connection and how we practice our faith. Addiction is an issue, but I want to notice the differences between internet addiction and the grief that comes from being separated from where we have meaningful relationships. When folks who’ve been largely defined by work find themselves unemployed or retired, there’s a similar sense of grief and loss. They weren’t necessarily addicted to work. Liberal religious spiritual life is so much about balance. Like many people I connect with in my social media ministry, I’m often housebound, due to my chronic illness. If you look at my social media presence, you'll notice I have two primary modes - one where I'm sharing information and acting as a spiritual resource, and one where I'm interacting with more particularly and directly.
The Dos and Don'ts of Tech Integration PD Of all the initiatives a school can begin, integrating technology may require the most professional development. This is partly because of the equipment, hardware, and software involved and partly because of the shift that a teacher must make in his or her teaching style, technique, and planning process in order to effectively use technology in the classroom. Here are some basic "dos" and "don'ts" for anyone doing tech integration professional development. This approach requires those who provide professional development for teachers to listen to their needs, and to know the school and staff they are either visiting or presenting to. For technology integration to be successful, a trainer needs to know these variances among the teachers he or she is working with and plan for how teachers will apply what they've learned with you once the session is over. For more on building a PD model that supports teacher collaboration and voice, see my posts on the Edcamp model. see more see less
A Social Network Can Be a Learning Network - Online Learning By Derek Bruff Last fall, for my first-year writing seminar on the history and mathematics of cryptography, I posted my students' expository-writing essays on our course blog. The assignment had asked students to describe a particular code or cipher that we had not already discussed—how it came to be, how it works, how to crack it, who used it. They described more than a dozen codes and ciphers. It seemed a shame that I might be the only one to read such interesting content, so I asked the students to read and comment on two papers of their peers. The course blog provided an ideal platform for that task. About a week later, one of my students arrived at class excited. Online Learning: The Chronicle's 2011 Special Report BROWSE THE FULL ISSUE: News, Commentary, and Data BUY A COPY: Digital and Print Editions at the Chronicle Store Since my course blog was on the open Web, my students' work could be seen by others, including Google's indexing robots and the cryptography researcher.
A smartphones proliferate, some users are cutting the computer cord It’s been four years since the introduction of the iPhone and rival devices that run Google’s Android software. In that time, the devices have turned much of America into an always-on, Internet-on-the-go society. A quarter of Americans with smartphones use the devices as their main way to get onto the Internet, the Pew study found. Smartphone users are diverse. “For businesses, government agencies and nonprofits who want to engage with certain communities, they will find them in front of a four-inch screen, not in front of a big computer in their den,” said Aaron Smith, a researcher at Pew and author of the report. The size of the screen is just about the only thing that keeps Miguel Reyes, 20, on his laptop. The recent high-school graduate from Landover was lounging in his backyard last month and was reminded about a book he wanted from Mexican author Francisco Jimenez. “I’m finding fewer and fewer things that make my laptop all that much better than my phone,” Reyes said.
Daniel Donahoo: Horizon Report K-12 Released: The Future of Education Is Mobile With the release of the New Media Consortium's 2011 Horizon Report for K-12 there is no doubt that the future of education is mobile. But, despite what tech-evangelists would have us believe it will not be enough to put mobile devices into children's hands and expect the education system to improve or their learning to suddenly take off. The revolution in technology, and subsequently educational technology, is an opportunity, but not a guarantee. The most recent Horizon Report repeats what it has stated for a few years now: "Digital media literacy continues its rise in importance as a key skill in every discipline and profession." And, it is for this reason developing children's skills across multiple literacies like visual, digital, media and networking is important and using technology to do it is a no-brainer. Mobiles are a category that defies long-term definitions. It sounds impressive because it is impressive. We don't have to evolve, and if we don't it will be a great loss.
How to Learn Without Memorizing Photo by Edwin Stemp Rote memorization is an inefficient way to learn. Just retaining a single formula can mean pounding the same information into your skull dozens of times. Unfortunately, you’re stuck with your brain. A few years ago, I noticed that smart people seemed to learn differently than most other people. While there are undoubtedly some genetic advantages that allow some people to learn effortlessly, I think part of this difference in success comes down to strategy. Is Your Brain a File Drawer or a Web of Ideas? A computer stores information as thousands of electrical 1s and 0s in a linear fashion. However, your brain isn’t a sequence of bits and bytes, so this approach doesn’t make sense. Other Forms of Learning What I’d like to advocate in this article is a more creative, spontaneous form of learning than the style you were probably coached for in school. There are lots of ways you can learn creatively: 1. You can do the same thing with less technical subjects. 2. 3. Examples:
5 Tools for Building a Next-Generation 'Hybrid' Class Website [Nicholas C. Martin is a visiting professor at American University and the United Nations University for Peace. He is also co-founder and president of TechChange, an organization that trains leaders to leverage emerging technologies for sustainable social change. Last month, I co-taught a course at American University’s School of International Service entitled ”Applications of Technology for Peacebuilding.” Prior to the course, we created an online social learning community in Drupal with a number of innovative features. Once we got the Drupal site up and running we began creating and embedding various tools to support the learning process. This course was just the beginning of our attempt at TechChange to go beyond what industry leaders like Blackboard and others currently provide to find and implement the most effective technologies and platforms to support dynamic learning. If you’re interested in seeing some of these tools in action you can view a sample TechChange Unit.
TechLearning: Bloom's Taxonomy Blooms Digitally 4/1/2008 By: Andrew Churches from Educators' eZine Introduction and Background: Bloom's Taxonomy In the 1950's Benjamin Bloom developed his taxonomy of cognitive objectives, Bloom's Taxonomy. Bloom's Revised Taxonomy In the 1990's, a former student of Bloom, Lorin Anderson, revised Bloom's Taxonomy and published this- Bloom's Revised Taxonomy in 2001.Key to this is the use of verbs rather than nouns for each of the categories and a rearrangement of the sequence within the taxonomy. Bloom's Revised Taxonomy Sub Categories Each of the categories or taxonomic elements has a number of key verbs associated with it Lower Order Thinking Skills (LOTS) Higher Order Thinking Skills (HOTS) The elements cover many of the activities and objectives but they do not address the new objectives presented by the emergence and integration of Information and Communication Technologies into the classroom and the lives of our students. Bloom's digital taxonomy map Remembering Understanding Applying Analysing Evaluating
7 Ingenious Resumes That Will Make You Rethink Your CV You love resumes. You really do. When we published "10 Creative Social Media Resumes To Learn From" in May, our readers enthusiastically responded by sharing it with friends, commenting on it and sending us links to their own snazzy resumes. We sifted through those links, picked our favorites and placed them in the gallery below. The 10 Resumes That Inspired the Post You're Reading Now In May, we brought you these awesome resumes to help you to stand out from the crowd. Social Media Job Listings Inspired yet? More Job Search Resources from Mashable: - 10 Creative Social Media Resumes To Learn From- HOW TO: Set Up an Online Resume- 9 Dynamic Digital Resumes That Stand Out From the Crowd- Top 5 Tips for Creating Impressive Video Resumes- Are Cover Letters Still Relevant For Social Media and Tech Jobs? Image courtesy of iStockphoto, SchulteProductions