The 21st Century Teaching and Learning Skills for Teachers and Students We have just finsihed working on our fourth ebook this year. The 21st Century Skills Teachers and Students Need is inspired by the popular post under the same title here in this blog.Since its publication last year, thousands of people have been reading it and so we decided to make an elaborate ebook where we can provide more information on this topic. As is the habit with each new ebook we publish, here is part of the introduction and you can scroll down to download and read the entire ebook. ......Digital era, information age, knowledge era are new terms that we start hearing recently because of this digital boom. Here is the table of content of this ebook to let you have an idea of what to expect to read. Use this Link to share the ebook ( ) Here is the ebook The 21st Century Skills Teachers and Students Need to Have -
Ways to Evaluate Educational Apps I am conducting a series of workshops in Florida and was asked to share a rubric to help teachers evaluate educational apps as part of the workshop. In 2010 Harry Walker developed a rubric, and I used his rubric (with some modifications by Kathy Schrock) as the basis for mine. (Read Harry Walker's paper Evaluating the Effectiveness of Apps for Mobile Devices.) I kept in mind that some apps are used to practice a discrete skill or present information just one time. Others are creative apps that a learner may use again and again, so it's a challenge to craft a rubric that can be used for a wide span of purposes. My rubric also emphasizes the ability to customize content or settings and how the app encourages the use of higher order thinking skills. Here's what I chose to spotlight in my rubric: Relevance The app’s focus has a strong connection to the purpose for the app and appropriate for the student Customization Feedback Student is provided specific feedback Thinking Skills Engagement Sharing
Lesson | Guest Post | Who Are You Online? Considering Issues of Web Identity Wednesday (Feb. 6) is Digital Learning Day, an annual opportunity to contemplate the place of technology in the classroom and in our lives. Last year, we celebrated by digging through 40 years of New York Times reporting on technology in education to find gems like the 1982 article “Computers Alter Lives of Pupils and Teachers.” This year, we have a student essay challenge, and we have also invited a guest post from Common Sense Media, an organization “dedicated to improving the lives of children and families by providing the trustworthy information, education, and independent voice they need to thrive in a world of media and technology.” We collaborated with the Common Sense Media writer Kelly Schryver to focus on the increasingly important and nuanced question “Who Are You Online?” – Katherine Schulten and Shannon Doyne Who Are You Online? Are You the ‘Real You’ Online? What kinds of things do you tend to post online, and how much thought do you give to choosing or creating them?
mooc.wikispaces Understanding Digital CitizenshipChange 11 MOOC - #change11Alec Couros - @courosa - - couros@gmail.com Overview This week, I would like to lead a conversation around the the emerging concept of digital citizenship as it applies to learners and the role that educators and educational institutions must play in developing citizenry. Media & Information Literacy: "Media literacy is a repertoire of competences that enable people to analyze, evaluate, and create messages in a wide variety of media modes, genres, and forms." Copyright/Copyleft: "Copyleft is a general method for making a program (or other work) free, and requiring all modified and extended versions of the program to be free as well." Network Literacy: Howard Rheingold writes, "Understanding how networks work is an essential 21st century literacy." Identity:
Principles of Democracy - Digital Storytelling Flat Classroom/NetGenEd Guidelines for Media Use While some of the following may still arguably be considered as qualifying under Fair Use in some instances, it is important to remember when participating in a project like this that we are utilizing a NING platform, similar to YouTube. Although not exact, NING has a Terms of Use Agreement that we all agree to abide by upon joining. NING reserves the right to remove anything they deem copyright infringement.Further, copyrighted material can cause a really fantastic video to lose out on a well-deserved award due to the inclusion of copyright especially music. Copyright May I use Copyrighted Material? If you are unsure how to determine if something is protected by Copyright, you can use this digital slider to help you.For our classroom purposes, you should NOT ever use mainstream, copyrighted music as background in any of your videos or digital stories. Fair Use Where does Fair Use come in? Was the Barack Obama "Hope" Poster fair use?
What's your digital footprint? Take this quiz and find out! I developed this quiz with members of my personal learning network (found at end of post) to get students thinking about their digital footprint. The quiz was created at the request of high school students I spoke with who thought the creation of a such a quiz could lead to a smart conversation about ways students can update their digital footprint so that it is one that leads to college and career success. Check it out with your students and let me know how it goes in the comments below. How’d you do?
Teaching technology: we need a digital revolution in the classroom | Observer editorial | Comment is free | The Observer There's an old saying in business: if you don't know who the sucker in a room is, it's probably you. A similar adage can be applied to technology: if you don't know how to control the systems you're using, these systems are probably controlling you. As John Naughton argues in his special report for this week's New Review, Britain is in danger of producing a generation of technological suckers: people who know how to word process a letter, buy apps for their iPhones and to search in Google, but have no understanding of the inner workings of these services. This is, above all, an issue of education and training. Understanding modern computing means far more than typing at a desktop machine or picking up mail on a smartphone. Digital technologies are becoming an unprecedented force economically as well as socially. Keeping up is one of the most vital economic issues this country faces. This isn't just a pipe dream, either. This is where the government has most to prove.
Technology and Education | Box of Tricks Posted by José Picardo on September 25, 2011 Many of us look at schools in which there is 1:1 iPad or Netbook implementation and drool with envy. “If only our schools were as innovative” or, let’s face it, “as rich, as these other schools” we think to ourselves. However, the other side of the coin is that many teachers also see iPads as nothing more than overrated books that glow. I think there is. You see, we feel that iPads are a great idea but we think that we need to develop pedagogically sound strategies and good practice before we consider buying any more. The comic above, for example, was created in one of these activities using Comic Life, a fantastic and very reasonably priced iPad app. It’s still very early days and our iPad’s use is obviously limited by its uniqueness, as we only have the one tablet. The screenshots below were taken from a e-book (i-book?) So, the iPad certainly glows. What do you think? Cover photo by Leondel José Picardo
The 5 Things All Digital Citizens Should Do Being a digital citizen is a fact of life these days. Everyone must be a well-behaved digital citizen looking to help others. Think of it like the Girl / Boy Scouts but online. First off, let’s take a quick look at what the all-knowing all-powerful Wikipedia says about the topic: People characterizing themselves as digital citizens often use IT extensively, creating blogs, using social networks, and participating in web journalism sites. Personally, I don’t think the definition needs to be limited to people who ‘use IT extensively’ (whatever that means – are they swapping out servers and using desktops as stepping stools or something?) See Also: The Teacher’s Guide To Digital Citizenship These five are just the tip of the iceberg though.
What does it mean to be literate in 2012? | Teacher Network Blog | Guardian Professional As it currently stands, the school ICT and computing curriculum does little, if anything, to stimulate an interest in these key subject areas. From key stage 3 upwards, the focus tends to be on spreadsheets and databases, and an overuse of Word and PowerPoint, geared as it is to enabling pupils to pass the national curriculum and coursework requirements. You would have to be a very keen enthusiast to get to the end of your key stage 4 course and still want to learn more about computers and technology as the curriculum currently defines it. One of the main problems facing teachers in these subject areas, is the gap between what pupils know and do at home, compared with what they know and do at school. Many pupils go home to better computing facilities that they have at school, both in terms of hardware and software, and have much fewer restrictions in what they can and cannot access at home compared with school. Could you be one of our bloggers?