Evernote: A Great Tool for Organizing Teachers & Students! If you are not familiar with Evernote, now is the time. Evernote is a free web tool and application that helps you to organize your notes, emails, images, and, well…. everything. It’s hard to describe, but this 50-second video highlights some of the key features and abilities. Evernote can be a great application for teachers, both to keep yourself coordinated and to facilitate student learning. I want to highlight a few ways that I have employed Evernote not only to make my life a little easier as a teacher, but to help my students and my classroom stay more focused and organized. First, if you need to familiarize yourself with a quick tutorial, try out the “Getting Started Guide For Teachers.” Organizing myself Teachers have tons of “stuff” on our plates. The key to Evernote success is that you set up some basic parameters first. Using Evernote with students Evernote is also a great tool for students to organize all of their own content. Should you go Premium? Concluding thoughts
Tech Integration Matrix What is the Arizona Technology Integration Matrix? The Technology Integration Matrix (TIM) illustrates how teachers can use technology to enhance learning for K-12 students. The TIM incorporates five interdependent characteristics of meaningful learning environments: active, collaborative, constructive, authentic, and goal directed (Jonassen, Howland, Moore, & Marra, 2003). What is in each cell? Within each cell of the Matrix one will find two lessons plans with a short video of the lesson. Download PDF of the Technology Integration Matrix Print this page Characteristics fo the Learning Environment ← → Levels of Technology Integration Into the Curriculum How should the Technology Integration Matrix be used? The TIM is designed to assist schools and districts in evaluating the level of technology integration in classrooms and to provide teachers with models of how technology can be integrated throughout instruction in meaningful ways. What is the history behind the tool?
WDWDT: A New App That Keeps Teachers, Students, Parents In Sync There’s a new classroom messaging app that goes beyond your typical mobile classroom app. It’s called WDWDT (stands for What Did We Do Today? ) and is a messaging service custom-built for students, parents, teachers, and others to stay in the loop about what’s been happening in class lately. You won’t need to send home exit slips or other notifications on paper and hope for parents to see and sign them anymore. How The WDWDT App Works The app is beautifully made and from the founder of CoveritLive, a service that lets you liveblog an event. It lets you: Create surveys for parents like end-of-year polls, solicit feedback about field trips, etc. As you can see, the app is quite robust and quite free. How WDWDT Can Be Used Situation #1 (it’s 3:30pm, in a schoolyard…anywhere in the world…in any language) Dad: “Hey honey, how was your day today?” Situation #2: Parent’s are always starving for more information about their child’s education and development. Situation #4 Mr. Situation #5 Situation #6
Technology is a Tool, NOT a Learning Outcome. Last weekend, I whipped up a hand-drawn image on the role that technology should play in teaching and learning spaces. Over the last five days, it’s been viewed over 4,000 times on Flickr and shared/favorited/retweeted over 500 times on Twitter. Thought you might want to see it too: (click to enlarge) The motivation behind the image was to remind teachers that carefully thinking through just what we want our kids to know and be able to do is the FIRST step that we need to take when making choices about the role that technology plays in our teaching. Sometimes I think we get blinded by the digital shine that comes off of new gadgets, tools and services. That just isn’t true, y’all: Kids AREN’T motivated by technology. Digital tools CAN make all of that work possible — but until we start seeing technology as nothing MORE than a tool, we’ll keep wasting time and cash on products that do nothing to change learning in meaningful ways for our kids. #nuffsaid Related Radical Reads:
PDF Max Freemium Choosing The Best Digital Content 7 Ways To Use Your iPad In The Classroom 23.21K Views 0 Likes There's a plethora of ways to use your iPad in the classroom but this infographic details some insanely useful apps, methods, and ideas for all teachers. 5 Quick Visual Guides To Earth Day 2013 4.01K Views 0 Likes Want to teach about Earth Day or create an environmentally-friendly project for students?
My 24 Most-Used Education Apps (What Are Yours?) 16 Technology Leaders I Follow On Twitter 5.11K Views 0 Likes I often get asked to list off my favorite people I follow on Twitter. That's a big question with no real specific answer. 12 Ways To Integrate (Not Just Use) Technology In Education There are a couple dozen ways to ‘use’ technology in education. There are also a couple dozen ways to integrate technology in education. Think those two things are the same? Think that throwing a few iPads and a few Edudemic blog posts into a classroom is the best way to launch a 1:1 initiative? Situation 1 You’re a school principal and decide to make the Apple iPad a cornerstone of your school’s curriculum. Situation 2 You’re a school principal and decide to make the Apple iPad a cornerstone of your students’ learning. Weigh In Which principal would you want?
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