3 EdTech Tips (resolutions?) for 2012 Tis the season to reflect on the coming year, so I humbly offer three tips for those of you brave enough to make resolutions – tips to help you take your “technology using educator” journey to the next level... Tip/Resolution #1 – Find or be an edtech mentor/friend with another educator at your school. Lest we forget that not all of life is virtual and online, local professional colleagues who share a common interest (edtech) and ambition (helping students learn better) can support, challenge, and excite one another in ways that email and threaded discussions cannot. The spontaneous, “Hey, take a look at this…!” Personally, I’ve found that “looking over the shoulder” is a great way to learn. Tip/Resolution #2 – Try Twitter (really!) I continue to be amazed at how many great educators are using Twitter to share and connect with one another. Go to and create an account Search for #edtech or #edchat, two of my favorite search terms.
Flipped Classroom - my thoughts on it, some other ideas, & infographic "Flipped Classroom" is a classroom model where the teacher works with students on projects and what would be typically homework instead of a lecture and the students get the "lecture" at home, usually through a video (like from Kahn Academy, or made by the teacher, or from Discovery Education). The proponents of this model say that it offers the teacher more time to work with students on projects and applying the knowledge, rather than spending time delivering that knowledge. The opponents say that it moves too much work to the student at home and many students don't have access to the resources, like broadband internet and a computer, to watch these videos. In my opinion, this is nothing new. Teachers assigned reading out of the textbook for homework, and now they want to assign video lectures to watch. What's so different? I have students who don't have the time, computer, internet access, or ability to watch videos at home. I use lectures in my class. Related: Project Based Learning
12 Tech Tools That Will Transform The Way You Teach! In a Simple K12 blog post titled “17 Signs Your Classroom is Behind the Times” they provide a list of things that characterize a classroom that has fallen behind. Number 16 lists a variety of technology tools that every educator should know about. As I read the list, I realized that although many teachers are interested in and excited about technology integration, they are too busy to explore all the new technology tools available online. This blog post is dedicated to all of the overworked teachers who just don’t have the time to seek out this information. 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. [Note: StoryJumper is another online digital storybook maker worth checking out!] 8. 9. 10. 11. 12.
The Complete Educator’s Guide to Using Google Reader Love it!? Hate it!? Doesn’t really matter what you think of the new Google Reader interface….. What does matter is they’ve changed some of the Google Reader functionality educators like to use. So here’s my essential guide for what educators now need to know about using Google Reader. Click on the following links to learn more: Intro to RSS and Google Reader One of the smartest things you can do is learn how to use RSS well if you plan to work online with your students. RSS isn’t dead, isn’t hard to learn and is an essential time saving tool for reading latest students’ work in one location quickly. RSS is an acronym which stands for Really Simple Syndication. In simple terms, RSS is a simple and effective way of keeping in touch when new information is added to a website without having to visit the website to check for new updates. The most common RSS reader used is Google Reader. How it works is you subscribe to your favorite website using the RSS feed in Google Reader. Please note : 1. 2. 3.
ROCK HILL | Technology 'hooks' students at Northwestern High ROCK HILL — South Carolina is at risk of a water shortage. With $500,000 in grants available for innovative conservation projects, it's up to the students in Bryan Coburn's introduction to engineering course at Northwestern High to devise solutions. Armed with smartphones and an array of Web tools, the teens spent much of last semester on that hypothetical assignment. By the project's end, they had created elaborate online portfolios showcasing their research, 3D designs and multimedia packages. Students said they never felt so enthralled by school work. Some were inspired to become engineers. "It was amazing," freshman Parker Hooten said. That's the kind of school experience that Coburn, the state's Teacher of the Year in 2009, and the founders of a national program want to replicate. Coburn is among a cadre of celebrated teachers rethinking how to prepare students to excel in an age of rapid innovation and global uncertainty. The project is called "The Model Classroom." An important role
ChronoZoom ChronoZoom is an educational tool for teachers and students who want to put historical events in perspective. A great many resources have been created already in ChronoZoom for your enjoyment and enlightenment. Start Exploring Use ChronoZoom to get a perspective of the extensive scale of time and historical events relative to what happened around the world. New Teacher Resources RT @MSFTResearch: See how #Chronozoom helps students “think historically” & travel though time with 3 newly created curriculum modules http… #chronozoom is a valuable tool for illustrating Climate Change: @metanexus Anyone can author their small or Big History on the 14 Billion year timeline at - an open source project. @BillGates Congratulations to the Big History Project. RT @BillGates: Big History is my favorite course ever. You don't have any favorite timelines yet.
SCIL Snapshot Tours — Calendar Each year SCIL hosts many hundreds of educators and leaders from around Australia and the world, who come to see a post-industrial model of schooling for themselves at Northern Beaches Christian School in Terrey Hills in Sydney. Our Snapshot Tours give visitors a taste of the rich learning environment at NBCS; a combination of re-imagined physical space, learner-owned technology, personalised learning, collaboration and innovation. Snapshot Tours run for 1.5 hours. Due to high demand, we request that no more than 3 people per school participate on a tour. RSVP is essential. For larger groups, please contact us for more information regarding a personalised tour. Alternatively, for a more in-depth visit, please consider a full ‘Immersion Day’ where we take your team behind the scenes and into the change journey itself.
The Technology Integration Answer...Well Almost Earlier this year our district adopted the TPACK model of technology integration. What is TPACK you ask? Basically, it takes the approach that planning for technology integration shouldn't be an event. It should be something that adds to what we are already doing. Through the use of Activity Types, teachers can take the activities they are already doing and match them up with appropiate technologies that may or may not work, depending on the context of learning. You can view this presentation to learn more. According to the feedback we have gotten from the folks who have embraced it has been overwhelmingly positive. Recently I came across something that you can also use to make technology integration easier for you and your staff. There are actually 2 that you can take a look at. The first is the original from The Florida Center For Instructional Technology at the University of South Florida. The other is an adaption from Northern Arizona University. About Steven Steven W.
ePEARL click to enlarge The ePEARL Learning Process guides students through the creation process, allowing enough flexibility for truly creative work and just enough scaffolding to keep students on the right track. There is a text editor and an audio recorder for the creation of work. Readings, music pieces, or oral presentations may be recorded. The software also offers the ability to attach work created with other software, so it can accommodate any kind of digital work a student creates in class, including scanned images of paper-based work. Before work is created, students are encouraged to set their goals for this work, and may attach learning logs, evaluation rubrics and study plans to keep track of their learning process as it takes place.
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