Web Tools Blog Series: Tools to Help Students Collaborate In previous blogs, we focused on web tools to collect and organize content and tools to help students create and present ideas. In this module, we focus on how to use web tools to foster collaboration. Randy Nelson (Pixar University) provides a brilliant definition of collaboration by using two principles of improv. First, accept every offer and second, make your partner look good. When teams collaborate on a project, they accept each others' ideas without judgment and "plus" them -- they ask, what can we do with this. I found this list of "principles" and think we can learn a lot more about collaboration from improv. Principle 4: Shut up and Listen Good improvisers are not necessarily more clever, or more quick-witted. Principle 5: Action beats inaction Don't talk about doing it, do it. Principle 8: There are no mistakes Earlier I said that we have to be willing to make mistakes. As a quick example, watch this video (caution, one bad word near the end). Example Projects Tools
5 Reasons to Incorporate Technology into Your Classroom | Capella University Blog Think that integrating technology into the classroom will only distract students and marginalize educators? Think again. Since students are already interested and engaged in technology, teachers can harness that attention for educational purposes. 1. Using a computer, tablet, or other device encourages self-directed learning and creates an active participant in the learning process, rather than the passive learners found in a lecture environment. 2. No one learns in the same way or at the same pace, but technology can level-set the classroom. 3. In a research project conducted by the U.S. 4. Technology is an integral part of how we work and live. 5. Using technologies like virtual lesson plans and internet resources can help free up time — both in developing and delivering curriculum. As an educator, integrating technology into the curriculum is key. Make sure you understand: An easy way to introduce technology is to start small. Resources to Get You Started Categories: Education
poida QR Codes Can Do That? There are tons of quick and easy ways to integrate technology into your instruction -- with powerful results. I've been a fan of Quick Response (QR) codes in education for years and even wrote a book all about how they can be used to promote deeper learning in your classroom. When speaking to teachers about these black-and-white squares, it's so much fun to see the "aha" moments as we explore different ways to use scannable technology in the classroom. This list of five things that you may not know about QR codes contains some simple ideas that definitely pack a punch. These tips include strategies for differentiating instruction, distributing materials, and keeping families up to date on classroom activities. 1. QR codes can talk! Another quick option is using a web tool like Vocaroo, which lets users record their voice with the microphone on their device. 2. Since a QR code is connected to a web address, you can take a scanner to any location on the internet. 3. 4. 5.
Cram.com: Create and Share Online Flashcards Does Technology Make Us Smarter or Dumber? Can a calculator make you smarter? The QAMA calculator can. You use it just like a regular calculator, plugging in the numbers of the problem you want to solve — but QAMA won’t give you the answer until you provide an accurate estimate of what that answer will be. If your estimate is way off, you’ll have to go back to the problem and see where you went wrong. If your estimate is close, QAMA (developed by Ilan Samson, an “inventor-in-residence” at the University of California, San Diego) will serve up the precise solution, and you can compare it to your own guess. Either way, you’ll learn a lot more than if you simply copied the answer that a calculator spit out. Ever since journalist Nicholas Carr posed a provocative question — “Is Google Making Us Stupid?” Calculators. (MORE: Does Listening to Music While Working Make You Less Productive?) Auto-complete. Texting. (MORE: Why Kids Should Learn Cursive) Search engines. (MORE: Remember More Without Trying) Email. Websites.
48 Ultra-Cool Summer Sites for Kids and Teachers A good majority of northern hemisphere and international schools are winding down the 2011-12 school year, and doors will be closing as the students and teachers take off on their summer adventures. Here is a list of great sites for kids and teachers to keep you happily productive and learning this summer. These are in no way in any order of personal preference or coolness. Happy summer! 1) Magic Tree House If your students like The Magic Tree House series (and let's be honest, who doesn't?) 2) Toporopa Can't afford that summer vacation schlepping around Europe? 3) ReadWriteThink Printing Press ReadWriteThink creates a lot of great educational resources. 4) Spell With Flickr Spell With Flickr is a simple site that allows you to enter any word, and will then create a photo representation of that word using pictures from Flickr. 5) Freeology 6) Tagxedo Tagxedo is a Wordle-esque site that allows students to create beautiful word clouds. 7) Learn Your Tables 8) Virtual Sistine Chapel 9) Cool Math
How to Integrate Technology When technology integration in the classroom is seamless and thoughtful, students not only become more engaged, they begin to take more control over their own learning, too. Effective tech integration changes classroom dynamics, encouraging student-centered project-based learning. Think about how you are using technology with your students. Are they employing technology daily in the classroom, using a variety of tools to complete assignments and create projects that show a deep understanding of content? If your answer is "No," is it because you lack enough access to technology? This article contains the following sections: Handhelds Go to Class: Teacher Josh Barron and one of his students go through the strange-looking rite of "beaming" information to each other. Getting Started The first step in successful tech integration is recognizing the change that may need to happen inside of yourself and in your approach to teaching. Back to Top Integrating Technology Across the Access Spectrum
An Oral History Of Apple Design: 1992–2013 Most efforts to explain design at Apple end up reducing a complex 37-year history to bromides about simplicity, quality, and perfection--as if those were ambitions unique to Apple alone. So Fast Company set out to remedy that deficiency through an oral history of Apple's design, a decoding of the signature as told by the people who helped create it. A longer version of the story that includes material not published elsewhere is available in the Byliner original ebook, Design Crazy. "This is our signature," Apple's gauzy television ads proclaim, referring to the familiar words that the company stamps on the undersides of its products: designed by Apple in California. The ads fall in the grand Apple tradition--beginning with the "1984" Super Bowl spot--of seeming to say a great deal while revealing little. The singular Cupertino computer company is one of the most intensely competitive, pathologically secretive organizations in the world. So Fast Company set out to remedy that deficiency.
PBL and Culturally Responsive Instruction Cultural responsiveness in the classroom can often be written off as something patched by a quick fix, especially in an English classroom where swapping a traditional (read: Dead White Guy) text with something written by a person from an underrepresented background can take the place of more significant cultural response. Don't get me wrong, I think that putting Zora Neale Hurston, Chang Rae Lee, and Junot Diaz into "the cannon" is an important social step for our discipline, but doing this at the expense of also having substantive structural changes in the classroom is a temptation that one has to be careful of embracing. As my colleagues at Sammamish High School and I have struggled with development and implementation of a problem-based learning (PBL) curriculum across disciplines, a great number of the discussions have involved a philosophical look at the place of seven key elements within our instructional framework. Inclusive Cultural Response Reactive Cultural Response
Integrating Tech: More Than Just Having Computers Technology has become part of the educational process, but too often it is separate and not integrated into the learning experience.Today, Education World offers easy and painless ways to integrate technology into your daily routine. Included: Nineteen activities and nearly 50 Web sites. Integrating technology into the curriculum is a priority -- if not a mandate -- in most schools today. Most educational technology experts agree, however, that technology should be integrated, not as a separate subject or as a once-in-a-while project, but as a tool to promote and extend student learning on a daily basis. The challenge, of course, is in finding ways to use technology -- and to help students use it -- that don't take time away from core subjects. For many teachers, a lack of personal experience with technology presents an additional challenge. Used properly, however, technology can be a tool for teachers as well as for students. Access an online weather forecast.