EST430

"This guide is specifically for teachers who are interested in finding out more about Twitter and even jumping in to the Twittersphere themselves. It is made up of a series of videos from teachers who use Twitter all the time, so it was 'crowd sourced.' Meaning people in the crowd each added a little until there was a whole. Pretty cool stuff really. You can hit the About page to find out who is responsible for all of this... :-)"

"Social media offers some great opportunities for learning in the classroom, bringing together the ability to collaborate, access worldwide resources, and find new and interesting ways to communicate in one easily accessible place. Teachers around the world have found innovative ways to use Twitter as a teaching tool (including TeachThought's favorite), and we've shared many of these great ideas here with you. Read on, and we'll explore 60 inspiring ways that teachers and students can put Twitter to work in the classroom."

"Recently, a high school teacher sent me the following question via Edmodo: Hey Miguel :) Can you tell me where to look to share a Youtube clip with my Lang &GovEco edmodo students? I found one I'd like to post for the first week. Thanks for all you are doing to help us utilize technology more effectively.  At first, I thought the response might be pretty easy but then realized there were several ways to get this done. This blog entry illustrates 4 of those approaches on how to add video to Edmodo."

A great post from Stephen Downes looking at assessment via contribution rather than collection/regurgitation.

This fascinating curated space from the UK provides a range of content around the topic of creativity. You can "Tailor your experience and have local creative partners, and content recommended by similar users, brought to the top. You can also recommend content and shape the Portal for others."

"Vannevar Bush foreshadowed the impact that such technology would have on our contemporary lives. By doing so, Bush inspired critical aspects of current online tools, including the hyperlink and the World Wide Web. Bush's vision directly influenced researchers to create digital technology we nowadays consider commonplace. Today's equivalent of Bush's breakthrough is just as radical, except it's far beyond the conceptual stage and is already in extensive development. This technology is termed "Augmented Reality" (AR). AR has the potential to act as a harbinger of future hi-tech transformations whilst irrevocably altering the basic nature of everyday life."

"I am still amazed at the amount of educators, who believe that Twitter holds NO VALUE for their professional learning. Many hold on to the belief that Twitter is a waste of time, used to follow celebrities, listen to gossip and bad hair day complaints. If YOU were able to get past that initial Twitter reputation, diving into the Twittersphere can be scary, OVERWHELMING and participating in this global conversation platform does not necessarily come naturally to everybody."

"At the start of the 21st century only half of all school classrooms had Internet access, compared to 98% today. The proliferation and sheer breadth of accessibility that the Internet offers has in many ways redefined the process of "growing up" - this graphic explores this redefinition and provides insight into not just how we learn stuff, but also what we learn from a young age now that we have computers."

"Oxford Owl is a FREE website built to support you with your child's learning. To help you along the way, you'll find age-specific reading and maths tips and activities, FREE eBooks, and lots of fun ideas to really bring your child's learning to life. You will also find support and advice on a range of questions you may have - including helping your child with their phonics, motivating boys to read and ensuring your child is doing their best in maths."

"Edmodo educators gathered online across the globe for a remarkable day of professional development. Teachers shared, inspired, and showcased ways they are using Edmodo and other digital tools in the classroom." These are the videos

"Search engines such as Google and popular cloud computing services may have been "sued out of existence" if they started in Australia, while consumers who make remixes or mash-ups of copyright songs and videos are also breaching the law. These are just some of the glaring issues with the Copyright Act that have been raised today by the Australian Law Reform Commission (ALRC) and copyright experts. The ALRC has released a new issues paper for its inquiry into whether Australia's copyright laws have kept up with the digital age."

"During its education event in January, Apple unveiled its plans to revolutionize the K-12 classroom with the iPad, electronic textbooks, a revamped version of iTunes U that supports content for K-12 schools as well as higher education, and tools for educators to create their own digital content using iBooks Author and iTunes U. In the intervening months, schools and districts around the country have made significant investments in iPads, including the San Diego Unified School District, which invested $15 million in 26,000 iPads for its students. Those sales created a record quarter for Apple in the K-12 education market. With the back to school season upon us, it's clear that the massive iPad deployments will give Apple the opportunity to disrupt the classroom in the ways it has whole industries and, in many ways, that's a good thing."

"Two awesome courses in one awesome channel: John Green teaches you world history and Hank Green teaches you biology."

Online Colleges has posted an interesting new infographic that looks at the connection between apps and education. The chart, which we've included here, suggests that the use of smartphones and tablets will only increase in the future, which really shouldn't come as a surprise.

"Innovation is the currency of progress. In our world of seismic changes, innovation has become a holy grail that promises to shepherd us through these uncertain and challenging times. And there isn't a more visible symbol of innovation than the iPad. It's captured the hearts and minds of disparate subcultures and organizations. In education it's been widely hailed as a revolutionary device, promising to transform education as we know it. Unfortunately, it's not as simple as bulk purchasing iPads and deploying them into the wilds of education. Innovation can't be installed. It has to be grown -- and generally from the margins. "

"According to Andreas Schleicher, there is no evidence from the PISA data yet of a consistent relationship between the use of education technology and superior student performance.  That, however, certainly does not mean that no such relationship will exist in the future, just that it hasn't happened yet, at least not at the scale required to show up in the PISA surveys. "

"With budgets tight, many schools are hoping to bring technology into the classroom without having to shell out for a device for each student. A solution for many has been to make classes BYOD (short for "bring your own device"), which allows students to bring laptops, tablets, and smartphones from home and to use them in the classroom and share them with other students. It's a promising idea, especially for schools that don't have big tech budgets, but it has met with some criticism from those who don't think that it's a viable long-term or truly budget-conscious decision. Whether that's the case is yet to be seen, but these stories of schools that have tried out BYOD programs seem to be largely positive, allowing educators and students to embrace technology in learning regardless of the limited resources they may have at hand."

"Call it the "learning paradox": the more you struggle and even fail while you're trying to master new information, the better you're likely to recall and apply that information later. The learning paradox is at the heart of "productive failure," a phenomenon identified by Manu Kapur, a researcher at the Learning Sciences Lab at the National Institute of Education of Singapore. Kapur points out that while the model adopted by many teachers and employers when introducing others to new knowledge - providing lots of structure and guidance early on, until the students or workers show that they can do it on their own - makes intuitive sense, it may not be the best way to promote learning. Rather, it's better to let the neophytes wrestle with the material on their own for a while, refraining from giving them any assistance at the start."

"Let's face it. The easier and more automated I can make certain things I do, the better off I am. While I haven't perfected my "Get Out Of Bed, Dress Me, Make Me Bacon" machine...yet, I have found a site that puts the power of the Internet to work for me. If This, Than That (or IFTTT) is a powerful website where you set up triggers and recipes to do tasks for you. You connect IFTTT to your favorite web tools like Twitter, Facebook, Pocket, Foursquare, etc and set up statements that if this happens, than that should happen."

LinkBunch is a free service that you can use to quickly send a group of links to your friends, colleagues, and students. To use the service just visit LinkBunch, enter the links that you want to share, and click "Bunch." When you click on "Bunch" you will be given a URL to share with anyone you want to see the links in your bunch. When someone clicks on the URL for your Bunch he or she will be able to open the links you bunched together.