Group items tagged

"This must seem like a contradictory title and an odd one especially coming from me, as I am an educational technology consultant and writer, but to be honest I stand by this statement and I'd like to tell you why."

"Alan November is recognized internationally as a leader in education technology. He began his career as an oceanography teacher and dorm counselor at an island reform school for boys in Boston Harbor. He has been a director of an alternative high school, computer coordinator, technology consultant, and university lecturer. As practitioner, designer, and author, Alan has guided schools, government organizations and industry leaders as they plan to improve quality with technology." This is his address to TEDxNYed.

"An interesting question was raised today during the Effective Teaching and Learning in a Digital Age event at the University of Birmingham. Organised by the Higher Education Academy, the one day conference attracted around 40-50 people from a number of universities across the UK. One of the invited speakers was Professor John Traxler (University of Wolverhampton) who spoke on how mobile technologies are extending and enhancing learning. In a 'hot off the press' publication from the HEA, which he also edited, John writes about mobile technologies, (of which he includes smart-phones, media players, games consoles, netbooks and handheld computers):"

"Working in technology administration, I have always bowed down to uniformity. I can't help it…it's the way we were all taught in the technology industry. It was routine and comfortable. Everyone got the exact same computer with the same image. Everyone had to login to active directory. Security groups were applied with abandon. I wax nostalgic just thinking about it.Fear of BYOD But those days are coming to an end. This is due to a huge number of factors including ridiculously tight school district budgets, much lower computer prices and cloud computing. I believe more and more schools will soon adopt bring your own device (BYOD) as a matter of economic necessity and recognition of educational potential."

Classrooms have come a long way. There's been an exponential growth in educational technology advancement over the past few years. From overhead projectors to iPads, it's important to understand not only what's coming next but also where it all started. We've certainly come a long way but some things seem hauntingly similar to many years ago. For example, Thomas Edison said in 1925 that "books will soon be obsolete in schools. Scholars will soon be instructed through the eye." I'm pretty sure this is exactly what people are saying these days about the iPad.

A neat set of videos from the ABC looking at the Digital World, Mobile and portable devices, New ways to watch TV, Podcasting and Social Media.

Henrico County Schools System has adopted the TPACK as the Framework for professional development and 21st Century Learning in the Henrico County Schools System.  Henrico County is one of the largest and earliest districts to pioneer and implement a one-to-one initiative.  They have adopted this model as its conceptual framework to guide their progress towards the 21st Century Learning. The following video will set the stage to provide insight into how this school district uses technology for relevant and real-world learning.

"With support from the Governor 's Productivity Investment Fund and the Virginia Department of Education, Radford University and participating schools in southwestern Virginia are exploring how the iPod Touch can be used to enhance effective teaching and learning. As school systems struggle with how best to deal with this cultural and technological shift, it is highly likely that the technology will continue to progress towards more powerful, wireless handheld computers that can deliver high quality, multimedia, computer processing power. " This site has links to games that have been developed as well as videos of iPods in use in schools.

"Tomorrow Microsoft is launching Office 365. Many of you have asked for our perspective, so we thought we'd share some thoughts to help you make an informed choice. Technology inevitably gets more complicated as it gets older. Upgrading platforms and adding features results in systems that are increasingly difficult to manage and complex to use. At times like these, it's worth considering a clean-slate: an approach based on entirely modern technologies, designed for today's world. Here are some things to think about as you compare Google Apps and Office 365:"

"It doesn't seem to matter what age group or demographic that I talk to, kids (and adults) everywhere are fans of Angry Birds. As I was playing around with Angry Birds (yep I'm a fan too), I started thinking about all of the learning that could be happening. I have watched a two year old tell an older sister that "you have to pull down to go up higher". I have watched as kids master this game through trial and error. Being the teacher that I am, I started dreaming up a transdisciplinary lesson with Angry Birds as the base. I happened to be writing an inquiry lesson that has students look at inventions throughout time and thought: the catapult-that is an invention that has technology and concepts that are used even today. This is one of those inspirational moments that comes when you are drifting off to sleep and has you frantically searching for paper and pen to record as fast as the ideas come. So what did I do? I got myself out of bed and went to work sketching out a super awesome plan. Here is the embedded learning that I came up with"

"I'm firmly of the opinion that Information and Communication Technology (ICT) in schools is misplaced and therefore misused. In essence, the way it is conventionally deployed negates much of the potential of ICT, and unless there is a dramatic reappraisal, we won't be witnessing much in the way of learning gains in schools. Here's my argument in two points:"

"So you and your students use the Internet everyday, but are you fluent in its language? Perhaps you've found yourself listening to a "techy" conversation where the terms IP, DNS, or PHP were being used and you wanted to know what those terms mean. What is an IP address? What is a DNS record? And just who is in charge of the Internet? Get answers to those questions and many more in Make Use Of's free ebook How the Internet Works."

"Collaborative schooling is a model where the school collaborates with, and provides direction and support for its homes and community. It recognizes the profound impact the home has upon education and that in most of the students' homes and communities there is a vast, largely untapped 'teaching' capacity. It therefore seeks to integrate the efforts of the home and the school. The school has already recognized the opportunities the network and digital technologies provide for the school to network and work collaboratively with their homes and desired parts of their school community. This is seen in the following:"

So what is the purpose of this site? It's simple. We want to share how technology with people quickly. Each video on the site will be under ten minutes. This is about the same length as my attention span and perfect for showing at the end of a staff meeting. Of course there are some sites like this out there already and we will link to similar sites on the homepage.We may end up having a few different videos on a topic e.g. Beginner's guide to Twitter and Advanced use of Twitter, but generally it will be short and simple. Anyone can upload a video, and you can do this in two ways. Either create a video and upload it to Youtube, Vimeo, Viddler etc and send me the link or email me and I'll give you access to add it to the blog yourself. It all depends on your level of WordPress knowledge really. Obviously some schools have some of these sites banned, so we will try and embed a video from one site and provide a link to others too. To make a video you will need either some screen capture software such as Camtasia or Jing or just use a webcam or video camera. You could be out and about filming, it doesn't need to be a video of a computer screen. the videos can be for 'free' software or for paid-for content, however…they can not be a sales pitch. If I deem the video to be more of an advert than a how-to guide, I will remove it. It should focus on how the software works and how it can be applied in the classroom. You may use these videos wherever you like, in a staff meeting or when working with teachers etc but please just leave us a comment to let us know that they were useful.

"Uploaded by floyda007 on May 15, 2008 Learning to Change Changing to Learn Advancing K-12 Technology Leadership, Consortium for School Networking(COSN) Video" Interesting to see how much has changed since this was created 3 years ago

Since most of today's students can appropriately be labeled as "Digital Learners", why do so many teachers refuse to enter the digital age with their teaching practices?

"Wasn't it just the other day that teachers confiscated cellphones and principals warned about oversharing on MySpace? Now, Erin Olson, an English teacher in Sioux Rapids, Iowa, is among a small but growing cadre of educators trying to exploit Twitter-like technology to enhance classroom discussion. Last Friday, as some of her 11th graders read aloud from a poem called "To the Lady," which ponders why bystanders do not intervene to stop injustice, others kept up a running commentary on their laptops. "

Filament Games is a game production studio that exclusively creates learning games. Our core competency is producing games that combine best practices in commercial game development with key concepts from the learning sciences. Accordingly, our senior staff is comprised of individuals who are equal parts game and instructional designers; a "dual literacy" that allows us to engineer authentic gameplay mechanics (rules and interactions that directly correlate with specific learning objectives). Filament Games was founded in 2005 by education technology expert Dan White, game designer Dan Norton, and software engineer Alex Stone. In the time since, Filament has developed over 30 educational games for clients ranging from National Geographic's JASON Science to Justice Sandra Day O'Connor's iCivics Inc.

"Last week, I read this interesting blog post from Kevin McLaughlin Entitled "Switching off the interactive whiteboard for good". It revisited the argument that IWBs have been a huge waste of taxpayers money, and should be replaced with alternative technologies. The post generated a large number of comments, and even caused Kevin to go over his bandwidth allocation, reminding me of an earlier IWB-related post to this blog, which remains to this day my most commented upon blog post ever! Matthew Pearson then posted a robust defence of IWBs, which again provoked debate in the comments and on Twitter - including the (rather amusing) retitling of Matt's post as "Interactive Whiteboards Are Awesome, It's Just People That Suck"."

"In the TPACK Game, you consider how Technology (T), Pedagogy (P), and Content (C) work together by randomly choosing two of the three (C,P, and T), and thinking deeply to find the third that makes them all work together in a pedagogically sound way to teach the content."