"Welcome back to iPad Summer Camp. Whether your summer is relaxing and filled with free time or packed with busy things (like me - working on a master's degree!), it's important to take some time to play with some of the technology that you might be using next year. If you haven't been following along, check out the introductory post and the first project. Otherwise, onwards to collaborative writing!"
"Empowerment of people through Media and Information Literacy (MIL) is an important prerequisite for fostering equitable access to information and knowledge and promoting free, independent and pluralistic media and information systems.
Media and Information Literacy recognizes the primary role of information and media in our everyday lives. It lies at the core of freedom of expression and information - since it empowers citizens to understand the functions of media and other information providers, to critically evaluate their content, and to make informed decisions as users and producer of information and media content.
Information Literacy and Media Literacy are traditionally seen as separate and distinct fields. UNESCO's strategy brings together these two fields as a combined set of competencies (knowledge, skills and attitude) necessary for life and work today. MIL considers all forms of media and other information providers such as libraries, archive, museums and Internet irrespective of technologies used"
"Learning technologies change student-resource interactions not only by the amount of resources that are now available to students, but also by the quality of the resources.
Instead of students being limited to the textbook they receive from their school, that may or may not be outdated, they now have access to resources from literally around the world. Websites like Project Gutenberg and the National Archives give students access to millions of resources, in various forms of media, on just about any topic they could imagine.
With that being said, quantity does not necessarily mean quality. For every respectable source of information online, there's an endless amount of second rate information. Teaching students how to find valid and reliable sources of information is paramount to education in the digital age. However, I don't believe it stops there."
"In New Haven, Connecticut, where I live with my husband and two sons, we are lucky to have nearby the Eli Whitney Museum. This place is the opposite of a please don't touch repository of fine art. It's an "experimental learning workshop" where kids engage in an essential but increasingly rare activity: they make stuff. Right now, looking around my living room, I can see lots of the stuff made there by my older son: a model ship that can move around in water with the aid of a battery-powered motor he put together; a "camera obscura" that can project a real-world scene onto a wall in a darkened room; a wooden pinball game he designed himself. (You can view an archive of Eli Whitney Museum projects here.)"
"Yesterday when I posted "How to Control What Students Can Do on iPad Using Guided Access", somebody emailed me asking for an iPad basics guide to share with her students. I have had a look at my archive and found this wonderful presentation.The slideshow below features the essential and basic tips iPad beginners need to know about in order to tap into the full potential of this versatile device."
"3 Reasons Why Faculty Meetings Are a Waste of Time
By Peter DeWitt on April 10, 2015 6:50 AM
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Many school leaders walk into a faculty meeting with a single idea of how they want to move forward and walk out with the same idea. That's telling...
John Hattie talks a great deal about the Politics of Distraction, which means we focus on adult issues, and not enough time...if ever...on learning. That is happening around the U.S. for sure. Recently the Assembly of NY State only furthered those distractions, which you can read about here, which means that school leaders and teachers have to work harder to maintain a focus on learning.
Quite frankly, well before mandates and accountability, school leaders focused on the politics of distraction and not on learning. Compliance is not new in schools. Faculty meetings were seen as a venue to get through and something that teachers were contractually obligated to attend.
During these days of endless measures of compliance, principals can do a great deal to make sure they don't model the same harmful messages to staff that politicians are sending to teachers. Jim Knight calls that "Freedom within form." In Talk Like Ted, Carmine Gallo quotes Marissa Mayer (CEO of Yahoo) when he writes,
"Creativity is often misunderstood. People often think of it in terms of artistic work - unbridled, unguided effort that leads to beautiful effect. If you look deeper, however, you'll find that some of the most inspiring art forms - haikus, sonatas, religious paintings- are fraught with constraints. (p. 190)"
Clearly, constraints have a wide definition. There is a clear difference between the constraints of compliance and the stupidity of the legislation just passed by the assembly in NY. As we move forward, principals still are charged...or at least should be...with the job of making sure they offer part...inspiration, part...teacher voice...and a great deal of focus on learning.
There is never a more important tim
"This is an archived Google Hangout video and audio recording of a STEMseeds interview with K-4 elementary STEM teacher Kylie Sanders (@piedmontstem) on April 4, 2015. We discussed STEM lesson plans and project ideas, Kylie's experiences as a first year "traveling" STEM teacher, challenges aligning lessons to standards and more! Amy Loeffelholz shared updates from her "single gender" STEM Club experiments this semester, and everyone discussed their latest classroom lessons and projects. Check out our shownotes for links to referenced resources."
"Creatubbles is a global platform for sharing and interacting with children's visual art. I believe this is a tool many of us having been looking for a long time.
Designed for elementary through middle school-age kiddos, the platform allows young artists to safely showcase, archive and share their creative work.
It also allows them to discover, to be inspired by, and to interact with the work of others."
"If you're looking for some new books to read this summer, take a look at the Open Library which is a part of the Internet Archive. The Open Library is a collection of more than one million free ebook titles. The collection is cataloged by a community of volunteer online librarians. The ebooks in the Open Library can be read online, downloaded to your computer, read on Kindle and other ereader devices, and embedded into other sites. Some of the ebooks, like Treasure Island, can also be listened to through the Open Library."
"NASA's website full of excellent educational resources. I just did a quick look through my archives and over the last few year I've written about NASA-related topics more than sixty times. Here are five of the most popular NASA resources for teachers and students that I've covered over the years."
"You probably are already working on your digital toolkit making it ready for the start of a new school year. Part of your preparation will definitely consist of making decision on the kind of web applications and mobil apps you will be incorporating in your teaching. This means that you need to have a fairly decent knowledge of educational web tools out there and the potentialities they can offer to your instruction. To this end and to help you make informed decisions about the technology to use in your class, we went ahead and did some digging into our archive and curated this collection comprising some of the best educational Chrome apps out there. We hope you will find it useful. Enjoy"