Group items tagged

"Being a part of conversations on Twitter help me reflect better on my practices and assist me in finding new tools for staff and students. "

"A small study, carried out by Michelle Riconscente, an assistant professor of education at the University of Southern California, offers some promising results, even with the necessary caveat that it was funded by the Motion Math app with a grant from the Noyce Foundation."

"Individual Education Programs (IEP) can be difficult to put in place at the best of times. IEP's are sometime a source of concern and frustration. The more informed people are about the IEP process the better the IEP can be. Parents will normally work with teachers to develop a plan to help the students succeed in school. The IEP assists this process by describing the goals the whole team sets for a student during the school year, as well as any special support needed to help achieve them. Here are a number of apps that make managing and collecting data for the IEP Process just that little bit easier."

"...new research presented by Assistant Professor of Education Kristin Redington Bennett in the December/January issue of Learning & Leading With Technology, the magazine of the International Society for Technology in Education."

"Gen i Revolution is an online game designed to help middle school and high school students develop and test their knowledge of concepts in personal finance. Gen i Revolution contains fifteen "missions" in which students have to select "operatives" to assist them. Each mission is designed to help someone make better personal financial decisions. Some of the mission topics include credit, budgeting, and investing for the future. "

"I knew it was going to be an interesting phone call (any call usually is before 8:00 in I.T.). When the teacher asked why she couldn't get to "insertwebsite.com" and her kids were arriving in 15 minutes for the first BYOD pilot class, I took my first deep breath of the morning…. The second call came about 8:25… She was still trying to get students logged into their devices… A technology specialist and a tech were trying to assist…. Some had limited connectivity to our wireless; others were trying to reach their carrier network, which didn't have a good signal in that part of the building. The app she was trying to get everyone on wasn't working and wouldn't pull up for everyone… "

"Smartphones and tablets, with their flat glass touch screens and nary a texture anywhere, may not seem like the best technological innovation for people who cannot see. But advocates for the blind say the devices could be the biggest assistive aid to come along since Braille was invented in the 1820s."

"The Bard can be daunting for most students, not to mention for many teachers teaching his works in the classroom. Since Shakespeare will always be a part of our curriculum, these online tools and apps can assist teachers prepare lessons and lead their students through an exploration of Shakespeare's canon with enthusiasm."

"An iPad can be a teacher's very handy assistant! Last year I published an infographic titled "iPad as the Teacher's Pet" and I have updated it to version 2.0. It's all about what can be done by Pad-using educators, whether or not their students have iPads. It is divided into seven sections: Show on a Big Screen Manage the Classroom Assess Student Work Interact with Students Manage Your Files Make Instructional Media Learn New Things"

"The educator's role has or should change in this age of information abundance or Education 2.0-3.0. The educator's role has always been to model and demonstrate effective learning, but somewhere along the line, the major role of the educator became that of content and knowledge disseminater. Now in this information age content is freely and abundantly available, it is more important than ever to assist learners in the process of how to learn."

"The MIT Admissions Dept is making it possible for young makers to share their projects as part of the application process, starting this year. Dr. Dawn Wendell, Assistant Director of Admissions at MIT, said that a new Maker Portfolio supplement on the MIT Admissions web site will provide a structured way for students to submit information about a diverse set of projects that they have participated in."

"For teachers who are genuinely interested in helping their visually impaired students excel, here are some tools that you may want to consider making use of (if you aren't already doing so)."

"The iPad is a great tool for coding.  Particularly for developing the skills and concepts in the junior years around directional language, understanding sprites and developing the building blocks of coding before moving onto traditional desktop coding software. Here is a list of great apps on the iPad to assist coding and robotics in the classroom.  If you would like to learn a great deal more about coding and robotics in the classroom I an strongly recommend getting a copy of this excellent eBook."

"The iPad is a great device for assistive technology and text to speech is one of the most often used accessibility feature by teachers in special education and general education classrooms. Many teachers are not aware that it exists, but it does, and it has evolved to become a very usable solution with lots of valuable options to customize it to meet your needs. Here's what you need to know to get started with text to speech functionality on your iPad."

"A "traditionalist" school, founded with the explicit intention of bringing the values of private education to a deprived corner of north-west London, has decided to stop setting pupils homework. Michaela Community School was set up by Katharine Birbalsingh, the headteacher renowned for receving a standing ovation at the 2010 Conservative Party conference, after she decried the state of English education. But now Michaela's assistant headteacher, Joe Kirby, has explained that the school has decided to "replace…setting, chasing, checking, marking and logging homework with revision, reading and online maths"."

""NSF funds compelling ideas, help test them and helps bring them to wider audiences," said Janet Kolodner, who ran the Cyberlearning program at NSF from 2011 to 2014. "We're interested in helping researchers envision the technologies that will impact learning in a decade and then assist them in transitioning the best ideas from research to practice. On top of that, we want to help scientists overcome the complexity of moving research ideas to real world use." The speakers in the lecture series, all leading cyberlearning scholars, represent the range of technologies, approaches and research practices being pursued today. They're only a small fraction of the remarkable projects being developed and tested at universities across the U.S. - in education departments, computer science departments, robotics labs and even neuroscience departments - but together, they represent the forces transforming what education may look like in the future. "

"There are two main methods for capturing text while using your iPad.  One way is by using Siri to carry out an ever growing variety of commands and tasks.  The other method is through dictation accessed via your iPad keyboard.  While Siri is a perfectly capable tool to use for dictation, and might be your preferred way to capture text, we have found that our favorite digital assistant especially shines when asked to answer questions and perform tasks.  Thomas recently wrote about some of his favorite uses for Siri on his iPad.  Dictation, however, is more of a quick and dirty way to collect your thoughts and have them transposed right onto your iPad screen whenever you typically would need to enter text in an app.  Think of it as an alternative to typing.  While a very helpful tool, there are some initial challenges to dictating effectively on your iPad or other iOS device.  The manner in which we speak doesn't always translate exactly to how we write-or even how we collect our thoughts.  As a result we've collected some tips to help you be the most efficient at using dictation."

There are a growing number of teachers and schools using game design to enhance student learning and provide an engaging, motivational tool to assist them in achieving this outcome.

"Think Tank: Flip-thinking - the new buzz word sweeping the US "

Lecture first via online video, then set the work in class. Teacher in a better position to assist and enable learning than lecturing in class and setting homework

For the next 4 days, we will explore ways to become mentors for our colleagues. As coaches/mentors, you will assist your peers in identifying ways that technology can strengthen classroom curriculum and enhance students' academic achievement. You will also help your colleagues to develop the necessary technology skills and instructional strategies needed to integrate technology into teaching and learning.