Group items tagged

"During one of my workshops this afternoon at Carondelet High School some asked for suggestions about using QR codes. Here are some of the uses that I suggested."

"One question I seem to get a lot about the iPad is what apps do I recommend that are free. I am hearing from a lot of teachers that they have no way to add paid apps and thus are stuck trying to find free apps. My experience is that many free apps stink. They have many adds, require in app purchases to be useful, or are just junk. I tend to stay away from most free apps. So what are you to do if the district controls adding paid apps? My suggestion is to build relationships with the decision makers. Don't just ask for a bunch of apps, instead provide documentation and purpose for a few apps you would like to have. I know this process takes time and effort but if you can show the purpose and learning you have a much better chance. If you need lesson ideas I suggest checking out my Pinterest page, and three of my favorite Pinterest pages: iPadsammy, TechChef4u, and Sue Gorman. Look for apps and lesson ideas there and modify them to fit your standards and kids. If I was starting from scratch this is the $10 iPad app setup I would push for in my kindergarten classroom. (I will be posting a $20 setup later)"

"As part of our Back-to-School series, we are sharing chapters and excerpts from the Makerspace Playbook: School Edition. Today, an excerpt from Chapter 9, Startup: tips for funding your Makerspace. One idea not shared in the playbook that has come up time and again is having a Make Sale, where you sell some of the items made in the Makerspace. Hillel Posner's students make cutting boards and necklaces in their woodworking class. Casey Shea at Analy High School recoups some of the high cost of buying and maintaining the school's laser cutter with an annual yearbook-engraving fundraiser. What have you done in your school to raise money to Make? On to our excerpt: Your Makerspace may not need much of a budget to operate, if you have a space you can use for free, tools to borrow, and materials found or donated. For some Makerspaces, the ones with lots of parental involvement, many of the projects are self-funded. But if your Makerspace takes place at a school without as much family support, or if you simply do not have this all in place, you may need to research community or family foundation grants to fill in the gap. It's possible there could be city or other government agency grants available to get your Makerspace what it needs. Sometimes you can find the funding with a "planning grant." If you are partnering with a non-profit, get advice from the fundraising staff who may be able to suggest the right foundations to approach. Ask around. Online tools like Kickstarter and Indiegogo might help you conduct pointed fundraising campaigns towards a specific goal. There are many sites like this - search on "crowdfunding" for more suggestions. While it's not a Makerspace, we know that the Rhode Island Mini Maker Faire used this tactic to launch a Maker Faire. Maybe it could work for a Makerspace too."

"I recently found an article on the I Can Teach My Child blog about how to read with your young children. As a speech-language pathologist, I really appreciated some of her tips. I am sharing them with you, along with my thoughts and suggestions on how to use the same tips with some great app books."

"Well it appears that my series of charts comparing ed tech tools is catching on because today I received my first suggestion for a chart topic. The suggestion was for a comparison of website creation tools. In the chart below I compare five popular tools for building classroom websites. You'll notice that the last column of the chart contains links to tutorials on how to use each service. You can find a Google Docs copy of the chart here or download it through the Box.com widget embedded below."

"Years ago, I wrote a piece suggesting that computer coding should be a basic requirement in junior high schools. I compared it to a required class I myself took in grade school: Typing, a skill that helped throughout my life. I brought up the idea again last week while moderating a panel at the South by Southwest festival in Austin, Texas. One of the panelists, MIT Media Lab Senior Research Scientist Kipp Bradford, challenged me on the idea. Bradford acknowledged the importance of coding classes. But he argued that given today's complex programming landscape (there are well over 100 languages in use), basic coding isn't the right course to prepare students for the job market of the future. He suggested teaching "computational thinking" skills instead."

"One of the questions that I'm frequently asked at the beginning of the school year goes something like this, "do you know how I can download videos from YouTube?" I do know how to do that, but I won't teach you how to do that because it is a violation of YouTube's terms of service. But I will show you how you can display YouTube videos in your classroom without showing the sidebar related video suggestions and comments. Here are five tools that you can use to display YouTube videos without showing the related video suggestions and comments."

"Math Playground is a great website containing hundreds of mathematics games appropriate for K-8 students. I first reviewed the site back in 2008. Whenever I have returned to it since then, more games and other helpful features have been added to it. Math Playground offers a huge variety of math games for students. You can locate games according to suggested grade level, by topic, or by question type. Students who need a refresher on a skill, can probably find one in Math Playground's video library. Math Playground's video library offers more than 100 instructional videos organized according to topic. To the right side of each video students will see some suggested games aligned to the topic covered in the instructional video."

The book contains a wide range of suggested activities for both the creation and exploitation of infographics in the classroom. It also helps teachers with tips and advice on how to plan and create infographics and suggestions for which tools to use to produce different types of infographic.

"Breaking up lessons with activities like juggling could help to boost pupils' science results, research suggests. It says that there is evidence that students respond well to short, 12-minute sessions, broken up with unrelated 'spaces' for children to do something different. Around 2,000 youngsters at 15 schools took part in the study, which aimed to build on neuroscience that suggests information can be more easily learnt and remembered when it is repeated several times, with spells of unrelated activity in between."

Update Your Life, Make Simple Task Easier and Exercise Your Brain ae the headings of this brief app review article. Great app suggestions!

"This week, we completed our 10th Annual Summer Teaching with Technology Workshop Series. During that time, we taught five iPad workshops ranging from Leveraging iPads, Laptops, and other Digital Tools to Create Differentiated Learning Environments to The iPad Classroom to iPads, ePubs, & iBooks Author. We often say that we learn as much from our participants as they learn from us. To prove it, we've compiled a Top 10 List of what we learned this summer."

"Importantly, our early indications suggest that the least effective method of reading may be the one society has been clinging to for centuries: reading on paper."

"As with most workshops, the overwhelming influx of ideas from Alan's workshop left teachers with a mix of emotions, feeling somewhere in-between, "I'm not doing enough" and "There's so much out there, I want to try everything now!" A suggestion that Mike Pelletier aptly calls, "TBC" (Tech Baby Steps) is always a good idea. Begin with just one thing that grabbed your attention and go with it - make it work for your classroom, not as an add-on, but as an integration."

...the distinction between digital natives and digital immigrants will become less relevant. Clearly, as we work to create and improve the future, we need to imagine a new set of distinctions. I suggest we think in terms of digital wisdom.

Part of the problem, he suggested, is the time it takes educators to move from learning about a piece of technology to actually integrating and manipulating its specific uses for the classroom. "If you take the five stages from the evolution of thought and practice," he said, "starting with 'entry' and moving through 'adoption' to 'adaptation' to 'appropriation,' and finally 'innovation,' research shows it takes seven years on average to go from the top of that list to the bottom. That's a long time." Too long, according to Benno. Which is why, as educators, "we have to figure out how to close the gap."

In this Connect@NMC online seminar, Lee will share a bit on their development and video process for the unique style they call "Paperworks." This session is designed to be an open discussion, so please come with some questions you may want to ask Lee about his technique or some suggestions for what other topics should be explained in "Plain English." If you missed this session, you can now view the archived recording http://nmc.na3.acrobat.com/p92246187/

So with the caveat that I am only halfway through Mark Bauerline's book The Dumbest Generation, I have some early impressions to throw out there. While I think there is some merit to this side of the debate (much like Keen's Cult of the Amateur) what really bothers me about this book so far is, as the title suggests, this sense that our kids are at fault. Let me put it plainly: our kids are not "dumb" nor is this generation "dumb" simply because they spend a lot of time in front of television screens and computers or because they haven't worked out for themselves how to get smarter using the Read/Write Web.