Group items matching

in title, tags, annotations or url

"It's all over the news: STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math) education ranks among the country's most pressing needs. Countless news stories talk about the renewed national concern with educating students in the STEM fields, and policy initiatives such as Common Core push forward with new attempts to fill that gap. But just what is causing this emphasis? And what can be done to solve the problem?"

"The NMC Horizon Report: 2014 K-12 Edition was released this past week, examining emerging technologies and their potential impact on teaching and learning worldwide. Part of the NMC Horizon Project, a 12-year effort, this report highlights "six trends, challenges, and emerging technologies that will affect current practice" over the next five years. Aside from being great content for your next Twitter chat, this year's iteration of the NMC Horizon Report is a must-read for 21st century educators and education policy makers alike. Following is a summary of major points."

"What does being a 'digitally competent' teacher mean? Does it mean using laptops, smartphones, or tablets in your classroom? Does it mean finding new and interesting ways to use those devices along with apps and web tools?  What level of expertise with technology constitutes 'competent'? Or does the concept encompass more than that? Do things like digital citizenship, acceptable use policies, digital footprints, and privacy concerns ring a bell. Just like in real life, being well-rounded is important when you're addressing technology use. Having the ability to say, use an laptop isn't really enough. The handy infographic below explores what it means to be a digitally competent teacher."

" "Even young kids have gotten very adept at Minecraft, so it can be quite intimidating for teachers," said Jason Schmidt, an instructional technologist for Bennington Public Schools who will teach the four-week MinecraftEdu MOOC, in a prepared statement. "If I can help get teachers over that hump, imagine how delighted students will be to have a learning environment tailored to their interests for a change." The other, Minecraft for Educators, "is a course for teachers who are wishing to gamify their learning experiences and deliver a unique pedagogy that will engage, enthuse and keep learners coming back for more," according to information released by the company. Both MOOCs are available through the Canvas Network. Minecraft for Educators will start January 26, 2015 and run through March 9. The company has also released a Minecraft app to allow students to submit assignments to the Canvas learning management system from within the game. Using the app, students can tag what they've made in the game for their teachers to visit, upload books they've written in game directly to the speed grader or use the game's circuitry tool to complete assignments that will be automatically graded. A video demonstration of the app is available at YouTube. Other MOOCs for teachers in the suite include: Digital Literacies 1; Digital Literacies 2; Five Habits of Highly Effective Teachers; Teachers without Borders: Educating Girls; and Tinker, Make and Learn. Among the other MOOC offerings in the new suite is a course designed specifically for parents, Parenting in the Digital Age, which aims to help them address issues such as cyberbullying, digital citizenship, exposure to inappropriate content, media literacy and screentime. Taught by Andrew Swickheimer, director of technology at Noblesville Schools, the self-paced course opens September 22. "Parental involvement in K-12 education has one of the biggest impacts on a child's commitment to learning," said Jared Stein, vice pres

http://egov.eletsonline.com/about-us/ The eGov magazine enjoys the distinction of being Asia's first magazine on e-Governance. Founded in 2005, the monthly magazine is published in both print and online formats, and is focussed exclusively on the use of Information and Communication Technology (ICT) for bringing efficiency, accountability and transparency to various citizen and business related initiatives of the government.

The eGov magazine enjoys the distinction of being Asia's first magazine on e-Governance. Founded in 2005, the monthly magazine is published in both print and online formats, and is focussed exclusively on the use of Information and Communication Technology (ICT) for bringing efficiency, accountability and transparency to various citizen and business related initiatives of the government.

The eGov magazine enjoys the distinction of being Asia's first magazine on e-Governance. Founded in 2005, the monthly magazine is published in both print and online formats, and is focussed exclusively on the use of Information and Communication Technology (ICT) for bringing efficiency, accountability and transparency to various citizen and business related initiatives of the government.

A social-media guide for public broadcasters targets the skeptical and the ambitious Until now, hundreds of independent NPR and PBS affiliates have had no common resource for best practices in social media. By Andrew Phelps Even though NPR and PBS have social media policies (while other news organizations choose not to and still others debate their value), hundreds of independent public broadcasters have shared no common resource for social-media best practices. The Corporation for Public Broadcasting wants to fill that gap with a newly released social media handbook for stations, which is hosted at the National Center for Media Engagement website. CPB commissioned the marketing firm iStrategy Labs to write a guide that targets a broad audience: not just the stations who need guidance, but the stations who still need convincing of social media's value."

"New York City's public school district is gearing up to scrap a controversial policy forbidding its 1.1 million students from having cellphones on campus. The thing is, plenty of students are already ignoring the ban. It turns out some of the poorest kids in the city are the ones who will notice the change most. The decision to lift the ban was prompted by safety concerns. Mobile phones aren't just for snapchatting but a way for kids to let parents know where they are. And with teen cellphone ownership rates so high, an ongoing ban increasingly seemed impractical-if not impossible. Civil rights activists call the move inevitable and long overdue."

Scanning your system is a necessary task. But, there are other tasks which are necessary while scanning your PC. This Techvedic tutorial outlines the privacy policy related with scan, what to do if Windows running on your PC can't complete the scan as well as additional information to keep up PC health.

"Teenagers really get a bad time,' says Sarah-Jayne Blakemore. 'It is amazing how it seems to be totally acceptable - even institutionalised - to parody and demonise them. We laugh at things that mock teenagers, but if you applied those sorts of jokes to any other sector of society, it just wouldn't be acceptable.' Blakemore is a professor of cognitive neuroscience and deputy director of the University College London Institute of Cognitive Neuroscience. She is sitting in her office behind Russell Square, the heartland of London academia, mounting a strong defence for every teenager in Britain who has slammed a bedroom door, smoked a cigarette, driven a car too fast and even - though she certainly doesn't condone this - given in to the peer pressure that surrounds drugs such as Ecstasy. Society's response to the teenage conviction that 'nobody understands' is often lack of patience. Teenagers, we think, are moody, self-absorbed, reckless, defiant creatures who reject our wisdom in favour of a path of personal sabotage. But the rallying cry from Blakemore - an increasingly powerful voice in the world of international neuroscience, who has given policy advice to the British government - is that teenagers are right. Beyond the world of neuroscientific research, for the most part society does not understand them."

"The NMC Horizon Report > 2015 Higher Education Edition is a collaborative effort between the NMC and the EDUCAUSE Learning Initiative (ELI). This 12th edition describes annual findings from the NMC Horizon Project, an ongoing research project designed to identify and describe emerging technologies likely to have an impact on learning, teaching, and creative inquiry in education. Six key trends, six significant challenges, and six important developments in educational technology are identified across three adoption horizons over the next one to five years, giving campus leaders and practitioners a valuable guide for strategic technology planning. The report aims to provide these leaders with more in-depth insight into how the trends and challenges are accelerating and impeding the adoption of educational technology, along with their implications for policy, leadership and practice. View the work that produced the report at www.horizon.wiki.nmc.org."

"Social media and text messages have blurred the lines between students' school lives and private lives. While most schools take clear steps to protect students at school, more schools are beginning to consider the need to set policies that apply to students' activities outside of school. When it comes to questionable online activities like cyberbullying and sexting, kids sometimes feel pressured to follow the crowd. Teachers can play a crucial role in setting high expectations for online behavior. Schools can open conversations about online safety so that students learn to set personal boundaries and feel more comfortable reporting incidents like bullying and harassment."

"One of my pet peeves is receiving an email that from someone that just launches into a request without stopping to address me by name. For years I have told students that I won't reply to emails if they don't write "Hi Mr. Byrne" or something similar to start their emails. Many of my colleagues have similar policies, I'm sure that many of you do too. Using your recipient's name is one of five good email etiquette tips for students featured in the video embedded below."

"Twitter has been around since 2006 and the company says it currently has 316 million "monthly active users". Over 500 million tweets are sent everyday, and in 2014 a Twitter executive said 4.2 million of those are related to education. What are they doing? Sharing resources, supporting colleagues, and changing education policy around the globe. But you know this. That's why you're here: you're ready to get started, but just aren't sure what to do."

"We know how to help kids develop into powerful learners. Now, we just need to make that happen in schools. "A parent of two teen-agers, Will Richardson has spent the last dozen years developing an international reputation as a leading thinker and writer about the intersection of social online learning networks and education. Will has authored four books (with two more on the way), including ""Why School? How Education Must Change When Learning and Information are Everywhere"" (September, 2012) published by TED books and based on his 2013 TEDx talk in Melbourne, Australia. ""Why School?"" is now the #1 best-selling TED book ever. A former public school educator of 22 years, Will is also co-founder of Modern Learner Media and co-publisher of ModernLearners.com which is a site dedicated to helping educational leaders and policy makers develop new contexts for new conversations around education. "

"Newark, Del. It's no secret that American workplaces are becoming more reliant on technology. But what may surprise the country's K-12 educators and policymakers is how work at nearly every rung of the employment ladder is becoming more digitized. Often, the skills needed to succeed have less to do with computer programming than what experts call "digital literacy"-the ability to interpret, create, and strategically use digital information. "Everyone's job is changing," said Mark Muro, a senior fellow and policy director at the Brookings Institution, a think tank. "The ability to read and then conduct first-order analysis of digital information is highly valued in almost all work environments." To better understand the central role of digital literacy in the workplace, Education Week took a deep look at four occupations in the Christiana Care Health System. It's the largest private employer in Delaware, with 11,600 employees and an expected 1,500 new hires this year."

An unavoidable element of the discourse around educational disadvantage or equality is how we define and assess equality. One definition will see this as being in equality of access to education, funding for education and/or resources. Such an approach has largely been seen in government funding models however subtle variations on this theme have resulted in significant differences in resulting policies.

"At first glance, it looks as though the group of young adults is building Lego. But these are actually students at the University of Cape Town's Hasso Plattner Institute of Design Thinking, and they're using the colourful blocks to design a prototype. It represents policy reform ideas around transitioning from informal to formal economies. It's a complex system represented with very basic materials. This is design thinking in action: human-centred, problem solving activities that ground design thinking in practice. It helps students to understand and innovatively solve challenges. Design thinking can be used very successfully as an academic programme that goes beyond traditional university practices. It allows universities to prepare a more resilient, adaptive student cohort. These graduates are more competent to enter economies that are constantly changing. This is particularly important when higher education institutions are training students for jobs that might not yet exist or that might have changed or become redundant by the time they graduate."