Group items tagged

Thinkfinity content providers are as follows: * ArtsEdge, a program of the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, provides art education resources. * EconEdLink, developed by the Council for Economic Education, offers economic and personal finance lesson materials for K-12 teachers and students. * EdSitement, from the National Endowment for the Humanities and the National Trust for the Humanities, includes information in the subject areas of literature and language arts, foreign languages, art and culture, and history and social studies. * Illuminations, created by the National Council of Teachers of Mathematics (NCTM), provides resources for teaching mathematics. * Literacy Network, a program of the National Center for Family Literacy and ProLiteracy, offers resources for literacy instruction and lifelong learning for adults and family literacy programs. * ReadWriteThink, from the International Reading Association (IRA) and the National Council of Teachers of English (NCTE), includes resources for reading and language arts instruction. * Science NetLinks, developed by the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), provides standards-based science resources including downloadable 60-second science updates. * Smithsonian's History Explorer, created by the National Museum of American History, features resources and artifacts from the museum's collections. * Xpeditions, from National Geographic, offers geography resources including printable maps and an interactive atlas. Professional Development Thinkfinity provides a number of professional development opportunities. Many Virginia educators have become Thinkfinity field trainers through online training classes and have become certified trainers. Resources A special Educator section highlights the newest available resources. Correlations between the Virginia Standards of Learning (SOL) and Thinkfinity resources are available in the following Excel spreadsheets

To promote sustainable global development and achievement of the United Nations Millennium Development Goals by increased use and understanding of statistics and other information about social, economic and environmental development at local, national and global levels.

"On your own for professional development? Earn a certificate of completion by taking the Library's self-paced interactive modules. Each multimedia-rich program delivers approximately one hour of staff development."

The 12 Habits of Highly Effective ICT-Enabled Development Initiatives are a set of best practice guidelines for project management, which aim to ensure the internal health of initiatives harnessing ICT for development. Like the Real Access criteria, the 12 Habits can be used proscriptively for planning, or retrospectively for evaluation.

"The Virginia Department of Education has been involved in the development of apps that are available in the Apple App Store for downloading. Through these activities, the following apps have been developed by collaborators:"

Students embrace media that presents participants with a challenge and requires them to draw on prior learning, acquire new knowledge, and tap their creativity to fashion solutions. The entertainment networks have capitalized on this formula with shows like The Amazing Race, Top Chef, Trading Spaces, and Project Runway in which participants creatively draw on their knowledge and resources to create appropriate solutions to challenges. To address the need to create new ways of engaging students to achieve, Apple worked with educators across the country to develop the concept of Challenge Based Learning.

It runs better than any other browser and is built by a community of developers around the world who are passionate about improving the browser and the Web. Best of all, Firefox is free.

The use of technology in education provides powerful opportunities to engage students in authentic learning. Google has developed a suite of tools that can easily be integrated into K-12 classrooms to encourage collaboration and creativity. This course will provide educators with a basic understanding of various Google products and suggest ways to integrate those products into the classroom.  Hat tip to John Sowash

Popcorn makes video work like the web. We create tools and programs to help developers and authors create interactive pages that supplement video and audio with rich web content, allowing your creations to live and grow online.

"History by Era" is the Institute's innovative new approach to our shared national history. At its core it is a collection of fifty individual introductions written by some of the most distinguished scholars of our day. It thus speaks to the reader not in one voice, but in fifty different, unique voices as each of these scholars interprets the developments, movements, events, and ideas of a particular era. Each Era follows the same template so that readers can move easily from one to another. An introduction to the time period is followed by essays by leading scholars; primary sources with images, transcripts, and a historical introduction; multimedia presentations by historians and master teachers; interactive presentations; and lesson plans and other classroom resources. Read an Introduction to History by Era from our senior editor, Carol Berkin, for more detailed information.

Wixie is the award winning online authoring tool students can use to construct knowledge and communicate ideas. Today's learners need a tool that is accessible whenever and wherever they are ready to learn! Students can use Wixie's paint tools, text options, clip art, and voice recording to develop online storybooks, curriculum projects, and so much more.

Ed Tech Competitive Grants, funded with ESEA and ARRA funds, support programs that stimulate the use of educational technology to improve teaching and learning. Grants assist schools in developing 21st century classrooms as envisioned by the Educational Technology Plan for Virginia: 2010 - 2015

"Use this application to develop instructional objectives for your courses and instructional programs."

"What expectations do teachers need to come with? How do you support teachers going into 1:1? * Get rid of network Nazi's who don't have any business making curriculum decisions for teachers. (This comment received lots of applause!) * Invest in staff development. That includes instructional and technical support. * "Just in time training" available for teachers."

This site offers a growing bank of imaginative, highly visual teaching-aids developed for use with interactive whiteboards in 11-18 Schools.

via http://freetech4teachers.blogspot.com/2008/12/secret-builders-virtual-world-for-ages.html SecretBuilders is a virtual world for children 5 to 14 years old powered by a web 2.0 community of children, parents, educators, writers, artists and game developers. On SecretBuilders, children will explore virtual lands, undertake quests, play games, maintain a home, nurture a pet, and interact with their friends. Three features which form the backdrop for SecretBuilders distinguish it from other online worlds: * Children learn through immersing themselves in the stories, themes, and concepts from the best in literature, arts and humanities. They will interact with famous historical and fictional figures and be introduced to content and characters from world civilization and the great thoughts and ideas of human creativity. * Children will create this site, not just consume it. They are directly involved in creating this world with their ideas, critiques and contributions on virtually every aspect of the site and many of their ideas will be implemented! * Children publish their works - writings, art, videos - making SecretBuilders their own personal store of creativity. They can invite friends and family to view their works, and comment upon them. Seeing their works published and enjoyed by others instills tremendous for self-confidence as well as motivation to do more.

Netbooks violate all the laws of the computer hardware business. Traditionally, development trickles down from the high end to the mass market. PC makers target early adopters with new, ultrapowerful features. Years later, those innovations spread to lower-end models.

Article on using Second Life for professional development. Uses a couple of my photos.