Group items tagged

Wow!! 150+ iPod/iPhone apps charted by price, grade level and subject. There are only a couple that mention language learning (Spanish), but I think a number of them could be adapted.

From Richard Byrne's blog: "Own Your Space is a free, sixteen chapter ebook designed to educate tweens and teens about protecting themselves and their stuff online. This ebook isn't a fluffy, general overview book. Each chapter goes into great detail explaining the technical threats that students' computers face online as well as the personal threats to data that students can face online." It's free, downloadable, and it looks to me like it should be read by any student with internet access - and their parents and teachers!!!

National EducationTechnology Plan 2010 Nov. 2010 report by the US Dept of Education

Now that I posted this, I should learn how to use the Diigo toolbar to annotate!

online tutorial for savvy web searching created by the center for teaching and learning at the U of M

blog by a German EFL teacher with tips for integrating technology into English language learning

Little is known about the population of educators who teach online, especially with relationship to preparation from their teacher education programs. This article discusses the results of a national survey of K-12 online teachers from across the nation to ascertain how prepared they felt they were with regard to three key areas: technology, pedagogy, and content, including combinations of these domains, as described by the technological pedagogical content knowledge framework (Mishra & Koehler, 2006). Overall, K-12 online teachers indicated that they felt the most prepared in the areas of pedagogy, content, and pedagogical content. They felt least prepared in the areas of technology, including technological pedagogical knowledge, technological content knowledge, and technological pedagogical content knowledge. Implications for the field of teacher education are discussed, including the need to more fully integrate technology within the coursework and field experiences of teacher candidates, and the need to create courses, or specific modules within existing courses, to address topics of importance to virtual teaching.

Directions for using Posterous - lots of possibilities where you can have students post things by attaching and sending to an email, and it collects them all so all can see/hear.

Are you familiar with all of these??  =)

"Over the past academic year, my students and I have been experimenting with the use of a number of web based applications (often known as Web 2.0 tools). My aim has been to enhance our schemes of work by providing our students with new and exciting learning opportunities. In my opinion, using technology effectively has clear benefits for both teaching and learning and can help to improve motivation by engaging pupils in activities which, perhaps, step out of their ordinary school experience and which show them that it is possible to teach and learn about a subject using tools similar to those they use daily outside school. In other words, we have tried to use the types of tools with which they are often already familiar. I have written about each of these individual tools in separate posts, but I thought it would be useful to list the ten most used internet applications on one post. As ever, I aim to provide, not only a list of the web applications we have used, but also examples of practice which you may wish to follow or, indeed, improve upon. Therefore, each of the entries below has links leading to lesson plans which have incorporated the tools as well as working examples of students' work where appropriate. Without further ado, and in alphabetical order, my ten tried and tested internet tools for teachers are:"

from a FL teacher in England - who tries and tests a number of tech tools. Here are his 10 favorite web 2.0 apps.

There are a number of FL webquests listed here by grade level. We should check out the tool for making webquests -

Register and you can see the teachers and projects they are running or want to run - sort by language.  There is also a growing list of "resources" on just about anything. 

A school district in Florida is advising teachers not to "friend" students on social networking sites, claiming that teacher-student communication through this medium is "inappropriate."

Interesting that these regulations are listed in the teachers' handbook. I live within walking distance from the school I work at, and often see neighborhood kids. One in particular is my student, in fact I was standing outside my home last night talking with two friends of mine and he walked by. He's a great kid and we always say hi and chat a little, but it's in the back of my mind that even that could be used against me by someone who is twisted. The weird thing about the inappropriate internet stuff is that there is always a paper trail, so it seems so obvious to not do certain things. I'm surprised FL advises teachers to not even use a "professional" user account with students, but apparently they feel the risks outweigh the advantages.

An interesting article on blended learning and successful characteristics by Nicky Hockly 

Have you ever read an NMC Horizon Report and thought, "I want to start implementing these technologies and learning approaches at my school...but where to begin?" Produced by the New Media Consortium (NMC), the Report details emerging technologies likely to have a significant impact on teaching and learning around the globe. The Toolkit is geared toward education leaders who wish to learn more about and further the dialogue on the emerging technologies identified in the Report and their potential to re-imagine K-12 education.

A new edition of the World Map of Social Networks, showing the most popular social networks by country, according to Alexa & Google Trends for Websites traffic data* (June 2011).

Downloadable educator's guide by Linda Fogg Phillips, written at Facebook's request.  The homepage says:   "Our commitment to you is to provide an easy way to stay updated as changes occur with Facebook.  We created this website to do just that, in addition to providing you with even more insights, guidance, and resources." but that still doesn't tell me much about what's in the guide...

a variety of ways to use Twitter and the results from using it in his class

He says he will help you make the most of Twitter by using an application called TweetDeck.  He explains how to use TweetDeck in this video tutorial, part 1.  Link to Part 2 included.

From the LARC newsletter: G.L.O.S.S. provides over 7,000 lessons in 40 languages with skill integration (reading/listening) and an interface that supports easy navigation. Lessons are built around authentic materials such as articles, TV reports, and radio broadcasts, and are most appropriate for learners at a low-intermediate level (ILR 1) and above. G.L.O.S.S. is designed and maintained by the Defense Language Institute Foreign Language Center, and is freely available to teachers and students alike.