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Ross Hunter

Technology Integration Matrix - 0 views

shared by Ross Hunter on 02 Oct 09 - Cached
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    The Technology Integration Matrix (TIM) illustrates how teachers can use technology to enhance learning for K-12 students." /> <!-- body { background-color: #FFFFFF; margin-left: 20px; margin-top: 10px; } --> This is a cached version of http://fcit.usf.edu/matrix/index.html. Diigo.com has no relation to the site.x
usasmmcity878

Buy Google 5 Star Reviews-Safe &amp; Real ⭐ ⭐ ⭐ ⭐ ⭐ Star Review - 0 views

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    Buy Google 5 Star Reviews In today's digital world, online reviews play a crucial role in shaping the reputation of businesses. Whether you own a small startup or a well-established company, having positive ratings and feedback on platforms like Google can significantly impact your success. Realizing the value of such reviews, some businesses resort to buying Google 5 star reviews. However, it is essential to understand the implications and potential consequences that come with this controversial practice. First and foremost, it's important to recognize the potential benefits of obtaining positive reviews. When potential customers search for a product or service, they often rely on other people's experiences to gauge its quality and credibility. Positive reviews can instill confidence in potential buyers and encourage them to choose your business over competitors. Moreover, Google uses these reviews to determine the ranking of businesses in search results, making it crucial in boosting your online visibility. What Are 5 Star Reviews on Google? Are you going to buy anything online or try out a new restaurant? Most likely, before making a choice, you'll browse several reviews online. Google is one website that stands out from the others when it comes to internet reviews. Google 5-star reviews are regarded by many as a trustworthy source of user feedback. These one- to five-star evaluations have a significant impact on the standing and prosperity of companies of all sizes. An insightful viewpoint on the caliber of goods, services, and client experiences can be found in Google 5-star evaluations. Google evaluations can make all the difference when it comes to finding a trustworthy contractor, a well-known tourist destination, or a local business. Potential clients can quickly learn about past experiences and determine the degree of satisfaction with a single click. A company's overall trustworthiness and search engine exposure can be greatly impacted by th
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    Buy Google 5 Star Reviews In today's digital world, online reviews play a crucial role in shaping the reputation of businesses. Whether you own a small startup or a well-established company, having positive ratings and feedback on platforms like Google can significantly impact your success. Realizing the value of such reviews, some businesses resort to buying Google 5 star reviews. However, it is essential to understand the implications and potential consequences that come with this controversial practice. First and foremost, it's important to recognize the potential benefits of obtaining positive reviews. When potential customers search for a product or service, they often rely on other people's experiences to gauge its quality and credibility. Positive reviews can instill confidence in potential buyers and encourage them to choose your business over competitors. Moreover, Google uses these reviews to determine the ranking of businesses in search results, making it crucial in boosting your online visibility. What Are 5 Star Reviews on Google? Are you going to buy anything online or try out a new restaurant? Most likely, before making a choice, you'll browse several reviews online. Google is one website that stands out from the others when it comes to internet reviews. Google 5-star reviews are regarded by many as a trustworthy source of user feedback. These one- to five-star evaluations have a significant impact on the standing and prosperity of companies of all sizes. An insightful viewpoint on the caliber of goods, services, and client experiences can be found in Google 5-star evaluations. Google evaluations can make all the difference when it comes to finding a trustworthy contractor, a well-known tourist destination, or a local business. Potential clients can quickly learn about past experiences and determine the degree of satisfaction with a single click. A company's overall trustworthiness and search engine exposure can be greatly impacted by th
Mardy McGaw

Educational Leadership:Teaching for the 21st Century:21st Century Skills: The Challenge... - 1 views

  • But in fact, the skills students need in the 21st century are not new.
  • What's actually new is the extent to which changes in our economy and the world mean that collective and individual success depends on having such skills.
  • This distinction between "skills that are novel" and "skills that must be taught more intentionally and effectively" ought to lead policymakers to different education reforms than those they are now considering. If these skills were indeed new, then perhaps we would need a radical overhaul of how we think about content and curriculum. But if the issue is, instead, that schools must be more deliberate about teaching critical thinking, collaboration, and problem solving to all students, then the remedies are more obvious, although still intensely challenging.
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  • To complicate the challenge, some of the rhetoric we have heard surrounding this movement suggests that with so much new knowledge being created, content no longer matters; that ways of knowing information are now much more important than information itself. Such notions contradict what we know about teaching and learning and raise concerns that the 21st century skills movement will end up being a weak intervention for the very students—low-income students and students of color—who most need powerful schools as a matter of social equity.
  • What will it take to ensure that the idea of "21st century skills"—or more precisely, the effort to ensure that all students, rather than just a privileged few, have access to a rich education that intentionally helps them learn these skills—is successful in improving schools? That effort requires three primary components. First, educators and policymakers must ensure that the instructional program is complete and that content is not shortchanged for an ephemeral pursuit of skills. Second, states, school districts, and schools need to revamp how they think about human capital in education—in particular how teachers are trained. Finally, we need new assessments that can accurately measure richer learning and more complex tasks.
  • Why would misunderstanding the relationship of skills and knowledge lead to trouble? If you believe that skills and knowledge are separate, you are likely to draw two incorrect conclusions. First, because content is readily available in many locations but thinking skills reside in the learner's brain, it would seem clear that if we must choose between them, skills are essential, whereas content is merely desirable. Second, if skills are independent of content, we could reasonably conclude that we can develop these skills through the use of any content. For example, if students can learn how to think critically about science in the context of any scientific material, a teacher should select content that will engage students (for instance, the chemistry of candy), even if that content is not central to the field. But all content is not equally important to mathematics, or to science, or to literature. To think critically, students need the knowledge that is central to the domain.
  • Because of these challenges, devising a 21st century skills curriculum requires more than paying lip service to content knowledge.
  • Advocates of 21st century skills favor student-centered methods—for example, problem-based learning and project-based learning—that allow students to collaborate, work on authentic problems, and engage with the community. These approaches are widely acclaimed and can be found in any pedagogical methods textbook; teachers know about them and believe they're effective. And yet, teachers don't use them. Recent data show that most instructional time is composed of seatwork and whole-class instruction led by the teacher (National Institute of Child Health and Human Development Early Child Care Research Network, 2005). Even when class sizes are reduced, teachers do not change their teaching strategies or use these student-centered methods (Shapson, Wright, Eason, &amp; Fitzgerald, 1980). Again, these are not new issues. John Goodlad (1984) reported the same finding in his landmark study published more than 20 years ago.
  • Why don't teachers use the methods that they believe are most effective? Even advocates of student-centered methods acknowledge that these methods pose classroom management problems for teachers. When students collaborate, one expects a certain amount of hubbub in the room, which could devolve into chaos in less-than-expert hands. These methods also demand that teachers be knowledgeable about a broad range of topics and are prepared to make in-the-moment decisions as the lesson plan progresses. Anyone who has watched a highly effective teacher lead a class by simultaneously engaging with content, classroom management, and the ongoing monitoring of student progress knows how intense and demanding this work is. It's a constant juggling act that involves keeping many balls in the air.
  • Most teachers don't need to be persuaded that project-based learning is a good idea—they already believe that. What teachers need is much more robust training and support than they receive today, including specific lesson plans that deal with the high cognitive demands and potential classroom management problems of using student-centered methods.
  • Without better curriculum, better teaching, and better tests, the emphasis on "21st century skills" will be a superficial one that will sacrifice long-term gains for the appearance of short-term progress.
  • The debate is not about content versus skills. There is no responsible constituency arguing against ensuring that students learn how to think in school. Rather, the issue is how to meet the challenges of delivering content and skills in a rich way that genuinely improves outcomes for students.
    • Mardy McGaw
       
      "ensuring that students learn how to think" You would think that this is the essence of education but this is not always asked of students. Memorize, Report and Present but how often do students think and comment on their learning?
  • practice means that you try to improve by noticing what you are doing wrong and formulating strategies to do better. Practice also requires feedback, usually from someone more skilled than you are.
    • Mardy McGaw
       
      Students need to be taught how to work as part of a group. The need to see mistakes and be given a chance to improve on them. Someone who already knows how to work as a team player is the best coach/teacher.
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    A very interesting article. Lots of good discussion points.
Anne Van Meter

Ed schools vs. education - Pittsburgh Post-Gazette - 5 views

  • "The achievement gap between the U.S. and the world's top-performing countries can be said to be causing the equivalent of a permanent recession," Mr. Hanushek wrote for Education Next.
    • anonymous
       
      What are your thoughts on this?
  • Today we lead the world only in how much we spend per pupil.
    • anonymous
       
      There are many reasons for this, of course. But, why do you suppose we're not getting the achievement?
    • Jimbo Lamb
       
      Is it because we are forcing all kids to fit the same standards rather than develop different standards for different needs of the students?
    • Anne Van Meter
       
      Not in % of GDP we spend... Of course, those other countries spend on pupil support: extended parental leave, full health care...
  • Far and away the most important factor in student learning is the quality of teachers. If we got rid of just the bottom 5 percent to 7 percent of teachers, that alone would lift our kids to Canadian levels, Mr. Hanushek calculates.
    • anonymous
       
      This is a delicate subject. But, we all know folks who don't put forth the effort that they should. What IF we did this?
    • Jimbo Lamb
       
      How do you compare this? In my school, I will have 183 students in my classes this year, and none will be considered advanced math students. Our calc teacher will have a majority of the advanced students and his enrollment numbers are at 93. How does this compare?
    • Anne Van Meter
       
      I only teach the lower level students (no complaints about that, I'm good at what I do) but they will not hit "advanced"!!
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  • Our teachers "do not know anything," according to Terrence Moore, who teaches history at Hillsdale College. That's largely because most have degrees in education rather than in the subjects they teach.
    • anonymous
       
      This statement just TICKS.ME.OFF!
    • anonymous
       
      Teachers are constrained by many different influences. Creativity is stifled, we teacher to the lowest common "core" denominator. Schools are not bold but old. We are rewarded by passing many useless measures, which unfortunately this article is based off of. Standardized test scores have blinded the public to what is important. Being able to problem solve and to be creative has always been the mark of an American, but that is being stripped of this generation b/c of the drive to wards testing.
    • Anne Van Meter
       
      And what are elementary teachers supposed to have degrees in? Do you really want a second grade teacher with a major in history? Or chemistry? In college, I took engineering and business calculus classes, business statistics and accounting, in addition to my education math classes. Does it matter that I didn't get a degree in math? Isn't it better that I also have courses in ancient near eastern history? And Arthurian legends? And American and English literature and American government?
  • "Future teachers are better served by getting good grounding in academic subject matter."
    • anonymous
       
      Is that true? Or, is it better to learn how to teach and to use technology for what its capable of doing, etc etc?
  • Ed schools seem to think knowing stuff isn't important.
    • anonymous
       
      Humbug!
  • "If you confront [teachers] with the fact that they, just as their students, can tell you nothing about the first 10 presidents or the use of the gerund, they will blithely respond that it is not so important for them to know things as to know 'how to know things,' " said Mr. Moore.
    • anonymous
       
      What do you think?
  • The reform needed is to remove state "certification" requirements. The reason for them, we're told, is to guarantee that only the qualified teach. Their real purpose is to keep the knowledgeable out of the classroom.
    • anonymous
       
      This is sounding more and more like a rant instead of a thoughtful argument.
  • "Yet these education schools," Mr. Moore points out, "not only do not impart real knowledge of academic subjects; they are actively hostile to it."
    • anonymous
       
      I need to see facts to support this.
    • Anne Van Meter
       
      The first three out of four years in college were spent taking more non-education courses than education related. We all had to take the full math/English/history/science core courses, then added psychology and sociology in addition to the education courses and several internships as well.
  • If instead of being forced to hire the certified, schools were free to hire the qualified, colleges of education would wither away -- and learning would blossom.
    • anonymous
       
      Many qualified folks lost their positions when they weren't deemed 'highly qualified.' 
    • Jimbo Lamb
       
      Isn't that what certification is? An official statement that the person is indeed qualified?
    • Anne Van Meter
       
      But, wasn't he just complaining several paragraphs ago that 60% of teachers are certified in their subjects? And he wants to add more uncertified teachers?
  • Students learn a lot from the teacher who knows a lot," Mr. Moore said. "They learn nothing from the teacher who knows nothing."
    • anonymous
       
      Now, that's profound.
  • they aren't allowed to teach.
    • anonymous
       
      Why would they? The work is difficult, the pay is terrible and everyone outside of education thinks you're lazy.
    • Jimbo Lamb
       
      A medical doctor teaching in HS? What, around their appointments with patients? 
    • Anne Van Meter
       
      And politicians take cushy jobs as lobbyists. I can't think of many teachers who only need to teach civics. It's only a small part of the full curriculum.
  • Not so many years ago, our schools were the best in the world
    • Jimbo Lamb
       
      I'd like to see the supporting evidence on this.
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    An interesting article, and certainly not without other opinions.
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    An interesting article, and certainly not without other opinions.
Donald Burkins

AASL's Best Websites for Teaching and Learning - NeverEndingSearch - Blog on School Lib... - 1 views

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    AASL's Best Websites for Teaching and Learning July 17, 2009 One of the most exciting revelations at ALA last week was the Sunday panel that unveiled the inaugural AASL's Best Websites for Teaching and Learning. (If there was a Newbery kinda ceremony for the techie in many of us, this was it!). Intro and links to the list sites.
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    AASL's Best Websites for Teaching and Learning July 17, 2009 One of the most exciting revelations at ALA last week was the Sunday panel that unveiled the inaugural AASL's Best Websites for Teaching and Learning. (If there was a Newbery kinda ceremony for the techie in many of us, this was it!)
anonymous

Educational Leadership:Teaching for the 21st Century:What Would Socrates Say? - 0 views

  • The noted philosopher once said, "I know nothing except the fact of my ignorance." My fear is that instead of knowing nothing except the fact of our own ignorance, we will know everything except the fact of our own ignorance. Google has given us the world at our fingertips, but speed and ubiquity are not the same as actually knowing something.
  • Socrates believed that we learn best by asking essential questions and testing tentative answers against reason and fact in a continual and virtuous circle of honest debate. We need to approach the contemporary knowledge explosion and the technologies propelling this new enlightenment in just that manner. Otherwise, the great knowledge and communication tsunami of the 21st century may drown us in a sea of trivia instead of lifting us up on a rising tide of possibility and promise.
  • A child born today could live into the 22nd century. It's difficult to imagine all that could transpire between now and then. One thing does seem apparent: Technical fixes to our outdated educational system are likely to be inadequate. We need to adapt to a rapidly changing world.
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  • Every day we are exposed to huge amounts of information, disinformation, and just plain nonsense. The ability to distinguish fact from factoid, reality from fiction, and truth from lies is not a "nice to have" but a "must have" in a world flooded with so much propaganda and spin.
  • For example, for many years, the dominant U.S. culture described the settling of the American West as a natural extension of manifest destiny, in which people of European descent were "destined" to occupy the lands of the indigenous people. This idea was, and for some still is, one of our most enduring and dangerous collective fabrications because it glosses over human rights and skirts the issue of responsibility. Without critical reflection, we will continually fall victim to such notions.
  • A second element of the 21st century mind that we must cultivate is the willingness to abandon supernatural explanations for naturally occurring events.
  • The third element of the 21st century mind must be the recognition and acceptance of our shared evolutionary collective intelligence.
  • To solve the 21st century's challenges, we will need an education system that doesn't focus on memorization, but rather on promoting those metacognitive skills that enable us to monitor our own learning and make changes in our approach if we perceive that our learning is not going well.
  • Metacognition is a fancy word for a higher-order learning process that most of us use every day to solve thousands of problems and challenges.
  • We are at the threshold of a worldwide revolution in learning. Just as the Berlin Wall fell in 1989, the wall of conventional schooling is collapsing before our eyes. A new electronic learning environment is replacing the linear, text-bound culture of conventional schools. This will be the proving ground of the 21st century mind.
  • We will cease to think of technology as something that has its own identity, but rather as an extension of our minds, in much the same way that books extend our minds without a lot of fanfare. According to Huff and Saxberg, immersive technologies—such as multitouch displays; telepresence (an immersive meeting experience that offers high video and audio clarity); 3-D environments; collaborative filtering (which can produce recommendations by comparing the similarity between your preferences and those of other people); natural language processing; intelligent software; and simulations—will transform teaching and learning by 2025.
  • So imagine that a group of teachers and middle school students decides to tackle the question, What is justice? Young adolescents' discovery of injustice in the world is a crucial moment in their development. If adults offer only self-serving answers to this question, students can become cynical or despairing. But if adults treat the problem of injustice truthfully and openly, hope can emerge and grow strong over time. As part of their discussion, let's say that the teachers and students have cocreated a middle school earth science curriculum titled Water for the World. This curriculum would be a blend of classroom, community, and online activities. Several nongovernmental organizations—such as Waterkeeper, the Earth Institute at Columbia University, and Water for People—might support the curriculum, which would meet national and state standards and include lessons, activities, games, quizzes, student-created portfolios, and learning benchmarks.
  • The goal of the curriculum would be to enable students from around the world to work together to address the water crisis in a concrete way. Students might help bore a freshwater well, propose a low-cost way of preventing groundwater pollution, or develop a local water treatment technique. Students and teachers would collaborate by talking with one another through Skype and posting research findings using collaborative filtering. Students would create simulations and games and use multitouch displays to demonstrate step-by-step how their projects would proceed. A student-created Web site would include a blog; a virtual reference room; a teachers' corner; a virtual living room where learners communicate with one another in all languages through natural language processing; and 3-D images of wells being bored in Africa, Mexico, and Texas. In a classroom like this, something educationally revolutionary would happen: Students and adults would connect in a global, purposeful conversation that would make the world a better place. We would pry the Socratic dialogue from the hands of the past and lift it into the future to serve the hopes and dreams of all students everywhere.
  • There has never been a time in human history when the opportunity to create universally accessible knowledge has been more of a reality. And there has never been a time when education has meant more in terms of human survival and happiness.
  • To start, we must overhaul and redesign the current school system. We face this great transition with both hands tied behind our collective backs if we continue to pour money, time, and effort into an outdated system of education. Mass education belongs in the era of massive armies, massive industrial complexes, and massive attempts at social control. We have lost much talent since the 19th century by enforcing stifling education routines in the name of efficiency. Current high school dropout rates clearly indicate that our standardized testing regime and outdated curriculums are wasting the potential of our youth.
  • If we stop thinking of schools as buildings and start thinking of learning as occurring in many different places, we will free ourselves from the conventional education model that still dominates our thinking.
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    Some very interesting points in this article. Why not add your coments?
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    A VERY interesting article. If you've got Diigo installed, why not add your comments
Jason Heiser

Copy / Paste by Peter Pappas: The Reflective Principal: A Taxonomy of Reflection (Part IV) - 4 views

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    The Reflective Principal: A Taxonomy of Reflection (Part IV) Reflection can be a challenging endeavor. It's not something that's fostered in school - typically someone else tells you how you're doing! Principals (and instructional leaders) are often so caught up in the meeting the demands of the day, that they rarely have the luxury to muse on how things went. Self-assessment is clouded by the need to meet competing demands from multiple stakeholders. In an effort to help schools become more reflective learning environments, I've developed this "Taxonomy of Reflection" - modeled on Bloom's approach. It's posted in four installments: 1. A Taxonomy of Reflection 2. The Reflective Student 3. The Reflective Teacher 4. The Reflective Principal It's very much a work in progress, and I invite your comments and suggestions. I'm especially interested in whether you think the parallel construction to Bloom holds up through each of the three examples - student, teacher, and principal. I think we have something to learn from each perspective. 4. The Reflective Principal Each level of reflection is structured to parallel Bloom's taxonomy. (See installment 1 for more on the model) Assume that a principal (or instructional leader) looked back on an initiative (or program, decision, project, etc) they have just implemented. What sample questions might they ask themselves as they move from lower to higher order reflection? (Note: I'm not suggesting that all questions are asked after every initiative - feel free to pick a few that work for you.) Bloom's Remembering : What did I do? Principal Reflection: What role did I play in implementing this program? What role did others play? What steps did I take? Is the program now operational and being implemented? Was it completed on time? Are assessment measures in place? Bloom's Understanding: What was
Ty Yost

http://www.angelamaiers.com/2010/01/a-peek-inside-my-toolkit-online-toolset.html - 5 views

shared by Ty Yost on 21 Jan 10 - Cached
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    I have two tool sets in my traveling, teaching and learning toolkit. An online set of tools, and an offline set of tools. I find these indispensable in my learning life and the trade of teaching.
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    I have two tool sets in my traveling, teaching and learning toolkit. An online set of tools, and an offline set of tools. I find these indispensable in my learning life and the trade of teaching.
Ben Louey

ALA | AASL Best Web sites for Teaching and Learning Award - 0 views

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    The Best Websites for Teaching and Learning honors websites, tools, and resources of exceptional value to inquiry-based teaching and learning as embodied in the American Association of School Librarians' Standards for the 21st-Century Learner.
Kathy Fiedler

Kathy Schrock's iPads4teaching - iPads for Teaching - 0 views

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    Welcome to the iPads4teaching site! This site will provide you with tips, tricks and resources for teaching and learning with the iPad.  It does not include the links of apps by Bloom's. You can find those (and more)  on my iPads in the Classroom page, Teaching and Learning with the iPad page, and Bloomin' Apps page, which are listed in the navigation menu. This site will promote the use of the iPad to support sound pedagogical practices and provide professional development options for you. If you have items to share, please use the form in the footer to let me know about them!
Darcy Goshorn

Experience with facilitating professional development and TurnItIn - 1 views

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    In an environment where global economy, global collaboration, and global 'knowledge' are  the aspiration of many countries, the understanding of the complexities of plagiarism becomes  a global requirement that needs to be addressed by all educators and learners. This paper  considers a simple definition of plagiarism, and then briefly considers reasons why students  plagiarise. At Unitec NZ, Te Puna Ako: The Centre for Teaching and Learning Innovation  (TPA:CTLI) is working closely with faculty, managers, student support services and library  personnel to introduce strategies and tools that can be integrated into programmes and  curricula whilst remaining flexible enough to be tailored for specific learners. The authors  therefore provide an overview of one of the tools available to check student work for  plagiarism - Turnitin - and describe the academic Professional Development (PD)  approaches that have been put in place to share existing expertise, as well as help staff at  Unitec NZ to use the tool in pedagogically informed ways, which also assist students in its  use. Evaluation and results are considered, before concluding with some recommendations. It  goes on to theorise how blended programmes that fully integrate academic literacy skills and  conventions might be used to positively scaffold students in the avoidance of plagiarism.  Conference participants will be asked to comment on and discuss their institutions' approach  to supporting the avoidance of plagiarism (including the utilisation of PDS and other  deterrents), describe their own personal experiences, and relate the strategies they employ in  their teaching practice and assessment design to help their learners avoid plagiarism. It is  planned to record the session so that the audience's narratives can be shared with other  practitioners.
Michelle Krill

Primary Source Learning - Inviting Learners to Read, Think, and Use their Knowledge - 0 views

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    The features on this Web site enable educational communities to: * Browse primary sources that teachers have used with students. * Teach primary source-based learning experiences from the Teaching Materials Collection. * Design learning experiences using MyPortfolio. * Share discoveries with others through field-testing and publishing. * Use our professional development programs to uncover the breadth and depth of LOC.gov resources. * Learn through primary source-based online activities and samples of student projects. * Create digital documentaries using University of Virginia's Primary Access or make a handout for students.
Darcy Goshorn

Envisioning the Post-LMS Era: The Open Learning Network (EDUCAUSE Quarterly) | EDUCAUSE... - 0 views

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    Although central to the business of higher education, the LMS has also become a symbol of the status quo that supports administrative functions more effectively than teaching and learning activities. Personal learning environments offer an alternative, but with their own limitations. An open learning network helps bridge the gap between the PLE and the LMS, combining the best elements of each approach. The initial implementation of an OLN at Brigham Young University represents a new learning platform model in higher education.
anonymous

Education Week: Filtering Fixes - 0 views

  • Instead of blocking the many exit ramps and side routes on the information superhighway, they have decided that educating students and teachers on how to navigate the Internet’s vast resources responsibly, safely, and productively—and setting clear rules and expectations for doing so—is the best way to head off online collisions.
  • “We are known in our district for technology, so I don’t see how you can teach kids 21st-century values if you’re not teaching them digital citizenship and appropriate ways of sharing and using everything that’s available on the Web,” said Shawn Nutting, the technology director for the Trussville district. “How can you, in 2009, not use the Internet for everything? It blows me away that all these schools block things out” that are valuable.
  • While schools are required by federal and state laws to block pornography and other content that poses a danger to minors, Internet-filtering software often prevents students from accessing information on legitimate topics that tend to get caught in the censoring process: think breast cancer, sexuality, or even innocuous keywords that sound like blocked terms. One teacher who commented on one of Mr. Fryer’s blog posts, for example, complained that a search for biographical information on a person named Thacker was caught by his school’s Internet filter because the prohibited term “hacker” is included within the spelling of the word.
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  • The K-2 school provides e-mail addresses to each of its 880 students and maintains accounts on the Facebook and Twitter networking sites. Children can also interact with peers in other schools and across the country through protected wiki spaces and blogs the school has set up.
  • “Rather than saying this is a scary tool and something bad could happen, instead we believe it’s an incredible tool that connects you with the entire world out there. ... [L]et’s show you the best way to use it.”
  • As Trussville students move through the grades and encounter more-complex educational content and expectations, their Internet access is incrementally expanded.
  • In 2001, the Children’s Internet Protection Act instituted new requirements for schools to establish policies and safeguards for Internet use as a condition of receiving federal E-rate funding. Many districts have responded by restricting any potentially troublesome sites. But many educators and media specialists complain that the filters are set too broadly and cannot discriminate between good and bad content. Drawing the line between what material is acceptable and what’s not is a local decision that has to take into account each district’s comfort level with using Internet content
  • The American Civil Liberties Union sued Tennesee’s Knox County and Nashville school districts on behalf of several students and a school librarian for blocking Internet sites related to gay and lesbian issues. While the districts’ filtering software prohibited students from accessing sites that provided information and resources on the subject, it did not block sites run by organizations that promoted the controversial view that homosexuals can be “rehabilitated” and become heterosexuals. Last month, a federal court dismissed the lawsuit after school officials agreed to unblock the sites.
  • Students are using personal technology tools more readily to study subject matter, collaborate with classmates, and complete assignments than they were several years ago, but they are generally asked to “power down” at school and abandon the electronic resources they rely on for learning outside of class, the survey found. Administrators generally cite safety issues and concerns that students will misuse such tools to dawdle, cheat, or view inappropriate content in school as reasons for not offering more open online access to students. ("Students See Schools Inhibiting Their Use of New Technologies,", April 1, 2009.)
  • A report commissioned by the NSBA found that social networking can be beneficial to students, and urged school board members to “find ways to harness the educational value” of so-called Web 2.0 tools, such as setting up chat rooms or online journals that allow students to collaborate on their classwork. The 2007 report also told school boards to re-evaluate policies that ban or tightly restrict the use of the Internet or social-networking sites.
  • Federal Requirements for Schools on Internet Safety The Children’s Internet Protection Act, or CIPA, is a federal law intended to block access to offensive Web content on school and library computers. Under CIPA, schools and libraries that receive funding through the federal E-rate program for Internet access must: • Have an Internet-safety policy and technology-protection measures in place. The policy must include measures to block or filter Internet access to obscene photos, child pornography, and other images that can be harmful to minors; • Educate minors about appropriate and inappropriate online behavior, including activities like cyberbullying and social networking; • Adopt and enforce a policy to monitor online activities of minors; and • Adopt and implement policies related to Internet use by minors that address access to inappropriate online materials, student safety and privacy issues, and the hacking of unauthorized sites. Source: Federal Communications Commission
  • “We believe that you can’t have goals about kids’ collaborating globally and then block their ability to do that,” said Becky Fisher, the Virginia district’s technology coordinator.
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    This is an excellent article. I think every school should take this to a meeting with Administrators to discuss bringing sanity to this issue once and for all.
Vicki Treadway

A Fistful of Challenges for Ed Tech -- THE Journal - 5 views

  • But the No. 1 challenge in ed tech, according to the report, is with teachers themselves and the inadequacy of their preparation and ongoing training.
    • anonymous
       
      Does this surprise you?
    • Melanie Hoskins
       
      differentiated instruction for teacher training - all our teachers get the same PD - with our without access to technology - yawn.
    • Dave Solon
       
      We stress to our students that they need that 21st Century Skill to 'learn how to learn.' Perhaps we need to re-invigorate our teachers and administrators with that idea as well.
    • Vicki Treadway
       
      Just had this discussion with a teacher today. She was telling me she is an auditory learner and doesn't learn well in a large group setting. I said we don't do with our adult learners what we say should be done with our students. I try to accomodate different learnning styles when I work with teachers.
  • "The challenge is due to the fact that despite the widespread agreement on its importance, training in digital literacy skills and techniques is rare in teacher education and school district professional development programs," the report said.
    • anonymous
       
      And, I would add, that the training is designed to teach the skills and not the pedagogy for using those skills in class. Teachers still see this as an aside to their job of teaching the content for the purpose of scoring high on the tests.
  • The third critical challenge cited by the authors was the failure of both technology and teaching practices to meet demands for differentiated, personalized learning.
    • anonymous
       
      And this SHOULD be easy, no?
  •  
    But the No. 1 challenge in ed tech, according to the report, is with teachers themselves and the inadequacy of their preparation and ongoing training.
  • ...1 more comment...
  •  
    But the No. 1 challenge in ed tech, according to the report, is with teachers themselves and the inadequacy of their preparation and ongoing training.
  •  
    But the No. 1 challenge in ed tech, according to the report, is with teachers themselves and the inadequacy of their preparation and ongoing training.
  •  
    But the No. 1 challenge in ed tech, according to the report, is with teachers themselves and the inadequacy of their preparation and ongoing training.
Michelle Krill

Digital Library Learning Resources Collection - 0 views

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    The goal of the Exploratorium Digital Library is to provide access to high-quality teaching resources and learning activities that reflect the museum's foundation of playful exhibit-based inquiry in science, art, and human perception. The Learning Resources Collection includes teaching tips and related resources. This collection is suitable for educators in both classroom and out-of-school settings; for peer institutions, such as museums, science centers, and universities; and for individuals.
Dianne Krause

Challenge Based Learning - 6 views

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    "Challenge Based Learning is an engaging multidisciplinary approach to teaching and learning that encourages students to leverage the technology they use in their daily lives to solve real-world problems. Challenge Based Learning is collaborative and hands-on, asking students to work with other students, their teachers, and experts in their communities and around the world to develop deeper knowledge of the subjects students are studying, accept and solve challenges, take action, share their experience, and enter into a global discussion about important issues."
Michelle Krill

Lesson Plans and Teaching Activities - 0 views

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    This section contains reproducible copies of primary documents from the holdings of the National Archives of the United States, teaching activities correlated to the National History Standards and National Standards for Civics and Government, and cross-curricular connections. Teaching with primary documents encourages a varied learning environment for teachers and students alike. Lectures, demonstrations, analysis of documents, independent research, and group work become a gateway for research with historical records in ways that sharpen students' skills and enthusiasm for history, social studies, and the humanities.
Michelle Krill

Ednovo - gooru - 4 views

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    Ednovo breaks down the barriers of access to education with a free web application, Gooru, that leverages technology, amplifies the effect of stellar teaching, and inspires students to learn. Gooru provides teachers with the ability to "search and teach" and students with the ability to "search and study" to find curriculum-appropriate web resources for any lesson. Teachers and students then share their lessons and notes with each other to enable learning in a truly social way.
Darcy Goshorn

Lesson Writer - 0 views

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    Good lord, Beth O'Marr demo'd this site and I had a language-gasm! Check this out!!
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    Drop in a relatively small text (800 words or less), and this little wonder creates graphic organizers, finds vocabulary, builds questions, does pronounciation, prefixes, suffixes.
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