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"The Ambidextrous Professional Learning Community holds a dual focus, both internal and external, simultaneously. They focus on developing strong norms, processes for communicating, problem solving, building consensus, etc. This is important, but Professional Learning Communities must recognize that equally important, is a clear understanding of how their work fits into the needs of those outside of the team. They clearly understand that their work must fit within the greater goals of the school and the district. They are externally focused and internally focused. "

Second in the Ambidextrous PLC series by Rob Jacobs

"...If the focus of an educational system is student learning, as most mission statements claim, then leaders must compare the reality of their employment of technology with their stated intention."

"The mission of School of One is to provide students with personalized, effective, and dynamic classroom instruction so that teachers have more time to focus on the quality of their instruction. To achieve this mission, School of One re-imagines the traditional classroom model. Instead of one teacher and 25-30 students in a classroom, each student participates in multiple instructional modalities, including a combination of teacher-led instruction, one-on-one tutoring, independent learning, and work with virtual tutors. To organize this type of learning, each student receives a unique daily schedule based on his or her academic strengths and needs. As a result, students within the same school or even the same classroom can receive profoundly different instruction as each student's schedule is tailored to the skills they need and the ways they best learn. Teachers acquire data about student achievement each day and then adapt their live instructional lessons accordingly. By leveraging technology to play a more essential role in planning instruction, teachers have more time to focus on doing what they do best - delivering quality instruction and insuring that all students learn."

This hands-on workshop will focus on understanding popular Web 2.0 tools, how these tools are being used in the classroom, and how a variety of assistive technologies can be integrated with Web 2.0 tools to allow all students to become effective users of these tools. Gain knowledge and skills related to the uses of Web 2.0 tools in the classroom and experience using a variety of assistive technologies to foster the use of Web 2.0 tools in your classroom.

get rid of the junk on the web pages to focus on the real content

FindSounds.com is a free site for finding sound effects and musical instrument samples on the Web. It is a Web search engine, like Google and AltaVista, but with a focus on sounds. It provides powerful features, yet is simple and easy to use, and suitable for all ages. Note to parents: audio files containing obscenities are filtered out so this site is safe for children. To learn how to search the Web using FindSounds.com, visit the Help page.

Free videoconference every Wednesday at 1 pm. Each week features a speaker from NASA Ames Research Center or NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory. The focus of the videoconference will be on the speaker's research and career path.

Folkstreams.net has two goals. One is to build a national preserve of hard-to-find documentary films about American folk or roots cultures. The other is to give them renewed life by streaming them on the internet. The films were produced by independent filmmakers in a golden age that began in the 1960s and was made possible by the development first of portable cameras and then capacity for synch sound. Their films focus on the culture, struggles, and arts of unnoticed Americans from many different regions and communities. The filmmakers were driven more by sheer engagement with the people and their traditions than by commercial hopes. Their films have unusual subjects, odd lengths, and talkers who do not speak "broadcast English." Although they won prizes at film festivals, were used in college classes, and occasionally were shown on PBS, they found few outlets in venues like theaters, video shops or commercial television. But they have permanent value. They come from the same intellectual movement that gave rise to American studies, regional and ethnic studies, the "new history," "performance theory," and investigation of tenacious cultural styles in phenomena like song, dance, storytelling, visual designs, and ceremonies.They also respond to the intense political and social ferment of the period.

Access articles, data sheets, and reports on a variety of population and demographic trends and topics. You can browse information organized by topic or focus your search on a particular world region.

Overall there is a strong body of evidence linking the use of technology to improvements in learning and outcomes for learners. The relationship is not a simple one. Time taken to embed the use of technology, school-level planning and learner competency and focus of use, and link to models of learning are all important in mediating the impact of technology on outcomes. Schools that take a systematic and planned approach to using technology to support learning achieve better outcomes with technology than other schools. These 'e-mature' schools have a well-developed vision for learning and lead and manage their use of technology in support of this.

This Google Site has been set up by Dr. Helen Barrett to focus on the use of Google Apps to create ePortfolios. On this site, there are instructions on how to use the different elements of Google Apps to maintain e-portfolios.

Welcome to a very exciting time in the history of the Pascack Valley Regional High School District. With our focus continually trained on the improvement of student achievement, the district is embarking on a project that will change the way the education process takes place.

Students at SLA are assessed through a variety of means with a focus on project-based learning and our five core values of inquiry, research, collaboration, presentation, and reflection. Our students do not take the School District of Philadelphia benchmark exams; rather, they complete projects in every subject that are assessed based on the SLA rubric (see below). The descriptions in the empty boxes are filled in according to the subject and project nature. We are working with the School District of Philadelphia to ensure that grades from the SLA Benchmark projects will be entered into SchoolNet at the end of every marking period.

EduTube is a new educational video search platform launched in April 2008. The main aim of EduTube is to organize the best educational video content on the Internet. It is not just another website for submitting videos - we recognize that a lot of great content is already out there, it just needs to be better organized. Educational Videos only All content on EduTube is moderated and only relevant, educational content is permitted. What distinguishes EduTube from other educational video sites is the focus on high quality, popular videos - typically EduTube videos are those which get several hundred to several thousand or more views a day on the hosting website (such as YouTube). Also unique to EduTube is the system for organizing videos and making them searchable, as explained below.

Teachers can use an emerging technology tool, GPS receivers, and an emerging GPS-based activity, geocaching, to transform their classrooms from teacher-centered environments to exciting, empowering, exploratory environments that focus on student engagement in the learning process.

The Visual Ranking Tool brings focus to the thinking behind making ordered lists. Students identify and refine criteria as they assign order or ranking to a list. They must explain their reasoning and can compare their work with each other in a visual dia

Scroll to bottom of page - "Principal Reading Walk Through Checklists The Principal Walkthrough checklists provide principals of Kindergarten through Fifth Grade with a tool to effectively structure classroom visits in order to observe effective reading instruction. This tool provides a snapshot of classroom organization, instruction, and learning opportunities in the reading classroom. Indicators focus on the learning environment and include instructional strategies essential for reading including phonemic awareness, phonics, fluency, vocabulary and comprehension."

"Are you looking for practical ways to improve student achievement? Strengthen teaching and learning processes with research-based instructional strategies combined with effective technology use. Twelve core strategies link to 30 classroom examples that show how to apply key research, using technology to engage learners and improve achievement. "

"The Visual Ranking Tool brings focus to the thinking behind making ordered lists. Students identify and refine criteria as they assign order or ranking to a list. They must explain their reasoning and can compare their work with each other in a visual diagram. This tool supports activities where students need to organize ideas, debate differences, and reach consensus. The tool and related resources are available for free, from any computer that is connected to the Internet. Students may work on their lists at home or at school, and can even compare their ideas with students located in distant classrooms. "