"This wiki complements the upcoming book "Powerful Ingredients for Blended Learning" by Wesley Fryer and Karen Montgomery, and the T4T course ("Technology For Teachers") course Wesley is teaching in Spring 2010. Content from the book and on this site is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non-Commercial License. Direct questions about these resources to Wesley or Karen. "
You can build just about any app you can imagine with App Inventor. Often people begin by building games like WhackAMole or games that let you draw funny pictures on your friend's faces. You can even make use of the phone's sensors to move a ball through a maze based on tilting the phone.
But app building is not limited to simple games. You can also build apps that inform and educate. You can create a quiz app to help you and your classmates study for a test. With Android's text-to-speech capabilities, you can even have the phone ask the questions aloud.
To use App Inventor, you do not need to be a developer. App Inventor requires NO programming knowledge. This is because instead of writing code, you visually design the way the app looks and use blocks to specify the app's behavior.
MeeGenius is an online library of picture books that kids can read independently or as a read along. Books can be personalized with students names, just answer a few quick questions and the book is rewritten for you. Each book comes with audio playback and word highlighting, perfect for beginning or struggling readers to read along.
"n Project Based Learning (PBL), students go through an extended process of inquiry in response to a complex question, problem, or challenge. While allowing for some degree of student "voice and choice," rigorous projects are carefully planned, managed, and assessed to help students learn key academic content, practice 21st Century Skills (such as collaboration, communication & critical thinking), and..."
"The open-access.net platform aims to meet the growing demand for information on the subject of Open Access (OA). Our editorial team gathers information which is scattered across many sources and bundles it thematically for presentation to various target groups.
Since we wish to progressively expand and optimise open-access.net in response to user needs and feedback, we welcome your input. So please don't hesitate to send us an E-Mail if you have any questions, comments or suggestions.
You are also welcome to participate in the current debate on OA by joining our experts forum which takes the form of a moderated mailing list. "
"This whitepaper takes a comprehensive look at the research, policies, and practices of technology literacy in K-12 settings in the United States. It builds a research-based case for the central importance of "doing" as part of technology literacy, meaning more than just being able to answer canned questions on a test. It also explores the current approaches to develop meaningful assessment of student technology literacy at a national, state, and local level."
"Laments about our schools are nothing new; everyone is an expert, it seems, when it comes to education. While most critics point to the lack of funding or the shortage of teachers, John Taylor Gatto insists the problem goes deeper; we've turned our schools, he says, into "torture chambers."
If that sounds abrasively radical, consider this: Gatto, with almost thirty years' experience as a public-school teacher, has just been named New York City's Teacher of the Year for 1989.
Gatto teaches seventh grade at Junior High School 54 on Manhattan's Upper West Side. Something of a local legend, he's a chess player and a songwriter - and he grows garlic. He was once named Citizen of the Week for coming to the aid of a woman who had been robbed. He has lectured on James Joyce's Ulysses at Cornell University and has taught philosophy at California State College. Perhaps it's not surprising that he's been approached by a film company interested in making a movie of his life.
Gatto once ran for the New York State Senate on the Conservative Party ticket, and some of his ideas are quite traditional: he stresses "family values" and questions increased funds for education. But he's too much of a maverick to be easily labeled. At a recent hearing in New York, he castigated the school system for "the murder of 1 million black and Latino children," and was met with a standing ovation.
What follows is the text of the speech he gave upon being named Teacher of the Year."
Which Founder Are You? is a twelve question personality quiz designed by the National Constitution Center. The purpose of the quiz is to help quiz takers identify which founding father they are most like.
"I have been reviewing many questions recently about storing data in the Cloud. With so many districts moving to Google Apps I decided to put together some resources on data ownership and privacy."
Schools are working with a flexible definition of literacy, influenced by established core concepts of media literacy, to:
* promote the development of critical thinking skills necessary to independently 'read' & 'write', and make meaning of messages in a variety of forms
* promote the basic operational skills, and understanding of the languages necessary to independently 'read' and 'write' effective messages in various forms of media (print, video, audio, etc.)
* instill confidence in the ability to adapt those skills and concepts to emerging forms of communication
* connect and transfer the fundamentals of literacy to other forms of real world communication and problem solving
Challenges & Questions:
* How do you fit this into already full school schedules?
* If these type of productions do take time from other discipline and skills, is it worth it?
* When and how do we train teachers to be confident enough in their own media literacy to fluidly guide students?
* Where is the balance that satisfies outcomes schools are traditionally responsible for with the real world needs of our students?
INTRODUCTION
Using the news in the K-12 classroom is an excellent way to engage young people. Reading, writing and creating projects related to the news is part of most state's teaching standards.
Students should be exposed to news via print (newspapers and magazines), and non-print (radio, Television, the Internet.) Both mainstream and non-mainstream sources should be included.
To incorporate media literacy into your existing teaching, I recommend you download the core concepts of media literacy and the critical thinking questions handouts as a way of getting started.
The ISTE Classroom Observation Tool (ICOT®) is a FREE online tool that provides a set of questions to guide classroom observations of a number of key components of technology integration.
The Foundation and Center for Critical Thinking aim to improve education in colleges, universities and primary through secondary schools. We present publications, conferences, workshops and professional development programs, emphasizing instructional strategies, Socratic questioning, critical reading and writing, higher order thinking, assessment, research, quality enhancement, and competency standards.
The ISTE Classroom Observation Tool (ICOT®) is a FREE online tool that provides a set of questions to guide classroom observations of a number of key components of technology integration.
Wikispacetutorials.com is a tutorial blog dedicated to wikispaces.com users who need to find answers to their wikispace questions. We provide video tutorials and written tutorials that cover the basics of wikispaces, as well as the advanced features. We are not affiliated with wikispaces.com. We just think they have a pretty good thing going, and we want to promote the use of their site, as well as help train the wikispaces.com community to get the most out of their wikispace. We hope that this site becomes a great resources for wikispace users all across the globe.
So, it is not a question of whether these technologies add value somehow to education, but the reverse, can education add value to the communications and information technologies of our present day world, and its future?