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T This really brought it home: "as we already know, the technology itself does not develop the skill, nor is it the teacher; the technology is only a tool, and teachers must remain committed to the collaborative process if students are to fully engage and develop the skills necessary to work collaboratively with their peers"

There is an assumption that persists in the educational community that more mature teachers are much more difficult and reluctant to be trained on the effective use of educational technology. To some degree, I think this assumption has been built on by the digital native vs digital immigrant myth. But as someone who has trained teachers of all ages all over the world I would say that, from my own experience, this hasn't been the case.

Yesterday I sat down and built a new guide, Google Documents for "Teachers. The 40 page guide (embedded below) is designed to help teachers who have never used Google Documents" (Richard Byrne, 2012.04.09, ¶1).

GenYES is an innovative program that creates 21st century leaders and learners. GenYES students help teachers use technology in classrooms, supporting effective technology integration school-wide. Eleven years of research proves GenYES empowers students and changes the way teachers integrate technology in their lessons.

The whole idea of the challenge has sparked my imagination about creating a challenge for teachers. I think teachers might be intrigued by the idea that they can become better at teaching with technology in "X" simple steps. The challenge might take on the title: Become Better at Teaching with Technology, Conquering One Tech Challenge a Month for a Year.

The K to the 8th Power Technology Literacy Assessment assists the teacher and lab director in determining each student's level of technology literacy. The assessment measures each student's technology literacy based on the National Educational Technology Standards for Students (NETS*S) for Grades 6-8. The assessment has four sections of twenty-five (25) questions. Each section is correlated to one or more of the six NETS*S standards. The test results indicate the student's level of technology literacy and recommends specific lessons to address deficiencies. Recommended lessons can be assigned to individual students or groups of students. 

EdTechTeacher.org presents The Center for Teaching History with Technology, a resource created to help K-12 history and social studies teachers incorporate technology effectively into their courses. Find resources for histlaptop classory and social studies lesson plans, activities, projects, games, and quizzes that use technology. Explore inquiry-based lessons, activities, and projects. Learn about new and emerging technologies such as blogs, podcasts, wikis, ipods, and online social networks and explore innnovative ways of integrating them into the curriculum. Find out how others are using technology in the classroom.

"As a technology teacher, I always keep looking for new tools to excite my students. During parent-teacher conferences, when a parent comes and asks me how's their child doing at my subject I almost always say, "Everyone is good at technology" or "All of them love ICT lessons". But when I'm alone, I reflect on these statements many times. If everyone already loves technology and is good at it, then what am I here for? What's my role? This is a generation of digital natives. You show a two-year-old how to scroll through the camera roll of your phone once and they won't ask you again. This makes me question my validity again and again."

"As writing skills have become more important than ever in this age of e-mail, instant messaging, and texting, NWP teachers are keeping up with the times by using technology to improve their students' writing abilities."

"Teacher centered technologies do not transform education!"

useful article , I need to finish it and look at this 'famous clip' that had 1 million viewers

Being a teacher definitely isn't for everyone. The things I put teachers through while I was at school is enough for me not to pursue it as a career. This infographic highlights some interesting facts related to the profession. For example, the average salary of a teacher is $53,910 and 17% of all teachers have a second job. Check out the infographic below for more indepth data on being a teacher. (Source: Masters in Teaching

This year my school district in Vermont ventured into a sort-of BYOD/1:1 hybrid program. We realized the importance of allowing our students access to technology to enhance their learning, but the infrastructure wasn't in place to tackle a traditional BYOD. .. Instead, we chose to be creative with our technology and professional development.

Teacher videos on technology-use in the classroom

Dennis is a former English teacher and administrator in urban and suburban schools for many years. Dennis has always gravitated toward K12 leadership, learning and technology topics. He has graduate degrees from Middlebury College's Bread Loaf School of English and Harvard University's School of Education. In addition to blogging about K12 learning, leading and web 2.0 tools/pedagogies at innovation3.edublogs.org, he is president of the Massachusetts affiliate of ASCD, a member of the Leadership Council for ASCD; a member of the Massachusetts Working Group for Educator Quality; Co-Facilitator of the Massachusetts High School Redesign Task Force; and a member of Massachusetts STEM Summit V Planning Committee. The web 2.0 conversation is not about technology tools; it is about student learning. Dennis subscribes to the definition of Professional Learning Communities that Rick and Becky DuFour and many other leaders of education have espoused. In simple terms, * learning (for us and for students) is our purpose, * we can improve student learning if we learn together collaboratively, and * monitoring student learning is the only way to know: 1. what students are learning, 2. how we are teaching and 3. how we get better at it. A former English teacher and administrator in urban and suburban schools for many years, he has always gravitated toward K12 leadership, learning and technology topics. He has graduate degrees from Middlebury College's Bread Loaf School of English and Harvard University's School of Education. He is married with three children and four grandchildren. Among other things, he loves running, cycling, kayaking, contemporary poetry, photography and the outdoors. In the summer of 2007 his professional life changed when he attended the Building Learning Communities Conference 2007 and in three days experienced, for the first time, the power of Web 2.0 tools and their potential for transforming schools and learning. That experience

The 21st century pedagogy teachers should be aware of. Educational Technology Mobile Learning

Interesting question: Should schools test teachers for technology proficiency before hiring them?

YES! And I think they should have to submit a writing example, too. The first time they say something like, "He don't.." or use the wrong form of 'their/they're/there' or worse, use 'your' instead of 'you're' or 'to' instead of 'too' end of interview.

The Benefits of Comic Life in Education Making comics is fun for everyone, and Comic Life makes it easy. Teachers and students will find Comic Life a very useful software tool, and now it's available for both Mac and Windows platforms. Technology not only changes how we write, but it also changes what writing is. Education will need to re-evaluate which writing skills teachers should pass to their students. Digital graphic writing is one genre students need to be fluent. Comic Life is the "word processor" of digital graphic writing. Easy to Learn Students and teachers need only a short time to learn the basics of Comic Life. It's easy to add images from digital cameras, computer web-cameras, clip art from CD's and the web, stills from QuickTime movies, scanned photos and drawings -- just about any on-screen image can be used in Comic Life. Adding captions and word balloons is as easy as drag and drop.