Group items tagged

Describes the importance of play, tinkering, and the new role that collaboration and collective expertise - all made possible by digital media - will have in solving complex problems in a constantly changing world.

The Technology Integration Matrix (TIM) illustrates how teachers can use technology to enhance learning for K-12 students. The TIM incorporates five interdependent characteristics of meaningful learning environments: active, constructive, goal directed (i.e., reflective), authentic, and collaborative (Jonassen, Howland, Moore, & Marra, 2003). The TIM associates five levels of technology integration (i.e., entry, adoption, adaptation, infusion, and transformation) with each of the five characteristics of meaningful learning environments.

Living in a Digital Age provides guidelines: Technological change in education, particularly in how our students receive, interact with and respond to the learning experience means we are facing the largest transformation that the teaching profession has ever seen. Teachers, students and parents are increasingly using digital technologies to teach, learn and communicate, challenging the traditional concept of a school. Schools and early childhood settings are now broader than the walls of a classroom. Schools need to assist students to develop the skills required for critical evaluation, online collaboration and communication and behaviours which support the safe, responsible and ethical use of digital technology - essential to participating in life and work in the 21st century. The following critical advice is the result of DEECD research projects carried out over the past three years by Victorian teachers participating in trials and/or pilots within the Innovation and Next Practice Division. The advice should be considered when using social media tools.

Leading with Web2.0: An Administrators Guide to Collaborative Tools in K-12 Education

Best hopes included: * Improving student achievement * Fostering collaboration * common understanding of "effective" performance * Providing meaningful and regular feedback to educators.

Make video and photo sharing easy while keeping those treasures private and safe.

Mimi Ito of the University of California, Irvine, describes how new media practices are transforming the ways that young people interact, play, collaborate and learn outside of school.

Whether that's through physical or virtual exchanges, and whether it's in order learn foreign languages, solve global issues, collaborate on new media projects, or extend professional development opportunities to teachers (to name just a few), the goal is the same: Get U.S. schools linked with the world so that kids can foster global understanding, communicate with different cultures and countries, and learn in a way that's exciting and meaningful.

The Partnership for 21st Century Skills is a national organization that advocates for 21st century readiness for every student. As the United States continues to compete in a global economy that demands innovation, P21 and its members provide tools and resources to help the U.S. education system keep up by fusing the three Rs and four Cs (critical thinking and problem solving, communication, collaboration, and creativity and innovation). While leading districts and schools are already doing this, P21 advocates for local, state and federal policies that support this approach for every school.

Skype in the classroom is a free community to help teachers everywhere use Skype to help their students learn. It's a place for teachers to connect with each other, find partner classes and share inspiration. This is a global initiative that was created in response to the growing number of teachers using Skype in their classrooms.