Group items tagged

Interesting little article identifying how to use web 2.0 tools to achieve school improvement plan goals, but I will say it's the instructional uses and not the tools that makes these goals achievable. Without the understanding (and more importantly) buy-in from teachers to integrate the tools into the classroom SIP goals won't be achievable.

Are you new to using an interactive whiteboard (IWB)? Have you used one for ages but want some other ideas? Are you using an IWB regularly but know you could use it better? Then you are invited to join The 2010 Interactive Whiteboard Challenge! The aim of the IWB Challenge: To improve the use of interactive whiteboards in classrooms everywhere by having students and teachers set challenges for each other by creating videos and screencasts of ways they use their IWB. The aim is also to connect educators and students to others who are working at improving their IWB practice.

Edutopia resources for improving student performance. 

We welcome you to our wiki and blog for supporting iPod & iPad devices in education. Although our focus is K-12, many of the techniques should work for you at any level and with any number of devices. On the wiki side of this site are the deployment and management articles, and on the blog side, you will find the classroom activities (written primarily by teachers) where iPods are supporting achievement improvement for our students. We are posting as many help and how-to articles here as we can and as quickly as we can so you can continue to be successful using iPod devices in your classroom. Please let us know if there are more or different things that you would like to have included here.

...benefits of using trade books is increasing student engagement. High quality trade books are written as to spark interest and create a desire to read. Many contain colorful, interesting illustrations, photographs, and diagrams, all of which draw students into the text and improve comprehension.

Princeton scientist with an interdisciplinary bent has taken two well-known problems in mathematics and reformulated them as a physics question, offering new tools to solve challenges relevant to a host of subjects ranging from improving data compression to detecting gravitational waves.

The K-12 Online Conference invites participation from educators around the world interested in innovative ways Web 2.0 tools and technologies can be used to improve learning. This FREE conference is run by volunteers and open to everyone. The 2008 conference theme is "Amplifying Possibilities". This year's conference begins with a pre-conference keynote the week of October 13, 2008. The following two weeks, October 20-24 and October 27-31, forty presentations will be posted online to the conference blog (this website) for participants to download and view. Live Events in the form of three "Fireside Chats" and a culminating "When Night Falls" event will be announced. Everyone is encouraged to participate in both live events during the conference as well as asynchronous conversations. More information about podcast channels and conference web feeds is available!

The United States General Services Administration (GSA) and the White House Open Government Initiative are soliciting your feedback on a concept for next generation citizen consultation, namely a government-wide software tool and process to elicit expert public participation (working title "ExpertNet"). ExpertNet could: Enable government officials to circulate notice of opportunities to participate in public consultations to members of the public with expertise on a topic. Provide those volunteer experts with a mechanism to provide useful, relevant, and manageable feedback back to government officials. The proposed concept is intended to be complementary to two of the ways the Federal government currently obtains expertise to inform decision-making, namely by convening Federal Advisory Committees and announcing public comment opportunities in the Federal Register. We are looking for you to provide: Any refinements or suggestions you have to improve the process as described; Any issues (legal, policy, technical) raised by the features described; Any tools that you know of that perform the process described in that step; Any organizations (public or private) that have a similar platform in place.

Want to let students explore with real data then welcome to FRED® (Federal Reserve Economic Data), a database of 25,176 U.S. economic time series. With FRED® you can download data in Microsoft Excel and text formats and view charts of data series. Students can explore data, create models & hypothesis, and test their models as the year progresses. If their models aren't working they can go back to their original data set and make changes based on what they've learned and see how those predictions work on new data. The best part is the variety of data that is available.  We plan to continually improve FRED® and encourage you to send feedback through our contact form.

Use of the iPad may have data that indicates it improves student reading and writing. 

Interesting examples, put together in a nice google doc (always like when people share using the tool they are talking about). Great thing about this list is that it should continue to grow and improve if googledocs does what it 'says' it can do.

On September 8, the U.S. Department of Education will ask students to respond to the President's Back to School challenge by creating videos, up to two minutes in length, describing the steps they will take to improve their education and the role education will play in fulfilling their dreams. Watch this page for more information about the "I Am What I Learn" video contest for students.

Identifying ways to help teachers think about assessment holistically rather than as a summative piece and create a plan to assess learning through an entire unit. Good quick read.

Great set of resources for research starting points beyond Google for younger students.

iCue is a free collaborative learning environment which includes hundreds of current and historic videos from NBC News, fun games and activities, and discussion forums. Whether you are joining to improve your grades, connect with friends, or just learn new things, iCue gives you a safe, fun environment for discussion and learning.

A site produced by NBC to collect news stories, share them, and reflect and respond to the perspectives presented by the news media. (Horizon Report, 2009)

Starting to gather more iPhone information as our work with Africa begins to shape up.