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This blogpost takes a close look at the skills required to be prepared for the future. It discusses the importance of a skills based curriculum rather than a narrow content based one. Its inspiration is a brilliantly designed Prezi focused on Future Proofing Education. A detailed read.

CyberSmart! Online Workshops, facilitated professional development, give educators a hands-on experience in 21st century skills-the new basic skills-to meet the learning needs of today's students.

COURSE OBJECTIVES: This is a graded internship that allows you to integrate your own coursework with a hands-on service learning experience. The central objective of this course is to provide students with community experiences and reflection opportunities that examine community needs, the importance of civic engagement, and social justice issues affecting ethnic minorities and marginalized populations in contemporary American society. Students dedicate 70 hours at a pre-approved site (including Title I K-12 schools, youth programs, health services, social services, environmental programs, government agencies, etc.) directly serving a population in need or supporting activities that contribute to the greater good of our community. A weekly seminar, course readings, discussions, and reflection assignments facilitate critical thinking and a deeper understanding of cultural diversity, citizenship, and how to contribute to positive social change in our community. The course is also designed to provide "real-world" experiences that exercise academic skills and knowledge applicable to each student‟s program of study and career exploration. STUDENT LEARNING OBJECTIVES: Student will be introduced to essential skills associated with their baccalaureate studies to actively serve the local community. While completing this in-depth study of cultural diversity, citizenship and social justice issues facing our community, students will gain an understanding of the value of Social Embeddedness and the importance of incorporating civic engagement into their collegiate careers, as they strive to become civically engaged students. Students will be introduced to inequalities, discrimination, and other community issues facing ethnic minorities and marginalized populations, as well as the correlation with greater societal issues. INTERNSHIP RESPONSIBILITIES:  Service hours - 70 hours of community outreach (spread throughout the semester in which you are enrolled in the course)

Computational Thinking: A mix of critical thinking skills and computer technology process skills. Lots of very useful resources for CT.

Scholastic posts "daily starters" for review and practice in language arts and math skills. Teachers can select grade levels and even reveal answers. New skills and activities are posted every day!

What skills should we be helping our students acquire? Hint: it's not knowing the second longest river in the USA.

David Puttnam spoke in Dublin tonight - he had some interesting ideas including ORACY - A web definition explains "oracy" as…used to describe a person's ability to efficiently communicate with others via the spoken word as well as to fully understand oral communication. Wilkinson…created the word to emphasize the need for school children to be able to fully use oral skills as an essential basis for learning and social integration. It is an analogy for the words numeracy and literacy, and aids in bringing the focus of oral skill on par with reading and writing in the classroom.

This is a "field-book of tools and processes to help readers in all fields develop as researchers, writers, and agents of change." For more details and how to purchase: http://bit.ly/TYS2012. (Printing and distribution in Australia and Europe begins end of March.) Comments on the influence of this book's approach "I was able to get engaged in a project that I was able to actually use in work, which was extremely satisfying. The whole process encouraged me, and I felt very empowered as a change agent, which could be an exhilarating feeling." a healthcare professional and story-teller "I really had not been used to thinking about my own thinking, so learning to do that also helped me to slow down and start to look away from the career path that I had been taking for granted." a biologist-turned-web designer "I found that the experience helped me to accept feedback from other professionals. I am more comfortable with listening to why my own ideas might not work or need further evaluation. This even happens to the point where I find reasons now to seek out this kind of feedback." a teacher "I had viewed research as a process of collecting information into a sort of database and reviewing it effectively. I have now revised my notions to include a more broad understanding of interconnectedness between people and ideas. An important part of research is to keep relationships going." an adult educator "One of the most useful ideas was the use of dialogue, which helps to slow down the procedures used by the company. There's a tension between management's need to make quick decisions and desire to have real dialogue around proposed changes-changes to the internal company operational procedures as well as to evaluating the quality of what the company is doing with its publications." a teacher, currently working in publishing "I was asked to pay attention to what I actually could do instead of what I could not. This enabled me to (1) step back and let go of a huge technic

Author describes study that showed that middle, hs, and university students were highly distractible by technology and were anxious if they could not check their devices. He described a strategy called "tech breaks" where students are allowed to check devices and social media for a minute and then to focus on school work for 15 minutes as a way of improving their metacognitive skills. 

I wonder if using technology in the classroom - integrally - would mitigate some of the anxiety and/or increase attention. I wonder if there are other teaching/learning strategies we might employ that would increase engagement such that students would be distracted from their distraction...

I love this site. This site provides a safe online space for children to upload their art, craft and design creations to share with the whole world. For teachers, it is a great place to find inspiration for your own class projects. http://ictmagic.wikispaces.com/Art%2C+Craft+%26+Design

The DIY online club awards badges (called 'Skills' on the site) to students and kids of all ages in exchange for completing tasks. DIY Makers share their work with the community and get patches for the Skills they earn. Each Skill consists of a set of Challenges that help them learn techniques to get the hang of it. Once a Maker completes a Challenge, they add photos and video to their Portfolio to show what they did.

The game, BiblioBouts, turns collecting citations into a competitive event, pitting students against their classmates. Students are rewarded for their research skills and their ability to differentiate between good and bad material. To play, they find sources, which are judged by their peers for relevance and credibility, and then measure the worth of sources their classmates find. They gain more points the more sources they assess accurately and the better their own sources are judged.

I'm about 80% of the way through Disrupting Class by Clayton Christensen and Michael Horn. (Yeah, I know... I'm the last one to read it.) There's a lot that's very interesting about the book, and while we should critically examine the book, it is still a fascinating read. If nothing else, it is continuing to make me think about how much more could happen in our classrooms if we created more opportunities for students to learn basic skills and content outside of class, rather than inside class. I've been thinking a lot about math class. How many students would learn math more efficiently if they could watch math videos, narrated by a teacher with problems done "on the board" as they watched with multiple examples of concepts (think geometry here, as an example) that speak to different learning modalities.

Zoo U is an online game-based social skills assessment program for children in grades 3 and 4. After customizing their avatar, players explore a variety of social situations in a virtual school setting.

Find activities that develop map skills in students from preK to Grade 6.

Abstract: Previously assumed to be a homogenous and highly skilled group with respect to information and communications technology, the so-called Net Generation has instead been shown to possess a diverse range of technology skills and preferences. To better understand this diversity, we subjected data from 2096 students aged between 17 and 26 from three Australian universities to a cluster analysis. Through this analysis, we identified four distinct types of technology users: power users (14% of sample), ordinary users (27%), irregular users (14%) and basic users (45%). A series of exploratory chi-square analyses revealed significant associations between the different types of technology users and the university that students attended, their gender and age and whether the student was local or international. No associations were found for analyses related discipline area, socio-economic status or rurality of residence. The findings are discussed in light of the rhetoric associated with commentaries about the Net Generation, and suggestions about their implications for teaching and learning in universities are offered.

Looks like a nice tool for Language teachers

Used by educators all over the world, Voxopop talkgroups are a fun, engaging and easy-to-use way to help students develop their speaking skills. They're a bit like message boards, but use voice rather than text and a have a specialised user interface. No longer confined to a physical classroom, teachers and students of oral skills can interact from home, or even from opposite sides of the planet!

Online, interactive lessons for study skills in preparation for post secondary education

"The purpose of this resource is to provide "Just in Time" training through an online interface for K-12 educators based on the National Educational Technology Standards for Teachers (NETS-T). "

Lessons for teachers on using several technology tools

"Just in Time" training through an online interfac efor  educators based on the National Educational Technology Standards for Teachers (NETS-T). These standards are the basic technology skills every educator should possess. In the process, educators will develop their own skills and discover what students need in order to meet the NETS for Students, as well as the MMC Online Experience requirement.