Group items tagged

"Classrooms using GroupTweet are realizing this is the perfect tool to setup a Group Twitter Account. No more messing with hashtags and having to instruct each student to setup their own hashtag searches or follow every other student in order to follow the conversation. With GroupTweet, your classroom will now have a single Twitter account that can be updated by all the students as well as instructors. It's a great way to organize and archive your classroom discussion under a single Twitter timeline."

Is it possible to be both a wired and unwired educator at the same time? Sounds like someone trying to explain Schrödinger's cat (the cat is both alive and dead at the same time, Google it).  I'm talking about being "an untethered teacher."  Sometimes, we end up tethered to the technology in our classroom.  To me, this is most evident with the interactive white board at the front of my classroom (I've intentionally omitted any particular brand name devices). Fortunately, I've been using AppleTV to untether myself from the front of the room.

"With budgets tight, many schools are hoping to bring technology into the classroom without having to shell out for a device for each student. A solution for many has been to make classes BYOD (short for "bring your own device"), which allows students to bring laptops, tablets, and smartphones from home and to use them in the classroom and share them with other students. It's a promising idea, especially for schools that don't have big tech budgets, but it has met with some criticism from those who don't think that it's a viable long-term or truly budget-conscious decision. Whether that's the case is yet to be seen, but these stories of schools that have tried out BYOD programs seem to be largely positive, allowing educators and students to embrace technology in learning regardless of the limited resources they may have at hand."

In honor of Twitter's #pencilchat, I put together some of the more memorable tweets to create this video. I plan to use it for upcoming professional development workshops about technology integration in the classroom. It's a light-hearted look at the spectrum of where we sit regarding technology in the classroom and meeting our students' needs. Enjoy!

"Mystery Skype is an educational game, invented by teachers, played by two classrooms on Skype. The aim of the game is to guess the location of the other classroom by asking each other questions. It's suitable for all age groups and can be used to teach subjects like geography, history, languages, mathematics and science."

"Backchannel Chat is designed for educational discussions, it provides all the tools an educator could need to facilitate online discussions. Easily control and moderate your classroom discussions in realtime. Our modern web 2.0 styled chat rooms will engage and transform your classroom."

"One of the great things about Minecraft is that there's not just one version. It exists as a stand-alone game, but creative players also create modifications, or "mods," that add all sorts of upgrades, features, and options for every taste. One of the most popular mods for classrooms is MinecraftEdu. Since it's targeted at classrooms, teachers may be tempted to ignore Minecraft and head straight for MinecraftEdu -- but not so fast! Both Minecraft and MinecraftEdu can serve as great learning tools. So which version is right for you and your classroom? Consult this list of pros, cons, and suggestions to make your decision."

"Classroom helps teachers create and collect assignments paperlessly. When teachers create assignments, they can choose to share a single document, or automatically make a copy for each student. They can quickly see who has or hasn't completed the work, and provide direct, real-time feedback."

Welcome to a preview of Classroom, a new tool coming to Google Apps for Education. Classroom weaves together Google Docs, Drive and Gmail to help teachers create and organize assignments quickly, provide feedback efficiently, and communicate with their classes with ease

You can save about $3500 hundred dollars per classroom if you buy a tablet and projector rather than an interactive whiteboard and get the same results, but you don't know that because this and other research (almost always commissioned by IWB companies) is purposely misleading you, comparing classrooms with IWBs to those without technology rather than comparing classrooms with IWBs to the much less expensive projectors/laptop or projector/tablet combo.

"Japan will soon start trialling electronic textbooks in primary schools, enhancing the role of IT in the classroom for a generation of "digital natives" born in the wired age. Under the "future school" project, 10 elementary schools will give all their under-12 pupils tablet PCs and fit their classrooms with interactive electronic blackboards starting as early as next month."

Interesting development in Japan with a pilot Tablet computer project.

Some useful ideas for using screencasting to help studetns learn. "Screencasts can be a great tool for teachers to create presentations for their students to view away from the classroom. But it is even more powerful when it is used as a student creation tool. Screencasts can require higher order thinking skills when the students not only create a presentation, but then have to explain their thinking. "

" This article tries to break down the 'Getting Started' aspects of Google Classroom and point out important features along the way."

There are about a million different ways to use all the great Google tools available for free in your classroom. Whether you’re bringing your classroom into the 21st century by making it paperless or AppSmashing, even the simplest of Google tools offers you a wide array of ways to use it. The Google suite of …

There are about a million different ways to use all the great Google tools available for free in your classroom. Whether you’re bringing your classroom into the 21st century by making it paperless or AppSmashing, even the simplest of Google tools offers you a wide array of ways to use it. The Google suite of …

Thorough discussion of the flipped classroom together with an exploration of how to implement it.

"The first thing that stands out upon arrival at Hellerup School, where 640 students between the ages of 6 and 16 study on the former site of the Tuborg brewery in Denmark, is the absence of a fence separating the school from the street. Inside, there is no office to greet visitors. Instead, small shoes litter the floor and children of all ages sprawl on couches doing homework, play foosball or run about the open space that substitutes for classrooms. "

The list of interesting ways you can use pinterest in the classroom and/or for personal learning is growing. There are some great ideas here and most are very easy to implement.

"Wikispaces Classroom is a brand new product from the Wikispaces team entirely and exclusively for teachers and students. Over the years we've distilled what we believe and do into one simple thing: help teachers help students. And Wikispaces Classroom is our attempt to take that to the next level."

Some of the different ways teachers are using tumblr in their classrooms

"In order to get impact with technology in the classroom, for me it's really quite simple and involves three easy to remember elements; technology for learning shouldn't be about bells and whistles, it's about what works"