Group items tagged

"A collection of images visualizing Personal Learning Environments/Networks started by Scott Leslie and continued by the community at large since 2008."

I'm a big, big fan of Diigo. I appreciate that I can save and share bookmarks, highlight and leave comments on webpages, annotate resources, host and participate in groups and forums on particular topics, message and interact with friends and colleagues, and much more. It's a very big component of my personal learning network (PLN). I'm also impressed and pleased that the Diigo founders and employees listened to its community of teacher-users and developed Diigo for Educators (More fondly referred to as EduDiigo). Here are some thoughts about about why teachers and learners might use Diigo.

"Much attention has been paid to 3D Printing lately, with new companies developing cheaper and more efficient consumer models that have wowed the tech community. They herald 3D Printing as a revolutionary and disruptive technology, but how will these printers truly affect our society? Beyond an initial novelty, 3D Printing could have a game-changing impact on consumer culture, copyright and patent law, and even the very concept of scarcity on which our economy is based. From at-home repairs to new businesses, from medical to ecological developments, 3D Printing has an undeniably wide range of possibilities which could profoundly change our world."

Cel.ly is primarily a free group texting service. Group texting saves time, improves communication, provides documentation of texts, and sets the stage for easily using many other cell phone tools. The Cells referred to in Cel.ly are instant mobile networks. With Cel.ly, you can have open group chat, one-way alerting, or a hybrid where curators can approve messages

"An assistive technology: a technology used by an individual with a disability to perform a function that might otherwise be difficult or impossible." Samantha Thomas, a student, future librarian, and educator at Kutztown University, created this handy collection of assistive technologies that you may find helpful. Some are commonly used with special needs individuals, such as augmentative & alternative communication apps and others are general consumer apps. Listed alongside each app is her assessment of its value as an assistive technology."

Many campuses have decided to outsource email and other services to "cloud" providers. Berkeley has joined in by migrating student and faculty to bMail, operated by Google. In doing so, it has raised some anxiety about privacy and autonomy in communications. In this post, I outline some advantages of our outsourcing to Google, some disadvantages, and how we might improve upon our IT outsourcing strategy, especially for sensitive or especially valuable materials.

"Two year 4 students from Winters Flat Primary School explain how they write, collaborate, receive feedback and share using Google Docs, one of the key communication tools of Google Apps for Education."

"Take your professional learning community to the next level by using Google Docs to collaborate with colleagues. Google Docs is an online office suite that allows you to create, edit, share, and publish documents, including spreadsheets and presentations. Because everything is stored and even modified on the web, Google Docs makes it easy to collaborate with colleagues - and even to edit the same document from multiple computers simultaneously. This session will focus on the use of Google Docs to promote and support collaboration within a PLC, including strategies for creating common assessments, sharing best practices, and capturing the conversation - even between meetings. Google Docs can even be used for data collection and analysis. This one tool can revolutionize the way your PLC collaborates. And it's free. (This is a hands-on DOUBLE session: 2.5 hours.)"

"The web is for everyone so, in essence, this web literacies paper is also for everyone. It is, however, likely to be of particular use and value to educators and academics looking for a reference point and framework to help develop web literacies in themselves and others. When we mention 'we' in this white paper we're talking about not only about Mozilla, but the community of people who believe in Connected Learning, and who believe in learning through making and doing. We're people who believe in the practical application of knowledge through project-based and interest-based learning."

"One of the very interesting aspects of Twitter is the ability to have online chats about specific subjects, usually lasting for an hour or so. These chats utilise a particular hashtag, and people who want to engage in the chat will keep an eye out for the particular tag, and will use it themselves if they want to become involved. There are hundreds of chats taking place on a regular basis and there's a useful community run document that lists many of them."

"TeachMeets are an exciting model of professional development making waves in the Melbourne teaching community. A TeachMeet is an informal meeting for teachers to share and discuss their classroom practise. Another term to describe these meets is an unconference. Presenters speak for either seven or two minutes on a topic of choice that is related to classroom practice. "

"This book is designed to provide teachers and parents alike an insight into the bring-your-own-technology (BYOT) revolution sweeping across entire school communities in Australia, the US and UK, and explain the immense implications of these developments. In time all schools in the developed world will move to students using their personal mobile technology in class, rather than it being provided by the school. It is not a case of if, but when. BYOT is like a tsunami coming across the horizon. The forces impelling the change and the potential educational, social development, economic, technological and political opportunities opened by the development will not only bring about its introduction but will soon fundamentally change the nature of schooling, teaching, the technology used, home-school relations and the resourcing of schools."

The world famous Hindu religion and spiritual networking website www.charanamrit.com provides complete list of Indian Hindu festivals which are celebrated by Hindu community with great zeal.

Katrina Schwartz and Ki Sung at MindShift started a podcast titled "Stories Teachers Share". It highlightst the many varied and interesting work teachers do daily. It gives teachers the opportunity to help the larger community better understand what it really means to be a teacher.

Facebook is moving back to its roots in education with this morning's big announcement of custom groups for schools called, not surprisingly Groups for Schools. While I'm dubious about how, if, and why individual teachers may want to use the service… it'll be great for entire schools who don't have the budget or resources to build their very own online community. So here's the deal: Facebook will let you have an area of the site where anyone with your school's or district's .edu email address can get in and participate. It's basically the same model that Mark Zuckerberg used to launch the site many moons ago.

Below you will find a collaboratively written document produced in Bangkok, Thailand, at the March 28-31 teacher's meeting of EARCOS, the East Asia Regional Council of Schools.  EARCOS is an organization of 130 primary and secondary schools that primarily use English as the language of instruction.  These include AP and IB schools and a number of other private schools.  We produced the document below on a public Google doc at a workshop, which I structured on the model of an "innovation challenge" of the kind that web developers use to bring together communities to complete a project.  We hope this guide will be useful to any teacher confronting the challenges of introducing new technologies into the K-12 classroom in meaningful, inventive, productive, creative, and connected ways.