I totally agree, students should learn programming and be exposed to it. I love Kevin Jarrett's STEM lab and what he's doing. Read this and discuss. It doesn't matter if you don't know how to code or if your teachers are afraid they are going to have to learn. Make it a priority. If you want to add volleyball, you find someone to coach it. If you want to add programming, find someone to teach it, it is that simple. I think this model of "everyone integrates" is great b/c everyone SHOULD integrate but to think or fantasize that technology integration is the same as teaching Computer Science is to think that a kind who can skate is ready to drive a car - not even in the same ballpark.
A great site for seeing how websites are put together. Drag the 'X-ray Goggle' button into your favourites bar and click to see the coding of a site. Then you can edit the code to make changes and publish online.
http://ictmagic.wikispaces.com/ICT+%26+Web+Tools
I've uploaded the portfolio assignment that I use for my one semester 8th grade keyboarding class. It includes movie making, self creation of rubrics, MLA paper writing, memos, block letters, blogging, and an efolio component along with QR Codes. I wanted to share this but also was testing the functionality of the site for sharing resources. Hope you'll share. (Note: KS3 in the UK means grades 7-9 - the site will be adding US grade levels soon.)
Don't let the title mislead you, but yes, there are many uses of Minecraft in schools.This versatile, compelling but pretty low bandwidth tool gives us so many things Second Life never did - and with minecraft.edu it is affordable for most of us. This list is trending on Twitter which just shows how many people are interested (or how many people don't read to know it isn't really 1001 ;-)
You might just find one way to teach coding in your classroom for the Hour of Code coming up.
Students at Burlington High School are reviewing hour of code tutorials and their thoughts. For high school students, this is a great way to learn and share and also helps teachers identify best practices and best tutorials. Great job, Jenn Scheffer.
The Code of Best Practices in Fair Use for Media Literacy Education helps educators gain confidence about their rights to use copyrighted materials in developing students' critical thinking and communication skills.
To allow the layering of Flash content with DHTML content you have to do the following with the Flash Object tag:
Add the following parameter to the <object> tag:
<param name="wmode" value="transparent">;
Add the following parameter to the <embed> tag:
wmode="transparent"
**FOR GEEKY WEBMASTERS ONLY***
For you webmasters out there, I've found a really cool tool to make killer drop down menus that is worth the cost. Also, this is the information on how to make menus or other items appear IN FRONT OF flash objects on a web page. (I've had trouble w/ this forever!)
Follow these instructions from this site:
"To allow the layering of Flash content with DHTML content you have to do the following with the Flash Object tag:
* Add the following parameter to the tag:
;
* Add the following parameter to the tag:
wmode="transparent"
"
Offers interactive demonstrations of anything that can be modeled mathematically - bacteria growth, light refraction, supply and demand, etc. Running a demo requires Mathematica Player, which can be downloaded free, along with the demos
About the Wolfram Demonstrations Project
Conceived by Mathematica creator and scientist Stephen Wolfram as a way to bring computational exploration to the widest possible audience, the Wolfram Demonstrations Project is an open-code resource that uses dynamic computation to illuminate concepts in science, technology, mathematics, art, finance, and a remarkable range of other fields.
Its daily-growing collection of interactive illustrations is created by Mathematica users from around the world, who participate by contributing innovative Demonstrations.
Interactive computational resources have typically been scattered across the web--requiring specialized programming knowledge that's made them difficult and expensive to develop. As a result, their coverage has long been limited, and progress has been slow.
In many ways, the Wolfram Demonstrations Project introduces a new paradigm for exploring ideas. The power to easily create interactive visualizations, once in the domain of computing experts alone, is now in the hands of every Mathematica user.
Demonstrations can be created with just a few short lines of readable code, powered by the revolutionary advances in Mathematica. This opens the door for researchers, educators, students, and professionals at any level to create their own sophisticated mini-applications and publish them online.
Type in a search term and your results come back coded by readability level
The name "Twurdy" comes from a play on words with the question "Too Wordy?".
The philosophy
Everyone has different reading abilities. Some people searching the web are university professors and others are 5 year old children. Twurdy has been created to provide people with access to search results that suit their own readability level.
What does it do?
Twurdy uses text analysis software to "read" each page before it is displayed in the results. Then Twurdy gives each page a readability level. Twurdy then shows the readability level of the page along with a color coded system to help users determine how easy the page will be to understand.