Group items tagged

Doug Johnson estimates the savings moving to Google apps, Great post for those considering this. Doug says: "These are rough and admittedly optimistic estimates, but I think you can see the general trend. Even if only 50% of my estimated nearly $2M in savings is realized, that averages out to close to $200,000 per year. (Out of a $1.2M budget.) I am not suggesting reducing tech budgets by this amount, but I can sure think of a lot more interesting things (like kids' computers, a more robust wireless network, and more bandwidth) to spend tech dollars on. Yes, I need to pay $7 a year per administrative, possibily teacher, e-mail account for archiving and retrieval. Not bad, though, considering."

Here is a lovely cross- curricular project that the spanish teacher and I did together. She came to me and said, "I want to use this but will you help me on the technology side, I don't have to understand the technology to use the technology." My answer is YES! We took 2 days, did it in class, and there is a rich project that also gives her a legacy to hand down to other classes and for others to use and share. In this, students are taking tours of countries. They will play this and critique it in class using the teacher's hook up between her computer and large screen tv.

Lesson plans which use technology

Article from "The Journal" about measuring learning and 21st Century Skills.

Excellent social networking video from the archives of FlatClassroom projects. Demoing this at MACUL.

An interesting article that examines the recent events of Rhode Island school district firing teachers and how effective that really is. Teachers need parents support.

history resources k-12. Lesson plans and best practices

Tinychat is a dead-simple audio and video web communication platform with a rich API. tinychat.com provides disposable conference rooms with a simple url for up to 400 people and up to 12 live audio video streams, that just work, no signup.  p2p.tinychat.com easily creates, private, encrypted, person-to-person audio video calls that just work, with no signup. 

HS principal, Harry Grzelewski, expresses his view on 21st Century Learning and instruction.

A research paper commissioned by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation that finds that students know when they are being taught well and when they are not. 

backchan.nl is tool for involving audiences in presentations by letting them suggest questions and vote on each other's questions. backchan.nl is intended for conference or event organizers who want a new way to solicit questions from the audience and make better use of question and answer time.

Video about digital learners.

Excellent write up on the uses of technology integration information from the Florida Center for Instructional Technology. This is an incredible example of how a good blogger (like Richard Byrne) can take what looks very complex and help his readers understand what they will get out of it. Of course, I could have written my own take, but since Richard does such a good job, why should I. Which brings us to another point about blogging - we give credit and don't "snarf" blogposts from others as many of the trolls out there are doing.

Florida's Center for Instructional Technology has produced some very useful matrices on the integration of technology. (Hat tip to Richard Byrne - Free Tech for Teachers)