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What if we applied the psychology of what makes technology attractive to students...to our face-2-face practices in the classroom? Using this idea, instead of using more technology in the classroom, why not design the traditional human / face-to-face classroom experience to be more like what makes technology so engrossing to modern students? Do these principles sound familiar... Deliver information in bite sized chunks, Create mental models, Use short stories to help process information, Learning happens and is remembered through repetition, People are motivated by Progress and Mastery, Sustained attention lasts 10 minutes, and the use of Progressive Disclosure. Progressive Disclosure an interaction design technique often used in human computer interaction to help maintain the focus of a user's attention by reducing clutter, confusion, and cognitive workload. This improves usability by presenting only the minimum data required for the task at hand. Here are 100 little articles that could have big implications in the classroom.

What is a global project? I define a global project as any sort of collaborative project that involves two or more classes from different schools/countries. There is usually a defined purpose and structure to the project. The learning is usually documented and shared on an online space such as a blog. Some global projects have a culminating event.

Cyberlearning is another buzz word in the literature of  the 21st education. With the growing integration of technology into education there emerged some new  forms of learning that just decades ago never existed. It is a positive sign that educators are moving with the current and not against it.

If you want to understand why STEM jobs are such a big deal, then this NPR interview really helps us understand why so many people are talking about STEM even though it makes up only 7% of the jobs. Read (and share) this NPR interview or download it for a listen as you travel. "That is, a technical education now allows you to do anything. And anything, for most workers, means having a job that's fairly focused as a STEM worker, but then moving on to management or into a regulatory roll or into a government job. So STEM has become the place where you go if you want to have a lot of alternatives 10 years down the road."

A nice training module to help students and teachers become "Google Drive masters." Neat idea.

"technology now serves as a critical thread that ties many of us together in learning" "until collaboration is a behavior naturally included in every educator's definition of teaching, then many of the contemporary promotions of technology in education will continue to be little more than spit in the wind."

"technology now serves as a critical thread that ties many of us together in learning" "until collaboration is a behavior naturally included in every educator's definition of teaching, then many of the contemporary promotions of technology in education will continue to be little more than spit in the wind."

Are you searching for a way to share documents, presentations, slideshows, or a series of photos or images with your students? Then Voice Thread is the free Web 2.0 tool for you and your students (teachers can register for a free education account).

Nice post about how to evangelize advanced tech to fellow teachers

The use of web based technology is growing by leaps and bounds every day. These online tools are the new set of keys for opening your students' minds. The vast resources on the Internet are making the use traditional methods of teaching and learning obsolete in countless ways.

Like everything else on the Internet, trying to find images is like trying to find a needle in a haystack. Without the right tools for finding science and math images on the web it is often an impossible, or at least mind-numbing, task. What is needed are search engines which make the job easier. This is where the tips and tricks provided below help this seemingly impossible task by using the top search Web 2.0 search engines and tools available today. These are valuable resources for both you and your students when trying to find just the right image for lesson or project involving digital media.

In contrast to the digital footprint you use for your personal learning network, this focus is on the online digital footprint students' use in your science or math classroom. The power of a well designed digital footprint brings the capacity to transform a classroom into an online learning community. Within this community your students use digital tools to create and develop a personal learning network.

mixing colors and other color activities

Those are some of the capabilities known as "21st-century skills" - what everyone from CEOs to President-elect Obama says that today's students need for their fast-changing future. In a knowledge economy, the reasoning goes, the ability to articulate and solve problems, to generate original ideas, and to work collaboratively across cultural boundaries is growing exponentially in importance. The challenge for schools is to find ways to shift from traditional rote learning and teach these skills, while still doing due diligence to the three R's. The good news about 21st-century skills, advocates say, is that they can be integrated into core subjects.

This network is for educators who are interested in educational podcasting and the Podstock conference May 1st and 2nd in Wichita Kansas.