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We need judges for multimedia for the Flat Classroom project and netgen. A topic will take 3-4 hours to judge during early May. This is a great way to learn about the emerging technology trends in education and technology and to see the current range of student abilities in digital storytelling. Some college professors have students participate as part of their coursework to understand how such projects work. If this is you, please contact us at lisa at flatclassroom dot org and we'll see what we can do to coordinate your needs. The Flat Classroom project judges a few weeks earlier than NetGen (early May versus NetGen in mid May). Thank you for your consideration and passing it along. This page is the instructions for the Flat Classroom project.

We need judges for multimedia for the Flat Classroom project and netgen. A topic will take 3-4 hours to judge during early May. This is a great way to learn about the emerging technology trends in education and technology and to see the current range of student abilities in digital storytelling. Some college professors have students participate as part of their coursework to understand how such projects work. If this is you, please contact us at lisa at flatclassroom dot org and we'll see what we can do to coordinate your needs. The Flat Classroom project judges a few weeks earlier than NetGen (FCP is in early May versus NetGen in mid May). Thank you for your consideration and passing it along. This page is the instructions for the NetGen Project

Technology has the potential to help reinvent the education process, and excite and inspire young learners to embrace science, math and technology,"

Really 197 channels for learning? Well, there are many, but if you're like me, you're building a subscription list for your content areas and starting to curate (and perhaps create) some channels. Building a good YouTube stream is becoming part of curation and PLN building - so here's a great place to start.

TenMarks is the best math practice and learning program for grades 3-High School and as of today, it's FREE for teachers to use - in class or for their students to use at home. The TenMarks approach gives students a variety of problems on each topic, and ability to use hints if they need a little nudge, and immediate video lessons for them to refresh and learn the topic - on the spot. The end result - students refresh what they know and learn what they don't. Teachers choose their own curriculum (mapped to state standards), assign work to students, have it automatically graded immediately, review individual and class performance, and most importantly, take immediate action. TenMarks is super effective and real easy to use - it was designed with the help of math teachers across the country. What's more - it's FREE for the entire class!

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.

The online learning congress has named their outstanding award winners. I was excited to see one of my blog sponsors, WizIQ win best virtual classroom provider for the second year in a row. Lots of interesting companies herein the global education community.

Virtual Reality game to learn Spanish language requires students to interact in real place also.

Shelly Terrell has a marvelous livebinder on learning with mobile devices with tons of great resources and information. If you're looking into this, take a look.

Can you imagine Jay Cross (informal learning fame) collating seminal documents that are all free on the web into a wiki in one place-yeah! Its an Internet Time Wiki.

Great List of Tech Tools for teachers that is updated weekly

Great ideas for changing pedagogy. 

Doug Johnson is a great read for his blunt, in your face honesty and his point about how technology companies are trying to differentiate is a great one. I think, however, we should extend this to schools as well. If your school is great, say why, but dissing the competition is no way to compete. If you think your school has no competition, think again. So, read this in light of the arriving and coming competition on the edulandscape and have an honest take on how you should "sell" the virtues of your school. If you can't talk about how great your school is and have to resort to how bad the other one is, prepare for a day when you'll shutter the windows and wonder how they're going to keep the bugs out of your empty building. Wake up and smell the wires burning their way into your student's computers and tablets, great teachers are just a click away and we've all got to learn how to blend and trend our courses, teaching, and to bridge our classrooms to add real value as teachers. It isn't hard as you think but if you just sit and teach like you've always taught, you're setting yourself up for some unpleasant days. You can't do everything but you can do something to improve yourself. Next practices are an important part of your best practice. Always innovate and never settle. Standards are only the beginning, you must have purpose if you're going to be a great teacher. Doug says: "But what I do know that when competitors trash each other, I tend to tune out. And I flat out hate it when I know they are lying - and I will NOT buy from a liar. A salesman recently promoted his video storage service by stating "unlike YouTube, we don't own your movies." That's just not true. (YouTube doesn't own your movies, GoogleApps doesn't own your Docs, CIPA, FERPA, etc. do not ban social media.)"

What is 21st century literacy and how do we help students become better communicators? Rebecca Alber says: "In today's world, being literate requires much, much more than the traditional literacy of yesterday. According to the NCTE (National Council of Teachers of English), twenty-first century readers and writers need to: Gain proficiency with tools of technology Develop relationships with others and confront and solve problems collaboratively and cross-culturally Design and share information for global communities to meet a variety of purposes Manage, analyze, and synthesize multiple streams of simultaneous information Create, critique, analyze, and evaluate multimedia texts Attend to the ethical responsibilities required by these complex environments"

Want to add voice comments to your Google Doc. Here's how from the educator's technology blog. Many students say that this helps them feel more connected to teachers. Think about it, if they struggle with writing, they might struggle with reading and this is the kind of differentiation that can really help some kids.