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"Special education addresses the individual differences and requirements of students with special educational needs. As a teacher or trainer, working with students with special educational needs requires specific skills and strategies to create and deliver effective programs of work for them. This free online education course serves as an introduction to the field of special education. The course begins by outlining core elements of special education, including the change in educational legalisation in recent years with particular emphasis on legislation in America. The responsibilities of teachers and trainers are also detailed, along with the individual educational plan (IEP). The course describes the most frequent disabilities encountered in the mainstream classroom: learning disabilities, attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), intellectual disabilities, behavioural disorders, and physical disabilities and sensory impairments. The course provides key information about each of these disabilities and describes practical strategies on how to assist and teach students with these disabilities. This free online education course will be of great interest to professionals in the education sector who would like a greater knowledge and understanding of working with students with special educational needs, and to all students who are interested in special education."

"Teachers and students have access to an impressive set of tools for sharing ideas and making thinking visible. The old model of calling out answers to questions has certain limitations and while it remains the mainstay of many classrooms new options allow for a mix of options. Some of our goals are to provide our students with appropriate wait time or think time and to ensure the voice of even our most introverted students is heard. It would also be nice to have a record of our students thinking and a way to easily see patterns of thinking across a group of students."

This special report features a series of columns by Dr. Lawrence C. Ragan, Director of Instructional Design and Development for Penn State's World Campus, and will help you establish online instructor best practices and performance expectations. The following snippets are just a taste of the insider's advice found in the full report: Principles of Effective Online Teaching: #1 Show Up and Teach - The necessity of this statement is borne of the misimpression that the online class "teaches itself." Since most of the course is already authored and designed for online delivery, instructors may believe they simply need to serve as the proverbial "guide on the side" as the students navigate the learning system. Not true! Principles of Effective Online Teaching: #2 Practice Proactive Course Management Strategies - The online instructor can help create a successful learning experience by practicing proactive course management strategies such as monitoring assignment submissions, and communicating and reminding students of missed and/or upcoming deadlines. Principles of Effective Online Teaching: #3 Establish Patterns of Course Activities - Although the online classroom environment provides tremendous flexibility of time and place of study, establishing and communicating a course pace and pattern of work can aid both instructor and student, and alleviate confusion around how the course operates. Principles of Effective Online Teaching: #4 Plan for the Unplanned - For those small or not-so-small occasions when "life happens," having a strategy for informing students of these changes can go a long way to maintaining course continuity. Principles of Effective Online Teaching: #5 Response Requested and Expected - Timely instructor feedback is essential for the online learner to manage their learning experience. Instructors are expected to respond to student inquiries within one business day.

Too often the conversation surrounding the flipped classroom focuses on the videos- creating them, hosting them, and assessing student understanding of the content via simple questions or summary assignments. I wish the conversation focused more on what actually happens in a flipped classroom. If we move lecture or the transfer of knowledge online to create time and space in the physical classroom, how are we using that time to improve learning for students? What is our role as the teacher in the flipped classroom? How are we maximizing the potential of the group when students are together to design collaborative, creative, student-centered activities and assignments? This is the part I want to hear more about!

"MIT + K12 is an MIT project that features MIT students explaining math and science concepts for K-12 students. The website isn't a collection of Khan Academy-style videos, it's a place where you will find videos featuring real MIT students explaining concepts while showing them as hands-on demonstrations or experiments. Watch one of the featured videos below."

Gone are the days where students sit neatly in rows all prepared with the same back to school supplies ready to consume instruction. As the 2012/13 school year approaches, one thing is clear. One-size-fits-all is out and personalization is in. This doesn't only apply to the classroom instruction, it also applies to the mobile devices your students choose to use for learning. Today student choice = personalization. The teacher sets the learning goals, but students choose their own tools or learning. 

Flipped classroom teachers almost universally agree that it's not the instructional videos on their own, but how they are integrated into an overall approach, that makes the difference. In his classes, Bergmann says, students can't just "watch the video and be done with it." He checks their notes and requires each student to come to class with a question. And, while he says it takes a little while for students to get used to the system, as the year progresses he sees them asking better questions and thinking more deeply about the content. After flipping his classroom, Bergmann says he can more easily query individual students, probe for misconceptions around scientific concepts, and clear up incorrect notions.

" Multiple layers could be used for showing data differences on a year over year or month over month basis. You could display the same data with different base layers for comparison. Students working collaboratively on a map can be responsible for editing their own layers on the same map. If you're using Google My Maps to have students create literature trips, they can create a different layer for each chapter of a book. Students mapping the history of an event like the U.S. Civil War could create a different layer for each year of the war. You might enjoy reading: Free Technology for Teachers: Listen and Read - Nonfiction Read-along...Free Technology for Teachers: Why You Should Use Videos In Your...Free Technology for Teachers: The Week in Review - The Most Popular... ENGAGEYA Share128 at 12:04 PM Email This BlogThis! Share to Twitter Share to Facebook Share to Pinterest Labels: free technology for students, Free Technology For Teachers, Geography, Google Apps, google maps, History, how to, My Maps, Social Studies Links to this post Create a Link Newer Post Older Post Home "

My feeling about this is quite clear... the learning is in transparency so I advocate not befriending students. Rather create a page or a group and interact transparently with the students there.

"Kidblog.org is designed for elementary and middle school teachers who want to provide each student with an individual blog. Kidblog's simple, yet powerful tools allow students to publish posts and participate in discussions within a secure classroom blogging community. Teachers maintain complete control over student blogs. "

Google is usually one of the first places students turn to when tasked with an assignment. Whether it's for research, real-time results, or just a little digital exploration … it's important they know how to properly Google. Lucky for teachers (and students, of course), Google has a handy set of lesson plans that are just waiting to be unleashed upon the leaders of tomorrow.

With more and more of the world's content online, it is critical that students understand how to effectively use web search to find quality sources appropriate to their task. We've created a series of lessons to help you guide your students to use search meaningfully in their schoolwork and beyond. On this page, you'll find Search Literacy lessons and A Google A Day classroom challenges. Our search literacy lessons help you meet the new Common Core State Standards and are broken down based on level of expertise in search: Beginner, Intermediate, or Advanced. A Google A Day challenges help your students put their search skills to the test, and to get your classroom engaged and excited about using technology to discover the world around them.

"This event takes place on Wednesday, Nov. 28, 2012, 1 to 2 p.m. ET. The flipped classroom model-in which students watch video lessons for homework and receive more direct, individual instruction from teachers during class time-is rapidly gaining popularity in K-12 schools, with websites such as Khan Academy offering thousands of free video lessons. Some teachers see flipped learning as a way to spend more time working with their students and less time lecturing. But critics of the approach have called it nothing more than a high-tech, time-shifting tool that often leaves students confused about the content they're supposed to be absorbing at home. Our guests will discuss the pros and cons of this approach and highlight the best methods for making a flipped classroom successful. "

A common question that we get with regard to technology projects is "how do I grade it?" The 21st-century communication and collaboration skills which are used with most technology based projects are, in many ways, real-world problem-solving skills. The standard, multiple-choice type tests simply are not going to be able to assess students' learning. Instead of thinking of the assessment itself as the measurement, we are going to need to examine our students' performances of understanding. In other words, the assessment is the tool through which we can gauge how much our students have learned.

"As instructors, we are all information curators. How do you collect and share currently relevant content with your students? How do your students research and share information that they find with the rest of class? What tools do you use to manage or facilitate presentation of resources? Is it public? Can students access it at other times? In groups?"

It is important to realize the implications for our students of our own critical reflection. Students put great store by our actions and they learn a great deal from observing how we model intellectual inquiry and democratic process. Given that this is so, a critically reflective teacher activates her classroom by providing a model of passionate skepticism. As Osterman (1990) comments, "critically reflective teachers - teachers who make their own thinking public, and therefore subject to discussion - are more likely to have classes that are challenging, interesting, and stimulating for students" (p. 139). Stephen Brookfield

The Framework presents a holistic view of 21st century teaching and learning that combines a discrete focus on 21st century student outcomes (a blending of specific skills, content knowledge, expertise and literacies) with innovative support systems to help students master the multi-dimensional abilities required of them in the 21st century. The key elements of 21st century learning are represented in the graphic and descriptions below. The graphic represents both 21st century skills student outcomes (as represented by the arches of the rainbow) and 21st century skills support systems (as represented by the pools at the bottom).

"Our students' excessive dependence on digital content is going wild and this obligates us from an ethical point of view ( at least ) to be ourselves aware of the copyright issues related to the use, dissemination, and redistribution of such content and also to teach our kids and students about the guidelines they have to respect when using electronic materials. The "Whatever online is Free" mentality should change and students need to constantly be reminded of the ethical codes and copyright rules they have to abide by to use the online content in an ethically sound manner."

"As an educator, you know that when students are given a writing assignment, many of them may need a bit of help to get it done on time. Did you know that it's possible to turn to Twitter for some help? The social media micro-blogging tool can help students write a great paper in a number of different ways."

For students there are two distinct benefits of using Evernote. First, bookmarking online with annotations helps students not only keep track of websites they find useful while researching, it also helps them remember why they bookmarked a site. There's nothing worse that looking at your bookmarks a week or two later and wondering what it was about a website that prompted you to bookmark it. Second, by writing course notes in Evernote students can access their notes from any device that is connected to the web.