Issues and Trends

Engaging uses of instructional technology including resources and tools, 10 techniques including links to delve deeper into uses for technology

Engagement: Social Learning: Use time outside of class better, so you can use in-class time better It provides opportunities for writing and writing assessment: Encourage dialogue, reach more students Help students get ahead of the professional curve: Build connections

I agree that I could efficiently use this resource in my future classroom to an extent. Because the article only outlines reasons why social media should be used in a classroom, there are no specific ways mentioned on how to integrate social media... there are only a list of benefits to using it. I believe this article could be intended for teacher or student use because it allows both teachers and students to understand the benefits and purposes of using social media in the classroom. One similar resource that could also be considered is "How to use Social Media as a Learning Tool": http://www.edudemic.com/how-to-use-social-media-as-a-learning-tool-in-the-classroom/. This site seems more beneficial to me because it specifically offers ways for teachers to implement social media in the classroom (rather than just stating advantages), such as a class Facebook group, Twitter feed, blog post, YouTube videos, and Instagram. Are you aware of any similar resources that should be considered? If so, what are those resources?

You also have to keep in mind the overall purpose of social media being in the classroom.

Highlights * Flipped class has the capacity for building lifelong skills for 21st Century learners. * Misunderstanding of the key elements necessary for successful flipping * Under-utilisation of conceptual frameworks and design in flipped classroom * Need for stronger evidence in evaluating student outcomes in flipped classrooms

Using Pinterest in the classroom for things like group projects (brainstorm and organize) and communicating with other instructors to gather ideas.

I think this article will be useful for my classroom. I use Pinterest now and we are working on maybe having a district pinterest page or links for people to follow and gather information from. I think of this article as more of a teacher article. I'm not sure how many students use Pinterest but in the education field this is huge.

I agree that I could use this article for my future classroom because I am already familiar with Pinterest, and the article provides tips for using Pinterest with other teachers as well as students. This article as a whole seems to be geared toward teachers because it is specifically about applying Pinterest to the classroom, but on the topic of Pinterest as a whole, students can also use Pinterest to share ideas with one another and possibly look at some of the boards of their own teacher. For instance, the article states that teachers could create a Pinterest board to share with students so that students could simply use resources from the board to begin writing instead of wasting time researching. The only other site that I have encountered that could be used for similar purposes is Diigo because teachers could also bookmark articles on this site to share with students in the same way that they could with Pinterest.

What are 21st Century skills?

"Through the intentional development and sequencing within the CCSS, it is critical that educators and curriculum developers consider new and existing instructional materials through a different lens when looking at their alignment with student learning standards."

I love the idea of our students learning how to code. It's been my passion for several years.

This article discusses markerspaces in schools and libraries. This is a possible topic of mine and I'm interested in putting makerspaces in my libraries.

This teacher describes how she transformed her classroom into a 21st century learning environment for her students.

I found this post very interesting. It is easy to see how PBL may work in a science or math classroom, but I have always wondered how it would look for English. It seems like this teacher has truly grasped PBL, and her students are enjoying the learning process. I think this resource could be utilized by any teacher who instructs about English content, but depending on the age of the learners, the students may not reach full autonomy as those in this article did. I particularly enjoyed one quote from the teacher, "Finally technology is embedded into the structure of all we do... It's never an accessory tacked on at the end." As we have learned about in other EdTech courses, technology needs to truly transform the learning experience. I believe the teacher is doing that in this classroom.

This Blog is one that I have bookmarked and will coming back to. This teacher's description of her class is how I want to work to make my class to look like. She had her premise but she had been able to create a class based on inquiry, openness and trust. This empowers students to create a social media campaign, create their own curriculum, and at the same time become more advanced in the content. Ms. Barseghian, I'm gushing, but your class sounds inspirational and worth the gushing.

twitter uses

app smashing ideas and projects

Great resource for everything to do with app-smashing. I especially liked the "Get the Most Out of Google" section because it talked about how to beautify Google Docs. A few teachers have complained to me that they don't like how simplified Google Docs is compared to Microsoft Word, but I want to explore these ideas more to show them how it can be spiced up. Then we could easily move forward and show the kids how to beautify their Google Docs. I've found that the kids get really into picking pretty backgrounds and fonts, lol... We just got done writing our own "Declarations of Independence," and many of them wanted to decorate theirs with aged paper, calligraphy pens, etc. Thanks!

Katrina, Thanks for sharing this resource. This is useful to us as students right now because we are working on App Smashing, and I can see it being a useful resource to share with upper level students to inspire them to try something more complex. I also see it as a great resource for teachers because it offers quite a few good ideas of projects to use with App Smashing along with the apps that make it work. If you are a teacher new to app smashing, it is nice to start with a set idea rather than trying to invent your own project to go along with the apps you want to use. I look forward to implementing some of these ideas in my own classroom!

App Smash on Pinterest

awesome collection of web 2.0 for different needs

signs of best practice in classrooms

A list of ways to know if you have successfully created a 21st century learning environment.

Best practices for teachers to evaluate and gear their instruction towards 21st century learning skills.

Several articles on how to use/incorporate google and features of google

Thanks for sharing. I do like the voice-to-text feature in Google Docs. I do fear this is promoting laziness, but it does make life easier! My students figured out this feature before I even showed it to them. I think that this feature is great for teachers too! For example, you can use an extension called Doctopus which will allow you to verbally give feedback to your students through Google Docs. For example, if I was reading a student's paper, this extension would record my voice as I am giving my student feedback. I think this would make life much easier on a student. Who knows, maybe there won't even be keyboards in the future. Maybe we will just talk into our computers? What a crazy thought!

Great resource! I was especially interested in the one about how to manage your Google Drive apps because I want to use more of them but don't want to get overwhelmed. There are a number of good ones for doing research, for instance. They can help both me, the teacher, teach the students how to research and organize information effectively, as well as help them, the students, actually go through the process. They really struggle with research, so anything helps. Thanks!

ELL blog

how teachers today use technology in their clasrooms

how teachers today use technology in their clasrooms

different challenges about media in the classrooms

different challenges about media in the classrooms

talks about making education distributed worldwide, download .mp4

talks about making education distributed worldwide, download .mp4

excerpt from book that is downloaded from ROD library

excerpt from book that is downloaded from ROD library