ISTE ideas

The SlideShare to go along with the Curated Learning: Empowering Students to Navigate their Learning Path. There are great links and stories directly in the SlideShare.

Examples of good student projects that show student curating as their own learning.

Speed dial to favorite web site and make it your start page. The bookmarks are visual.

How you can create a list of apps to share. You can share the list with people - it also provides a direct link to the App store for them to acquire the apps.

The Apps are curated - they are already reviewed and organized to help you find what you need when you need it.

Community Robotics Education & Technology Empowerment.

This is a research paper from Luis Ocaja - who was mentioned during the Opening Keynote. Quixoteism is another fun word of the day. In the research paper it is defined as a new social motive.

"Understanding another person's perspective, and realising that it can differ from our own, is known as theory of mind. It underpins empathy, communication and the ability to deceive" "Where does this leap in understanding come from? According to one hypothesis, children gradually deduce that other people have internal experiences that are different from their own by observing the facial expressions and gestures of others over time." "Another suggestion is that theory of mind comes from our ability to use language, which allows children to listen to people talking about their beliefs and emotions. This is backed up by the fact that language fluency and the ability to pass the false belief test emerge at around the same age."

During the Opening Keynote the phrase "Theory of Mind" was used and the work of Luis Oceja was mentioned. I have found a bunch of resources that will help me understand both topics. As a teacher, having someone show through science why humans can not be replaced in the classroom by computers is comforting. It all ties back to the social neuroscience of empathy and the theory of mind.

The random fact of the day came from the Opening Keynote speaker Dr. John Medina. A question was posted from the audience if technology is changing our minds. His initial obvious answer is how can we know? There can not be long term studies about the changes occurring if the technology is still in development. However an immediate change to the mind is the endless blue screens are eyes are used to seeing. There is a relationship between blue light and cryptochromes. Because this was an unknown word, I felt obligated to look it up. "Cryptochromes are photoreceptors that regulate entrainment by light of the circadian clock in plants and animals. They also act as integral parts of the central circadian oscillator in animal brains and as receptors controlling photomorphogenesis in response to blue or ultraviolet (UV-A) light in plants." Circadian is defined as "Adjective: (of biological processes) Recurring naturally on a twenty-four-hour cycle."

I was really interested to check out what Beyond Textbooks had to offer - since my Master's research project was interactive, textbook replacement options. Since their website was mentioned during the afternoon ISTE session, it is not too surprising it is overloaded and not loading. This is another resource that will need to be explored more fully in the future.

"ISTE Learning is a virtual learning community where professional development opportunities and ed tech resources abound. " There are some offerings for online Professional Development in many different areas of technology. A traditional PD session often alienates part of the audience because of the wide skill ranges. This online resource will allow the Professional Development to directly meet the interests and the needs of the learner.

YouTube channel for ISTE videos. There will be a daily playlist of featured videos. The musical entertainment from the Kick-Off celebration has already been posted. This will be a good place to review the highlights of the conference.

Brainstorms for bring Skype into the classroom. This is something that will be explored further later in the summer.

I don't know how I missed this website before. Yet another go-to site for free, helpful online resources to enhance classroom teaching. The website creator won the ISTE's Young Educator of the year award. That is not a surprise after checking out the site. Some future discoveries will probably be related to playing around on this site.