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"Here's a collection of terrific social media infographics that might come in handy. As you probably know, infographics are visual representations of information, data, or knowledge. They illustrate information that would be unwieldy in text form and they act as a kind of visual shorthand, making information easy to understand and consume. They are driven by the same information as charts, but they're often a better form of communication because of their pleasant aesthetics - charts and graphs can communicate data, but infographics turn data into information."

"iSchool: a closer look at Manhattan Beach Unified's iPad pilot program email Does Manhattan Beach Unified's iPad pilot program represent the future of education? Kindergarten students at Grand View Elementary School use iPads two times a week. Photo by Alene Tchekmedyian Kindergarten students at Grand View Elementary School use iPads two times a week. Photo by Alene Tchekmedyian Just before 8 a.m. one recent Tuesday, Andy Caine wheeled a waist-high cart into his second-floor history classroom at Mira Costa High School, as the Beach Boys' "I Get Around" played faintly in the background. On the syllabus for the day: the First Amendment. As the first period bell rang, Caine unlocked the cart. "Come and get 'em," Caine said to his class of seniors, and stood behind his podium, on which he's pasted a sticker reading, "Think for yourself. Question Authority." The students put aside their pens and notebooks and lined up at the cart to pick up an unconventional tool that school districts across the nation have been implementing into classrooms. Each student grabbed an iPad and returned to his or her seat. Caine is one of 43 Manhattan Beach Unified School District teachers chosen to try the $500,000 iPad pilot program, which started last fall. At Mira Costa, two English, math, science and social studies teachers use iPads, along with eight science teachers at Manhattan Beach Middle School and 27 teachers of different grade levels at each elementary school. The district purchased 560 student iPads (32 gigabytes and costing around $700 each), in addition to iPads for pilot teachers and administrators. A quarter of the pilot costs are grant funded, while the district supports the rest. Later this year, the School Board will decide whether, and in what capacity, to continue the pilot. Caine and pilot teachers implement iPads into their curricula two to three times a week, a total of 30 to 90 minutes. "I would use them every day if I had the po

"Mike - "Do not do workshops around hardware and software training. The research is clear if you train teachers how to do spreadsheets -- if you teach them how to analyze data - they go back and teach kids how to analyze data and do spreadsheets." Cyndi - "Get rid of the network nazi's -- people who are IT people with no background in curriculum or education have no business making curriculum decisions." (Those who have heard me speak know I agree with this.) Mike- Leadership is everything - 4 characteristics of places where successful things are happen"

Pre-task thinking: Let's say you want to send clients an assessment test for them to do from home, and all the data should be evaluated instantly, without you having to correct it. You would like to have all of the data neatly in one table, easily available. This could be for a general assessement test that you use again and again. I've got a very short test on Making appointments on the phone just to show what the front end of such a self-grading test could look like to the client:

Take data from a spreadsheet and create a visual map.

A free web hosting service for teachers, great to have a complete control over data and files.

Let's be honest, we don't like to read big pieces of text. Text-heavy graphs are rather difficult for understanding, especially when we deal with numbers and statistics. That is why we use illustrations and flowcharts for such kind of information. It's no wonder that today we know a method to make our life easier. It called an infographic - a visual representation of study or data. But like anything else, it can be done right or wrong ( I'm sure you saw poorly ones). How to create a cool infographic? The secret is in a long time brainstorming. You need a really cool idea and good design.

LibreOffice is the power-packed free, libre and open source personal productivity suite for Windows, Macintosh and GNU/Linux, that gives you six feature-rich applications for all your document production and data processing needs: Writer, Calc, Impress, Draw, Math and Base.

"Create an eBook from online content The world of educational resources and materials is shifting away from print stuff towards digital stuff. One of the reasons for this shift is the ease of creating and sharing digital stuff. ePUBS and tablets and apps like iBooks are merging into a mini-Perfect Storm event that supports and encourages the use of digital content. As social studies teachers, we need to take advantage of these sorts of tools. And I just ran across an incredibly easy to use online tool called Readlists that lets you create an ePUB book from resources that you find on the web. Imagine being able to create a digital book that has a variety of articles, data, and multimedia. Readlists is the latest project of the Arc90 people - the same people who created Readability."

Cell phones have the capability to become the "Swiss army knife" for student research and organization. First, we explore using cell phones as data collection tools: audio recorders, digital cameras, and digital camcorders. Additionally, we consider how classroom projects can be developed for cell phones: creating ring tones, text messaging, mobile WebPages, and mobile surveys. Finally, we contemplate the future features of cell phones and how those features play a role in learning.

"The Two Top Areas for Keeping Today's Students Top Notch This is the third guest post in a series running all week featuring guest edu bloggers. By Vicki Davis Stock PhotoIn the NetGenEd™ project with Don Tapscott-students from my school and over 300 students from five countries are studying the future of technology. They are breaking down trends like Mobile Computing, Open Content, Electronic Books, Simple Augmented Reality, Gesture-based Computing, and Visual Data Analysis. But who cares?"

"Last week blogger of the week, NJ Principal Eric Sheninger, spoke out against fellow NJ Principal Anthony Orsini and his efforts to his students from using social media tools. This week, Sheninger takes time out of his administrative duties for an interview including tips and advice for administrators and teachers on incorporating social media and web 2.0 in the classroom. "

Lisa Nielsen is an educational administrator and permanently certified teacher with more than a decade's worth of experience working in educational innovation at the city, state, and national level. Working as an innovative educator in New York City, Ms. Nielsen was honored as Teacher of the Year and was her district's nominee for Technology Educator of the year. Ms. Nielsen has worked in various capacities in educational innovation at the NYC Department of Education and Teachers College, Columbia University including as manager of instructional technology professional development, literacy coach, instructional technology coach, teacher, librarian, and staff developer. She currently serves as Technology Innovation Manager for the NYC Department of Education. Ms. Nielsen is a Google Certified Teacher, International Edublogger, International EduTwitter, and creator of The Innovative Educator blog, website, learning network, and wiki. In addition to her blog (http://TheInnovativeEducator.blogspot.com), her work is published in "Learning and Leading," and "Tech & Learning," magazine as well as the following online media Tech & Learning, ISTE Connects, Ed Reformer, and The Huffington Post. An outspoken and passionate advocate of innovative education Ms. Nielsen is also covered by local and national media for her views on "Passion (not data) Driven Learning," "Thinking Outside the Ban" and determining ways to harness the power of technology for instruction and providing a voice to educators and students. Her first book "Teaching Generation Text" is set for a fall 2011 release.

"Cell Phones for Learning Cell phones are rapidly becoming ubiquitous in many school communities, but their presence in the classroom is commonly viewed as disruptive and unwanted. Modern cell phones offer a variety of capabilities, which are being used effectively by educators in different schools to support curricular learning objectives and boost student achievement. Explore reasons some school districts are embracing the use of cell phones for learning both inside and outside the classroom and examine specific guidelines school districts are utilizing for student cell phones. Explore specific applications of cell phones for learning, including use as electronic response systems, data access, media recording, homework tracking and social networking. This session is also presented as: * Guidelines and Instructional Applications for Cell Phone Use at School * Cell Phone Digital Storytelling"

" * Get students to see data represented in graphs often. * Present survey information in various graph forms and discuss what it shows. * Find Examples from the AIMs and SAT9 that use graphs and charts and create them in Excel and display them for the class to see and discuss."

The Next Generation of Digital Books Our Choice will change the way we read books. And quite possibly change the world. In this interactive app, Al Gore surveys the causes of global warming and presents groundbreaking insights and solutions already under study and underway that can help stop the unfolding disaster of global warming. Our Choice melds the vice president's narrative with photography, interactive graphics, animations, and more than an hour of engrossing documentary footage. A new, groundbreaking multi-touch interface allows you to experience that content seamlessly. Pick up and explore anything you see in the book; zoom out to the visual table of contents and quickly browse though the chapters; reach in and explore data-rich interactive graphics.

Fantastic site for finding visual graphics in the form of infographics.