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"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

In April of 2011, the USD No. 448 Board of Education, based upon a recommendation supported by the administration and staff, voted to approve iPads for all staff and all students in grades 4, 9, 10, 11, and 12 beginning in August 2011. We have been "pioneers" in the iPad one to one arena. The journey has been challenging, interesting, frustrating, enlightening, but most of all rewarding. Our staff has done an incredible job of embracing change and integrating iPads into our curriculum. They are providing an extremely important service to other educators--being a model school. What I have observed is that because this is such a new concept, other educators are much more inclined to get excited about the concept if they are able to see it in action. Thank you USD No. 448 staff members for providing a working model for other educators.

In April of 2011, the USD No. 448 Board of Education, based upon a recommendation supported by the administration and staff, voted to approve iPads for all staff and all students in grades 4, 9, 10, 11, and 12 beginning in August 2011. We have been "pioneers" in the iPad one to one arena. The journey has been challenging, interesting, frustrating, enlightening, but most of all rewarding. Our staff has done an incredible job of embracing change and integrating iPads into our curriculum. They are providing an extremely important service to other educators--being a model school. What I have observed is that because this is such a new concept, other educators are much more inclined to get excited about the concept if they are able to see it in action. Thank you USD No. 448 staff members for providing a working model for other educators.

This podcast is a recording of a conversation over skype on May 14, 2010, with Dean Mantz in Sterling, Kansas, Dean Shareski in Moosejaw, Saskatchewan, Cyndi Danner-Kuhn in Manhattan, Kansas, and Wesley Fryer in Edmond, Oklahoma. For the past several years, each participant has taught pre-service technology classes for undergraduate college students. In this conversation (which runs long, about an hour and a half) topics ranged from how course activities are selected, structured and assessed, epiphany or "a-ha" moments in teaching, changes which have been made to the course or how the course is taught (mixing face-to-face, online and blended modalities) and how to best leverage face-to-face interaction opportunities with students. LOTS of great ideas here. Check the podcast shownotes for most (if not all) of the referenced websites, curricula and resources from our conversation. This podcast is labeled (part 1) because we plan to continue the discussion in upcoming months!

MaYoMo ( Map Your Moments ) is a video-centric social news network for mobile citizen journalism. Our contributors and users include citizen journalists, bloggers, journalism students, experienced independent journalists and NGO's from all over the world. In other words, if you are aware of your surrounding life and you need to express your point of view on certain topics or events, you are more than welcome in our network. MaYoMo enables its users to ask for news and information from any corner of the world. Whenever you have a question about some event that you've just heard of or read about e.g., you can easily place a request in a country from MaYoMo's world map and ask what happened, when or where. Users from that region can possibly help you out by providing you any information available. This is how we let you get involved in the global events not only by witnessing, reporting or commenting them, but also by digging them out right from the place they have happened. As we know many people nowadays spend most of their time in virtual worlds, rather than in the real life, we've built them a special continent on our map. "Virtu" is the virtual continent where users can ask for news or send reports about events in worlds like Second Life, World of Warcraft and dozens more. Greetings, The MaYoMo Team

iPads in Primary Education Since Apple decided to make a push into the education market with the iPad 2 and its built in AV tools, it appears (in my humble opinion) that the PC it is no longer the cutting edge technology that it once was. My blogs aim to investigate the use of this handheld technology in primary education, in particular Spring Cottage Primary School's 'iPad journey' and look at some of the apps that can be used across the curriculum to engage, motivate and inspire children's learning in the classroom.

"Teachers Guide on The Use of Wikis in Education guides, social networking tools, wikis in education Med kharbach Today's guide is about Wikis in education. This is the 14th guide we are publishing here and there are more coming on the way. We . in Educational Technology and Mobile Learning, are very much hoping that by the time we finish posting all the series of guides we have been working on, our readers ( most of whom are teachers and educators ) will have already acquainted themselves with some powerful web tools to integrate technology into their education. As I said in earlier guides, we will also publish a free ebook containing all the guides we have written plus several other surprises for teachers, so stay tuned."

"We are poised to launch the new round of QuadBlogging to start in January 2012. If you don't know what QuadBlogging is, here's a short video produced by pupils in Mrs. Yollis' class in Los Angeles, Mr. Salsich's Class in Connecticut, Class B4 in New Zealand and Class 2KM and 2KJ Leopold School, Australia:"

"My Interesting Ways to Use series has been really successful. I measure their success in how useful they are to teachers and other educators in helping with professional development. I say "My" in the loosest sense of ownership really, as with all of the presentations they belong to us all. I just kickstart them and point them off in the right direction."

Can You Find the Mystery Class Sites? In this global game of hide-and-seek, students search to uncover the secret locations of ten "mystery" sites hiding around the Earth. To guide the investigation, they track changes in day length at the mystery sites and at their hometown, and use other "clues" along the way. As they take this inspiring journey, students unlock the essential questions behind the reasons for seasons and the dramatic changes in day length that result. Mystery Class starts in early February but you can get ready now.

Can You Find the Mystery Class Sites? In this global game of hide-and-seek, students search to uncover the secret locations of ten "mystery" sites hiding around the Earth. To guide the investigation, they track changes in day length at the mystery sites and at their hometown, and use other "clues" along the way. As they take this inspiring journey, students unlock the essential questions behind the reasons for seasons and the dramatic changes in day length that result. Mystery Class starts in early February but you can get ready now.

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.

This free eBook, eLearning Trends in 2019, the fourth one in this series, has been designed to be your guide to enhance, measure, and maximize the impact and returns on your learning strategies in 2019.

iMovie has made a surge into classroom instruction, in part because of the rapid growth in the field of digital video and partly because of Apple's superior software design that offers tremendous ease for the user. Like all educational technology, desktop video editing is not a ubiquitous solution for all of the challenges teachers face in today's classroom. Teachers using digital video, in particular iMovie, have provided an abundance of anecdotal evidence for encouraging individual expression, spawning creativity, revitalizing content, promoting collective knowledge construction and individual reflection, and offering students of a variety of backgrounds and experiences to engage in authentic learning.

"In the face of the "new normal" of decreased budgets and increased expectations, many administrators are turning to technology to enhance teaching and learning while mitigating the consequences of consecutive years of budget cuts. Mobile learning, in particular, has attracted a great deal of attention for its potential to engage students by leveraging the technology environment they have grown accustomed to in their non-school lives; its potential to scale personalized learning and reduce the digital divide; its potential to extend learning beyond the four walls of the classroom and the limited hours of the school day; and its potential to enable new pedagogies based on the affordances of these devices that students already carry at their fingertips.Still, the field of mobile learning is still emerging and there are many questions to be addressed when contemplating a mobile learning implementation. How do we create a program with a sustainable impact on teaching and learning, rather than a superficial adoption of the currently "hot" technology? What are the steps involved in implementing a mobile learning program? How do we optimize the investment of our technology dollars? How do we choose devices, networks, and software for our implementation? What are the security considerations in implementing a mobile learning program? What are the policy considerations for a mobile learning program? What are the professional development considerations? What are the teaching models associated with mobile learning? What are the options for funding a mobile learning program?"

Who is "Reber", anyway? David Reber, a.k.a. - "me". I am a native of Lawrence, Kansas. Alumnus of Hillcrest Elementary School, West Junior High School, Lawrence High School, and The University of Kansas. I hold a BS in Biology from KU, an MS in Science Education from Emporia State University, and a Kansas Teaching License for high school Biology and General Science. I began teaching in Lawrence Public Schools in 1996. After one year at Lawrence High School, I transferred to Free State High School for it's inaugural year in 1997 and have taught there ever since. Courses I've taught include Biology, Advanced Placement Biology, Applied Biology, Plant and Animal Biology, Ecology and Environmental Science, Human Anatomy and Physiology, Human Biology, General Chemistry, and Science Explorations.

nsformation in learning starts with the best minds in education. Thank you for attending the Education Leadership Summit 2010 recently held in Dallas, Texas. We are pleased to provide the following resources from the Summit to continue the conversations begun in Dallas and hope they will help facilitate new discussions in your own institutions. You will find links to a variety of materials ranging from links to our keynote speaker, videos of our student panelists, presentations from our workshop presenters, and access to the summit "back-channel" contributions.

"Dan Meyer teaches high school math outside of Santa Cruz, CA, and explores the intersection of math instruction, multimedia, and inquiry-based learning. He received his Masters of Arts from the University of California at Davis in 2005 and Cable in the Classroom's Leader in Learning award in 2008. He currently works for Google as a curriculum fellow and lives with his wife in Santa Cruz, CA."

Twitter Resources for Teachers You've heard the buzz on the Twitter phenomenon. Everybody seems to be hooked by this micro blogging service. It's been a catalyst for marketing in multinational companies, personal branding for entrepreneurs, and a simple advertising tool for the small businesses. Professionals from the education sphere seem to be catching up to the trends of technolgoy. Whether you're innovating teaching strategies for the university or looking for education jobs online, Twitter is one versatile venue where both teachers and students converse meaningfully. Don't take our word for it, here are some expert guides and tips on how to use this magnificent social networking site to your learning advantage. Articles on Twitter In Education 1. Teaching Twitter to the Teachers - To use twitter effectively, you need a reason to start with. 2. Twitter Tweets for Higher Education - Doing a little online searching (emphasis on the little), the author of this blog has found the following items related to Twitter and education. 3. 50 Ideas on Using Twitter for Education - Blog By Carol - Based on a list by Chris Brogan - 50 ideas for using Twitter in Business. 4. Using Twitter as an Education Tool - Are you using Twitter yet? If not, you may want to read how other educators are using Twitter as an education tool. 5. Twitter Transforms Teaching - Twitter's now tapped as a teaching and learning tool with opportunities to motivate students and advance achievement. 6. Teaching with Twitter - Steve Wheeler's 10 top uses of Twitter for education. 7. Twitter Professors: 18 People to Follow for a Real Time Education - 18 people Lon S. Cohen (writer and social media strategist. He is @obilon on Twitter) following for a real time education. 8. Educational Tool: Twitter - 'Twitter in the Classroom' techniques by Christine Morris. 9. Twenty-Five Interesting Ways to use Twitter in the Classroom - Excellent presentation by Creative Commons 10. N

Apple's new iPad is out, and the big question for us is how it might help teaching and learning in school. So to test it's metal, I'm writing this article on an iPad. Writing is first in line of the things students do most with their computers in school, so this should be a good test. But how about the other things at students need to do in a typical day? That's the real test. So we'll go back a few weeks to an article called A Day in the Life, and see how many of the things that Sally needed her computer for could be done with the iPad.

"Welcome to the world of the iPad! I hope that you, like I have, will find this amazing device transforming in your approach to the utilization of technology for teaching and learning. Hopefully, we will soon be saying goodbye to the fifty pound backpacks our students carry around, and all of their textbooks and learning resources will be available on this one, small device! Whether you are currently using iPads in your school or for yourself...or if you are just beginning to explore the possibilities, I hope you will find resources here to benefit you in your journey. Enjoy this site, share the information with others, and feel free to contact me with any questions or to share your experiences! Below are some of my "musings" as I reflect on where we currently are in our journey with the utilization of technology with our students. Enjoy!"

Maybe you want to know how you would look like with a different hair cut, in a famous picture or in a cd cover... Many of us have tried to manipulate pictures in order to try something different or just to have fun but not only it takes loads of hard work but also the results aren't usually all that great. Well, not anymore. With FACEinHOLE.com you can easily and in a matter of seconds create a totally "new look" for you and your friends. You just have to select a scenario, upload and adjust a photo (or use your webcam) and there you have it; a great FACEinHOLE that you can send to your friends, post in your blog or make available to the world. Maybe you are wondering how much would this priceless tool cost? The answer is: totally and absolutely free!