Blogging is helping many teens become more prolific writers.
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Blogging helps encourage teen writing | Top News | eSchoolNews.com - 9 views
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it and revise their writing on a computer, the report says. Nearly six in 10 students (57 percent) say they edit and revise more frequently when they write using a computer. Teens who use a computer in their non-school writing believe computers have a greater impact on the amount of writing they produce than on the overall quality of their writing. Yet, there is a great deal of ambiguity with respect to the impact of computers in each of these areas. Among teens who use computers in their non-school writing, four in 10 say computers help them do more writing, and a similar number believe they would write the same amount whether they used computers or not. In comparison, only three in 10 teens who write on computers for non-school purposes at least occasionally believe computers help them do better writing–and twice as many (63 percent) say computers make no difference in the quality of their writing. Parents are more likely than teens to believe that internet-based writing (such as eMail and instant messaging) affects writing skills overall, though both groups are split on whether electronic communications help or hurt. Nonetheless, 73 percent of teens and 40 percent of parents believe internet writing makes no difference either way. Most students (82 percent) believe that additional instruction and focus on writing in school would help improve their writing even further–and more than three-quarters of those surveyed (78 percent) think it would help their writing if their teachers used computer-based writing tools such as games, multimedia, or writing software programs or web sites during class. The telephone-based survey of 700 U.S. residents ages 12 to 17 and their parents was conducted last year from Sept. 19 to Nov. 16 and has a margin of error of plus or minus 5 percentage points. Link: "Writing, Technology, and Teens" survey var a2a_config = a2a_config || {}; a2a_config.linkname="Blogging helps encourage teen writing"; a2a_config.linkurl="http://www.eschoolnews.com/2008/04/30/blogging-helps-encourage-teen-writing/"; Comments are closed &amp;lt;script language=JavaScript src="http://rotator.adjuggler.com/servlet/ajrotator/173768/0/vj?z=eschool&amp;amp;dim=173789&amp;amp;pos=6&amp;amp;abr=$scriptiniframe"&amp;gt;&amp;lt;/script&amp;gt;&amp;lt;noscript&amp;gt;&amp;lt;a href="http://rotator.adjuggler.com/servlet/ajrotator/173768/0/cc?z=eschool&amp;amp;pos=6"&amp;gt;&amp;lt;img src="http://rotator.adjuggler.com/servlet/ajrotator/173768/0/vc?z=eschool&amp;amp;dim=173789&amp;amp;pos=6&amp;amp;abr=$imginiframe" width="300" height="250" border="0"&amp;gt;&amp;lt;/a&amp;gt;&amp;lt;/noscript&amp;gt; Recent Stories with Comments Kentucky offers cloud-based software to 700,000 school usersNo access for bad guysU.S. court weighs school discipline for lewd web postsParent video protesting state budget cuts goes viralEditorial: Threats to innovation <SCRIPT language='JavaScript1.1' SRC="http://ad.doubleclick.net/adj/N5621.125531.9553987353421/B3794502.5;abr=!ie;sz=300x250;click=;ord=996778?"> </SCRIPT> <NOSCRIPT> <A HREF="http://ad.doubleclick.net/jump/N5621.125531.9553987353421/B3794502.5;abr=!ie4;abr=!ie5;sz=300x250;ord=996778?"> <IMG SRC="http://ad.doubleclick.net/ad/N5621.125531.9553987353421/B3794502.5;abr=!ie4;abr=!ie5;sz=300x250;ord=996778?" BORDER=0 WIDTH=300 HEIGHT=250 ALT="Click Here"></A> </NOSCRIPT> Educator Resource Centers Computing in the Cloud How technology can help with language instruction Communication and Collaboration for More Effective School Management Expert Blog: Security Insights Boost Student Achievement with Connected Teaching Private: Testing ERC Page Solving key IT challenges with virtualization Online Learning: One Pathway to Success Re-imagining Education One-to-one computing: The last piece of the puzzle Recent Entries Customers question tech industry’s takeover spree New rules bring online piracy fight to U.S. campuses Judge orders school newspaper to delete stories Ed-tech grant program aims to boost college readiness Lawmakers tra
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Study Finds That Online Education Beats the Classroom - Bits Blog - NYTimes.com - 0 views
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Some of it was in K-12 settings, but most of the comparative studies were done in colleges and adult continuing-education programs of various kinds, from medical training to the military.
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“The study’s major significance lies in demonstrating that online learning today is not just better than nothing — it actually tends to be better than conventional instruction,”
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But the report does suggest that online education could be set to expand sharply over the next few years, as evidence mounts of its value.
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The real promise of online education, experts say, is providing learning experiences that are more tailored to individual students than is possible in classrooms. That enables more “learning by doing,” which many students find more engaging and useful.
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“People are correct when they say online education will take things out the classroom. But they are wrong, I think, when they assume it will make learning an independent, personal activity. Learning has to occur in a community.
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I would agree that for colleges and adult learners it might be, but I'm not convinced that the same holds true for K12.
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Learning has to occur in a community, eh? If that's true, THEN can we get twitter, skype, Flickr, youtube, Diigo, etc unblocked so we can take advantage of that community?
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Education Week: Filtering Fixes - 0 views
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Instead of blocking the many exit ramps and side routes on the information superhighway, they have decided that educating students and teachers on how to navigate the Internet’s vast resources responsibly, safely, and productively—and setting clear rules and expectations for doing so—is the best way to head off online collisions.
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“We are known in our district for technology, so I don’t see how you can teach kids 21st-century values if you’re not teaching them digital citizenship and appropriate ways of sharing and using everything that’s available on the Web,” said Shawn Nutting, the technology director for the Trussville district. “How can you, in 2009, not use the Internet for everything? It blows me away that all these schools block things out” that are valuable.
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While schools are required by federal and state laws to block pornography and other content that poses a danger to minors, Internet-filtering software often prevents students from accessing information on legitimate topics that tend to get caught in the censoring process: think breast cancer, sexuality, or even innocuous keywords that sound like blocked terms. One teacher who commented on one of Mr. Fryer’s blog posts, for example, complained that a search for biographical information on a person named Thacker was caught by his school’s Internet filter because the prohibited term “hacker” is included within the spelling of the word.
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The K-2 school provides e-mail addresses to each of its 880 students and maintains accounts on the Facebook and Twitter networking sites. Children can also interact with peers in other schools and across the country through protected wiki spaces and blogs the school has set up.
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“Rather than saying this is a scary tool and something bad could happen, instead we believe it’s an incredible tool that connects you with the entire world out there. ... [L]et’s show you the best way to use it.”
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As Trussville students move through the grades and encounter more-complex educational content and expectations, their Internet access is incrementally expanded.
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In 2001, the Children’s Internet Protection Act instituted new requirements for schools to establish policies and safeguards for Internet use as a condition of receiving federal E-rate funding. Many districts have responded by restricting any potentially troublesome sites. But many educators and media specialists complain that the filters are set too broadly and cannot discriminate between good and bad content. Drawing the line between what material is acceptable and what’s not is a local decision that has to take into account each district’s comfort level with using Internet content
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The American Civil Liberties Union sued Tennesee’s Knox County and Nashville school districts on behalf of several students and a school librarian for blocking Internet sites related to gay and lesbian issues. While the districts’ filtering software prohibited students from accessing sites that provided information and resources on the subject, it did not block sites run by organizations that promoted the controversial view that homosexuals can be “rehabilitated” and become heterosexuals. Last month, a federal court dismissed the lawsuit after school officials agreed to unblock the sites.
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Students are using personal technology tools more readily to study subject matter, collaborate with classmates, and complete assignments than they were several years ago, but they are generally asked to “power down” at school and abandon the electronic resources they rely on for learning outside of class, the survey found. Administrators generally cite safety issues and concerns that students will misuse such tools to dawdle, cheat, or view inappropriate content in school as reasons for not offering more open online access to students. ("Students See Schools Inhibiting Their Use of New Technologies,", April 1, 2009.)
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A report commissioned by the NSBA found that social networking can be beneficial to students, and urged school board members to “find ways to harness the educational value” of so-called Web 2.0 tools, such as setting up chat rooms or online journals that allow students to collaborate on their classwork. The 2007 report also told school boards to re-evaluate policies that ban or tightly restrict the use of the Internet or social-networking sites.
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Federal Requirements for Schools on Internet Safety The Children’s Internet Protection Act, or CIPA, is a federal law intended to block access to offensive Web content on school and library computers. Under CIPA, schools and libraries that receive funding through the federal E-rate program for Internet access must: • Have an Internet-safety policy and technology-protection measures in place. The policy must include measures to block or filter Internet access to obscene photos, child pornography, and other images that can be harmful to minors; • Educate minors about appropriate and inappropriate online behavior, including activities like cyberbullying and social networking; • Adopt and enforce a policy to monitor online activities of minors; and • Adopt and implement policies related to Internet use by minors that address access to inappropriate online materials, student safety and privacy issues, and the hacking of unauthorized sites. Source: Federal Communications Commission
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“We believe that you can’t have goals about kids’ collaborating globally and then block their ability to do that,” said Becky Fisher, the Virginia district’s technology coordinator.
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The Best Online Sources For Images | Larry Ferlazzo's Websites of the Day... - 0 views
Big Fat Online Education Myths | Cheating Like Weasels in Online Classes | GetEducated.com - 0 views
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Magazine - Is Google Making Us Stupid? - The Atlantic - 10 views
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By Nicholas Carr
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Nicholas Carr also wrote The Shallows an entire book about the effect the Internet is having on our brains - I highly recommend it. http://www.theshallowsbook.com/
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I can relate. I have the Google application on my phone which I use almost daily to check something such as a bus schedule, movie time, game score, etc.
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I am the same way on my phone. On car rides, dinner, you name it with my wife and one of us will say, "I wonder..." and the phones are out and we're finding answers. Sometimes I want to just wonder though...
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I would be interested to see a study done like this in the United States. In my one undergraduate class on politics and media we talked about "info snacking" which is the idea that people look for small bits of information at a time instead of reading the entire article. This is exactly what Carr is talking about here.
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I agree Charles. However I would suggest that I think that people will have to develop a way to info. snack and be able to do conventional reading too. It seems as though there is something lost when all you are able to do is skim and scan.
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The other thing that I wonder quite a bit about this entire article is does "info snacking" stem from the internet or does it stem from being a generation that was raised on frequent tv, video, video games, and the internet altogether. It would seem to me that those other factors would have to have something to do with it as well.
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Let's also not forget the constant stream of data to our mobile device(s) as well when thinking about that. Should this make us better, not worse, at multi-tasking.
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ity,” hopping from one source to another and rarely returning to any source they’d already visited. Th
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that provide access to journal articles, e-books, and other sources of written information. They found that people using the sites exhibited “a form of skimming activ
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As part of the five-year research program, the scholars examined computer logs documenting the behavior of visitors to two popular research sites, one operated by the British Library and one by a U.K. educational co
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This is the point I read until I got distracted. The ads on the side are distracting to me, and I also needed to get going because of the time.
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I am finding the sticky notes to be distracting. I keep skipping from the article to the notes.
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That is a very good point. I personally find it easier to read articles on paper instead of the computer screen because there are less distractions.
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My mind would
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What a good analogy. Before when you swam and simmered in the information and had to take time to digest, now we can just move from one thing to another quickly.
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Do you feel that this style allows for anything further than "In one ear, out the other"? How do you best capture the features of the web?
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It is clear that users are not reading online in the traditional sense; indeed there are signs that new forms of “reading” are emerging as users “power browse” horizontally through titles, contents pages and abstracts going for quick wins. It almost seems that they go online to avoid reading in the traditional sense.
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“We are not only what we read,” says Maryanne Wolf, a developmental psychologist at Tufts University and the author of Proust and the Squid: The Story and Science of the Reading Brain. “We are how we read.”
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Nietzsche’s friends, a composer
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Nietzsche’s prose “changed from arguments to aphorisms, from thoughts to puns, from rhetoric to telegram style.”
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The advantages of having immediate access to such an incredibly rich store of information are many, and they’ve been widely described and duly applauded. “The perfect recall of silicon memory,” Wired’s Clive Thompson has written , “can be an enormous boon to thinking.” But that boon comes at a price. As the media theorist Marshall McLuhan pointed out in the 1960s, media are not just passive channels of information. They supply the stuff of thought, but they also shape the process of thought. And what the Net seems to be doing is chipping away my capacity for concentration and contemplation.
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Thanks to the ubiquity of text on the Internet, not to mention the popularity of text-messaging on cell phones, we may well be reading more today than we did in the 1970s or 1980s, when television was our medium of choice. But it’s a different kind of reading, and behind it lies a different kind of thinking—perhaps even a new sense of the self.
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Carr's argument is that although we are perhaps reading more than ever...due to text messaging, social media sites, etc we are not taking the time to really delve into what we read and contemplate. Moreover, this premise seems plausible to a degree, as it seems generally that much of what is sent through social media may be trival or meaningless information.
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The human brain is almost infinitely malleable. People used to think that our mental meshwork, the dense connections formed among the 100 billion or so neurons inside our skulls, was largely fixed by the time we reached adulthood. But brain researchers have discovered that that’s not the case.
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Although I didn't read it (how appropriate - LOL = ) ) Carr's book on "The Shallows" alludes to this concept...in that our brains may in fact be coming re-wired, due to the common every day distractions that cause us to lose focus on thought-provoking topics. His argument is that the collective human attention span is becoming reduced, essentially due to our environment of perpetual distraction- spawned by the internet.
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With the approval of Midvale’s owners, he recruited a group of factory hands, set them to work on various metalworking machines, and recorded and timed their every movement as well as the operations of the machines. By breaking down every job into a sequence of small, discrete steps and then testing different ways of performing each one, Taylor created a set of precise instructions—an “algorithm,” we might say today—for how each worker should work. Midvale’s employees grumbled about the strict new regime, claiming that it turned them into little more than automatons, but the factory’s productivity soared.
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The idea that our minds should operate as high-speed data-processing machines is not only built into the workings of the Internet, it is the network’s reigning business model as well. The faster we surf across the Web—the more links we click and pages we view—the more opportunities Google and other companies gain to collect information about us and to feed us advertisements. Most of the proprietors of the commercial Internet have a financial stake in collecting the crumbs of data we leave behind as we flit from link to link—the more crumbs, the better. The last thing these companies want is to encourage leisurely reading or slow, concentrated thought. It’s in their economic interest to drive us to distraction
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I believe this segment is akin to "data mining" where companies look at human tendancies to advertise and create greater opportunities to feature their products by the locations (physically or virtually) of their prospective customers, clients or buyers. This idea (data mining) is relatively new to me, but there is no doubt that it will be a prevalent part of marketing in the future. During the reading of this article I received 5 text messages (responded to 2), but was disciplined enough not to check my email until I was finished. What portion of today's younger generation is disciplined enough to stay on task...until an assignment is completed?!?
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r use of the Net will be different from those woven by our reading of books and other printed works.
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I never really thought about this. Our brains are adapting to the net earlier than ever before now thanks to web tools that are being implemented earlier in the classroom. I do not remember using computers on an active basis to at least fourth grade, and I know they are starting much earlier with them.
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tual technologies is reflected in the changing metaphors we use to explain ourselves to ourselves. When the mechanical clock arrived, people began thinking of their brains as operating “like clockwork.” Today, in the age of software, we have come to think of them as operating “like computers.
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al of Gutenberg’s printing press, in the 15th century, set off another round of teeth gnashing. The Italian humanist Hieronimo Squarciafico worried that the easy availability of books would lead to intellectua
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The world would be so different without all of the great technology advances. I think back to when I had my first cell phone and it became easier to stay connected with my friends through phone calls, and now with smart phones we can be connected to the world at all times. Some people may fear change, but I think it is good to embrace it.
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Overall, I do not think Google is making us stupid. I think it is our society as a whole has become so fast paced, and we need information quicker so online resources are the first thing we go to. I think as long educators keep students focused on analyzing and deep thought, we won't let Google or other web tools make our society less intelligent.
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The idea of not being able to sustain attention to a lengthy article or book makes me think about how difficult it is more and more kids to sustain attention to tasks in class. It seems to get worse as the years go by and I feel like more and more kids are being diagnosed with ADD. Perhaps that type of attending "problem" is going to be the norm.
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I find this to be very true in the computer age as well. It is so easy to type something and change it multiple times now. I wonder if we actually give as much thought to what we are typing as we once did when changing a line meant getting a new piece of paper and starting over causing minutes or hours of extra work rather than seconds.
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I would agree with this statement. I feel that as I have gone through my education, I was taught all of the skills to read and analyze appropriately. Now that I have mastered those skills, I am only expected to recall information. If I can gather the information in a quicker/more efficent way, I will use it. But am I really learning?
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TwHistory » About - 0 views
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"The TwHistory project began in early 2009 with the first Twitter reenactment of the Battle of Gettysburg over a period of several weeks. TwHistory is based on the idea that historical reenactments can take place online and have positive effects for all involved. In school settings these virtual reenactments can increase engagement while providing opportunities for students to research personal journals and other primary source documents. In order to organize, study, and preserve these online reenactments we have created TwHistory.org. View past and current projects on our reenactments page. You can also follow us on Twitter at @TwHistory."
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School 2.0 - 0 views
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Picture a classroom where every student has their own tablet PC, with wireless internet access and videoconferencing equipment to give them access to academics, industry experts and other schools around the world. The teacher begins the lesson by drawing students’ attention to a new discussion thread that’s appeared overnight on an online forum about a text they’re studying.
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You no longer need to be fluent in HTML to benefit from the digital revolution. Web 2.0 tools are closing the divide between richer and poorer regions, and between the ‘digital natives’ and ‘digital immigrants’ of the online world. Cloud computing, where resources and software are stored online, means hardware is no longer necessary, and the growth of free programmes and services lets anyone create their own wiki, blog or podcast.
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The extent to which technology can transform the world, and education, is illustrated by the ‘flat classroom’ project, run by Julie Lindsay, head of information technology and e-learning at Qatar Academy in Doha, Qatar, and Vicki Davis of Westwood Schools in Camilla, Georgia, USA. The project began in 2006 as an online collaboration between the two schools, inspired by Thomas L. Friedman’s book The World is Flat. It has now sprouted two sister projects – ‘digiteen’ and ‘horizon’, which have so far involved more than 800 students and 200 educators from across the world.
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“Technology isn’t magic. It doesn’t provide instant solutions. It challenges teachers to improve their practice by being more flexible and creative, and it challenges students to reflect on the limitations of technology as well as its capabilities. The best way to learn is by practising together.”
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JeopardyLabs - Online Jeopardy Template - 1 views
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JeopardyLabs allows you to create a customized jeopardy template without PowerPoint. The games you make can be played online from anywhere in the world. Building your own jeopardy template is a piece of cake. Just use our simple editor to get your game up and running. Not interested in building your own jeopardy templates? Well that's cool too. You can browse other jeopardy templates created by other people. It doesn't get any better than this!
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How Important Are Students' Digital Footprints? | Edutopia - 1 views
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In many cases, one questionable photo or post can change how the student is viewed, and then in turn, negatively affect their future.
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A digital footprintis any online information about a person that can be searched, shared, and seen by a large, invisible audience.
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“Managing one’s digital identity is a skill
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Ask students to Google themselves to see what and who comes up when they type their name into a search engine
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It’s imperative that students understand how an online blemish
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can make a negative impact on their education and careers, and this learning must start in the classroom.
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ISTE Learning - 0 views
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ISTE Learning is an anytime, anywhere online community for professional development where educators can sample free concepts, buy cool resources and exchange creative ideas. This space provides relevant learning experiences in multiple formats to strengthen the teaching experience and grow digital literacy.
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"What Is ISTE Learning? ISTE Learning is an anytime, anywhere online community for professional development where educators can sample free concepts, buy cool resources and exchange creative ideas. This space provides relevant learning experiences in multiple formats to strengthen the teaching experience and grow digital literacy. ISTE Learning's Mission The mission of ISTE Learning is to provide robust leadership, learning and teaching opportunities that are grounded in the NETS to support educators in effectively implementing technology into their learning environments."
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Stixy: For Flexible Online Creation Collaboration and Sharing - 0 views
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Think of Stixy as your online bulletin board. Create as many Stixyboards as you like, one for each project. Use Stixy to easily organize and share: * Your family's schedule * Projects at work * An upcoming holiday with your friends * Your photos from your last bike trip * Or share a file or two with a friend Only you set the limitations for how you want to use Stixy.
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Create and Collaborate on Online Diagrams - Try it Free | Creately - 0 views
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Scriblink - Your Online Whiteboard - 0 views
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A free digital whiteboard that users can share online in real-time. Sorta like pen and paper, minus the dead trees, plastic, and the inconvenience of being at the same place at the same time. We are all about collaboration. Whether you're here for fun or more practical things like layout planning, concept diagramming, or tutoring a friend in math, Scriblink brings you the power of free hand expression with anyone, at anytime, anywhere in the world.