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anonymous

Educational Leadership:Teaching for the 21st Century:21st Century Skills: The Challenges Ahead - 0 views

    • anonymous
       
      This will come as a shck to a lot of folks, eh? Not new?
  • But in fact, the skills students need in the 21st century are not new.
    • anonymous
       
      Not new, eh? Then what's all the fuss? Read on.
  • What's actually new is the extent to which changes in our economy and the world mean that collective and individual success depends on having such skills.
    • anonymous
       
      Ah! So THAT's the difference. Yes, I would agree. You?
  • ...9 more annotations...
  • This distinction between "skills that are novel" and "skills that must be taught more intentionally and effectively" ought to lead policymakers to different education reforms than those they are now considering. If these skills were indeed new, then perhaps we would need a radical overhaul of how we think about content and curriculum. But if the issue is, instead, that schools must be more deliberate about teaching critical thinking, collaboration, and problem solving to all students, then the remedies are more obvious, although still intensely challenging.
    • anonymous
       
      I like this paragraph. We need only be more deliberate with our intent to focus on these skils. It's not a complete overhaul, then. I think schools would be more likely to accept this perspective, don't you?
  • To complicate the challenge, some of the rhetoric we have heard surrounding this movement suggests that with so much new knowledge being created, content no longer matters; that ways of knowing information are now much more important than information itself. Such notions contradict what we know about teaching and learning and raise concerns that the 21st century skills movement will end up being a weak intervention for the very students—low-income students and students of color—who most need powerful schools as a matter of social equity.
    • anonymous
       
      Some folks even go so far as to say that we don't have to teach the times tables any more. I cringe when I hear that.
  • What will it take to ensure that the idea of "21st century skills"—or more precisely, the effort to ensure that all students, rather than just a privileged few, have access to a rich education that intentionally helps them learn these skills—is successful in improving schools? That effort requires three primary components. First, educators and policymakers must ensure that the instructional program is complete and that content is not shortchanged for an ephemeral pursuit of skills. Second, states, school districts, and schools need to revamp how they think about human capital in education—in particular how teachers are trained. Finally, we need new assessments that can accurately measure richer learning and more complex tasks.
    • anonymous
       
      Do you agree with his three points? Is his missing any?
  • Why would misunderstanding the relationship of skills and knowledge lead to trouble? If you believe that skills and knowledge are separate, you are likely to draw two incorrect conclusions. First, because content is readily available in many locations but thinking skills reside in the learner's brain, it would seem clear that if we must choose between them, skills are essential, whereas content is merely desirable. Second, if skills are independent of content, we could reasonably conclude that we can develop these skills through the use of any content. For example, if students can learn how to think critically about science in the context of any scientific material, a teacher should select content that will engage students (for instance, the chemistry of candy), even if that content is not central to the field. But all content is not equally important to mathematics, or to science, or to literature. To think critically, students need the knowledge that is central to the domain.
    • anonymous
       
      I like this, too. Having a firm grip on basic knowledge (times tables, for example) is a MUST for the higher order ideas we're after.
  • Because of these challenges, devising a 21st century skills curriculum requires more than paying lip service to content knowledge.
    • anonymous
       
      Hear Hear!
  • Advocates of 21st century skills favor student-centered methods—for example, problem-based learning and project-based learning—that allow students to collaborate, work on authentic problems, and engage with the community. These approaches are widely acclaimed and can be found in any pedagogical methods textbook; teachers know about them and believe they're effective. And yet, teachers don't use them. Recent data show that most instructional time is composed of seatwork and whole-class instruction led by the teacher (National Institute of Child Health and Human Development Early Child Care Research Network, 2005). Even when class sizes are reduced, teachers do not change their teaching strategies or use these student-centered methods (Shapson, Wright, Eason, & Fitzgerald, 1980). Again, these are not new issues. John Goodlad (1984) reported the same finding in his landmark study published more than 20 years ago.
    • anonymous
       
      This is important, I believe, if we're to promote these ideas.
  • Why don't teachers use the methods that they believe are most effective? Even advocates of student-centered methods acknowledge that these methods pose classroom management problems for teachers. When students collaborate, one expects a certain amount of hubbub in the room, which could devolve into chaos in less-than-expert hands. These methods also demand that teachers be knowledgeable about a broad range of topics and are prepared to make in-the-moment decisions as the lesson plan progresses. Anyone who has watched a highly effective teacher lead a class by simultaneously engaging with content, classroom management, and the ongoing monitoring of student progress knows how intense and demanding this work is. It's a constant juggling act that involves keeping many balls in the air.
  • Most teachers don't need to be persuaded that project-based learning is a good idea—they already believe that. What teachers need is much more robust training and support than they receive today, including specific lesson plans that deal with the high cognitive demands and potential classroom management problems of using student-centered methods.
    • anonymous
       
      TIME! And RE-training. Where is this truly modeled? It's VERY difficult to teach in a model that yo've never experienced either as a teacher or a student.
  • Without better curriculum, better teaching, and better tests, the emphasis on "21st century skills" will be a superficial one that will sacrifice long-term gains for the appearance of short-term progress.
Jenn Wilson

New: 10 of the best Apple apps for education in 2012 | eSchool News - 0 views

  •  
    "Last year we presented "10 of the best apps for education," which highlighted some of the best apps for iPhones and iPods. However, with new upgrades in touch technology, HD and 3D features, and the debut of the iPad, we've come up with a new list of the best Apple-based education apps for 2012."
mary heuer

Blogging helps encourage teen writing | Top News | eSchoolNews.com - 9 views

  • Blogging is helping many teens become more prolific writers.
    • Michelle Krill
       
      Wow! What a statement!
    • janae kauffman
       
      I know!
  • 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 <script language=JavaScript src="http://rotator.adjuggler.com/servlet/ajrotator/173768/0/vj?z=eschool&dim=173789&pos=6&abr=$scriptiniframe"></script><noscript><a href="http://rotator.adjuggler.com/servlet/ajrotator/173768/0/cc?z=eschool&pos=6"><img src="http://rotator.adjuggler.com/servlet/ajrotator/173768/0/vc?z=eschool&dim=173789&pos=6&abr=$imginiframe" width="300" height="250" border="0"></a></noscript> 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
  •  
    "Survey reveals that student bloggers are more prolific and appreciate the value of writing more than their peers"
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    I am trying to get rid of this but cannot delete because it has been annotated by others....that's what I get for playing around ...
anonymous

The day online news took over | Digital Savant - 0 views

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    Interesting read about online news vs Corporate news. What do YOU think?
Melissa Wilson

Magazine - Is Google Making Us Stupid? - The Atlantic - 10 views

  • By Nicholas Carr
    • L Butler
       
      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/
    • Charles Black
       
      I know that we used online sources mainly for my Bachelor Senior Thesis compared to going through stacks of books and papers in the library. Google has made research a lot quicker for all of us.
    • Charles Black
       
      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.
    • Ryan Donnelly
       
      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...
  • ...47 more annotations...
    • Charles Black
       
      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.
    • Ryan Donnelly
       
      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. 
    • Ryan Donnelly
       
      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. 
    • Ryan Donnelly
       
      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. 
  • ity,” hopping from one source to another and rarely returning to any source they’d already visited. Th
  • sortium
  • 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
  • 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
    • Charles Black
       
      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.
    • Melissa Wilson
       
      I am finding the sticky notes to be distracting. I keep skipping from the article to the notes.
    • Charles Black
       
      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.
  • My mind would
    • Ryan Donnelly
       
      My mind wandered off here, because of the picture to the side. 'I was thinking I wonder if this is the author?' and then I saw the caption and thought, "I wonder what those words are?"
  • Once I was a scuba diver in the sea of words. Now I zip along the surface like a guy on a Jet Ski.
    • Ryan Donnelly
       
      A friend of mine and I are going to soon put this to the test by reading the Infinite Jest, which is a very long read if you are unfamiliar with the book. I anticipate it being a difficult task. I wonder if it would have been less difficult before the net.
    • Ryan Donnelly
       
      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. 
    • Matthew Rogers
       
      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?
  • 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.
  • “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.”
  • Nietzsche’s friends, a composer
    • Ryan Donnelly
       
      Wagner, I believe. 
  • Nietzsche’s prose “changed from arguments to aphorisms, from thoughts to puns, from rhetoric to telegram style.”
    • Ryan Donnelly
       
      I wonder if Nietzsche would think of the Internet as Good or Evil, or even if he would consider it being part of the Overman. 
  • 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.
    • jan Minnich
       
      This segment pretty much summarizes that Carr believes that we are losing our ability to sustain deep cognitive thought. He acknowledges the tremendous benefit of the internet, but cautions that it might be coming at a price...that we have yet to fully realize.
  • 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.
    • jan Minnich
       
      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.
  • 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.
    • jan Minnich
       
      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.
  • 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.
    • jan Minnich
       
      I enjoyed learning of this story. Personally, i'm always looking for ways to be more highly efficient when I observe human systems or partake in a job or task sequence. Taylor obviously laid much of the ground work for "industrial efficiency."
  • 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
    • jan Minnich
       
      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?!?
    • Melissa Wilson
       
      This paragraph lost my attention.
    • Melissa Wilson
       
      If adults are noticing a change in reading attitude, what about children who have grown up with the internet?
  • We can expect as well that the circuits woven by ou
  • r use of the Net will be different from those woven by our reading of books and other printed works.
    • Charles Black
       
      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.
    • Charles Black
       
      It is much easier to type things out because of time and speed. I think this could be a good and bad thing. I don't remember the last time I wrote out by hand a letter or something long.
  • 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.
  • 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
  • manist H
  • laziness, making men “less studious” and weakening their minds.
    • Charles Black
       
      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.
    • Charles Black
       
      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. 
    • Jenn Wilson
       
      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.
    • Jenn Wilson
       
      This is the point where I scrolled down to see how much further I have to read and thought "I don't think I can make it!"
    • Jenn Wilson
       
      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.
    • Matthew Rogers
       
      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?
  • The deep reading that used to come naturally has become a struggle.
    • Matthew Rogers
       
      The question is, what skill do we focus our teaching on? Locating and accessing, or not being able to cover as much information but analyzing it further?
    • Matthew Rogers
       
      I find myself struggling to make it all the way through a longer blog post or video file. I need quicker gratification. Books are quickly sliding out of the picture
  • I’m just seeking convenience, but because the way I THINK has change
    • Matthew Rogers
       
      The skimming strategy gives students the false sense that they are really reading. Actually, they are just finding the words that they know in a story and piece the parts they understand together.
    • Matthew Rogers
       
      At this point in the reading, I have found myself loosing focus on the article
    • Matthew Rogers
       
      Even when I have full intentions, I find myself bookmarking more pages and never end up actually going back and exploring them.
  • Reading, explains Wolf, is not an instinctive skill for human beings
    • Melissa Wilson
       
      Interesting, I didn't realize that reading wasn't a natural skill. Does that explain why some people have so much trouble becoming good readers.
    • Melissa Wilson
       
      The internet has certainly taken over my life. When the internet goes down at school I find myself thinking, "Now how am I going to teach."
    • Matthew Rogers
       
      Although it is a different language, I am intrigued that the Chinese process of reading follows a different neural path than the English language
    • Melissa Wilson
       
      This sounds very similar to the grumbling I hear from teachers when they complain that standardized tests are taking all of the creativity out of teaching. Interesting that the complaints started so long ago.
Michelle Krill

Media Cloud - 0 views

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    Media Cloud is a system that lets you see the flow of the media. The Internet is fundamentally altering the way that news is produced and distributed, but there are few comprehensive approaches to understanding the nature of these changes. Media Cloud automatically builds an archive of news stories and blog posts from the web, applies language processing, and gives you ways to analyze and visualize the data.
Michelle Krill

Making education global | Skype in the classroom - 0 views

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    "Meet new people, discover new cultures and collaborate with classes from around the world, all without leaving the classroom"
peguyer

Education Update:Reading the Blueprint:Dawn of the New Literacies - 0 views

  • desultory
    • Michelle Krill
       
      lacking a plan, purpose, or enthusiasm
  • the U.S. Department of Education's Office of Educational Technology has upped the technology ante with the release of its National Education Technology Plan in Spring 2010.
    • Michelle Krill
  • The plan states, "The challenge for our education system is to leverage the learning sciences and modern technology to create engaging, relevant, and personalized learning experiences for all learners that mirror students' daily lives and the reality of their futures."
    • Michelle Krill
       
      Plan was updated in 2014
  • ...4 more annotations...
  • August 2010
  • 21st century concept of authorship
    • Michelle Krill
       
      .
  • teachers need to guide students to be critical readers "who can evaluate online information for credibility, timeliness, accuracy, and even hidden agendas,"
  • The new generation, sometimes dubbed "screenagers," does much more with technology outside school. Through social networking sites and wireless gizmos, kids are reading; texting; connecting socially; and making their own digital creations, from music mashups to backyard, YouTube-ready videos.
    • peguyer
       
      I find that "screenagers" know how to use their personal devices for social media, but are unable to problem solve with educational technology.
  •  
    "Dawn of the New Literacies"
Timothy Laubach

Engadget - 1 views

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    Technology New Site.  Great for keeping up on the latest equipment advances and technology news
anonymous

BBC News - Children who use technology are 'better writers' - 0 views

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    ""Our research suggests a strong correlation between kids using technology and wider patterns of reading and writing," Jonathan Douglas, director of the National Literacy Trust, told BBC News. "Engagement with online technology drives their enthusiasm for writing short stories, letters, song lyrics or diaries." "
anonymous

tweentribune.com | News for tweens, kids and students - 1 views

shared by anonymous on 27 Oct 09 - Cached
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    Just learned about this. News for kids
anonymous

Official Google Blog: Google heads to grade school: New resources for K-12 teachers and students - 0 views

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    This is an important change! Make sure you take this to your tech person and building principal.
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    To help address schools' email security needs, Google Message Security (GMS) will be offered free to current and new eligible primary and secondary schools globally that opt in by July of next year. GMS filters out email messaging threats, and education IT departments can customize the filtering rules and group messaging lists to suit their schools
Michelle Krill

Free Music Archive - 0 views

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    The Free Music Archive is an interactive library of high-quality, legal audio downloads. The Free Music Archive is being directed by WFMU, the most renowned freeform radio station in America. Radio has always offered the public free access to new music. The Free Music Archive is a continuation of that purpose, designed for the age of the internet. Every mp3 you discover on The Free Music Archive is pre-cleared for certain types of uses that would otherwise be prohibited by outdated copyright law. Are you a podcaster looking for pod-safe audio? A radio or video producer searching for instrumental bed music that won't put your audience to sleep? A remix artist looking for pre-cleared samples? Or are you simply looking for some new sounds to add to your next playlist? The Free Music Archive is a resource for all that and more, and unlike other websites, all of the audio has been hand-picked by established audio curators.
anonymous

Is Virtual Life Better Than Reality? - CBS Evening News - CBS News - 0 views

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    If you're not familiar with Second life, check out this intro from CBS news from a few years ago. Yes, it's cool, but after you get past the wow factor, do you think it offers anything for teachers?
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    Wow! It looks like it may be fun to create a possible fantasy world. I do worry about kids and I guess some adults getting to wrapped up in it to be able to separate it from the "real" world! Interesting report.
Deb Sowers

Happy News - Real News. Compelling Stories. Always Positive. - 0 views

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    Happy News - Positive real-world international stories about business, health, science & technology, arts & entertainment, sports, heroes, opinion & editorial, environment If you're having elementary students share "current events" articles, this might be a great place for them to start looking for their article.
anonymous

sean.blog: Diigo 4.0 Release - 0 views

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    Nice description of the new features in Diigo v4. Nice videos, too
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    Nice description of the new features in Diigo v4. Nice videos, too. This is just SUCH a great tool for kids!
anonymous

10 Sites to Learn Something New in 10 Minutes a Day - 2 views

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    Not all of these sites will be open to you at school, but I thought it was an interesting collection of sites where you can quickly learn something new each day. Granted, it may not always be something you WANT to learn, but there y' have it. :)
anonymous

Template 2 - Single Column - 0 views

  • We're very happy to announce that over 700,000 historical images from The New York Public Library's Digital Gallery are now freely and instantly available whenever you're creating a VoiceThread.
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    This really is VERY nice enhancement, isn't it?
  •  
    We're very happy to announce that over 700,000 historical images from The New York Public Library's Digital Gallery are now freely and instantly available whenever you're creating a VoiceThread.
Amy Soule

Sony officially unveils new Readers, drops price of e-books | Crave - CNET - 0 views

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    Competition for Kindle!
anonymous

Education Week: Filtering Fixes - 0 views

  • 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.
    • anonymous
       
      This is nothing new, but it seems this is one of the VERY few districts that puts its filter where its mouth is.
  • “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.
  • 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.
  • ...10 more annotations...
  • 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.
    • anonymous
       
      We find it hard to even imagine this, don't we?
    • anonymous
       
      the entire approach to filtering is based on this sentence, isn't it?
  • “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.”
  • As Trussville students move through the grades and encounter more-complex educational content and expectations, their Internet access is incrementally expanded.
  • 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
  • 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.
    • anonymous
       
      Hmmm - a lawsuit? And the Assistant Sec of Education didn't understand what I meant when I suggested that lawsuits control decisions and guide curriculum.
  • 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.)
  • 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.
    • anonymous
       
      YES!! What do you think?
  • 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
    • anonymous
       
      This is the Act that schools cite when giving reasons for blocking what they do. Can you justify it from this? Granted, it's not the coplete law, but they sure do use this to justify everything.
  • “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.
    • anonymous
       
      Hear! Hear!
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