"At Mathalicious, our mission is to help transform the way math is taught by providing you with the best, most meaningful and most relevant math content available. Our lessons are aligned to traditional state standards. Unlike most math resources, though, our content emphasizes both conceptual understanding and real-world application."
"RefSeek's guide to the 25 best online resources for finding and viewing educational videos. With the exception of BrainPOP and Cosmeo, all listed sites offer their extensive video libraries for free and without registration."
Jason Ohler argues that technology can't be separated from school because it can't be separated from life. He developed this blog post as a response to and Education Week article criticizing the motives of the Partnership for 21st Century Skills
"Schools and universities can set up free Google Apps accounts with their own domain name, where they can give all student and faculty acces to a variety of tools, including a GMail account, iGoogle portal, Google Groups for collaboration, and Pages, for creating websites. Each user can also use their GMail account to activate other Google services, such as GoogleDocs."
"The Scaling Framework - an interactive tool that helps analyse how you move an innovation from being something done by 1 or 2 people, to making it widespread."
"During the last six or so years I have created a number of 'how-to' documents and presentations for a variety of web based and related technologies. They are available from the various workshop web pages however I thought it might prove helpful to link to all the documents from a single page. Some of my workshop participants have referred to these documents as 'cheat sheets'."
"The U.S. Department of Education is developing a new National Educational Technology Plan to provide a vision for how information and communication technologies can help transform American education. The plan will provide a set of concrete goals that can inform state and local educational technology plans as well as inspire research, development, and innovation. A draft plan is expected in early 2010."
"KnowledgeWorks' Institute for Creative Collaboration builds the capacity of organizations and groups to think bigger, learn together and work smarter.
"I am constantly being asked, by those new to social media, for specific examples of how social media (Web 2.0) tools can be used for learning - whether it be for personal learning, informal learning or formal learning - in education or the workplace. So here are over 100 ways that different social technologies (and tools) are being used by learning professionals worldwide - compiled from the comments of those who have contributed their Top Tools for Learning."
Wouldn't it be great if you could do that with a Kindle? How much more would kids love reading if they could highlight, ask questions and offer thoughts to a vast audience of readers? Now that would really change the game for reading!
Researching a new technology each week has been inspiring
So, the idea is to have an alternate assessment at the end of each chapter. The alt. assessment will be created using one of many technologies we have discussed in our class (ex. animoto, flipbook, comicstrips, prezi). At midterm I plan on assigning a larger project, more cumlative of course.
Nice way to scaffold the assignment. And don't worry if it's a bit messy at first. Reflect on it and work out the problems, and you'll end up with a great way to engage your kids!
it was crucial for students to have the rubric in hand when their animation assignment was assigned.
True, but if used in an innovative way, I'd still rather have one on a stand than none at all. "If used in an innovative way..." .. key phrase here.
This leads to my ultimate grumbling of the week, I think that because of the shortcuts made to put technology into the hands of teachers and students that we are actually sacrificing class time and more importantly time on task. The concept of time on task was first studied by the late Ted Sizer who passed away recently. As a traveling teacher, I need to pack and unpack at least three times per day. I wonder how much time students actually lose not only in my class but throughout a day because of technology. Its not as though that time can be gained back. I do believe that technology is valuable to students but our schools need to do more with both infrastructure and training to make the devices increase the academic capacity of our students.
why aren’t schools quicker to recognize the power behind technology.
Of course, the more frustrated I got the less I wanted to try to learn about how Prezi worked. I was that student that got disillusioned with what I was learning somewhere along way, and decided I wasn’t that interested in learning that “something” anymore.
Is this unique to today, or is this just human nature? Has technology made this worst or made it new?
To truly problem solve in life and in school one needs to be able to analyze actions that are being taken toward solving a given problem and analyze the result those actions have on the final outcome.
This is a pervasive problem - in society - but I also think in our profession. Maybe I can share what I am working on with my dissertation. It reflects some of this.
As educators we strive to positively reach all of our students; but often don’t ever interact with all of the other professionals in our buildings. This is a problem.
I would agree. Look at our policitcal system. Do we really think that a leader is going to turn our country and its complex problems around in a year? Regardless of who could have been elected last November, Americans would have expected a quick fix AND for that person to have all the answers. It doesn't work that way. Anyhow...enough of politics.
While I may not be in an ideal place to utilize technology with the students I see, I am in the perfect position to use technology to enhance teaching and learning with my co-workers.