Group items tagged

"There are some remarkable efforts underway in American schools to invest the next generation of students with the literacy skills needed to innovate, solve problems, and meet unprecedented challenges. Until now, there has been no way to connect these initiatives, to provide models for advancing literacy learning in every subject, to collaborate in identifying and pursuing critical research questions about literacy teaching and learning on a consistent, sustained basis. That's about to change. The National Center for Literacy Education (NCLE) is building a coalition of stakeholders representing the premiere education organizations, policy analysts, researchers, and foundations who are working together to identify and share the plans, practices, support systems, and assessments used by educator teams working to improve literacy learning. NCLE will celebrate the work of successful school teams across the country that are achieving remarkable results in advancing literacy learning, and share what is learned with education policymakers…NCLE is providing the Literacy in Learning Exchange as a free resource to all educator teams. All educators are invited to use the free site to build or further develop a team in their school, district, or across schools/districts, or in their out-of-school setting. Educators that embrace the challenge of sponsoring and supporting a team will be eligible to apply for recognition and support as Centers for Literacy Education." Does your school have (need) a literacy team? If so, hopefully library staff is involved. Centers for Literacy Education, or collaborative groups/teams working toward capacity building for literacy: http://www.literacyinlearningexchange.org/about/centers-literacy-education

This information applies to 2012. I'm not sure if this will be an annual event. Connected Educator Month is funded by the U.S. Department of Education, and several organizations are sponsoring programs and activities, including AASL and SETDA, the State Educational Technology Directors Association. So what is CEM, anyway? "Online communities and learning networks are helping hundreds of thousands of educators learn, reducing isolation and providing 'just in time' access to knowledge and opportunities for collaboration. However, many educators are not yet participating and others aren't realizing the full benefits. In many cases, schools, districts, and states also are not recognizing and rewarding this essential professional learning. For these reasons, the U.S. Department of Education's Connected Educators initiative has made August 2012 Connected Educator Month. Throughout the month, there will be coordinated opportunities to participate in events and activities in dozens of online locations to develop skills and enhance one's personal learning network." As one ad for the program proclaims, it's "all of August, all for free, all online - shape the future of the profession." Explore activities in the starter kit at your own pace: https://dl.dropbox.com/u/38904447/starter-kit-final.pdf

Though Twitter's contribution to the world of social media and progressive society was at one time a strongly argued point, there is no doubt today that the popular social media platform has become a valuable tool for various aspects of education. Sure, Twitter can be the perfect place to waste hours on mundane details about people's lives or worthless celebrity gossip. But, the microblogging platform also enables us to create and participate in meaningful conversations concerning education, technology, and society.

The goal of our project was to update the MEMO Guidelines for Standards in Information and Technology Literacy. The new standards reflect 21st century skills and provide a bridge between K-12 and higher education expectations for students. Beginning in June and continuing throughout the summer and fall, advisory and writing groups met, and determined the framework, standards and benchmarks. The groups included library media specialists and technology integration teachers as well as representatives from public libraries, higher education, and business.

APPitic is a directory of apps for education by Apple Distinguished Educators (ADEs) to help you transform teaching and learning. These apps have been tested in a variety of different grade levels, instructional strategies and classroom settings.

The mission of Web 2.0 Labs is to continue to cultivate, incubate, and grow existing and future opportunities for peer learning in education. Educators, librarians, and students are given the opportunity to learn from and work with each other, and to promote the personal and collective value of that work through social media projects. 

Welcome to the Cool Tools Wiki
Most technology is not created for education, it is re-purposed for education.

Cybrary Man's Educational Web Sites The internet catalogue for students, teachers, administrators & parents. Over 20,000 relevant links personally selected by an educator/author with over 30 years of experience. 

Highlighting the need to improve literacy rates and provide access to educational opportunities for all children, LitWorld will host the third annual World Read Aloud Day on March 7, 2012. Last year, World Read Aloud Day united 200,000 people in 60 countries. Show your public support for this important literacy initiative and promote reading in local and global communities by participating in World Read Aloud Day. Suggested activities and other resources are available on LitWorld's website.

Evernote is a great web service and software application that we can use in education. A lot of ink has been shed on this topic and just one click in a search engine is enough to get hundreds of links to guides and tutorials about Evernote. I have been going through so many of these resources and have collected ideas, videos, notes and many more. If you are a loyal reader to my blog ( I am glad most of you are ) you would clearly notice that guides I write here are different in that they are simple. to the point, address teachers and students direct  need, and most of all written in an easy and simple language. In this regard, I am working on an ebook that will contain all the guides I have posted here so far but will be available for free only to my subscribers. Without any further ado, let us get back to our guide.

In June of 2010, members of the Georgia Library Association and the Georgia Public Library Service launched this bi-monthly educational webinar series. The series highlights trends, innovation, and best practices in Georgia libraries. The free sessions feature Georgia speakers, but they are open to library employees from all geographic (and astral) locations. Topics are chosen to be of interest to employees of all library types, and each session is approved for one Georgia Continuing Education (CE) contact hour.

Academic standards define expectations for the educational achievement of Minnesota's public school students in grades K-12. The standards and benchmarks are important because they: 1) identify the knowledge and skills that all students must achieve by the end of a grade level or grade band; 2) help define the course credit requirements for graduation; and, 3) serve as a guide for the local adoption and design of curricula. Student mastery of the standards is measured though state and local assessments.

Free toolkits, lessons, videos for internet safety, digital citizenship, and cyberbullying topics.

The five Cs below will empower educators to discover how they and their students can begin building personal learning networks specific to the learner's needs extending relevant learning connections to like-interested people around the globe.

The PSU Online Resource Hub offers a collection of the best tools and resources to support education about the Middle East at the K-12 level. Materials are organized by country and theme and categorized into three sections, background information, news & media, and teaching materials.

Fascinating change: In 2013, I'll be "ripping" DVDs to make clip compilations for media literacy. And I'll be encouraging K-12 teachers, school librarians, and technology educators to do the same.

Might be a good resource to follow: The Cooperative Children's Book Center (CCBC)

is a unique and vital gathering place for books, ideas, and expertise in the field of children's
and young adult literature. The CCBC is a noncirculating examination, study, and research library
for Wisconsin school and public librarians, teachers, early childhood care providers, university
students, and others interested in children's and young adult literature. The CCBC is part of the University of Wisconsin-Madison (UW) School of Education (SoE), and receives additional support from the Wisconsin Department of Public Instruction (DPI).

Curation tool as used in education K-12

New resource for me (or reminded one) with digital storytelling, movie making, free educator account with student account management, etc. Wow.

TVO Kids- loads of videos and games- educational? Mostly...