Group items tagged

"Formative assessment is useful tool assist teachers assess the learning needs of their students. Such knowledge allows teachers to modify their teaching to meet the needs of their students. The digital formative assessment tools listed here offer a range of approaches to help teachers undertake this task. "

Ben Hazzard's place for K-12 teachers to find other teachers for cross-classroom collaboration.

iTALC is a use- and powerful didactical tool for teachers. It lets you view and control other computers in your network in several ways. It supports Linux and Windows 2000/XP (Vista support will come) and it even can be used transparently in mixed environments! In contrast to widely used commercial equivalent software, iTALC is free! This means you do not have to pay for expensive licenses or things like that. Furthermore the source-code is freely available and you're free in changing the software to fit your needs as long as you respect the terms of iTALC's license (GPL). Freedom in two ways! Features iTALC has been designed for usage in school. Therefore it offers a lot of possibilities to teachers, such as * see what's going on in computer-labs by using overview mode and make snapshots * remote-control computers to support and help other people * show a demo (either in fullscreen or in a window) - the teacher's screen is shown on all student's computers in realtime * lock workstations for moving undivided attention to teacher * send text-messages to students * powering on/off and rebooting computers per remote * remote logon and logoff and remote execution of arbitrary commands/scripts * home-schooling - iTALC's network-technology is not restricted to a subnet and therefore students at home can join lessons via VPN-connections just by installing iTALC client Furthermore iTALC is optimized for usage on multi-core systems (by making heavy use of threads). No matter how many cores you have, iTALC can make use of all of them.

"PRIME Minister Julia Gillard says she wants to eradicate the riff-raff from the teaching profession and entice the best and brightest to join. The challenge lies not in attracting smart, personable people to teaching, but in retaining them."

Good article that reflects on the conditions faced by many short-term contract teachers that we have in Victoria.

Reflections by a teacher caught in the sandpit of contract teaching in Victoria.

The 21st century teacher is in the critical spot-of mastering constantly evolving technology and digital learning tools-the same tools their students use every day. In this post 9 such tools are discussed. The list is not meant to be exhaustive or even authoritative and is subjective. As this is the 21st century, things will change but, here and now, the authors suggest that this is a fairly accurate litmus test of what the kinds of tools the average 21st century teacher can be expected to use and master."

An informative and authoritative Australian website that aims to provide teachers and students with appropriate resources for disaster resilience education. Topics covered include floods, bushfires, earthquakes, heat waves, tsunamis, pandemics and severe storms. Included for each topic are student and teacher specific resources, links and real-life stories.

Blog posting from Vicki Davis

Start spreading the News to leave some PD time open during the K12 online conference October 20-24 and 27-31! If you want to download the flyer you can get it in PDF format. http://k12onlineconference.org/ Julie and I met 3 years a go at the K12 online conference and shortly thereafter the first Flat Classroom Project was born. Little did we know we'd be keynoting a strand so soon. But the best thing about the K12 online conference is you -- us. All of "us" -- the loosely defined, ever changing edublogosphere full of plurkers, lurkers, and prolific conversationalists. So, you've been hanging around the fringes wondering if all of this "stuff" is for you and your classroom. I challenge you -- read / listen to ONE session -- participate in ONE conversation. Just dip you toe in and see what you think! Share what you're doing! Learn from others! This is not about any ONE person telling US how to do things the best way. This is about US telling US how to do things. Free. By teachers and educators for teachers and educators. What is there to lose?

Diipo.com is a social networking sites that is set up for just teachers and students. Teachers can set up class sites where they can post announcements as well as assignments along with links and attachments for students in that particular class site. Students can be added to class rosters, upload files, post entries like a blog, contribute to other group projects, and more.There is also a Ning-like virtual teacher's lounge where educators can interact.

An infographic which features the major differences between fixed and growth mindsets using teachers as the underlying subject

Microsoft has some great Teacher Guides available. The guides have teaching tips and step-by-step instructions on a variety of topics and tools and technologies. The guides are all free and downloadable in PDF form. Topics include: Critical Thinking in web searches, Windows Movie Maker, Free tools from Microsoft, Digital Storytelling, Microsoft Office, web apps, OneNote, Bing and Mathematics, and Accessibility in the Classroom. The guides are easy to use and read and a great resource

Philologus is designed by teachers for teachers and allows them to create customised interactive versions of popular games suitable for use during lessons.

"Are you a 21st Century Teacher?"

Basically a list of what it takes to become a progressive teacher that engages with learning technologies and adopts new learning spaces. As an Australian, I smiled at the second item.

Jeff Mummert from The History Teachers Attic has published this great post which lists the TED videos that he thinks are particularly useful and divides them up by subjects including the traditional curriculum areas. As he point out this list is not the sum total of all the TED videos, just a selection of those most relevant to education.

Educators and students around the world spoke, and Wetpaint listened! Advertising will now be removed from qualified education sites to keep the focus on collaboration and learning.

via Andrew Sartori (Sartz). I didn't realise that wetpaint wikis were also free for educators!

"The annual list of apps that educators favor this year shares some commonalities with last year's favorites. Teachers tend to drop apps if they become too expensive or sometimes if the updates are so overwhelming that they no longer know how to use the product. It's a delicate balance:"

Though US focused this list from the Online Colleges is useful nonetheless "For teachers hoping to infuse multimedia into their classrooms, YouTube makes for an excellent starting point. Plenty of universities, nonprofits, organizations, museums and more post videos for the cause of education both in and out of schools. The following list compiles some of the ones most worthy of attention, as they feature plenty of solid content appealing to their respective audiences and actively try to make viewers smarter."

A review of free technology resources and how teachers can use them. Ideas for technology integration in education.

The Professional Learning Board community has free and low-cost resources for parents & teachers: professional development, instructional strategies, classroom management, online teaching and learning tools, virtual classrooms, continuing ed, and schools.

Teachers can access a variety of classroom resources regarding the various scientific education projects, events and services operated by CSIRO. Links are present to related sites run by the organisation

Identifying what our children need to learn is one of the most important processes within education. For the teacher this is the question they engage with as they design their teaching and learning units. By no means is this an easy task and the teacher must balance multiple factors to ensure that the programmes they design provide their students with the learning they require. Even the most effective sequence of lessons is of little value if what it sets out to teach has little importance in the lives our learners are likely to lead.