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"there are a number of great tools to teach programming to K-12 students, along with a lot of resources for computer science teachers:"

Complying with, and teaching young people about, copyright in an educational setting often feels burdensome. That's because copyright laws were not designed to facilitate the sort of sharing and collaborating that has become widespread in the digital age.

The purpose of the game is to teach kids how to spot online marketing strategies, protect their personal information and avoid online predators.

Excellent collection of links and resources about Twitter - includes critical responses, overviews, how tos and many teaching specific links.

This is a selection of images taken with a 1.3 megapixel cell phone camera for a professional development media teaching course I'm taking. The object was to collect media of a specific location. We were assigned to Church street, which is the heart of Toronto's gay community and other urban locations.

The purpose of this project was to document a public location using only the technology we have access to. Since my good camera is out of commission, I used my cell phone (which has very limited image capability). Despite my "low tech" gear, I managed to get some decent pictures - mostly due to techniques (cropping and moving the camera to eliminate need for focus) and some minor tweeks in Irfanview, changing colour to B&W and pushing up the contrast. Most of our time was spent walking down Church street which is the heart of Toronto's gay community - thus all the LGBTQ content. We ended our walk in China town - unfortunately only two images (we were tired and it was cold!)

"As long as media literacy education was about television, it was perceived to be fluff," she said. "But when the Internet came along, kids didn't know how to cite sources online, and they were creating publicly visible content in their own homes without their parents' knowledge...which sparked serious safety concerns."\n\nIf Thoman and her colleagues' work over the past half century can be credited with establishing media literacy as an academic subject, it's possible that the digital media revolution will catalyze this subject's introduction into the mainstream curriculum.\n\nThat reality seemed closer when, in May, my former boss Sen. John Kerry, along with Senators Rockefeller and Snowe, introduced the "21st Century Skills Incentive Fund Act" into the Senate. The bill recognizes that, in order to prepare students for the modern workforce, education must go beyond core curricula and teach "critical thinking and problem solving skills, communication skills, creativity and innovation skills, collaboration skills, contextual learning skills, and information and media literacy skills."

in high school courses, 'media' is often taught by visual artists or English teachers. Very rarely by those who have worked in media, the web or technical capacities (as production based degrees are not counted towards core curriculum areas: history, english, math, computer science, french, phys ed, etc).

"A YouGov poll has suggested that computer games can damage children's ability to communicate, but Tom Chatfield argues that gaming imparts a range of new, vitally important skills"

"If you've set the goal of trying something new in your classroom this year (shouldn't that always be one of our goals), here are eleven techy things teachers should try this year."

Infotention is a word I came up with to describe the psycho-social-techno skill/tools we all need to find our way online today, a mind-machine combination of brain-powered attention skills with computer-powered information filters

Through play, I have seen my students develop social, critical thinking, and problem-solving abilities in a safe, risk-free environment. Has our early childhood curriculum become so narrow that we now focus only on what is being tested and ignore all the other areas in a young child's development?

"Sit in one of these regions (like the Barrens) for 20 minutes watching the general chat. Keep a log of the topics discussed in the chat. Create categories for the topics and sort them. Create a bubble map diagram to show the relationship and possible overlap of topics. Reflect on the topics (were they helpful, interesting, offensive, etc.). What do you think motivates people to be helpful or annoying?"

I created this spreadsheet in order to track insights about aspects of MMO game play (example is WoW) that might be reconfigured or repurposed as classroom/school learning structures. The object here is not to necessarily use WoW in school but examine which elements of gameplay translate into new and unique learning experiences online or off. PLEASE ADD YOUR COMMENTS TO THE DOCUMENT!

Little do they realize that when it comes to the news and the advertisers who make it possible, the truth is not always part of the story and nothing can be taken at face value. While learning about media consolidation and the power of money over truth, Bounce, Pema and Jagroop decide to take on the developers and the media.

McBride concurs. "This generation, more than any other, wants to be able to participate in knowledge-not just be an audience to it." She thinks emerging professionals should spend as much time using online tools for professional knowledge and development

Lots of other things to use for presenting these days beyond powerpoint. A good collection for students or teachers.

A recent 93-page report on online education, conducted by SRI International for the Department of Education, has a starchy academic title, but a most intriguing conclusion: "On average, students in online learning conditions performed better than those receiving face-to-face instruction."

Interesting. Though I'm curious about what's being assessed. there's a certain social knowledge and development that occurs in visually and physically mediated spaces that is more difficult to discern online. as well, wondering how online disinhibition (actors and lurkers) factors into who "performs" well or is under serviced by online only contexts.

Complete unit planner for Media Arts Open courses

From keeping track of grades to sharing lesson plans, from helping students collaborate to communicating with parents, teachers now have a host of web-based tools at their disposal to help them stay organized and make their jobs easier.

A fantastic resource on using audacity for podcasting from a dedicated teacher.