Technology_In_Education_ (Summer_2012)

Today's Meet is an online, real time meeting place for online collaboration. It's free (as far as I know), and seems really user friendly. 

Today's Meet seems like a scaled-down version of Skype and I really like that! It would be helpful for me to use this with fellow teachers and my students. We could use this virtual meeting place as a way to not have to make the commute to school if the weather isn't necessarily permitting. I'm sure my students would find this website as efficient as I do.

2 Cents blog was suggested by Dr. Z last semester, and it really does offer some great insight from an experienced teacher. It's always nice to read about experiences from practicing teachers, and this blog is no exception. Check out some of his posts!

Provides definitions and links about effective instructional technology integration.

I found this website in my searching for some web 2.0 tools and thought it was great as well. Not many teachers know what some of the new technology terms means, so providing them with the definition would be great. I also liked that it provided links to the technology integration. I have a friend who is a math teacher in Des Moines who is the only teacher in the school who uses Moodle because noone else has the guts to try it. Thanks for sharing!

A great site built with education and community in mind! References to reading lists for children, concepts, applications, reviews, articles including scholoraly reviewed such as Blooms Taxomomy. Also includes games for appropriate grade levels of learning and their links.

This blog is all about hands-on activities. Healy said in her book that it is important to pair online acitivity with hands-on acitivties. This blog provides many examples (pictures, videos, etc.) of what these students are doing in their classroom. I thought that this was interesting to hunt around on becuase there is SO much information.

I am taking another online class and the professor has utilized this software. Voice over power points.

This is a great wiki to help teachers find all types of Web 2.0 tools to use int he classroom. Very helpful and interesting!

This was a great blog! Has a lot of great resources to use in the classroom but they can also be used at home as well!

I really like the set up for this site. I really like how they break down the tools.

This is a short article on the Top 10 Web 2.0 Tools for young learners to help them share and collaborate with others.

This is really great tools that didn't know was out there.

This site is good introduceing people to new tools.

Text Message (SMS) Polls and Voting, Audience Response System. This site can be sued for literally any subject and any level to gather feedback and poll students. This could be used as a way to check for understanding.

I found this website to be a very practical tool for teachers and students to use to gather information on a number of things. As a teacher you could poll the class to see what kinds of topics the students would want to learn about or take an in-class quiz to see where everybody is at in the unit. Students could use this poll tool to develop a poll to give them feedback on a project they are working on. There seems to be an infinite amount of possibilities with this type of tool. Other resources that are similar to it are Google spreadsheets and the i-Clickers that I had used in some of my classes at Hawkeye Community College.

This is a great tool for increasing student interaction in the classroom, while simultaneously allowing the teacher to formatively assess student learning. What I like about it is that you can use your cell phone to text in a response, which means every student (well almost) will have one of these devices. So at anytime, the teacher can say, get out your cell phones and text a response on (insert topic here). This is mostly a student used resource, but the teacher does have a lot of use in it through the reporting functions of the tool. This is probably the most important aspect of the tool because it allows the teacher to make informed decisions about his/her teaching allowing for any necessary changes. I know there are a variety of these types of services, but I think this one has worked the best for me in the past.

Discusses cognitive theft and the "low road in math".

While this is written to apply to math, there are so many other fields of study where this can apply. It's more about having the mindset that each problem is a journey for the students and you're the easy shortcut that you have to not allow them to take.

It seems that most of our day as teachers is consumed with litercy education. Since when did we find that literacy was more important than the other content areas like social studies, science, and MATH! This blog would be a great resource for teachers to visit because it gives great insight into mathematics education. Math just doesn't involve adding and subtracting, but it provides problem solving skills that students will need to have. The only resource that I can think of that would apply to mathematics is the use of calculators. The age old question that revolves around calculators and math is do they help with learning math or hinder it?

"A fascinating inside look at the Net Generation, Grown Up Digital is inspired by a $4 million private research study. New York Times bestselling author Don Tapscott has surveyed more than 11,000 young people. Instead of a bunch of spoiled "screenagers" with short attention spans and zero social skills, he discovered a remarkably bright community, which has developed revolutionary new ways of thinking, interacting, working, and socializing." I am reading the book now and enjoy it very much.

This allows for creative sharing with students

This blog is one of the top ten educational blogs. It is very interesting and covers all aspects of the curriculum.

"E-Learning Queen focuses on distance training and education, from instructional design to e-learning and mobile solutions, and pays attention to psychological, social, and cultural factors. The edublog emphasizes real-world e-learning issues and appropriate uses of emerging technologies."

This, I feel, is the most collaborative tool you can use in a classroom. Skype allows people to connect all over the world, so you can collaborate with so many different people. This is also a free tool, which is a plus.

Skype is a great resource for connecting with others, whether it be students from another school, experts in the field, or instructional support personel at the AEA. The uses of Skype are almost limitless. Skype can be used by both teachers and students, and considering the global nature of our society, it should be used by both students and teachers if we are going to develop global literacies necessary for success in the 21st century. While the same resource, Skype is available on the iPad, which is handy considering that more and more schools are providing students with iPads. Another iPad based resource that is similar is the Polycom Real Presence App. I use this app for work quite a bit. It does essentially the same thing only calls are IP based so there is a slight learning curve, as well as there is a feature that allows you to lower the bandwidth rate for use in low speed Internet situations.

I am so glad that skype was mentioned with this. I think a lot of the technology's that we use everyday, we often overlook when working in the classroom. I even posted an article about using cell phones in the classroom. If students are using it and know how to use it then why wouldn't we want to build on this prior knowledge and help them grow!

Disabilities, Opportunities, Internetworking, and Technology The international DO-IT Center promotes the success of individuals with disabilities in postsecondary education and careers, using technology as an empowering tool. In collabortive groups DO-IT exercises use active participation by using assistive technologies as well as supporting issues in the sciences and mathmetical models for learning. Their site may be accessed through various links by: involvement, current news issues, search bars and topics. A great site that encourages empowerment through knowledge provided and established by the University of Washington.

There will be many diverse students in my classroom and I will have to prepare for their different abilities. This website is quite helpful in teaching me how I could help my students boost their confidence when they use different technological mediums. I can also navigate my students towards this website, so they can learn about technology through it. This is an effecient website and I would use it in my future classroom.

This journal describes how online social networks can be made into a classroom environment all in itself.

PDF file of 2012 Horizon Report.