Group items tagged

"Last week my wife and I told our 13-year-old daughter she could join Facebook. Within a few hours she had accumulated 171 friends, and I felt a little as if I had passed my child a pipe of crystal meth. I don't mean to be a spoilsport, and I don't think I'm a Luddite. I edit a newspaper that has embraced new media with creative, prizewinning gusto. I get that the Web reaches and engages a vast, global audience, that it invites participation and facilitates - up to a point - newsgathering. But before we succumb to digital idolatry, we should consider that innovation often comes at a price. And sometimes I wonder if the price is a piece of ourselves. "

"Welcome to the Assessment for Learning website. This site has been developed by Curriculum Corporation on behalf of the education departments of the States, Territories and Commonwealth of Australia." "There are 32 assessment tasks, covering the learning areas of English, Science, Studies of Society and Environment and Health and Physical Education, Languages Other Than English, Technology, The Arts and Mathematics - or their State and Territory equivalents.

"The classic "3 R's" of learning are, of course, Reading, 'Riting, and 'Rithmetic.  For the 21st century, we need to add a fourth R--and it will help inspire the other three:  Algorithm. "

"the goals of a programming system should be: to support and encourage powerful ways of thinking, to enable programmers to see and understand the execution of their programs. A live-coding Processing environment addresses neither of these goals. JavaScript and Processing are poorly-designed languages that support weak ways of thinking, and ignore decades of learning about learning. And live coding, as a standalone feature, is worthless.

It is commonly recognized that our nation's progress depends on improving learning, thereby creating healthier communities and a stronger workforce. In today's world, that requires us to take advantage of new learning tools to ensure that our children's learning is practical and prepares them for the challenges of the 21st century. The advantages of digital media now greatly outweigh the disadvantages and require that schools update their thinking and policies to provide guidance on the use of these tools to improve student learning and achievement.

Certain systems, software, and technologies simply don't work very well. In fact, some are barely usable. See if your biggest annoyances made this list. Let's face it. There are bits and pieces of the IT world that are simply broken, and we rarely want to come out and admit it. Well, some don't. I, on the other hand, am not in the slightest bit afraid to step forward and point the finger of shame at the creators of technology

As with anything Apple, the recent education-themed announcement has everyone dreaming of a better future for the children, and all that. The question you keep reading is "will e-textbooks change the face of education?", just like people asked about the iPad when it first came out. And while I'm very impressed by the design of the new textbooks available on iBooks 2, and I love the fact that they include touchable animations and videos to supplement text, the books themselves don't seem revolutionary.

"Let me guess, you heard about Pinterest. Or more like, you can't spend 15 minutes online without hearing about it… And now you're thinking, "should I jump on the wagon too?" or "another social network to keep up with?" and on top of that, everybody is talking about using it for marketing and getting tons of traffic and, you just don't see it. Alright, I hear you. I'll give you everything you need to know about Pinterest and a bunch of resources so you can decide if you or your business are ready to join the hottest trend online."

"The Digital Learning Branch provides advice and manages a comprehensive suite of digital systems, tools and resources to support schools design and deliver contemporary curriculum and enhance outcomes for students. The key focus of the Branch is to influence schools to leverage the potential of investments in digital technologies, and embed their use into school practice."

"Welcome to the Google Apps Education Training Center. This is an online learning environment dedicated for educators and students to learn how to effectively use Google Apps in an educational context. Access to a Google Apps Education account is strongly recommended so that you can experiment and apply what you learn. There are six modules of training content available. Each module has several chapters with many lessons. After reviewing the entire training course, an individual will have a solid understanding of all the products in the Google Apps suite. Learning objectives include: * Customize Google Apps for your school * Organize your email more effectively * Create shared calendars for your school * Collaborate with others, online, on documents, presentations, and spreadsheets * Deliver and collect surveys, quizzes, and feedback * Develop a media-rich website without looking at code * Set-up an internal video portal just for your school Each chapter will take from 10 to 20 minutes to complete. Browse the modules on the right to see a list of chapters for each topic."

"We know how important it is to protect and educate young people on using the Internet and want to provide all of our users with a safe experience. When it comes to family safety, we aim to: * Provide parents and teachers with tools to help them choose what content their children see online * Offer tips and advice to families about how to stay safe online * Work closely with organisations such as charities, others in our industry and government bodies dedicated to protecting young people "

"Easily incorporate computational thinking into your curriculum with these classroom-ready lessons, examples, and programs. For more resources, including discussion forums and news, visit our ECT Discussion Forums, Lessons include complete teacher editions, student worksheets, and any applicable Python programs. Examples include short exercises from core subjects with key CT concepts to consider. Programs include Python examples and exercises for teachers to enhance their existing lessons. All lessons, examples, and programs are based on California K-12 state standards."

Interesting collection of Python programming lessons shared here by Google.

Foller.me is a Twitter service that can provide you with the most detailed information about a specific Twitter user in the least amount of time! Here's how it works. You input a Twitter name into the searchbox and hit enter. Foller.me gets access to the profile of that user via the Twitter API, scans all the public info and the latest 200 tweets! In general, you'd read those 200 messages to get to know what that specific user is all about, right? Well you don't have to! Foller.me has done that for you already, and provides you only with the most significant parts of those 200 tweets. It builds up three tag clouds: topics, #hashtags and @mentions, all based on the user's recent activity, AND excluding all stop words! Isn't that great?

"Tablet computing and personal electronic devices such as iPads promise to have a dramatic impact on education. This Ning network was created to explore new and innovative ways iPads and other portable devices could be used in schools and colleges."

"Connect.ed is an innovative, self-paced cybersafety education program offered by the Australian Communications and Media Authority (ACMA) as part of Cybersmart. Connect.ed provides teachers with the flexibility of a self paced environment to learn about current online behaviours of students, potential risks involved in these activities, a teacher's and school's duty of care and the appropriate tools, resources and strategies to help students to have safe and positive experiences online."

"It's a noble aspiration: being truly digital means no trees die, your information is searchable, sortable, and safely stored in the cloud. We now have access to great tools such as Evernote, Dropbox, and Google's suite of applications, which means that stuff you care about can accessible to you on almost any device and location; on your phone, tablet, and desktop, at home, at the office, and on the move. Yet paper survives."

"ICTEV's 2011 conference aims to put you in touch with educational colleagues who will enthuse and inspire you to integrate technologies in your learning and teaching. The technologies you will hear about and explore on the day will allow you and your students to be in touch with other educational communities (schools and professionals) across the world."

Melbourne ICT event for educators in May 2011.

Our Strategic IT consulting offerings span across the infrastructure lifecycle. We use the expertise and deep tech background of the best minds at ACL to create a comprehensive IT strategy for a digital and technological transformation of your organization that aligns with your business objectives. Our strategic IT consulting will help you automate and digitalize operations, optimize the portfolio, and implement the latest technologies, processes and governance models.

"For hundreds of years, people have been obsessed with taking the shortcut over valleys and rivers instead of going around them. To do that, we use bridges. In this module, you will have the chance to become a bridge engineer and design and build your own. You will also learn about some of the different types of bridges and how to decide which one to use in different situations."

I have been working on a bridge building technology unit and this pysical science unit looks interesting if you are a science or physics teacher.