Group items tagged

"Yesterday I sat down and built a new guide, Google Documents for Teachers. The 40 page guide (embedded below) is designed to help teachers who have never used Google Documents. This document is part of a larger project that I hope to complete this month. Please leave a comment if you have suggestions about how to improve this document."

"I was out to dinner in Adelaide with some amazing educators on the weekend. While there Shaileigh Page asked me for five educators I thought teachers to twitter should follow. I had a few names that came to mind quickly, then I thought of more (going past my original target of 5). Building their twitter network can help Australian teachers to develop their Professional Engagement (one of the new National Professional Standards for Teachers)."

Teacher's Assistant Pro allows teachers to keep track of student actions, behavior, infractions, and achievements in the classroom. Communicate quickly and easily with parents and your administration by documenting student classroom habits and behaviors and sending reports via email or making a call right from your iPhone. Designed by a teacher, and used by thousands of teachers across the world. Includes PIN code security.

"Learn it in 5 is a powerful library of how-to videos, produced by technology teachers, for the purpose of helping teachers and students create classroom strategies for today's 21st century's digital classroom. These step-by-step how-to videos walk teachers through Web 2.0 technology, demonstrating how to use Web 2.0 applications like blogs, social networks, podcasts, interactive videos, wikis, slidesharing and much more."

"The 2013 VITTA Annual Conference and Expo is set for August again this year and is already aspiring to be the best ever. Provoking Learning with ICT will be a conference designed for all learners, exploring the exciting environments and the opportunities for students and teachers to enhance their learning through technology. Provoking Learning with ICT highlights the innovation, creativity and achievement of teachers and students nationally in and beyond the classroom. "

But after a change to a conservative government that has a very poor track record when it comes to supporting public education, Victorian teachers are slowly awakening to a very different landscape. Perhaps the most rude awakening has occurred by way of the latest notebook lease offer from DEECD.

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."

"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.

"This plea doesn't apply to the teachers (or administrators, for that matter) who have figured out that Wikipedia is an incredible knowledge store, cornucopia of primary sources, and go-to site for most the free world. Rather, this plea is for those who, instead of teaching students about Internet site credibility, fact checking, verification, and crowdsourcing, choose to simply prohibit the use of Wikipedia."

Interesting blog post that explains the sillyness behind filtering Wikipedia from students doing classroom research.

While the Lewisville school district still restricts regular cellphone use in the classroom, the policy is being loosened to allow the program to be used by the school's teachers when they feel that technology would enhance learning.

Digital Leader programme "Show them something they are interested in and they want to know more. If they come up against a barrier, they want to overcome it. If they can find out something no-one else knows, they want to share it. Successful Digital Leaders are the epitome of the curious student with more to offer schools than perhaps any other student body at this time. The classroom environment is changing and students and teachers need their help."

Plans for a pilot scheme to connect teachers in the UK who want to learn how to program with experienced practitioners who can coach them are starting to take shape. The ultimate goal is to give every child in the UK a chance to try their hand at computer programming ..

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.

"You can't swing a stick in social media without hitting something on Facebook. Same goes for education. You can't talk about how technology is revolutionizing education without mentioning Facebook. It's a simple service to figure out but what about once you become a regular user? If you're a teacher, you would be well served by spending 3 minutes to read through this must-have guide. (We timed it out and it's a bit under 3 minutes. It's almost summertime, you can spare it for us!)"