Group items tagged

Before giving students internet access, there must be safety training for teachers and students.

This blog emphasizes the importance of stressing being a "good citizen" when using the Internet with our students. A week was spent with the following learning objective: "A renewed focus on the choices we make and how they affect us, specifically about balance, responsibility and safety." Each day time was spent on some aspect of this objective. As a culminating activity, students were invited to an assembly where the theme was " Digital Citizenship mean..... to me" Students were able to share what they learned throughout the week.

Michele I had read this article when reviewing them for our assignment. It was great to see all of the topics touched upon, especially about balancing on and off line activities. Love that they stressed being a good digital citizen just as we stress being a good citizen in general. I think we forget to stress some of these points with our students and that they are important in our online life even outside of school. The kids and adults alike.

The article uses a friendly approach to help teens stay safe and for parents (adults) to understand how to change privacy settings. There is a series of videos (11) to help learn more about social networking and how to check yourself it something doesn't seem right. The article also demonstrates the use of protection your personal property from hackers and spammers.  I personally think the article does a great job using the friendly approach with teens, and using videos, and teens will click on a video than read an entire article. Holly

These are great articles. I like the user friendly approach to all of these; In www.connectsafely.org there are great personal accounts of what can go wrong using social media. Those articles really resonate with my own fears. We must be wise when we use the web.

This online discussion forum offers adults insight into the legal, social, and safety issues tied into specific social networking sites.

This is a brief article describing the Adobe Creative Suite update to 6.0. Aside from listing the latest updates, he most interesting part of this article is that Adobe is introducing the Creative Cloud. If you follow the link about the cloud it unveils a whole knew way of creative possibilities. The Creative Cloud is something I want to look into for our classroom. I am wondering if it is an alternative to purchasing hefty licenses every year.

I have a hard time imagining the powerful suite of Adobe apps working well in the cloud. For this cloud service to work, I would imagine one needing a seriously fast and reliable Internet connection. None the less, I am really excited to see if this lives up to the promises. Thanks for sharing.

I use Photoshop all the time at my school. I'm looking forward to what CS6 has to offer. Want to research more on The Creative Cloud. So far what I know, I like.

Textbooks, encyclopedias and newspapers are educational resources of the past. Today, students seek answers from the sky -- specifically, the clouds. A new way of using the Internet is making data limitless. It's called "cloud computing," and it's allowing educational institutions, businesses and individuals to keep more information at their fingertips than is possible with even a room full of computers.

One of a series of posts on different types of internet based tools and their use in education; backchannels engage students who otherwise might not contribute, evens the playing field; students ask questions on the fly without interrupting; gives teacher feedback on the level of understanding or confusion in the class; does not recommend twitter for classroom alternative backchannels teacher can manage ; It will improve writing and a student's ability to articulate themselves quickly using text. Students must have Effective Digital Communication Skills in order to be successful in the 21st century. One digital communication skill that is needed is to have the ability to articulate quickly and succinctly using text.

This is a brief article that expresses the importance and convenience of communicating with technology in education.

In this article, "Role of Information & Communication Technology in Education", the author briefly discusses the benefits of technology in education. Because of the brevity of the article, most of the advantages were only skimmed over. However, the author does mention a point that resonates with me as I attempt to integrate technology into my classroom: "The ability to digitally record any data, from tests to transcripts, is a feature of information technology that has long-term potential to save money on both paper and ink as well as make organization and management simpler for administrators and teachers" (Page). The ability to streamline classrooms and to reduce the need for paper intrigues me. Also, her point about technology making "organization and management simpler" is key to sustainable implementation of technology in my future classroom.

In this article, "Role of Information & Communication Technology in Education", the author briefly discusses the benefits of technology in education. Because of the brevity of the article, most of the advantages were only skimmed over. However, the author does mention a point that resonates with me as I attempt to integrate technology into my classroom: "The ability to digitally record any data, from tests to transcripts, is a feature of information technology that has long-term potential to save money on both paper and ink as well as make organization and management simpler for administrators and teachers" (Page). The ability to streamline classrooms and to reduce the need for paper intrigues me. Also, her point about technology making "organization and management simpler" is key to sustainable implementation of technology in my future classroom.

This article, written by EDUDEMIC author, Jeff Dunn, offers 5 distinct reasons why schools need to move toward Digital Textbooks/ebooks as opposed to traditional paper books/texts. He begins by adding support to his stance by citing Ed Secretary, Arne Duncan's call to make "textbooks obsolete". Among Dunn's reasons and pertinent to our Media/Inform Literacy discussion are these ideas: Using digital texbooks or ebooks on line, allows for students to interact with the book. Some books have videos, highlighting/notetaking features, moveable models and interactive diagrams. In addition, such technological books are more immediate-they are simply accessed by the press of a button. Arne Duncan also remarked that the US is lagging behind other countries in converting to these computerized books. With states desiring a lead position in education in the US, and Obama's push (Connect Ed) campaign to have all schools connected (internet/computer/tech), this transition to Digital Text/ebooks seems a likely probability-and exciting one too. Though sitting back, especially in a beach chair, with a paper book still holds an appeal for me.

This article provides (as it says) over 100 different tips on how to use Google as a search engine in a way that can get you around blocked websites, or to glean search results that are refined to what you are specifically looking for. I included this article as it seems useful when building a blog, to structure search links and topic links in a way that will result in the consumer of the blog obtaining the content they are looking for. As the article begins, time is precious. As an educator, I need my time in class (and outside if class) to be structured in a way where I can access information easily and quickly and teach students to do so as well. These 102 tips for how to use Google are the tools in the toolbag I believe are necessary to bring this need to fruition. As stated above, the relevance to Blogs is providing useful tips on the Blog for users to utilize to refine searches and yield more meaningful results. These "tricks" would also serve well for a Blog on how to search the Internet!

This article lists some interesting statistics about the pervasiveness of social media. According to this post, 96% of students with internet access use social networking technology, and 56% of those talk about education-related topics while they are online. Educators say social networking gives them access to a professional community, and it encourages collaboration and the exchange of ideas. Parents say it helps them become more involved, helps them understand the teacher's expectations, and increases student-teacher communication. Social media helps students learn collaboration and develop important workforce skills. It also gives them a positive view of technology, stimulates engagement, and increases academic networking. Interesting statements, to be sure.

This short article explains a new Pew study which explored the affects of broader access to the internet and social media and student performance. The article speaks of both the positive and negative affects that they are seeing as per standardized tests and teacher feedback.

I found this very interesting as our school goes to a Bring Your Own model and the entire High School becomes a 1:1 laptop zone. Many teachers have asked questions about this and the Pew study is something I plan to share with them.

Collect, curate and share your ideas, inspirations, and projects! Popplet is a place to engage in visual conversations on any topic of your choosing, quickly and easily, with your friends, family and colleagues on both the internet and mobile web.

Popplet is an app for the web and iPad, where you can collect, curate and share your ideas, inspirations, and projects.

Popplet is the universal tool available to educators. The app gets students thinking outside the traditional scope of a poster and can collect pieces along the way. Perfectly inspired!

Group work is regarded by most students as challenging. However in real life context, they have to work in teams in many situations. Collaboration is considered in this video to be an authentic approach to learning and this resource suggests strategies on how internet technology can make group work effective, less time consuming and transparent.

Many educational sites to check out this summer. There is a site of web 2.0 tools that can be accessed in "two clicks." Also a nice live binder link for how to use the web 2.0 tools. this site will take you to his recommendations for webinars, lesson plans and all sorts of internet sites. Updated regularly.

This article discusses research that has been done regarding the needs of people to obtain media and information literacy skills in order to better many of their experiences in 21st century society. The article states that "knowing how to search for, analyze, and interpret information is a skill that will be used for more than just writing a good research paper: People use media literacy skills for applying for jobs online, getting relevant health information, and sifting through online educational opportunities, for example." Ten recommendations for developing stronger media and information literacy skills are given in the article. Legislative efforts from the federal government to provide funding in support of programs that help to develop these 21st century skills are also discussed.

"...you can now sort your search results by readability. The readability index is a bit coarse, but it is helpful none-the-less. The index use a simple ranking of "basic," "intermediate," and "advanced."

Students can't utilize web 2.0 if they can't search for tools that are at their reading level.

Internet use has definitely changed the environment in terms of learning, thinking and succeeding. This article discusses many changes that researchers have noted in human learning and thinking. The author also discusses Howard Gardner's Five Minds for the Future: disciplined, synthesizing, creating, respectful and ethical. Mind qualities that have always been important but perhaps are even more important in this age of information. Teaching students to think critically is even more important than ever.

Article reports on #140edu conference on benefits of tweets and many educational uses of tweeting including collaboration.