Web 2.0: Enhancing Education Through Technology

Simple way to record voice and send via email.

An brief article cautioning with interesting statistics about the number of teens who use blogging on a regular basis. Might have some implications for introducing and educating students about blogging into the classroom.

This is an interesting article about the small percentage of teens 13 to 17 that are blogging. According to the Millennials reports, although social networking sites have increased, they are more interested in text messaging than twittering or blogging. The author suggest that "Understanding why teens go online, and what tools they use, can give teachers clues into how they conduct research, and even complete homework". This is something to consider

This is a great list of 10 key skills every student should learn..from reading and writing to communicating effectively. Good read.

School district implements common planning time and allows teachers to collaborate using a wike for lesson plans and web links to enhance classroom teaching.

Thank you for sharing that example of the wiki and teacher sharing. I may discuss this to be a possible option for a professional day for my own dept members as we look to design our own text.

Offers strategies for creating and managing project-based learning environments. Emphasizes active learning environments based on authentic tasks, inquiry and feedback.

The pedagogical value and the challenges of integrating student blogging into your teaching is a recurring topic on ProfHacker. Some of our earliest posts dealt with student blogging, and we have revisited the issue frequently. Most recently, Jeff and Julie wrote about that age-old question-How are you going to grade this?-when it comes to evaluating classroom blogs.

Exactly as the title suggests- A rubric for evaluating Student bolgs

This site has a plethora of rubrics for assessing the new technology-based projects we will encounter in our classroom. It provides links to rubrics for podcasts, wikis, blogs, websites, voice threads, and more. It's a great resource when planning a rubric for your own classroom projects.

Effective 21st century assessment reaches beyond traditional testing to look at the broader accomplishments of learners. Assembling an e-portfolio, or electronic portfolio, is an excellent method for assessing students' progress toward school, state, or national academic standards, as well as 21st century skills. An electronic portfolio is a purposefully limited collection of student selected work over time that documents progress toward meeting the standards.

Eporfolios would be great for the current teacher to view the strengths and weaknesses of their students. I can find the grade my students received last year but since each teacher grades so differently it really does not give much information.

A discussion of e-portfolios and their use as assessment.

Blog post by Ken Kay of EdLeader21 outlining strategies for administrators to assist teachers in implementing 21st century skills (critical thinking, communication, collaboration, and creativity) into classroom practices .

A look at how technology use in formative assessments improves feedback and how this formative feedback directly helps students improve their performance.

Helpful information for teachers to provide assessments and rubrics --subject specific and general-- including the categories of Multimedia and Web 2.0. Also includes graphic organizers and report card/progress reports.

Storify is a website which allows you to make stories using tweets, photos, videos, or anything on-line. Storify creates a file by gathering content from all over the web and putting into one place (making a story).

This article is a follow up to an article titled "Readers: These 10 education policies need to go," Readers responded and eschoolnews posted the top five. I am not sure I agree with students have a 4 day week and teachers having a 5 day week (5th day would be for teachers to plan and collaborate), but I do agree that teachers need more time for this

Utilizing the concept of storyboarding as a collaboration tool during all steps of a project's process to facilitate sequencing, planning and management. "The more time devloted to the storyboard, the less time needed for development." What a great thing for students to learn!

An overview commentary on the use of EPortfolios for teachers and students. The article addresses what and how to use electronic portfolios and addresses how one should go about setting one up and how to assess the contents. One point not addressed but one I encountered in another technology class I took was what happens when the computers or programs are incompatible between the teacher and the student (using a mac versus a pc for instance). Very interesting.

This is a How-To guide for using Acrobat to create, edit, and interact with assessments. This includes adding and commenting on video and audio elements in the document. We have this program on our school computers so it may be worth giving this a shot!

Is it time to rethink the learning enterprise? I think that our profession has to be flexible in order to benefit both the student and the teaher. This article notes how to empower teachers by making differnt forms of technology available to them so that learning can be differentiated to improve students performance.

Really?

EJ690980 - Preparing Teachers for the "Schools that Technology Built": Evaluation of a Program to Train Teachers for Virtual Schooling.

When looking for various assessments in relation to technology, I stumbled upon this article that discusses assessments, not only in relation to all students, but students with special needs.  Technology has really made a breakthrough with communication barriers among children with autism.  Technology assessments have helped with data collection, communication, and allowing various learning techniques to create new methods of retaining information.  In relations specifically to children with autism, the internet is a social network for them and allows them to communicate without the need for speech.  It is very interesting and worth a read through.