Web 2.0: Enhancing Education Through Technology

Information graphics, visual representations of data known as infographics, keep the web going these days. Web users, with their diminishing attention spans, are inexorably drawn to these shiny, brightly coloured messages with small, relevant, clearly-displayed nuggets of information. They're straight to the point, usually factually interesting and often give you a wake-up call as to what those statistics really mean.

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.

Beautiful web-based timeline software.

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.

A tutorial on who to use Adobe to assess digital work, best practices, commenting and markup tools, audio commenting

"Students were involved in creating their online textbook using a wiki that involved collaboration with students in 2 other schools where they peer reviewed the work posted by other students on the course". I think students would get a lot out of this!

Being a student of the PRS (Personal Response System) ideals through the UMASS/NSF Funded program, I have personally embraced and concur with so much of the data and thought process of using digital forms of assessment, that it has become a cornerstone in determining the understanding and competency of my students through both Formative and Summative assessments. If the life of a teacher is not going to change, and more is to be placed on the plate, something either needs to be removed or made simpler. Digital assessment offers a solution to teachers struggling with the load and tasks of being a reflective and responsive teacher. By keeping students more in the loop on progress and using the data to determine many of the factors associated with duration and direction of lessons, teachers can remain most informed and proactive.

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

All education is self-education. Period. It doesn't matter if you're sitting in a college classroom or a coffee shop. We don't learn anything we don't want to learn. Those people who take the time and initiative to pursue knowledge on their own are the only ones who earn a real education in this world.

Really?

National Expert on OER and Director at Creative Commons.

What a better way to promote collaboration by students than for a student to create his own social networking site for his high school.

I wonder what program he used to create the social media website.

webs.com

Quite an interesting interview. Basically, DreamBox seeks to 'learn the learner as the learner learns'. In this manner, the adaptive software is able to formulate instruction so as to cater specifically to the individual student. Quite interesting indeed.

Assess student learning at a glance via a honeycomb-style, color-coded display featuring overall student understanding from the individual to district level. I found this very interesting not only due to the ease of use, but also the ease of which you can fluidly bounce between multiple different problem areas quickly and efficiently.

Mindmeister kicks Mind42's butt! A free account entitles you to three beautiful mind maps, complete with text, links, icons and images (Googled from the web).

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.

Interesting interview with Dr. Chris Dede, Professor in Learning Technologies at Harvard's Graduate School of Education, about using technology in the classroom and re-imagining teaching and learning. You need to be a member of the Thinkfinity Community to view the video.

This was a very good video and put into perspective what the 21st Century Learning Classroom would be like.