Wissahickon Staff Developers

"A project-based approach to science and math activities is enjoyable for every student and teacher involved. Fun activities, supported by making connections with concepts promote learning. Over the past decade an increasing number of studies have shown the positive impact of project-based learning on student achievement."

strategies for increasing dialogue in the classroom

"Online professional development (PD) fits today's fast changing K-12 educational environment where demands on teachers and re-certification require teachers to continually learn new and challenging content and pedagogy. Online professional development has the benefit of supporting teachers in their daily practice and connecting them with a network of like-minded professionals so that they can learn and share with each other."

recommended by the SAS site, this site provides resources for math content using interactive models

"Secretary Arne Duncan announced the draft National Educational Technology Plan on March 5 This plan describes how information and communication technologies can help transform American education. It lays out a set of concrete goals to inform state and local educational technology plans, as well as recommendations to inspire research, development, and innovation."

If you're like us, you've used 'creative' tactics to keep track of all these links either through email, word documents or endless lists in your browser bookmarks folder. It is hard to put a bunch of links together in any meaningful format. And sharing a group of URLs is cumbersome for everyone - the sender and the receiver. Have you ever looked through your bookmarks list and forgotten what they are all for? We created LiveBinders so that you could do with digital information what you do with the papers on your desk - organize them into nice containers - like 3-ring binders on your shelf. At LiveBinders we welcome you to use not just one binder, but as many binders as you need to help organize the stuff you collect and share over the internet.

Excellent videos and images free to use in the classroom. Science and Social Studies resources significantly more engaging than math.

"Not only does SafeShare.TV remove distracting and offensive elements around YouTube videos, but it also allows you to crop videos before sharing them. "

From the website : "The Education Podcast Network is an effort to bring together into one place, the wide range of podcast programming that may be helpful to teachers looking for content to teach with and about, and to explore issues of teaching and learning in the 21st century."

"There was no shortage of prescriptions at the time for how to cure the poor performance that plagued so many American schools. Proponents of No Child Left Behind saw standardized testing as a solution. President Bush also championed a billion-dollar program to encourage schools to adopt reading curriculums with an emphasis on phonics. Others argued for smaller classes or more parental involvement or more state financing."

"ipadio allows you to broadcast from any phone to the Internet live. Phone blog, collect audio data, record and update the world, or simply let your mates know what you're doing - ipadio is integrated with Social Media & Blogging platforms"

a site that dares to enlighten about pedagogy and theory in education today

OnGuardOnline.gov provides practical tips from the federal government and the technology industry to help you be on guard against Internet fraud, secure your computer, and protect your personal information.

"Education technology has many supporters in its movement to alter traditional teaching methods. This list of the top 50 education technology blogs includes writers, technicians and social media experts…but they all are teachers. The "movers" are teachers who facilitate learning among other teachers and in the classroom, the "shakers" teach new philosophies and innovations, and the folks "on the ground" offer news, tools and methods of using those tools in the classroom. This list is divided into those three categories, and each link within those categories is listed alphabetically. The links lead straight to the recently updated blogs, and the descriptions supply information about that blogger's achievements, including careers and jobs."

Access and Equity in eLearning online tutorial developed by the Australian Flexible Learning Network. This interactive tutorial provides a concrete look at the difference between universally designed and non-universally designed web-based resources as they impact people with various disabilities, and includes pointers for how to design and/or adjust web-based learning environments to make them more accessible.

"Speck (1996) notes that the following important points of adult learning theory should be considered when professional development activities are designed for educators: "

ADULTS LEARN DIFFERENTLY than young people. But more importantly, their reasons for learning are very different. Andragogy (Knowles, 1984), the theory of adult learning, attempts to explain why adults learn differently than other types of learners.