Welcome back! I hope everyone had an enjoyable and relaxing weekend! Last Thursday I wrote a little bit about Obama's announcement of the new ConnectEd program. If you haven't heard yet, the program's goal is to bring high speed internet to 99% of America's students, as well as provide funds for teacher technology PD. For all the details and logistics, Edudemic has a new article from the weekend.
Edudemic also has a new article on "Teacher-Led Professional Learning: The Latest Revolution in Education." All around the country teachers are teaching their peers through twitter, google, and edcamps. It's absolutely awesome to see all these educators putting in so much time to help others, and I'm glad to see this has become a growing trend in education.
Finally Edudemic has a post entitled, "EdX Wants YOU To Improve their Online Learning Platform." edX is one of the newest and largest MOOCs (massive open online course). The organization offers an enormous variety of high quality online courses for free. And now, they've released their site's source code to the internet in an effort to get educators, programmers, and computer scientists involved in improving the quality of their user experience.
Edudemic also has a new article on "Teacher-Led Professional Learning: The Latest Revolution in Education." All around the country teachers are teaching their peers through twitter, google, and edcamps. It's absolutely awesome to see all these educators putting in so much time to help others, and I'm glad to see this has become a growing trend in education.
Finally Edudemic has a post entitled, "EdX Wants YOU To Improve their Online Learning Platform." edX is one of the newest and largest MOOCs (massive open online course). The organization offers an enormous variety of high quality online courses for free. And now, they've released their site's source code to the internet in an effort to get educators, programmers, and computer scientists involved in improving the quality of their user experience.
EduCade has a new article up entitled, "Geoscience: STEMulating the Classroom Through Play." The post discusses gamification via the soon to be released iPad app Geomoto, by GameDesk. If you're an earth science instructor, I absolutely recommend keeping your eye out for this app, it will be an excellent resource. You can see students playing the prototype here. And if you haven't had a chance to check out GameDesk before, they have some wonderful education projects in the works.
Much like gamification, it's nearly impossible to go through a post without talking about Blended Learning. Classrooms all across the world are integrating technology and virtual lessons, and the importance of blended learning is become more and more evident. However, to successfully implement blended learning, there are a huge number of issues educators must address. To help with that, Tom Vander Ark at Getting Smart has prepared an awesome resource collection in, "The 10 Big Blended Learning Questions."
Free Tech for Teachers has two new ed tech posts from the weekend. The first is about "Watch2Gether - Watch and Discuss Videos Online." Through the site Watch2Gother, students and teachers can engage in online discussions over videos from YouTube. This could be an excellent resource in a flipped classroom to make sure students are watching and discussing the videos they have been assigned.
Free Tech also has a short review of a new tool, "Clipping Magic - Remove Background Materials from your Images." Clipping Magic is "a new tool that makes it easy to edit background objects out of your images. For younger students who may have difficulty with advanced image editing programs, Clipping Magic is a great tool.
Free Tech also has a short review of a new tool, "Clipping Magic - Remove Background Materials from your Images." Clipping Magic is "a new tool that makes it easy to edit background objects out of your images. For younger students who may have difficulty with advanced image editing programs, Clipping Magic is a great tool.
Teach Thought has an interesting article discussing, "What Technology Does to Learning: An Analogy." The article compares teachers to department store employees (just for the sake of the analogy!) in order to better understand the process and benefits of integrating technology into the classroom.
Teach Thought also gives us "8 Tips for Helping Students Tell Stories in a Social Media World." The post opens with a discussion of the importance of storytelling and then goes on to give 8 ideas to help students better tell their stories. While the guide is directed at students, it would be an excellent resource for a teacher to help his/her students with their own digital storytelling.
Teach Thought also gives us "8 Tips for Helping Students Tell Stories in a Social Media World." The post opens with a discussion of the importance of storytelling and then goes on to give 8 ideas to help students better tell their stories. While the guide is directed at students, it would be an excellent resource for a teacher to help his/her students with their own digital storytelling.
Ed Reach has a write-up on "Storynory - Hundreds of Audio Stories for Your Classroom, Bedtime or Vacation." Storynory is is website with audio stories for students. The site has a huge variety, from classic fairy tales to modern original stories and they post a new story each week. Plus, it's free! The site is an excellent resource, particularly in the elementary classroom.
The Lightning Round
- Edudemic has a new infographic on The 6 Types of Connected Students
- Educational Technology gives us 5 Tips on How To Use Technology Mindfully
- Teach Thought also has a new infographic, it's on 50 Mobile Learning Statistics for K-12 Education
And that's all for the weekend edition! We'll end today with a video promoted by Sir Ken Robinson (via Educators Technology) which shows "A Wonderful Exercise in Critical Thinking." The main point of the video is that when students are told there is a "right way" to do something, this negatively impacts their creativity. If you've got 2 minutes, check it out! And we'll see you tomorrow!
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