Tech Tools: Student Blogging | Quisitivity

Tech Tools: Student Blogging
"Twenty-first century learning is about communication, collaboration, problem solving, and technology, all of which are integral to blogging."

A good post as to WHY blogging in the classroom works.

on presenting | Ramblings

on presenting | Ramblings:

"This is totally not confined to at-work presentations.

The number of sessions I have sat through that could have taken 5 minutes instead of 20,30,40 or even 60 is amazing. Remember: I have not flown half way around the globe to see you read. I have come to hear a story, to see how conclusions were formed and interact."

"I (and anybody else in the audience who has learnt to read) can read your dot points faster than you can. While I’m reading, I’m not listening to you."

I have been telling my students this FOREVER! And they DO NOT LISTEN TO ME. I try to model good presentation behaviour, and they want my slides to have every word I say. My slides are their notes. What's wrong with paying attention to a presentation, jotting down some thoughts and later, going over the notes and filling them out with material gleaned from my references (that they have gone and read through themselves) ?
No wonder when they present I have to continually pinch myself to stay awake and try to follow. And these students are prospective teachers. They will go into schools and bore children the same way they bore me.
At least one young lady has gotten totally into using Prezi - I am eagerly awaiting her presentation to see if she's managed to break through.

Creative Commons and Open Educational Resources in the U.S. National Education Technology Plan - Creative Commons

Creative Commons and Open Educational Resources in the U.S. National Education Technology Plan - Creative Commons

"The United States Department of Education 2010 National Educational Technology Plan (pdf) includes the following:

Open Educational Resources (OER) are an important element of an infrastructure for learning. OER come in forms ranging from podcasts to digital libraries to textbooks, games, and courses. They are freely available to anyone over the web."

This is really great. Consider the sharing and the opportunity that this gives to disadvantaged students who do not have access to great teaching, great libraries or educational resources. Especially students in the developing world. I hope that we will also start producing and sharing our own content, as we cannot simply be consumers of the material, we also have to share our knowledge and experiences. They are important and valid.

OOo4Kids - Open Office for Kids

taaa daaa!

Finally children have thier own office application suite. Open Office 4 Kids is a lighter version of Open Office, with the folowing specific features:

• Dedicated to 7-12 years
• Specific adaptations to the world of education
• Works everywhere (Linux, Mac OS X, Windows)
• International / Multilingual

Don Tapscott and learning from our kids

Ethan Zuckerman writes in his blog on a presentation from Don Tapscott re: learning from our kids.

"A student, Joe O’Shea, reacted to this presentation, saying that it resonated, and confessing, “I don’t read books.” He explained, “I think I know what’s in books, but I get my information from the web, and I’ve got really good BS detectors. If I need to read in a book, I have Google Books.” Using that site, he approaches books like a website. The dean of the film school reacted, saying, “I don’t know if that’s really exciting or the end of modern society.”"

Really interesting for teachers to try to understand our new students!

Are dinosaur managers and poor teaching holding back Digital Britain?

Interesting article on the results of an expert panel that is looking into the UK IT future. One very interesting note was that:
" if UK kids are technophiles in their spare time, they are technophobes at school "

"A recent report by the CBI blamed poor teaching in schools for contributing to a shortage of graduates in science, technology, engineering and maths. "Scientific potential at the age of 14 is not being fully realised," the report noted.

"If you talk to 12-year-olds they'll say I don't want to work in an office because what they're taught at 12 is [Microsoft] Word and Excel," Clarke added. "They're not taught what this profession is really about so I think that's fundamentally important to get the best kids looking at this profession."

Are dinosaur managers and poor teaching holding back Digital Britain?

Back to School: 10 Terrific Web Apps for Teachers

Back to School: 10 Terrific Web Apps for Teachers
Some of these applications are really useful. My particular favorites are Curriki and edmodo.
I can see many teachers wanting to use docCop to check for plaigiarism.
But they are all worth a check.

How Web-Savvy Edupunks Are Transforming American Higher Education | Fast Company

How Web-Savvy Edupunks Are Transforming American Higher Education
This article from Fast Company Magazine is an excellent roundup and review of initiatives in higher education that are using Web 2.0 and Internet technologies to change the education paradigm.

iLearn Technology � Blog Archive � Kideos

Great YouTube alternative for elementary students, categorized by age and subject.
" Kideos is a collection of kid friendly videos. Each video featured on Kideos has been carefully screened by the Kideos Video Advisory Council (made up of a select group of parents and educators). The videos are categorized by age range (from 2 to 10) and by category. Categories include Baby Einstein, Barney, Book Characters, Cartoon Characters, Cute Animals, Disney Channel Programs, Disney Movies, Dr. Seuss, Educational Videos, Fairy Tales, Kids, Mickey Mouse and Friends, Muppets, Nursery Rhymes, Sesame Street, Songs, Teletubbies, Trains and Machines, and Wiggles. If you register with Kideos, you can set it up to only view your own selection of ages and characters. The videos are streamed from You Tube and placed inside a Kideo player ."

http://kideos.com/

Team WhiteBoarding with Twiddla

Painless Team Collaboration for the Web:

"Mark up websites, graphics, and photos, or start brainstorming on a blank canvas. Browse the web with your friends or make that conference call more productive than ever. No plug-ins, downloads, or firewall voodoo - it's all here, ready to go when you are. Browser-agnostic, user-friendly."

50 Open Source Apps Transforming Education

50 Open Source Apps Transforming Education — Datamation.com:

"While some educators have been quick to grasp the potential and promise of open source software, many others have been hesitant to stray from the comfortable zone of commercial applications. Yet that’s changing.

More teachers and institutions are now participating with organizations like SchoolForge, the Open Source Education Foundation, and Open Source Schools. These educators are beginning to see that the open source philosophy has the power to transform education in several key ways."

Howard Rheingold on essential media literacies

We need to start changing the definition of literacy. We have to prepare students for the future, not for the past as we are doing. But a big problem is that the teachers, instructors, etc are themselves not literate in the new sense.
Where can the change start?

Read the article here
Howard Rheingold on essential media literacies

Banning Scientology doesn't make Wikipedia more credible

"Our students, whether they are Googling, Bing-ing (just doesn’t have the same ring, does it?), or digging through Wikipedia should be able to identify sources of limited credibility. This isn’t just a web skill, either. It’s a matter of critical thought. Is there bias in a source? How much of a source is news and how much is personal spin?"

One of the major things that I find I have to fight to get through to my students - it's not on the radar. Especially in Trinidad and Tobago, I hear far too often - "but it was in the papers", or "it was on the Internet" as if once it is in some sort of distribution medium, it is gospel truth and papally infallible.

The text books are equally problematic - we don't see print as able to be wrong.

REad more - http://education.zdnet.com/?p=2621

Google Unveils Google Squared

Technology Review: Blogs: TR Editors' blog: Google Unveils Google Squared: "

Google today showed off a forthcoming service called 'Google Squared' that creates tables of numerical data culled from searches of websites. In the example given, a search for 'small dogs' created a table on different breeds, including data on such things as the breeds' heights and weights, placed inside boxes. Once an initial table is created, users can click on individual entries to check the source and--if the number was erroneous--they can correct the numbers through new searches. Finally, they can save their customized table for future reference."

How Room Designs Affect Your Work and Mood: Scientific American

How Room Designs Affect Your Work and Mood: Scientific American

Really interesting article. Discusses the influence of room design in the way the brain processes information.

One very useful point for education was:

"Over eight weeks and more than 50 lessons, the researchers rotated a class of fourth-grade students between two seating arrangements: rows of desks and a semi­circle of desks around the teacher. The semicircle configuration increased student participation, boosting the number of questions pupils asked. Other studies suggest that putting desks in rows encourages students to work independently and improves classroom behavior."

Teaching: No ‘Fallback’ Career - Room for Debate Blog - NYTimes.com

Teaching: No ‘Fallback’ Career

As private sector professionals lose their jobs or suffer cutbacks in pay and benefits, more and more of them are thinking about second careers. Public service is suddenly popular with all generations. Teaching may not pay a lot, but it comes with relatively good benefits and, in public schools, job security in the form of tenure after three years. But this fallback fantasy may be unrealistic, despite reports of a possible teacher shortage in the next several years. Does such a shortfall really exist? What does it take to become a teacher, let alone a good one?

Cell phones get top marks in class -- dailypress.com

Cell phones get top marks in class -- dailypress.com:

"Students sat in small groups in Tony Neeley's science classroom, staring intently at a projected image at the front of the class. A question popped onto the screen. Neeley gave the students a six-digit number and said, 'Go.' Instantly thumbs began dancing over cell phone keypads. Within seconds, phones trilled the signal that a text message had been sent. At the same time, answers began dropping into view on the screen, one answer for each group of students, identified by a student's cell phone screen name.

In less than an hour, the Mary Passage Middle School students worked their way through more than 70 questions for a semester exam review, with every eighth-grader participating in a drill that looked more like a game show than a quiz.

'They only get one crack at it so they have to make sure they are right,' said Neeley.

Cell phones, considered a nuisance or worse in many schools, are welcome at Passage. At least eight teachers are using them for a range of lessons, from reports to quizzes in English, social studies, science and math classes."

One Cell Phone Per Child

One Cell Phone Per Child - Columns by PC Magazine:

"To get an understanding of the scale of the worldwide mobile revolution, consider that 4.1 billion people subscribe to a mobile phone service, according to the International Telecommunications Union (ITU), which is part of the United Nations. More than half of the world's people are connected, right now. High costs and spotty Internet access limit the functionality of those connections for many users, but the infrastructure is there."

It's amazing to think that the cellphone is a major communication/Internet/Computer is our children's hands, and instead of looking for ways to use it for education, we are banning and tightly controlling its use in schools.

Use of mobile phones for quality education

"When the mobile phone was invented, little did we realize how much this piece of technology would be embraced by Filipinos. In fact, “texting” in the Philippines was seen as a social phenomenon in the late 1990s, with the country ranking first in the world in text message use. Even now, wherever you’d go, you’d see somebody clutching a mobile phone. High-level executives conduct a lot of business through the device. Even sari-sari stores in remote areas display “karatola” [posters] advertising pre-paid loads."

The Philippine Text2Teach alliance is composed of Ayala Foundation, Nokia, Globe Telecom, SEAMEO-Innotech, Chikka Asia and PMSI-Dream Broadcasting Systems.

This uniquely Filipino innovation aims to enhance education opportunities for children and resource solutions for teachers in developing countries. BridgeIT believes that Text2Teach can contribute to raising the quality of basic education in the country.

Use of mobile phones for quality education - INQUIRER.net, Philippine News for Filipinos:

What’s In Your Social Media Toolkit?

What’s In Your Social Media Toolkit?:

"You can think of social media as a set of tools that organizations can use for a variety of purposes - customer service, branding, promotion, relationship-management, etc. Just as with any toolkit, you’re not going to use every tool every time.

Sometimes the hammer fits, but if you’re trying to measure something the hammer is pretty much useless. Similarly, sometimes a blog will fit perfectly, while other times YouTube might be a more suitable tool. Sometimes (say it ain’t so!) social media outreach won’t fit at all.

If social media represents a set of tools - what’s in your toolkit?"