January, 2012

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It is Time For Schools to Seriously Consider BYOT

A Principal's Reflections

'This piece is cross-posted at the Huffington Post. As we continue to move even further into the 21 st Century, technology becomes more embedded in all aspects of society. As a father, I see this firsthand with my son, who is in first grade. The gift he wanted the most this past Christmas was an iPod Touch, which Santa was kind enough to bring him. Then there is his younger sister who will regularly ask to use my iPad so she can either care for her virtual horse or dress Barbies in creative ways

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So.You Wanna Be A Blogger

The Web20Classroom

'So this is a blog. Yep. It really is, or at least I want it to be. This is a space for me to reflect, share, learn and grow with anyone who stops by. It has been a wonderful experience for me and I really do enjoy working on this. Besides the professional growth, blogs can be a wonderful addition to any classroom too. So you are thinking? I wanna start blogging?

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Lessons from Our One-Year Experiment with BYOT

The 21st Century Principal

'Schools can successfully implement the practice of allowing students to use their own technological devices on school networks. Early next month, our school will mark the one-year anniversary of our implementation of a policy that allows our students to use their own laptops, tablets, iPods, and smartphones on our school WiFi. Last February, I posted " Lessons in Providing Students Wireless Access in Our School Building.

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Workshop Opportunity- Boston Area

SpeechTechie

'Hi Folks- I will be repeating my Links to Language Workshop I held this summer with EDCO Collaborative (similar to the 1-day I have done regionally and in other places recently) on February 3, 2012 in Newton, MA, with an expanded online component that will allow participants an optional graduate credit through Framingham State College. The details are in this flyer - you should plan to call EDCO to register if you are not in a member district.

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Quickly Create Personalized Learning Experiences that Work

How can we actively engage learners 24/7, on their level and according to their interests, while respecting their learning styles? It’s not impossible. In this guide: Explore how to transform traditional, one-way videos into two-way interactive learning experiences Understand different types of artificial intelligence (AI), including - Generative vs.

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Twitter Questions and Tips

EdTechSandyK

'I''m prepping for a workshop on Twitter for Professional Learning that I will be facilitating at the TCEA 2012 convention in a couple of weeks. Today, as I was discussing my agenda with a colleague, she offered up a suggestion for something I should include. It was an awesome suggestion, and it made me realize that there are probably a lot more suggestions out there in my PLN!

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Developing 21st Century Learning through Coaching Conversations

wwwatanabe

'My passion and goal is to see 21st century learning (innovating, creating, collaborating, communicating, and critical thinking) in our classrooms. How can I spread that passion so the goal of 21st century learner-centered classrooms becomes a reality? As the Technology Integration Specialist, part of my job is coaching teachers, administrators and students in technology integration for 21st century learning.

More Trending

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Making The Right Digital Decisions

The Web20Classroom

'Recently, my district began a huge initiative to combat bullying/cyberbullying and to help students become more aware of the choices they make both in their face-to-face lives and their digital decisions as well. There is no one right way or right answer that will stop the problems. However, I do believe that the classroom and our schools are the places where tough conversations need to be had.

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Top 10 Tips for Using Social Media for Administrators & Other Educators

The 21st Century Principal

'According to Andy Beal and Judy Strauss, authors of Radically Transparent: Monitoring and Managing Reputations Online , “Shifting from traditional to social media requires new skills, new tools, and an understanding of social media platforms.” Any school leader bringing an archaic understanding and knowledge of old media to social media is in danger of looking foolish and perhaps in danger of getting himself in major trouble with stakeholders.

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Learning, unlearning and relearning

Learning with 'e's

We all value learning. And much of what we have learnt can be difficult to unlearn. Usually that's a good thing. But there are times when unlearning just has to be done. Sometimes it's impossible to learn new things if you don't unlearn some of the old stuff you are hanging on to. At the extreme end, a lot of irrational beliefs and prejudices are based on what we have learnt and find we now cannot relinquish.

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Keeping in Touch and Touching Lives

EdTechSandyK

'Last Saturday, I received one of those phone calls no one ever wants to receive. On the other end of the connection was the husband of a dear friend of mine, calling to tell me that my friend''s parents had just died in a car accident. The accident happened four hours away from where I live, and due to other circumstances, my friend was already there when the accident took place.

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Can Brain Science Actually Help Make Your Training & Teaching Stick?

Speaker: Andrew Cohen, Founder & CEO of Brainscape

The instructor’s PPT slides are brilliant. You’ve splurged on the expensive interactive courseware. Student engagement is stellar. So… why are half of your students still forgetting everything they learned in just a matter of weeks? It's likely a matter of cognitive science! With so much material to "teach" these days, we often forget to incorporate key proven principles into our curricula — namely active recall, metacognition, spaced repetition, and interleaving practice.

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Quality Blogging and Commenting Audit Meme

wwwatanabe

'Silvia Tolisano (@langwitches) challenges us in a meme to audit blogs and comments to raise awareness of quality blogging. I''m honored that both Kathleen Morris and Sheri Edwards tagged me in this meme. Here is Silvia''s meme challenge : Select a blog post or blog comment to audit (Professional or Student) Take a screenshot or copy and paste the post or comment into your blog post (be sensitive whether you want to reveal any names or references) Include or link to the rubric you use to assess

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The Real World, Not MTV Style

A Principal's Reflections

'One of the main objectives of a sound lesson is for students to find meaning and relevancy in terms of what they are learning. Typical questions students ask include the following: Why do we need to know this? What am I going to do with this later in life? How is this going to help me get a job? This can sometimes prove to be a difficult task as real world contexts are either not established or properly articulated.

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Looking Back At 2011 And Looking Forward To 2012

The Web20Classroom

'For the past few years ( here and here ) I started a tradition (if we can call it that) where I look back at the year in #edtech and try to make predictions as to what''s going to take hold in the coming year. No science behind any of this. Just my feelings from what I have been reading and seeing and what I believe will take a great hold in educational technology.

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Advice for the New Administrator & Educator Using Social Media

The 21st Century Principal

'During a conversation today, I was asked, "What advice would you give to the new administrator just beginning to use social media in his or her new role?" Becoming an administrator is a challenge in itself, which means there are enough issues to deal with without making mistakes using social media. Added to these challenges is the fact that most often new principals or assistant principals are left either with no mentor, or the mentor they have probably doesn''t know a great deal about technolo

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Reimagining Chickering & Gamson's Principles Post-Pandemic: Technology's Central Role in Modern Edu

This white paper examines and proposes revisions to the "Seven Principles for Good Practice in Undergraduate Education" introduced by Arthur Chickering and Zelda Gamson in 1987 for today's technology-driven world.

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Fakebook

SpeechTechie

'There have been a number of "Facebook emulators" that allowed you to create profile pages and posts for a fictional or historical person, but ClassTools.net''s Fakebook, seems to be the easiest to use, and I am also glad to see that it has stuck around (some of these have been a bit ethereal). Kids are obviously "into" Facebook, and even elementary students would be excited to create a fake profile, having seen siblings and parents use the site.

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We learn by teaching

Learning with 'e's

Although I am employed to teach, I consider it something of a disappointment if I don't learn something myself during my teaching sessions. Sure, it is my prime responsibility to ensure that my students are given the best opportunities to learn, and I take pride in creating the best possible learning environments and experiences I can offer. The real magic occurs when we are all learning together, and I would like to argue that this should be the case in any learning environment.

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Achieving Goals in the New Year

EdTechSandyK

'Happy New Year! While I was scanning a few "Top 10" lists that are all over the place this time of year, the famous Darth Vader Volkswagen ad from last year''s Super Bowl came up on my screen. Even after watching it multiple times, this video still makes me smile! It struck me as I watched it that it''s a good metaphor for the start of a new year. It''s important no matter where we are in our lives or careers to keep growing and take steps toward achieving our goals.

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A Worthy Widget

A Principal's Reflections

'Dell has been identifying new ways to support the education community on the web. One of their developments is a Wordpress plugin called Education Connect that will help connect education blogs to each other. With the help of some of the top education blogs in the industry they have come up with a great tool to link bloggers to each other. Let me first explain how it works.

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Behind the Bell: The Underlying Impact of Tardiness in K-12 Schools

Managing a K-12 campus with constant pressure to meet performance metrics is challenging. And tardiness can significantly limit a school from reaching these goals. Learn more about why chronic lateness matters, and key strategies to address the following impacts: Data errors caused by manual processes Low attendance and graduation rates that affect a school’s reputation Classroom disruption, which leads to poor academic performance High staff attrition and “The Teacher Exodus” Unmet LCAP goals t

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Watch, Know and Learn With @WatchKnowLearn

The Web20Classroom

'A few weeks ago You Tube announced their commitment to education by moving a lot of their educational content to a separate domain, [link]. This allows schools and districts to, depending on their filtering, unblock the videos found there for use in the classroom. It''s been open for a while now and reaction has been positive. New content gets added daily and the site continues to grow.

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6 Tips for Engaging Readers of Your Educational Blog

The 21st Century Principal

'Let''s face it. One of the reasons we blog is because we want people to read what we have to say. In order to do that, we have to provide readers with engaging content. In my years as a blogger, I have stopped puzzling over why some blog posts get over 5,000 page views and why some are ignored. It has to do with giving your readers engaging content , and author''s Andy Beal and Judy Strauss offer solid advice for doing just that in their book Radically Transparent: Monitoring and Managing Reput

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Essential Skill for SLPs: Saving Images from the Web on iPad (UPDATE)

SpeechTechie

'I have previously emphasized here that being able to save images from the web is an incredibly useful skill. Besides providing visual cues for our students, images serve as material to make all kinds of great projects using various webtools and apps. It used to be that this looked a certain way on iPad, but then Google has been changing a lot of their apps'' "look and feel," including installing a sort of "cover flow" interface with Google Images.

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InBox Zero in Gmail

The Electric Educator

'It''s January second and all across American people are starting their New Year''s resolutions. The gyms are packed, the cupboards are empty of junk food, and storage bins are on sale in all the big box stores! If getting organized is one of your resolutions, let me give you a hand. A year ago I began implementing the concept of " Inbox Zero." This concept is proposed by productivity blogger and expert Merlin Mann.

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The Battle of the Authoring Tools: A 10-Point Comparison for Picking the Right One

Speaker: Chris Paxton McMillin, President of D3 Training Solutions

There are plenty of great authoring tools for developing eLearning, but the one you select could directly impact your course's outcomes. Depending upon your learners’ needs and your organization’s performance goals, you could be overlooking considerations that impact the both effectiveness of your courses and how long it takes to finish them. From general capabilities to specific workflow structures, some aspects are critical when it comes to learning objectives and deadlines.

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Build a powerful PLN

Learning with 'e's

If you are a professional, you should have a PLN. Your PLN (personal or professional learning network) is the community of people you interact with and learn from on a regular basis. They may be people you meet on a daily basis, but more often than not in the digital age, many PLNs are comprised of people we interact with on social networking sites.

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Getting Started With Web 2.0

A Principal's Reflections

'The following is a guest post by Wendy Mackey, one of my Special Education (English) teachers at New Milford High School. The problem with Web 2.0 is that it takes time to understand! There are so many great technology programs out there to choose from, that it can be very overwhelming for us teachers to narrow down exactly what to use. I, however, feel like I hit the nail on the head with Glogster.

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Guest Post-1:1 Technology in the Math Classroom

The Web20Classroom

'To start the year I have a guest post all about 1:1 in the Math Classroom. Enjoy! Perhaps the single subject area that stands to gain the most from the introduction of a 1:1 technology program is math. Math classrooms with 1:1 technology can greatly expand the differentiation of content provided to students, can prevent student misconceptions from developing, and can free the teacher to focus on teaching and planning rather than grading.

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Google+ Hangout with QR Codes!

The Daring Librarian

'We had an exciting day a few Friday''s ago when we used Google+ to hang out with the 2nd grade gifted inclusion kids at Ms. Mensing''s class from Sonoran Sky Elementary in Scottsdale, Arizona! Whew! That''s a mouthful! But these kids were AWEsome! I taught a brief lesson on QR Codes in the Classroom (and Library!) all about where QR Codes came from, how they are different than regular bar codes, and how they are being used all over the world to transmit information like Text Messages, Video, an

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The Roses and Thorns of an LMS Strategy: How to Flourish with the Right LMS

Speaker: Amanda Davis, Chief Experience Officer and Liam O'Malley, VP of Association Solutions

The "new normal" is now a little less new, a little more normal. Does that mean your current LMS strategy is in need of a refresh? Is your organization or association leaning into the always-evolving eLearning environment to ensure you have the tools and content to remain relevant through all this change? There are many complex decision-making processes within your learning & development strategy and LMS lifecycle management, including: Selection.

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ATIA Orlando 2012 Presentation

SpeechTechie

'For participants as well as all others, I wanted to share my presentation I am giving at ATIA Orlando this morning. The presentation is called Links to Content and talks specifically about resources that make curriculum content more interactive and visual and, therefore, more accessible to students with language and other difficulties. This has always been one of my passions, as I think SLPs (and others) can play a big role in helping students with "entry points" to abstract curriculum topics,

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Learning Real-World Civics: White House Contacts One of Our Students

The 21st Century Principal

'One of the best ways to teach students to become engaged as a citizen of our country, is to have them try to communicate with those in political office. One of our students did just that. A few months back, a student at our school wrote a letter to the Obama Administration, and in that letter she invited the President to visit our school. This week, she and my school secretary were surprised when we received a phone call from the White House.

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The sharp end

Learning with 'e's

Last year's #pencilchat hashtag was probably the best Twitter discussion I have seen or participated in. It tore into the age-old resistance to technology and all things new that we continually encounter in schools and other traditional institutions and it lampooned the laggards, change resistors and other stick-in-the-muds we all know and love. Several of us were inspired enough by the dialogue to write our own blogposts, pushing the metaphor to its limits.

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Using Innovation to Combat Texting While Driving

A Principal's Reflections

'The following is a guest post by Doreen Zacher, New Milford High School''s Student Assistance Counselor. She recently collaborated with graphics teacher Walt Pevny and NMHS students in the U Got Brains Challenge 2nd Annual Champion Schools Program. Their efforts resulted in NMHS being selected as a champion school in the battle to stop students from texting while driving.

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Building the Foundation for a Modern K-12 Classroom

K-12 looks different these days. But one thing remains the same: you need a reliable learning platform that serves as the foundation for teaching and learning––for all students, in a variety of learning experiences. Discover how the Instructure Learning Platform supports today's K-12 classroom through: A central, consistent, connected hub of the digital learning environment.