Top 100 Tools for Learning

http://c4lpt.co.uk/recommended/top100.html

Ten Ways to Improve Student Learning with Technology

This list comes from SETDA's action plan for national, state, and local education leaders. The list was created with input from more than 100 national policy makers and 50 state educational officers.

1. Ensure that technology tools and resources are used continuously and seamlessly for instruction, collaboration, and assessment.
2. Expose all students (pre-K through 12th grade) to STEM fields and careers.
3. Make ongoing, sustainable professional development available to all teachers.
4. Use virtual learning opportunities for teachers to further their professional development, such as through online communities and education portals.
5. Incorporate innovative, consistent, and timely assessments into daily instruction.
6. Strengthen the home-school connection by using technology to communicate with parents on student progress.
7. Provide the necessary resources so that every community has the infrastructure to support learning with technology, including assessments and virtual learning.
8. Obtain societal support for education that uses technology from all stakeholders--students, parents, teachers, state and district administrators, business leaders, legislators, and local community members.
9. Provide federal leadership to support states and districts regarding technology's role in school reform by passing the ATTAIN Act.
10. Increase available funding for the e-Rate so that schools can acquire telecommunication services, internet access, internal connections, and maintenance of those connections.

It is Time

“It is time to realize the full potential of the technology investment we have made during the last decade. It is time to move beyond talking about the potential of technology to change education – we need to prove it. We need to study what technologies have the most dramatic impact on what types of students. We need to move our efforts, as the Web-based Commission said in its report, from promise to practice”.
—Education Secretary Rod Paige
quoted by John Bailey at NECC 2002

New PODetc Courses

PODetc's 4 NEW spring online courses are now open for enrollment on our site and University of Wisconsin-Green Bay's Education Outreach. Our courses are closely aligned with ISTE's new NET-Standards for teachers. We also address the Partnership for 21st Century Skills framework in each course.

Our NEW spring courses:

* Creativity and Innovation in the Classroom
* Survey of Emerging Technologies
* Technology Literacy 102: Building Knowledge Management Systems
* Technology Literacy 103:Utilizing Social-Networking Support Tools in a
Leadership Capacity

More information is available at our PODetc Course Catalog.

Flat Classrooms Cont.

We just finished our first PODetc course Introduction to Instructional Technology in the Classroom. It was a blast! One of the things that I was reflecting on is how online courses have the potential to flatten classrooms. I felt more connected to my students in this course than I often do in face-to-face environments where I am an instructor.

The instructors became co-learners with students and we tackled different issues related to the ISTE NETS standards for students. It was fun to see knowledge distributed and constructed between all of us.

We start a new section on Monday and I can't wait to start the process again. You can find out more about our PODetc courses by visiting our website at http://www.podetc.com/PODetc/Course_Catalog.html.

Cool Web 2.0 Tools

Today I went to the LA CUE Tech Fair. The keynote was Robert Freedman. He shared a number of free Web 2.0 tools. They included:
1) Visuwords- free visual thesaurus
2) Poll Everywhere- allows you to create polls that can be taken from a cell phone
3) Gizmoz- alows you to upload your own picture and animate it
4) Tux Paint- free paint program for kids
5) Slide rocket- allows you to create cool collaborative PowerPoints online

The Power of Embedding

I'm at the LA CUE workshops today. I'm in a session by Jacice Stearns on Voice Thread. She was talking about one of the power of Web 2.0 tools is their ability to embedd. This means that the tool gives you code that can be embedded in other applications. Some programs that allow you to do this are wikispaces, blogger, word press, Facebook, Voice thread. So for example, if you make a Voice Thread, you can embed it into a wiki or a blog so users can see it without having to go to the VoiceThread site.

Twitter a Teaching and Learning Tool

Came across this great blog entry by Tom Barrett http://tbarrett.edublogs.org/2008/03/29/twitter-a-teaching-and-learning-tool/

Blikis

Today I came across a new term- "blikis". According to wikipedia "A bliki (also known as a wikiLog, wog, wikiWeblog, wikiblog, or bloki), is combination of the two Internet concepts of a blog and wiki. It combines features from both: as with blogs, posts or articles appear in reverse chronological order on the front page, with the most recent one at the top; but editing is done in wiki style, with a version history for each page and special markup tags. As with wikis, the fact that a site is a bliki does not mean that any reader can edit any page; editing permission is at the discretion of the administrator(s)".

Anyone bliki-ing out there?

Microblogging and Relevancy

Great article in The Journal about this topic http://www.campustechnology.com/articles/69158_1/

Project Management Tools

We have been using two new online tools to help us with project management in The Stephens Group.

The first is Meeting Wizard. It allows you to set up a couple of dates and enter emails of people you want to attend. It automatically emails them and lets them check which dates and times works for them or lets them suggest a new date and time. When a common date has been reached it emails everyone with this date and time. It will also send an email reminder.

The second tool is Stixyboard. It allows you add dates for projects and will email the people on the projects reminders that the deadline is coming up.

Disruptive Innovations

Today I responded to a post on a forum that described technologies as "disruptive innovations". Here is the response that I posted:

" believe that technology has the potential to change communication patterns in the classroom. Traditionally, communication patterns in the classroom have been mostly linear. Teacher lectures to students. Teacher asks question, student raises hand, is called on and gives answer.

In some of my consulting work I have seen that over time technology can change these practices. For example, some classes are starting to use Moodle an online course management system. The use of Moodle is not replacing face to face instruction it is extending the learning beyond the classroom. Students are assigned discussion boards to respond to questions. So instead of a classroom where only a few people can respond to teacher questions everyone can and rich asynchronous discussions can occur.

These types of learning opportunities also "flatten" a classroom. What I mean by that is they make teachers and students co-learners, instead of teachers always playing the role of the expert.

Usually changes like the ones above are evolutionary, meaning that they do not happen overnight. Also they challenge teacher identities. I think sometimes new technologies are looked at as disruptive innovations because they are getting in the way of traditional teaching methods. In order to fully utilize these tools teaching practices need to evolve to more constructivist forms of teaching that encourage higher order thinking."

Lessons from The Youth Vote

Just listening to a NPR story on the youth vote for Obama. In the interviews the youth talked about how twitter, YouTube, and text messaging made them feel more connected to the campaign. We should be thinking about how to leverage this in education.

AUPs

I've been getting some requests from clients lately asking for good examples of acceptable use policies.

Here are some helpful links I've come across:
This resource that came across my desk a couple of weeks ago may be helpful- http://www.ctap4.org/cybersafety/admin_resources.htm . The link on acceptable use policies also looks good http://www.ctap4.org/cybersafety/AUP.htm .


Also I kind of liked the simplicity of this AUP http://www.ashwaubenon.k12.wi.us/AUP/AUP.html

Anybody else have some good examples to share?

Leveraging Technologies

Earlier today I spoke at the ACSA (Association of California School Administrators Conference).

I spoke on what I see as the five biggest leveraging uses of technology to improve student achievement in my consulting work. They include:
1. Technologies that allow users to obtain usable and accessible data to inform practice
2. Technologies that have the ability to personalize learning
3. Technologies that build community
4. Technologies that build efficiency and communication
5. Technologies that promote creativity, innovation, and higher order thinking

Workplace of the future

I thought this article on office design of the future in Friday's Financial Times was really interesting. Much of it is about how designers are creating spaces to invite collaboration http://us.ft.com/ftgateway/superpage.ft?news_id=fto110620081803150698&page=1

Obama's Map to the White House

I love this Google Map that shows Barak Obama's journey to the White House. It is a great illustration of how this tool could be used.

Flat Classrooms

This is our second week of our first PODetc (Professional Online Development for the ed tech community) Course. The course is an introduction to the new ISTE NETS Standards for Students.

It has been so exciting to see real students enroll and participate after all of our hard work creating the course architecture, content, and getting our courses accredited. The best part has been the online discussions from teachers literally all over the world and the diverse perspectives that they have about teaching and learning in an increasingly global society.

This week we are looking deeply at globalization and how to incorporate that in the teaching and learning process. One of the assignments was to listen to a discussion between the two teachers who founded the Flat Classroom project. One of the teachers made a statement in the discussion that has really resonated with me. She said, "this project has really flattened the relationships between students and teachers". What she meant by that is that it is more peer to peer co-learners instead of the hierarchical expert disseminates information. I'm doing a lot of thinking about how I can work this into my presentation at the ACSA Leadership Summit in San Diego later this week.

Social Media Strategist

One of the terms that I heard on NPR that has really caught me this week is the reference to someone who called themselves a "social media strategist".

We have heard that students entering kindergarten will have jobs we have never even heard of. I think this is one example of that.

This week I've spent some time thinking about myself as a social media strategist both for myself and other organizations I'm a part of. In some of my research I came across this article entitled 10 Social Media Strategies for the Fortune 1000 Corporations. Even though it is intended for Fortune 1000 Corporations, I think these principals can apply to any organization.

Social Networking and the Election

I have been really interested in the role of social networking in the election. One great site devoted to this is techpresident.com.

In particular, there is a lot about twitter. On a personal note I have really had a lot more fun this election being connected via twitter. It has been fun to see my twitter friends from across the country announce when their going to the polls, what's happening in their state, and what coverage we are all watching on TV and how we rate it. It has really made me feel much more connected to people to twitter in real time about an event that has such deep importance to all of us.

Learning, Memory, and the Brain

Last night I attended a lecture on Learning, Memory and the Brain by Dr. Erin M. Schuman at the University of Irvine, CA. Today I've been reflecting on two things.

1.) Graphs and charts are the language of scientists. Are we doing enough of this with our students?
2.) What is the difference between memory and learning, or are they the same thing?

Would love to hear your thoughts on this.

My Mad Men Addiction

I have recently become addicted to the ACM mini-series Mad Men. It is about an advertising firm in Manhattan in the 1960s. I have been very interested in watching all of the technology in the show. Every executive has one secretary and the place is buzzing with typewriters all day. I asked my husband what in the world were they all typing? He said these people were the equivalent of email today. Executives would record letters into Dictaphones and the secretaries would type up the memos and letters and mail them off to the clients and file copies for their bosses. Most executives don’t have their own secretaries anymore and email has made the majority of what the 1960’s secretaries were doing obsolete.

Compare this to parody done by Microsoft on the Devil Wears Prada on how technology can be used in the work place today.