I bought my husband the Amazon Alexa for Father’s Day and we have been surprised by how much we use and appreciate this “new member of the family.” Turns out there are also some great classroom ideas for this voice activated computer. Check out this blog post by “The Daring Librarian” Gwineth Jones on using Alexa in the library – “There’s an Echo in my Library.”
Ed Tech Challenge This a self-paced, scaffolded technology integration course for educators. This course was the collaborative effort of school districts all over the nation- and the content for this course was created by technology integrators, classroom teachers, Google Apps Certified Trainers and Teachers, and ISTE award winners. All of the suggestions we give are grounded in practice- they are techniques we actually use and we know work! We’ve flipped this course so that you can learn when you have time, and we’ve created templates, videos, and resources so that you can start using those tools right away.
Blogging with Elementary Students – How to Get Started is a great “how-to” article on the Teacher’s Life for Me blog. Michael Soskil tells you step-by-step how to have students select a topic, do research, cite works, and publish. All these activities align perfectly with Common Core standards for ELA.
Using myHistro, you can combine maps and timelines seamlessly into one great presentation, convert any public timeline into a personal pdf file, or export it into Google Earth format for offline storage. All completed timelines can be embedded into your blog and websites for maximum exposure.
Pulp-O-Mizer The Pulp-O-Mizer allows its lucky operator to select from menus of backgrounds, foregrounds, and magazine titles and to add new and exciting text to them for use as web graphic memes, blog illustrations, Facebook posts, forum messages, or for any other non-commercial purpose.
My Web Wardrobe Wiki is a fabulous idea for organizing all the Web 2.0 Resources used in the classroom. Hats off to Jennifer Barnett on this great site. You might also like her Digital Sewing Kit with all the basic downloads and plug ins to help you operate efficiently. And there’s more – a page of Technology Tutorials and Tips and her Friday Five Newsletters sent to teachers each week.
Ongoing, job-embedded professional development for 21st Century educators
Built around social media and Web 2.0 tools – to keep you up to speed with the changing technology and what your students are using every day
Made up of intensive, organic, learner-directed, collaborative communities of practice and purposeful network connections
Focused on leveraging emerging technologies as tools for deep learning and principled change – this works whether you participate as an individual, in small teams, or as a school.
The Digital Textbook Playbook is a guide to help K-12 educators and administrators begin building rich digital learning experiences for students in districts across the country. The playbook offers information about determining broadband infrastructure for schools and classrooms, leveraging home and community broadband to extend the digital learning environment, and understanding necessary device considerations. It also provides lessons learned from school districts that have engaged in successful transitions to digital learning.
STEMdaily™ aggregates and curates news stories in STEM Education for all professionals interested in staying up-to-date on the latest developments in STEM. These news stories will cover topics in Education (from K-20+), Diversity and Women in STEM, Corporations and the Career Pipeline, Competitions and Conferences, Scholarships and Grants, Government, Non-Profits, Trade and Professional Associations, States, Innovation, Foundations, Testing and Assessments, STEM Policy, and much more.
We have all heard of Ted Talks. Now teachers can utilize Ted Ed for their classrooms. Videos are categorized by topics and subject areas, have questions and deeper thinking activities to go with the videos, allow you to use You Tube videos in the same fashion, and even allow you to “FLIP” your lessons by altering content and saving a unique URL. I am impressed with this learning tool for middle and high school students.
The Night Zookeeper makes a great unit of work in schools. The Night Zookeeper is a project you can deliver very easily in your classroom. It is accessible for all primary school students from Foundation Stage to Year (Grade) 6. The project fosters a great sense of creativity amongst pupils and has seamless cross-curricular links. It involves aspects of Literacy, Art and ICT.
ZooBurst is a digital storytelling tool that lets anyone easily create his or her own 3D pop-up books. Using ZooBurst, storytellers of any age can create their own rich worlds in which their stories can come to life.
Doodle for Google 2012
Doodle 4 Google invites K-12 students to express the theme–”If I could
travel in time, I’d visit…”–as creatively as possible using Google’s
logo as their canvas. This year’s winner, along with having his or her
doodle featured on our homepage for a day, will take home a $30,000
college scholarship and a $50,000 technology grant for their school. And
as an added bonus, the winning Doodle will be featured on a special
edition of Crayola’s 64 box! We hope you’ll get everyone in on the fun
(but please — just one doodle per child!). All submissions must be
postmarked by March 20th and received by March 23rd so there’s not a
moment to wait!
Technology Tools for Teaching and Learning begins with making statements teachers might have for students. An example – I want my students to create web-based timelines. Then, there is an extensive list of free online resources to help meet that learning objective.
Kathy Schrock\’s Guide to Everything is true to title and has information on everything from authentic learning to Twitter. You will want to bookmark this site and check back often!
Trailblazers.Wikispaces.Com is a resource from Kristin Swanson where she compiles resources for her school district. I love that she calls it “Teachers as Technology Trailblazers.” If you have the time to explore, there are tons of resources on this site.
Educreations transforms your iPad into a recordable whiteboard that captures your voice and handwriting to produce amazing video lessons that you can share online. It’s as simple as touching, tapping and talking.
Posted by jenmalonetn | Posted in Technology | Posted on December 9, 2011
Technology Terms Glossary You may not need this technical information often, but when you do, this is a handy guide. Ever have a computer technician start the “cyber speak” and you have no clue what the terms mean? E-Rate Central has an alphabetized guide to all these terms, acronym, and equipment names.