How Many Of These 25 Retro Tech Sounds Do You Remember? It’s intriguing how easily certain sounds can invoke deep nostalgia. Whether these old tech sounds bring back a longing for the past, or give rise to pent up frustrations and impatience, they’re certainly the sounds of a bye-gone era. Over the past few decades, technology has invaded every facet of our lives. This invasion has inevitably been intertwined with a host of sounds and jingles that can separate generations. The Windows start up sound, for instance, has gone through a fascinating evolution. Where now we have the smooth glides of an inkjet, we used to bear the screeching of a dot matrix.
Which of the following, aged tech sounds, do you remember? Waiting To Save A Document One of the greatest contributions to increased patience during the 90s, I believe, was the incessant waiting required whenever you had to use a Floppy Disk. Powering Up The PS1 Connecting To Dial-Up This sound signals those tentative few seconds where you’d find out if you could actually connect today. Hours of Code: Past & Present.
The most obvious thing to do with computers in the early days of edtech was to program them using the BASIC language (Beginner’s All-purpose Symbolic Instruction Code) that was built into the machines. Students wrote code, the instructions for computers to follow. In the early days it was simple stuff, such as printing words or numbers on the screen. Miraculously, the computers performed. 10 PRINT “HELLO” 20 GOTO 10 RUN Today coding is enjoying a comeback. Rather than typing, students use visually engaging characters and blocks of words. Both the graphics and the reasons for coding have grown up, and the purpose is clear. Hadi Partovi, founder of Code.org, says: “These days there’s no greater opportunity than to change the world with technology.”
Partovi thinks students should learn computer science, and he’s an advocate of even young students learning to code. Students know how to use devices to communicate, play games, and do homework, research, and reports. Code.org: www.code.org. 8 Guiding Principles for K-12 Tech Education | News & Views. Zuckerberg and Chan back edtech company MasteryConnect. Salt Lake City-based educational tech company MasteryConnect has raised $5 million in funding.
The investors were Facebook founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg and his wife Priscilla Chan. SALT LAKE CITY–(BUSINESS WIRE)–Education technology leader MasteryConnect today announced that it has secured $5 million in funding from Facebook founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg and his wife, Priscilla Chan. This additional investment is an extension of the company’s $15.2 million Series B round, bringing MasteryConnect’s total private funding to $29 million. The company will use this additional funding to accommodate and facilitate its rapid growth and increase the reach of its competency-based learning platform. MasteryConnect is a leader in competency-based learning solutions and creates technology tools that help teachers plan, teach, and measure student progress to improve learning outcomes. The demand for competency-based learning tools is at an all-time high. ‘Picture This’: A Step by Step Guide on Digital Learning Portfolios in the Classroom.
It’s hard to talk about “Digital Learning Portfolios” without really knowing what they are. At the Dreamyard Project, a collaboration between the Bronx’s Dreamyard Preparatory School and the Parsons New School of Design, this illustration below is what we think it is, and what we all agree that a digital portfolio should be. I had the lucky fortune to be involved in this collaborative project, and played a role in making this happen at my particular school. My name is Rudy Blanco, I am the Digital Learning Coordinator at the Dreamyard Preparatory School and I’m here to share my big takeaways with you. Developing a “Digital Learning Portfolio” culture at your school is a huge undertaking, and in order to prepare, one should understand a few key things that will help make these portfolios a success.
Teach students about organization: Your students need to be master file organizers. For the sake of my school, I strive to teach Google Drive to every single student in our school. Save Time This Year With 10 Free Tech Tools for High School Teachers. Time is at a premium for high school teachers. "I think that a lot of people forget that in middle school and high school we have so many more students than the elementary school teachers have," says Stephanie Richardson, an English teacher at North Harrison High School in Ramsey, Indiana. While an elementary school teacher may teach 25 to 30 students, she says, she is expected to give each of her 150 to 175 students the same amount of attention. "If you think about it, even if you are grading just a regular paper, it takes five minutes for a paper," she says.
"Well, if you have 175 of them, that's a lot of time. " One thing Richardson can't live without is a notebook she calls her "sanity saver. " It has everything she needs, like her calendar and discipline record. High school teachers strapped for time can also try using free tech tools that are designed to make their lives easier. [Read these four questions high school teachers should ask when vetting new tech tools.]
Assessment Tools 6 Back-to-School Tech Projects. Have your students get to know one another by sharing with their classmates their favorite things and what they did this summer using these fun tech projects! 1. FakebookInvite your students to create a fakebook. The site is easy to navigate. To save their page, they simply hit print and save their profile as a PDF to their desktop. Students can add blocks for friends, music, TV shows, books, video games and anything else they would like to share. Students can post images of their summer vacations on their fakebook page. 2. What is fantastic about this collage maker is that students can save their work straight to their desktops without creating a username or password! 3. 4. For the places they went, they can add what they did on vacation. 5. 6.
Below is an example of an introduction video students could make on their first day back: Erin Bittman is a designer turned teacher! Your Essential Back to School EdTech Checklist. How To Use Twitter In The Library While Teaching Research Skills | Library Media Tech Talk. In the most recent blog entry, I discussed some of the ways we support teachers in the library by helping them present research tools. Recently, I've been trying to work in social media whenever possible. Students are presently using social media to post selfies and brag about themselves. In recent months, I have discovered that these great social tools can be used for so much more. We should strive to model better ways to use social media in the classroom! Two weeks ago, I was showing an 8th grade English class how to do basic research using Britannica School. I also taught a brief introduction to EasyBib. After I had taught a few sessions, I thought about bringing Twitter into the lesson.
The next morning, Britannica responded with this Tweet: They later sent two more Tweets. Then had inquired about what we were teaching! EasyBib Tweeted us too! I was able to share a response to Britannica about the specific things we had taught the students. Autodesk Launches Free Maker Curricula Through iTunesU. MAKING MAKERS FREE: At ISTE 2015 this morning, Autodesk announced the release of new—and free—maker curricula for teachers and students. The company now offers three design thinking and modeling courses for students through iTunesU, along with an iBook to promote the power of sketching in the classroom and teach students about the company’s sketching software. These tools augment the previously-released Autodesk Design Academy and Autodesk’s suite of free tools for educators, teachers and institutions. Together, these materials support maker education and professional skills training for students interested in design careers.
According to Jaime Perkins, Senior Manager of Education at Autodesk, the company now provides “content that gets students interested in design, skills around design thinking...and the software to build real-life solutions.” While all of Autodesk’s tools are free for students and teachers to use, some of the equipment (think 3D printers) can be expensive. ISTE Honors School Librarians as Tech Leaders | School Library Journal - Cathy Knutson Two librarians earned a nod from their peers as tech trailblazers in their schools—winning recognition from the International Society for Technology in Education (ISTE) members as part of its 2015 Professional Learning Network (PLN) Award Honorees.
“The library media specialist role is so far beyond how we used to think of librarians,” says Jessica Medaille, ISTE’s chief membership officer, based in Eugene, OR. “They’re helping their students and teachers understand how to collaborate by providing a learning experience with technology.” Cathy Knutson, media specialist at Oak Hills Elementary School in Lakeville, MN, won the Librarians Network Primary Award, with Diana Rendina, media specialist at Stewart Middle Magnet School in Tampa, FL, taking the Librarians Network Secondary Award. Both were selected by fellow librarians.
“ISTE has been a game-changer for me professionally,” says Rendina, who is in her fifth year at the school as a media specialist. Diana Rendina. Edtech Conferences You Need To Know (EdSurge News) EDITOR'S NOTE: Wow! We've experienced an overwhelmingly positive response to this conference map--thank you! We've also seen several mentions of minor corrections and conferences that we missed. See our updated graphic below, which includes seven new conferences for your viewing pleasure. UPDATE: Click here for our updated 2016-2017 version!
The education world—and the edtech community—have plenty of conferences. At EdSurge, we love to attend them, write about them and share upcoming events on our site here. Now in consultation with other conference-trotting stars, we've pulled together a list of the leading 40 or so convenings for educators and edtech entrepreneurs and executives. Click here for a two-page 8.5" x 11" printout ( with clickable links!) Click here to buy a snazzy 18" x 2 4" poster Our pairing? Your illustration says 2015-2016: When do these events occur? Most of these events typically take place annually, usually during the same season. What are these EdSurge Summits? Why Do We Separate the Teacher From the Tech? We are often bombarded with many posts and articles about the successes and failures of technology in education. Too often these assessments are based upon the technology as if it were the only factor having any effect on the students in the classroom.
Of course this overlooks something that has been pounded into educators’ heads for years: The greatest influence on students in the classroom is the teacher. That holds true with or without technology in the classroom. The environment for learning is created in the classroom by the teacher. The teacher determines the tools selected for learning in the classroom. The teacher determines how much time each subject gets and what should be emphasized over something else. Yes, there are restraints and mandates placed on every teacher by administration, but the majority of the individual learning environments that directly affect students, are environments made by classroom teachers. Teaching is complicated. 4 Ways Digital Tech Has Changed K-12 Learning. Internet Safety: Hover Before you Click. Recently I looked through my Spam folder in Gmail. So many of the messages were “spoofing.”
This means the email LOOKED like it was from a legitimate company, but in reality it was someone trying to trick me into giving personal information or money. It is not just email where people try to trick me into clicking on links or downloading files that I should not be. Websites can also contain links that are malicious. If you hover your mouse over a hyperlink you can see what website the link goes to in the bottom left of your window. A trick you may encounter is that the website is almost legitimate. When I get an email from a company I usually work with I will not click on the links in the email. Phishing attempts try to get you to click on links or download files that are fraudulent or malicious. In this phishing attempt you will notice the email looks professional. Click Here for additional examples This email has a strange subject line of Re: [4]. Copyright secured by Digiprove © 2015.
Do You Want Your Own Drone But Not Sure About Flying It? No Problem - This One Flies Itself. Henry Bradlow holds an RC controller and a horribly cracked Moto X, but he’s only gripping these devices in case something goes wrong with his demo. When Bradlow, the CTO and co-founder of Lily Robotics, gives the go sign, Nghia Ho, the company’s computer vision engineer, flings a drone straight up into the air.
It rises, and then immediately begins to fall. For a split second, it appears as though this 3D-printed prototype with a camera attached is about to shatter into a thousand pieces. But just as the drone starts to descend, Lily’s four rotors flick on. The machine steadies itself in mid-air, then rises about twenty feet and hangs there, awaiting instructions. Bradlow never once touched the controller, or his phone. Click to Open Overlay Gallery It’s a drone, sure, but mostly it’s a flying camera.
It's not the future of drones; it's more like the future of the point-and-shoot. Lily’s not a DJI competitor, and it’s not trying to take down the super-powered Solo from 3D Robotics. 4 Questions for 4 Ed Tech Thought Leaders. As technology is quickly evolving, educators and administrators alike are trying to keep up with the new products and trends in blended learning. We reached out to 4 ed tech thought leaders to get their opinion and advice on some questions that are always on our mind. Here’s who we asked and what they had to say: Tom Murray Serves as the State and District Digital Learning Director for the Alliance of Excellent Education located in Washington DC.
Named one of the top 16 “Forward Thinking EdTech Leaders in the Country” and one of the “Top 100 Influential Voices in Education.” Monica Burns EdTech & Curriculum Consultant, Blogger, and Apple Distinguished Educator. Sam Gliksman Author of the book “iPad in Education for Dummies” released in January 2013. Jennifer Scheffer Certified Google Educator, the Massachusetts Google Educator Group Leader, and Technology Integration Specialist/Mobile Learning Coach for Burlington Public Schools.
Monica - Starting small is important. Some Incredible Water Craft Toys For Your Summer Vacation Enjoyment. Tech Developer's Guide From The Office of Educational Technology. A School That Ditches All the Rules, But Not the Rigor. How can we make school a joyful experience without sacrificing rigor? What’s the best way to measure true learning? What’s the purpose of school? The founders and teachers at the PlayMaker School (watch the PBS Newshour report by April Brown), an all-game based school in Los Angeles, are asking those big, abstract questions that all teachers grapple with.
And they’re trying to find their own answers through their constantly morphing, complex experiment. Here are their thoughts about these issues, in their own words, from extended answers to the PBS NewsHour report. How can teachers, parents, and administrators these ideologies to existing public schools? Tedd Wakeman/PlayMaker co-teacher We’ve always defined, as an educational community, rigor as being a lot of hard drudgery, what we consider really hard work, taking engagement and interests completely out of the equation and saying, “If we see kids who are sitting at their desks and they’re just writing Tedd Wakeman/PlayMaker co-teacher.
CoSN 2015: The Emerging Tech That's Transforming K–12's Horizon. Storybird: The Ultimate Online Storytelling Tool. Forbes Welcome. Empowering Students Through Blogging. When To Say No To #EdTech. Five Edtech Takeaways from an Administrator Who Returned to Teaching. Why technology must be invisible during ed tech roll outs. 3 Next Steps to Nurture EdTech Growth. 12 of the Best Places on the Internet to Get Free Help with Computer Problems.