Education is like traffic- guest post. Featured Post Recently, an article that I wrote for The Apple was published: 10 Steps to Better Lesson Plans. I thought I would share it here and encourage you to check out The Apple for great lesson plans, education news, resources, and even job postings. This is a repost of the article: Kelly Tenkely | TheApple.com Master teachers are also master lesson planners.
They can look at a learning goal and piece together key components that will ensure that their students meet the goal. Not all lessons need to be a reinvention of the wheel, but there are several hallmarks of well-crafted lesson plans. Whether you are building your own lessons, or searching through databases of lessons, be sure to include these 10 key components: 1. Carolyn Foote: Where Is the Media? I just returned from the ISTE (International Society for Technology in Education) annual conference -- an international gathering of over 15,000 educators and leaders and representing more than 100,000 ISTE members who are highly involved in using technology in their schools.
Many of the "best of the best" practitioners of instruction are there sharing with their colleagues, having serious conversations about issues in education. And yet where was the media? When I run a Google search for ISTE 2012 and the New York Times, the only stories I find in the top page results are about new products from three vendors in the exhibit hall and one about the New York Times presenting a session on their new product.
The Wall Street Journal carried those same story headlines about the same vendors, and the Washington Post and ISTE don't appear in search results at all nor does the Los Angeles Times (though the conference was in California). As educators we aren't so great at telling our own stories. How to Get Started With Infographics. Media and publishing professionals know that infographics are hugely popular, and are more likely to be shared via social media than a standard blog post or article. By combining images with data, infographics get much more mileage than text or graphics alone. You can use them for news, presentations, or press releases on your company blog or website to attract publicity and show off your expertise. Companies without a graphic designer on board or on budget couldn't easily take advantage of infographics in the past.
However, thanks to online chart and map creation tools, any business can now turn an interesting concept into an engaging infographic. Choose Your Graphics and Data Wisely Every business holds expertise in something, and that specialized knowledge can make for an interesting piece. Data from Google Looking for ideas about the types of data you want to detail in an infographic? Templates and Icons Free Tools for Building Your Own Infographic When Free Isn't a Good Idea. How to give presentations with an iPad. SAN FRANCISCO – You can give impressive presentations from your Apple Inc. iPad‚ and perhaps even leave your laptop behind‚ if you prepare well and know what to expect.
It’s even easier to take to the podium with newer technologies like AirPlay mirroring and the latest version of Keynote for iOS. Here are tips for moving presentations onto your iPad and delivering them live. Get it togetherApple’s $10 Keynote (all prices U.S.) for iOS can import presentations made in Microsoft PowerPoint or in Keynote for OS X ( Macworld rated 4 out of 5 mice ), but in both cases you’re likely to lose a great deal during the import process. Say goodbye to some fonts, transitions, and builds that aren’t available on the iPad, plus audio and more.
(Presenter notes are supported, however, whether created on the iPad or imported from a PowerPoint or Keynote for Mac presentation.) Plug it in One way to do this is to plug a video adapter into your iPad’s Dock connector, and then connect that to your display. British children 'unhappiest in the world', say academics. Wendy Ellyatt, the group’s development director, who is also an author and consultant in early education, said the launch reflected growing concerns over the state of modern childhood.
It will campaign on a range of issues covering education, health, technology and commercial pressures that hamper children’s development, she suggested. The move follows the publication of a landmark report from Unicef last year that found British parents were trapping their children in a cycle of "compulsive consumerism" by showering them with toys and designer labels instead of spending quality time with them. This came after a 2007 study by the UN children's agency ranked Britain bottom out of 21 developed countries for child welfare and third from bottom for educational standards.
Mrs Ellyatt said: “Recent research that shows that children in the UK are some of the most pressurised, unhappy and commercially vulnerable in the world. “This situation has not been helped by risk-averse policy-making.” Social Media in Education: Twitter being used in Arts and Sciences Courses. Part 5 in the Series: Social Media in Education Social Media can be embedded into a number of different courses and it’s always good to find unique research and actually case studies available to help you develop a plan. It’s not always easy find these types of ideas, practices, and real world examples. One of the books (very similar to a textbook) I found on this showcases real case studies and examples.
Teaching Arts and Sciences with the New Social Media by Charles Wankel (2011) in one of those types of books that package it with various examples geared towards certain areas of study. One of the examples is by Brian Croxall (@briancroxall ) who is using Twitter in his ENG 456 Reading Technology course to engage his student with social media in an age of new media. The final assignment is for students to write up an evaluation of the assignment and what Twitter teaches about community and media. Want to read more about social media in education? Like this: Like Loading... Book Retriever App Tracks Classroom and Home Libraries. Harnessing the Internet to Provide Low-Cost Higher Education - Mission: Innovation. A University of the People student from Haiti (Photo courtesy of University of the People) University of the People has an ambitious goal: to use the Internet to provide an extremely low-cost college education to students around the world.
And the nonprofit’s big idea is starting to gain traction with grant makers. The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation has awarded $500,000 to support the university’s effort to gain accreditation. The grant comes on the heels of recent awards by the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation, the Intel Foundation, and the Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation. Since its inception in 2009, University of the People has enrolled 1,500 students from 132 countries. “If you educate one person, you change his life,” says Shai Reshef, the technology executive who founded and leads the university.
While University of the People uses the Internet to deliver courses, the organization takes a straightforward, no-bells-and-whistles approach to technology. Seeking Sustainability. Easily Create Your School's Mobile App. This increased home Internet access by way of mobile phones should encourage us to solicit data from our own school families on how they are choosing to communicate via mobile phone for personal day-to-day tasks and relationship building. Soliciting feedback from families Create a brief two-minute home-technology survey that allows parents to provide information about what device(s) they use for what purpose.
School-family engagement teams can then take this information and embed communication opportunities based on where parents are most comfortable. Exercise hard-copy and electronic survey options. There are plenty of online survey tools including Polleverywhere.com, Surveymonkey.com and Zoomerang.com. Once you have enough information about your school’s population of mobile phone users, it’s time to design your app in collaboration with a team of parents from your home and school association. Choosing the right app-maker Knapp’s family engagement app I’ve built an app, now what? HPHS%20Mural. Five-Minute Film Festival: Flipped Classrooms. I really enjoyed Mary Beth Hertz's excellent blog published earlier this week, "The Flipped Classroom: Pro and Con" -- one of the most concise and balanced views I've read on the buzz-wordy concept of flipping the classroom.
Advocates say that "flipped classrooms" help overburdened teachers differentiate their instruction to reach more learners, provide an avenue into more hands-on and student-driven learning during classtime, and shift the teacher's role from "sage on the stage" to learning coach and facilitator. Critics say it's just a fad, relies too heavily on rote instruction, and doesn't go far enough in making the needed changes for teaching and learning reform. I've rounded up this list of videos so you can learn more about the challenges and benefits of flipped classrooms. Video Playlist: Flipping the Classroom Keep watching the player below to see the entire playlist, or view this playlist on YouTube. More Flipped Class Resources Flipping the Classroom Guides and PD.
This Google+ Hangout Changed My Views On Communication Forever. Last week, I had the great honor to speak with three very awesome people in a Google+ Hangout: Christian Vogler, director of the Technology Access Program at Gallaudet, Andrew Phillips, policy counsel at the NAD and Willie King, the director of product management at ZVRS. These three folks have one thing in common – they are deaf. I can’t understand sign language, and I speak way too fast for anyone to be able to read my lips. How did it go without a hitch? Thanks to a Google+ Hangout app announced by the Google Accessibility team last week, a sign language expert and a fantastic CART transcriptionist, Laura Brewer. All in real-time, all virtually. Without this technology, I would have never gotten to talk to Christian, Andrew and Willie. That’s right, I was the minority. The app that you see above allowed me to speak freely, while Laura typed my words in at an astonishing 200 words per minute.
A lot of people benefit from accessibility, not just just deaf and hard of hearing. Fiat will offer 'world's first in-car espresso maker' Updated 2012-07-15 2:48 PM The world's first in-car espresso machine ina standard production car -- the Lavazza machine in the coming Fiat 500L. Oh how those Italians love their espresso. And starting in October, they'll be able to have a doppio on the go in the new Fiat 500L. At the presentation of the car to the global press in Turin this month, Fiat announced that the 500L will be "the first standard-production car in the world to offer a true espresso coffee machine. " The espresso maker will be an option in the new, bigger, four-door 500L that goes on sale in Italy in October and in the rest of Europe shortly after.
Fiat says the machine "is perfectly integrated in the car with a deck designed expressly by Fiat. " The 500L, which is being built in Serbia, is due in the U.S. in 2013, but the espresso maker seems unlikely in the current climate of concern over driver distractions in cars. The coming Fiat 500L at the company's presentation for the global press this month in Turin. Can a $10 Robot Save African Education? | Wired Design. Nii Adjetey Sowah programs a Mindstorms robot in Ayorkor Korsah’s Introduction to Robotics class at Ashesi University College in Ghana. Ten dollars doesn’t get you a lot of parts. Then again, $35 for a computer seemed pretty outrageous not too long ago. The success of that Raspberry Pi Micro-Computer prompted professors Ken Goldberg and Ayorkor Korsah to stage a contest: Design a $10 robot.
Conceived as a teaching tool for use in African classrooms, such a low-cost machine could prove to be revolutionary for education in poorer countries around the world. Launched last month and ending on Sept. 15, the contest offers prizes for any professional, student, or hobbyist who can design a $10 robot — or at least one in that neighborhood. “Obviously a $10 is very … it’s a bit unrealistic,” says Goldberg, a professor of engineering at UC Berkeley.
“But we wanted to set [a price] that would really get people thinking. Still having trouble imagining a robot that can be built for $10? Old NYC payphones transformed into free Wi-Fi hotspots | Internet & Media. Just when the whole world laughs at those dinosaurian payphones -- marveling at how antiquated we used to be -- New York City has put them to a new innovative use. The city announced today that it was starting a pilot program transforming those metal relics of yesteryear into free unlimited Wi-Fi kiosks. Initially, 10 locations in Manhattan, Brooklyn, and Queens will get the service, and more hotspots will be added in coming months. Abandoned payphones have been a point of contention for many of the city's residents for a while now. According to a New York news site DNAinfo, 40 percent to 60 percent of the city's more than 13,000 payphones are out of service.
And some residents complain that they "serve as magnets for criminal activity, including drug dealing, alcohol consumption, sexual activity, and public urination. " According to GigaOm, the select payphones will provide Wi-Fi service from 300 feet away by using "military grade" antennas. Going open in a cannibalistic world (#OMDE) It was one of those conversations that left me uneasy and disturbed. The point of discussion was to what extent opening resources in distance education is viable, achievable and desirable in a highly competitive higher education landscape. To what extent can we open up our materials under a Creative Commons Licence without losing our market advantage or our distinct value? How do we prevent private and for-profit higher education institutions from cannibalizing our open materials and “stealing” our market share?
One proposal was to open some courses as a major PR exercise while defending our intellectual property rights and market share more than ever before. I was left perturbed and sad. Let me start at the beginning (or not quite…). Knowledge production and sharing had never been open. The history of “academic” scholastic inquiry and teaching shares many of the characteristics of knowledge production and control in the context of guilds. In closing: Acknowledgement References Like this: Evernote Wants To Be The Automatic, Trusted Place To Store Your Life [Interview] Evernote, the multi-platform app that lets you capture notes, audio and images when you are on the go, and then access those mementos wherever you want to next, has carved out a position as one of the more consistently useful services out there for smartphone consumers.
The growing number of users is a testament to that. In June, at the LeWeb conference in London, CEO Phil Libin noted that Evernote now has 34 million users, having reported 25 million as recently as May. And while paying users are a much smaller fraction, they are growing at a similarly strong rate: now they’re at 1.4 million versus 1 million in May. When Libin was in London I sat down to talk to him about what we might see next from Evernote as the service continues to evolve.
TC: You mentioned on stage that you thought images were an important part of the kind of data you wanted to associate with Evernote (in your lifetime and beyond storage ambition), but you wouldn’t build the “next Instagram.” TC: Amazon? Easy Group Blogging With Posterous Spaces. Let’s read them a story! Helping your children succeed in school.
An iPad Lover’s Take On The Nexus 7. St Julians Comprehensive in Newport allows pupils to use Twitter for schoolwork. The 60-Second Guide To Texting In The Classroom | Edudemic | Social Media and Cell Phones in the K12 Environment. Case study: How 20 high school students ignited a social media success | Social Media and Cell Phones in the K12 Environment. The Epic @Evernote Experiment #edchat @EvernoteSchools. 3 Trends You May Have Missed At ISTE - Getting Smart by Guest Author - edchat, EdTech, ISTE12. Great Free Text Messaging Tools to Use with your Students | Social Media and Cell Phones in the K12 Environment. French-students-win-2012-international. Geninne, Blogger In Mexico, Finds Inspiration In Nature.
iPaddiction. Top 10 Twitter Accounts for US Teachers. Free access to British scientific research to be available within two years | Science. Africa: Social Media Skills for African Youth With Disabilities - Global Voices Online | Social Media and Cell Phones in the K12 Environment. ‘Game-based’ learning 10 Wonderful Libraries Repurposed from Unused Structures. Teens love texting and social networks but ignore e-mail | Social Media and Cell Phones in the K12 Environment. Marissa Mayer's Exit Took Google By Surprise.
What If Teens Prefer Twitter to Facebook? | DigitalNext: A Blog on Emerging Media and Technology - Advertising Age | Social Media and Cell Phones in the K12 Environment. Mark Brumley: "Seven Social Media Lesson Ideas for the Classroom" | WISE - World Innovation Summit for Education | Social Media and Cell Phones in the K12 Environment. Microsoft Starts Integrating Skype Into Office.
Youth Who Tweet Are Youth Who Vote | Social Media and Cell Phones in the K12 Environment. 10 Ways You Can Use Your Smartphone to Advance Science. The Book Truck: Mobile Library Hits Mexico City's Streets - Cities. 10 Ways to Create Videos Without Installing Software. What the Internet Actually Looks Like - Megan Garber. To Fly. Arcade Aesthetics: A Museum Showcases the Art Behind Iconic Video Games in Melbourne.
Pathbrite CEO Reflects on the Effects of the MBA. Columbia University Names Sree Sreenivasan First Chief Digital Officer - Arik Hesseldahl. Arts Council England launches digital R&D podcast series for the arts and cultural sectors. Gooru: Fantastic new education search engine. Rethinking Higher Education Technology.