Education Program - Free Digital Storytelling Software for Educators At Mixbook, we offer discounts for bulk and volume custom yearbook orders for Elementary School Yearbooks, Middle School Yearbooks, High School Yearbooks, as well as education centers and academic programs. Transform your sports team, student and school photos into lasting memories with our premium, professional quality custom school yearbooks. Whether you’re looking to capture the baseball team photos, create a custom school yearbook or class project photo book, or celebrate your student’s art projects in a class calendar, Mixbook has hundreds of unique and easy to create photo products that can be customized to your heart’s content. Creating photo keepsakes for your students and teachers has never been easier than with the Mixbook editor.
Professional Development Guides These free instructional guides, formerly known as the Teaching Modules, were developed by education faculty and professional developers for their colleagues. They can be employed as extension units in existing courses or can be used independently in workshops and meetings. Each guide includes articles, links to video footage, PowerPoint presentations, and class activities. They draw from the wealth of Edutopia's archives of best practices and correlate with ISTE NETS standards. We will update these modules over time, and we welcome your suggestions for future topics and feedback. Mountlake Terrace High School: Eeva Reeder (pictured) developed and implemented an architecture assignment for her geometry students in which they design a school and consult with local experts. Project-Based Learning Professional Development Guide Project-based learning, as with all lessons, requires much preparation and planning. Handhelds Go to Class: Technology Integration Professional Development Guide
How to Grow a Blog Last month, in preparation for my K12Online Conference presentation , I re-read Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi’s Good Business. Leadership, Flow, and the Making of Meaning . In it, he states that the experience of flow – when the person is totally immersed in an activity and genuinely enjoying the moment – comes from “the steps one takes toward attaining a goal, not from actually reaching it.” He adds that: People often miss the opportunity to enjoy what they do because they focus all their attention on the outcome, rather than savoring the steps along the way. In education, however, the product – the grade, the final draft, the test mark – still often takes precedence over the process of learning – the sense of personal journey without which the final destination is meaningless. In my classroom – a predominantly blogging classroom – things have to be different. In order to create that classroom, however, I need to continue to tweak my classroom practice. Keep in mind, this is not easy.
10 ways to change the minds of tech-reluctant staff We often hear about tech-savvy educators and administrators who have an array of best practices and whose love for technology is evident. But as anyone who’s ever been part of a school or district knows, not all teachers and administrators are as comfortable or familiar with technology. In a recent “Question of the Week,” we asked our tech-savvy readers: “How do you get tech-reluctant teachers and administrators to use technology effectively?” Here are our readers’ top answers (edited for brevity). 1. “To get educational staff on board with tech, encourage and support them using tech for their non-work purposes. 2. “As a principal, I make time to offer and teach the [professional development] myself. “During the past 12 years, and through all of the technology changes we have encountered, I have found that the most effective way to get others to effectively use technology is by modeling.
The Education Technologies That Educators Believe Can Have The Biggest Impact On Student Learning (Survey Results) Survey results indicate several specific technologies as those that we should be investing in and focusing on if we want to effectively leverage technology in education. Tough economic times have more people questioning what we are getting out of technology spending in our schools. Unfortunately, results are often being sought in overly broad terms, like improved grades and graduation rates, without trying to more directly relate technology program goals to specific outcomes. One thing that frequently seems to be either lacking or overlooked in many of the school technology programs we read about is input from those who are responsible for leveraging these technologies in instructional application. Are teachers integral to the planning, rollout, and accountability cycles for these programs? Last month EmergingEdTech ran a survey seeking input on this subject from teachers and their colleagues. Respondents Profiles – Who Participated? (Click the pic for a larger image) Mobile Technologies
What makes a good teacher as far as technology is concerned? I'm interested in exploring this question, which I have phrased very carefully. I think whether you're a teacher of information and communications technology, or someone who teaches with educational technology, there are some common denominators of what makes the teaching good. These are all my ideas and conjectures; I have stated them as though they are facts purely in order to avoid clumsy circumlocutions. The first requirement is a willingness to experiment and take chances. For example, I came across a program a few years ago which made commenting on a student's work very easy: it was possible to give comprehensive feedback in only 5 minutes by clicking various buttons. Clearly, it was the sort of 'solution' you may wish to use with one or two special case students, but not with whole classes. Not everything is within the individual teacher's control. A third requirement is for intellectual honesty. Secondly, take a cost-benefit approach.
bloomsapps Using Blooms Taxonomy in education is a highly effective way to scaffold learning for the students. With the recent popularity and pervasive nature of iOS devices in school districts it is essential for educators to understand how to implement Blooms in the classroom using the apps that are available. While this list is by no means fully comprehensive, it will assist educators in getting started when implementing iOS devices in the classroom. This site will change almost daily as it will be updated with new and exciting apps! If you find any that you have worked with in your classroom please email dmileham@e1b.org or tweet @bloomsapps or @dmileham75 with your suggestions. Two Links to some iTunesU courses relating to iOS Integration: 1 iPad by Erie 1 Boards of Cooperative Educational Services ( Movie Making\Digital Storytelling Camera to PDF Free - cool little app that turns your device into a scanner. LiveBinders: I would be remiss if I didn't post this.
Is CALL outdated? Through both my own interest and the influence of my MA course, I’ve been sending out prompts for dialogue on Twitter, on Facebook and in my office regarding the integration of technology in our classes in terms of the familiar (and purportedly outdated) abbreviation CALL (Computer-assisted language learning), which has been met with a polarised set of opinions. Feel free to chime in. My desire for discussion stems from the Bax article, “CALL – Past, Present and Future” (2003), which responds to CALL’s phases put forth by Warschauer & Healey’s “Computers and language learning: An overview” (1998) and develops the concept of technology’s normalisation in the language learning classroom. This discussion is by no means new1, but maybe we’ve been discussing what’s not practical at this point. So integrated into daily life that we don’t consider it special (Source: The New Yorker, 2011) But first, I think it’s warranted to summarise one of Bax’s points. 1984 was a big year for computers
The 100 Best Web 2.0 Classroom Tools Chosen By You The Wordle of this list! (Click image to enlarge) One of the most popular posts on Edudemic in 2010 was The 35 Best Web 2.0 Classroom Tools Chosen By You and I felt it might be time for an update to that list for 2011. There were more than 900 submissions but many were duplicates. Lessons from the past, lessons for the future: 20 years of CALL Links checked 19 April 2012 This article was written in late 1996 and published as a chapter in Korsvold A-K. & Rüschoff B. (1997) (eds.) New technologies in language learning and teaching, Council of Europe, Strasbourg, France, ISBN 92-871-3255-0. Inevitably, an article like this dates very quickly and there are many revisions in this Web version. Some important changes have taken place, but some things have hardly changed at all. Lesson No. 1 focuses on the importance of ongoing training. Lesson No. 2 is full of warnings about regarding technology as the panacea. Lesson No. 3 on choosing the right hardware is less relevant now than it was in the 1990s. Lesson No. 4: I was a bit hard on Artificial Intelligence (AI). Lesson No. 5 focuses on the importance of new ideas - still as valid as ever. Lesson No. 6: I was probably a bit too harsh about "Doing it yourself", as new authoring tools have made life a lot easier for the teacher who wishes to create his/her own learning materials. i.
3 Reasons an Administrator Needs an iPad For over a month now, I have been testing the capabilities of my iPad, and I have to admit, it has now become a seamless part of both my professional life and personal life. I would encourage all administrators to consider investing in an iPad for three reasons. 1. 2. 3. Getting an iPad should be a "no-brainer" for the administrator. Short List of Must Have iPad App List for Administrators Skype for iPad Dropbox for iPad Docs-to-Go for iPad GoTasks for the iPad Google App for the iPad