Friday Institute for Educational Innovation - White Paper Series Hiller Spires and Melissa Bartlett June 2012 Since technological advances are driving much of the change that we see in information and communication, researchers and educators are attempting to answer two important questions: What does it mean to be literate in the 21st century? How do we design instruction that enables educators to cultivate digital literacies for themselves as well as their students? Digital literacy should be positioned as an entitlement for students that supports their full participation in a society in which social, cultural, political, and financial life are increasingly mediated by digital literacies (California Technology Assistance Project, 2008). View pdf Click here to view similar resources. For information about the New Literacies Collaborative, visit newlit.org.
The Must-Have App Review Rubric Added by Jeff Dunn on 2011-11-22 So you just downloaded a few educational apps that you think might be useful in your classroom. How do you accurately compare and contrast them? Thanks to a new app review rubric from by eMobilize , it’s easier than ever to understand just how useful an app may be in the classroom. On a related note, the Edudemic Directory features many educational apps and lets you quickly compare them to see how they stack up. I’ve rewritten the original rubric from eMobilize and tailored it to fit all school districts. Download The Rubric Here (PDF) Overview of the App App Title: App Publisher/Developer: Version: Link to App Store: Curriculum Compliance Yes/ No – Is it relevant to the curriculum framework? Operational Yes/ No – Is navigation easy? Pedagogy Yes/ No – Does the material accommodate diverse ways in which students learn? Comments are closed.
What I Wish I’d Done Before Deploying iPads to 735 Middle Schoolers, Part 2 | Terice T. Schneider's Digital Home We planned. We met to go over the plans. We talked. What we didn’t do was address some of the simple day-to-day things that we never thought would be an issue. When offering professional development to teachers on integrating iPads, give them training on a management system like Texas’s Project Share from Epsilen (which is releasing an App soon), Edmodo, or Schoology or even eBackPack. Teachers also want to know how to deliver content to their students. Everyone agreed that the better way to do this would have been to choose one, train how to use it and stick with it for a year. Finally, give your teachers clear expectations, not only of the iPad use in the classroom, but of how classroom management should look. We had an expectation that the iPads would be used multiple times a week if not daily. Some tips we used for classroom management are: “Apples UP!” I hope these tips will help those of you deploying iPads next year.
iPads in Education - Apple's Configurator Overview A week ago I spent 5 hours at one of our local schools playing with Apple's new tool for managing iPads - Apple Configurator. I have to say that it was time well spent - I can see this being a viable tool for school districts struggling with managing large numbers of iOS devices. Some of the pros & cons (as some people might see them) to using this: Some tidbits I'll share that hopefully will save others headache I experienced: An iOS device can only be displayed in one of the Apple programs at a time; if it isn't displaying here, make sure you have iTunes & the iPhone Configuration Tool shut down.To use the Supervise mode, you have to setup up AND mark your "template" device as supervised from the beginning.
The Real Reason Change Isn't Happening #iste12 teachers know where they're going -- they're just afraid of what will happen when they get there "The biggest barrier to tech integration is professional development. Simply giving teachers iPads won't change anything," I overhear someone saying in the Blogger's Cafe. "I agree. Another woman adds, "I think a lot of them are still not motivated. I stay quiet, while I try to organize a workflow for students using multiple devices in my classroom next year. True. But we also need permission. We need permission to take risks and fail. I remember a few years back when I developed differentiated professional development. However, in my second round of training, only the social studies teachers volunteered to work on job-embedded, tech-integrated, project-based learning. The social studies teachers weren't afraid, because they had no quarterly benchmark tests. I found the same trend to be true in coaching teachers last year.
iPaddiction School of the Future There are a number of accounts and forecasts by established educational speakers on how the future of school may develop, some accounts embracing computers and technology in all classrooms, others suggesting little change at all. But I wondered what children thought about ICT in schools and how important it is to them? So I decided to ask them! The aim of this investigation was to find out what children thought school might be like in ten years time and the role they thought ICT might have or that they would like in schools. "I'll be really old then... The first stage of this investigation was to find a way which allowed children to explore and refine their ideas.
Video In this video, you will learn how to add and edit text objects in a SMART amp workspace. Viewers will also learn how to format text, using the workspace text editor, and clone formatted text to save time when creating workspace content. In this video, you will learn how to insert a SMART Notebook file into a SMART amp workspace. The Screen Capture Toolbar is one of the most useful SMART Notebook Tools and brings content directly into your SMART Notebook page. In this video you will learn how to change the settings of your pen tray. This video shows you how to create custom badges in Edmodo and then reward them to students. This video shows you how to add and conduct a poll within your Edmodo group. This video shows you how to upload a Microsoft Word document into your Google drive but in the Google format. This video shows you two ways to insert an image into Google forms as well as how to keep your questions separate by inserting page breaks.
How Does Digital Literacy differ from Traditional Literacy and Which Comes First? « Effective Social & Digital Media Storytelling Blog Mike Vigilant (@mikevigilant) asked on Twitter, “How much (if any) of digital literacy is tied to actual literacy, and which comes first?” Literacy is a competency of knowledge in a specific area; traditionally known as reading and writing and to be literate is to have that competency. Traditional literacy (and we will assume reading and writing) is at the core of all traditional learning, that being in a school or institution but also other, non formal learning environments. The notion of digital literacy is regularly up for debate; what is digital literacy? Gunther Kress, in his book Literacy in the New Media Age (2003), suggests that our view on literacy needs to be broadened to envelope media communications, including screen, online, image and more recently, I believe, social media literacy; digital literacy is social, it’s informative, it’s engaging, it’s participatory, and it’s evolving at a very fast rate. Carlacio, J. & Heidig, L., 2009. Cope, B. & Kalantzis, M., 2000.
Incorporating Innovation into Strategic Planning that Will Enrich Learning It takes more than ensuring educators and students have access to technology when schools begin the work of developing a 21st century strategic school plan. As innovative educators, students, leaders, and families, are well aware, technology is just a tool. In and of itself technology does not equate to either innovation or greater effectiveness. In fact poorly used technology generally results in substandard instruction. I've heard one too many educational leader, teacher or parent proudly state that they are part of an innovative school as evidenced by the fact that they have laptops or Smartboards in every classroom. The goals, dreams, and vision for learners, not technology, need to drive the plan.
Learning to Learn in a Digital Age The following is an excerpt from Communique - Higher Education Partnerships Newsletter . Learning to Learn in a Digital Age Howard Major, Ed. D. Debbie Taylor-Major, M. Ed. Many educators are making great strides in guiding students to become autonomous, self-directed learners. One key feature of this “facilitator” approach involves helping students “learn-to-learn,” or develop, learning skills. Additionally, when students are active learners, they must make judgments, analyze content, synthesize information into coherent forms of communication, and present that information to others. Online Re-usable Learning Objects: Learning objects are “bite-sized” pieces of instructional content, usually 10-15 minutes in length, which are created by subject-matter experts and placed in an online “repository” with many other learning objects addressing various content. Transitioning from “Providing” Information to Supporting Student-directed Learning. Developing Higher Level Thinking Skills: Figure 1.0