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The 7 Golden Rules of Using Technology in Schools

The 7 Golden Rules of Using Technology in Schools

Paperless – How I Teach From The Cloud « Mister Norris This school year, I made a conscious decision to go paperless. Last year I carried around my computer to every class, a planner and a pen. I constantly lost the pen or the planner. I used a LOT of paper. I knew there had to be a better way. The other way I utilized Google Calendar this year was with my parent teacher conferences (PTC). I then needed a way to plan my lessons. Last year I did all of my planning in my planner. This system worked but it was time consuming. So I planned to do this all on my computer. Evernote is very simple software that organizes your notes. I utilized the stack feature so that I have two main stacks in Evernote, private notebooks and work related notebooks. An interesting side note, I was telling a friend from Tokyo International School about Evernote and how I use it to teach. If I am ever at work and I need a word processor, I reach straight for Google Docs. People grumble about Google Docs, they say it’s not fully featured.

The official blog of PikiFriends Introduction Elearning is booming and many schools are investigating the advantages and opportunities afforded by using the WWW to enhance participation in learning activities and add value to the courses they offer. The following guide is intended to help schools and teachers avoid some of the risks involved in encouraging or requiring learners of all ages to participate in activities on the WWW. “Learners’ personal privacy and data security are our responsibility if we require them to use web services.” What do we mean by require? Even if we don’t explicitly or intentionally state that teachers and learners must use a particular website, we can, in effect, do this implicitly and unintentionally. Why is it important? Teachers’ and learners’ personal privacy and data security are our responsibility if we require them to use websites and web services. Fortunately, there are measures that we can take to minimize these risks easily and effectively. Important questions to ask: Conclusion

50 Ways to Integrate Technology - Ways to Anchor Technology in Your Classroom Tomorrow Using Free Websites as Learning & Teaching Tools 1. Have students use Spelling City to learn their spelling words, vocabulary words, or site words through games, practice, and quizzes. Spelling City is a free resource for teachers. www.spellingcity.com 2. www.brainpop.com 3. www.dovewhisper.com 4. www.flashcardexchange.com 5. people.uncw.edu/ertzbergerj/ppt_games.html 6. www.clustrmap.com 7. www.ustream.tv 8. www.fanfiction.net 9. www.ccmixter.org 10. www.toolsforeducators.com 11. www.animoto.com/education Share your ideas for integration on Animoto. 12. www.makebeliefscomix.com 13. www.wordle.net 14. www.surveymonkey.com 15. www.readwritethink.org/materials/timeline 16. www.kerpoof.com 17. classtools.net 18. www.buildyourwildself.com 19. www.freerice.com 20. www.fluxtime.com Using Free Websites for Management 21. www.myavatareditor.com 22. www.dropbox.com 23. www.evernote.com 24. www.superteachertools.com 25. www.sharinglinks.com 26. www.bighugelabs.com 27. rubistar.4teachers.org 28. fur.ly 29. www.jingproject.com

What is Sandboxing? Posted 02/24/2012 at 2:23pm | by Michael Simon What is this "sandbox" that the developers keep talking about lately? And how is it utilized to make apps better for the end user? Let's say you have a beautiful garden with a well-manicured lawn, shimmering koi pond and brilliant bands of flowering plants. Now imagine some jerk shows up and starts dumping trash, ripping out flowers and pouring toxic waste into the water--it would take months to clean and would never look the same. But if there was a way to contain the damage, say by building a small box around the perpetrator, cleanup would be a breeze and the rest of your garden would stay pristine. Replace "jerk" with "malware" and "garden" with "Mac," and you've got the essence of sandboxing, a security measure that, in Apple's own words, "protects the system by limiting the kinds of things an application can do, such as accessing files on disk or resources over the network." How? So what does all this mean for you?

Thoughts on writing a social media policy « simfin Context Don’t let anyone tell you social media is evil and should be banned. There are people who believe this and sadly, some are leaders and colleagues with influence in some of our schools. We need to provide evidence and tools to prove that, where managed effectively, social media will enhance and extend teaching and learning – and if this is the answer they want to hear, raise standards. Social media and online communication opportunities are important and can have a positive impact on all elements of the teaching and learning process, the school and learning community. We see teachers and other professionals creating networks to share ideas and resources, children and young people crowd source ideas and information. An important element in the policy development process is seeking the feedback and engagement of teachers, parents, carers and students. Policies should be organic and responsive. The Bottom Line Let’s start with some simple truths: Nothing is private Nothing can be deleted

Top 10 Technology Blogs for Education Education, as with all aspects of culture, is greatly impacted by the forward progress of technology. Several technology blogs for education are maintained by well-known individuals in the field of secondary and postsecondary education. These technology blogs address technological developments as these innovations relate to education. Many of the top 10 technology blogs for education are maintained by those who specialize in integrating information technology with education. Most bloggers on the list are renown in the educational field and all offer great ideas and insights for teachers and others interested in using technology to enhance traditional educational methods. Check out our picks here: 1. The Innovative Educator is a blog created and maintained by author Lisa Neilsen. 2. Free Technology 4 Teachers is a blog that introduces teachers to free web-based applications, such as YouTube. 3. 4. 5. 6. Noted e-learning expert, Steve Wheeler, maintains the Learning with “e’s” blog. 8.

How to Choose the Right Words for Best Search Results Digital Tools Diane T. Sands Dear Savvy Searcher, My students keep wanting to enter their entire research question into the search bar. Frustrated Educator Dear Frustrated, I had a particular conversation with a student a while back. “But how do I know what the important words are?” She had a point, of course. Based on how Google ranks search results, typing in a question will be more likely to bring back pages with a question for a title. Explaining how to distinguish the important words has sometimes proven challenging with younger students. Nouns frequently make good search terms, so students can start by drawing the people, places, and things in their questions. The searchable parts of this picture are [George Washington diary]. Compare the results: From an academic standpoint, the second result brought back highly authoritative sources that are specifically about diaries, rather than other books. Verbs and adjectives can also help in many cases. Related

Social School Media - social media for the whole school community The 33 Digital Skills Every 21st Century Teacher should Have Every single teacher is concerned about his/ her teaching practices and the skills involved in this process. How many times have you wondered about a better way to teach the same lesson you have delivered to an eariler class? How often have you used technology to engage your students and improve their learning ? It is amazing how technology has changed the whole world giving rise to new forms of education we never thought of. There are actually several pluses for the use of technology in education and to try and list them all here is way beyond the scope of this short post. There is no blinking the fact that the type of students we teach today are completely different from last century's. Please, remember that I have spent many laborious hours working on this post and all I ask is a credit back to Educational Technology and Mobile Learning when re-using this content somewhere else. The 21st century teacher should be able to : Here are some tools for teachers to develop this skill :

ISTE Session Review - Extreme Web 2.0 Makeover by Steve Dembo I'm finally getting some time to go through all the things I learned at ISTE11 and start sharing things. One session that was very informative and fun was "Extreme Web 2.0 Makeover" by Steve Dembo. Steve is a member of the Discovery Education team and is a great presenter. He started the session out by letting us know that it was mainly for newbies. I thought this was classy of him to give people a heads up. Steve is very energetic, humorous, and knowledgeable. Here is the link to Steve's presentation: tinyurl.com/istemakeover You can also reach Steve at Teach42.com. Steve had a slide show to use (see above) but ended up making the session more interactive and took questions from the audience and showed them different tools and ways to use them in school. Here are some of the things I learned about in the session: QR Codes - he showed everyone how to create their own QR codes using delivr.com. Livestream.com - advanced video podcasts and video streaming service.

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