7 Resources for Developing Typing Skills This morning my friend Ken Shelton asked me via Twitter if I had any resources for online keyboards. Of course I do, I just need to find them. So for Ken and everyone else looking for online typing practice sites, here's a short list to get you started. Typing Web is an online typing tutorial that provides instant feedback after every free typing lesson. Typing Web offers beginner through advanced typing lessons for free. Word Games offers a large collection of online word games and typing games. Listen and Write is a great way for students to improve their typing skills and hear about the news. Power Typing hosts a small collection of five typing games that students can use to develop their typing skills. Good Typing is a free online typing skill development program. Dance Mat Typing is a nice little resource from the BBC. Typing Adventure is a nice little game that young students can use to practice their typing skills. Bonus Just for Fun Item!
Early Childhood Education and the iPad I was fortunate enough last weekend to receive an invitation to the Sydney Catholic Schools Early Years Conference. I was interested because the conference was centred around creating a clear and coherent vision around Early Years pedagogy. I was also intrigued to see how the iPad fitted in with this vision. One of the sessions I attended was Technology in the Early Years - Apps and iPads by Kate Highfield a Lecturer in Early Childhood from Macquarie University Sydney. Kate was certainly an engaging and passionate speaker but what really impressed participants was a scaffold by which we could evaluate the apps that are used within the confines of our own classrooms. Kate and her research partner Kristy Goodwin have developed this scaffold from their research into educational apps. Kate suggested that we could plot apps on a educational continuum depending on where the different apps contribute to cognitive development. PuppetPals: FREE Create your own animated stories. StoryKit: FREE
Strategies for Taking Flight with BYOT (Cross-posted at Bold Visions and BYOT Network and cowritten by Jill Hobson, Director of Instructional Technology – Forsyth County Schools) The Partnership for 21st Century Skills identified 4 critical areas of learning for students that include creativity, critical thinking, communication and collaboration. In Forsyth County Schools, we’ve been working hard with parents, teachers and students to embrace learning with student-owned technologies; something we call Bring Your Own Technology (BYOT). What we know for sure is that BYOT is really more like Bring Your Own Learning because we’ve discovered that it is NOT about the technology – it IS about the learning. The video, Above and Beyond, by Peter H. Reynolds and produced for the Partnership for 21st Century Skills, is a wonderful illustration of what is possible when students are given the freedom to personalize the learning experience for themselves. As you watch the video, you might consider the following questions: Like this:
The Best Free iPad and iPhone Kids' Apps According to Apple | Groovin' On Apps EmailShare 18EmailShare There’s a difference between popular kids’ apps and games that grab the world’s fancy momentarily, and the best kids’ apps and games that become all-time favorites, classics and “must-haves.” So which type of kids’ apps do you seek? Either way, Apple’s got you covered. With some overlap, the App Store lists them separately. You’ll find popular kids’ apps robotically listed in Top 25 or Top Charts lists. Ultimately, Apps for Kids and Games for Kids give you the best kids’ apps and games according to Apple. You might also like our related post, Apple’s Top Apps and Games for Kids That You Can Try for Free. You can get nearly one-fifth of Apple’s top recommended kids’ apps and games for free Cool beans, right? But first, a few words about how to use the table below. Now, have at ‘em. Top Recommended Free Kids Apps and Games on the App Store
Kindertown: An Educational App Store At its education event last month, Apple made the point of touting the amount of educational content it offers via its App Store: some 20,000 apps fall under the "education" category. But we really shouldn't confuse quantity and quality when it comes to educational content. Indeed, in some ways, the abundance of educational apps makes it even tougher to locate good ones -- even with Apple's promotion of featured apps and bestseller lists and with the App Store reviews. How do you know which apps have an educational (not just entertainment) value, which apps are developmentally appropriate, which apps teach particular content or focus on a certain subject (either in general, such as math or literacy apps, or more specifically, such as those that teach addition or phonetics)? That's where the startup Kindertown steps in, with an (educational) App Store within the (Apple) App Store.
BYOT Information The York County School Division is recognized as an international leader in the effective practice of BYOT, Bring Your Own Technology, which encourages students to bring their personal technology tools to school for learning. YCSD was named a 2012-2013 Microsoft Innovative Pathfinder School District as a result of the division’s BYOT initiative. As students utilize their personal technology devices in school, they can learn new ways to use them for collaborating and interacting with their teachers and each other to research information, solve complex problems, create original products, and publish their work. BYOT was first introduced to secondary students at the start of the 2011-12 school year. The program has now expanded to include an e-Reader program for students in grades 3-5. General Information
iPad vs. BYOD | IPAD 4 SCHOOLS Yes, we are at the beginning of a revolution in Education. Yes, we have witnessed the world going mobile and yes, there is a variety of tools available to help us make learning mobile and personal. But… Most of the teachers around the world getting excited about this and offering advice (like me) are tech-savvy people. We have already had a play with many devices, we blog and Tweet all day, researching the best practice around the world. We are comfortable with the differences and know how those differences in features and software might affect a lesson. So… Until the vast majority of the teaching profession are aware of what opportunities students would have with one device over another (at least 5 years), the decision a school makes must guarantee simplicity for the non-technical majority. Why should it be iPad and not one of the others? The devices are all the same! have a camera;have a screen;can ‘Skype’access the Internetdo office-style documents So why iPad? Conclusion Future Like this:
Should Kindergarteners Use iPads in the Classroom? Much like with toy cellphones, kitchenware and hardware tools, children under a certain age once played with toy computers to simulate the experience of working on the real thing. But in recent years, children as young as 2 and 3 years old have eclipsed the step of starting out with a toy version of a piece of technology and are now playing on iPads and other devices before they start kindergarten. And with the rising fad of mobile devices, public schools are left to decide if the use of devices like iPads should be integrated into class curriculums. While some education officials praise the newer strategy for aiding learning, others claim devices like iPads have no place in the classroom. In April, an elementary school in Auburn, Maine, was given permission to distribute iPads to kindergarteners next fall — an expense with a $200,000 price tag, according to local media. Has the Information Age turned into an information overload? The iPads Are Coming …
A Small Collection of Studies of iPad Use in Education This week I got the itch to go beyond anecdotal stories about iPads in the classroom and look for some more substantial research and writing on the topic. Below are some of the reports that I’ve been reading through this week. The Department of Education and Early Childhood Development for Victoria, Australia iPads for Learning – In Their Hands field trial studied the use of iPads in nine schools. One of the observations to note here is that greater success was reported at primary and special schools than in secondary schools. The iPad as a Tool for Education is a study based on iPad use at Longfield Academy, Kent, England . Reading With iPads – The Difference Makes a Difference studied the impact on the reading comprehension, knowledge of content, and analysis skills of boys aged 11 to 13 who read using iPads. The Impact of the iPad and iPhone on Education was published in 2010 and is speculative in nature as the students surveyed had not yet been given iPads.