Cracking The Code To Teams: What Educators Can Learn From Programmers | EdSurge News While so many educators devour books on leadership and attend lots of conferences, their efforts often fall short when they try to achieve game-changing goals with teams. What if the secret lies with programmers? What if they’ve cracked the code on achieving big goals with teams and it’s a matter of educators learning their strategies? The secret is an organized approach to work programmers call “scrum.” Once you get past the name, you’ll realize it’s a process that has a lot to offer educators. How Does It Work? Scrum is a team-based approach many software engineers take to develop products. During daily “stand ups,” each team member shares three things: (1) actions taken yesterday; (2) actions to be taken today; and (3) any obstacles thwarting today’s actions. Takeaways for Educators 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. What Could This Look Like in Schools? Students: Student leaders, such as athletic team captains, club and publication leaders, and others, can develop sprint goals with their teams.
10 Things Every Teacher Should Know How To Do With Google Docs Google Docs is a powerful word processing tool that many schools have adopted. As it’s similar to Microsoft Word and other word processing tools, most of its features are intuitive to use. However, in addition to completing many of the functions of a traditional word processor, Google Docs provides even more capabilities that can be invaluable to educators. Here are ten tricks that can make your life easier with Google Docs: Share & Collaborate with Google Docs One of the most powerful features of Google Docs is that you can share and collaborate on documents with others. Sharing with individuals is relatively easy. Comments And Suggested Edits Sometimes, you don’t want to make changes on a document. Others can reply to your comments when they make changes or ask for clarification. Revision History One of my favorite tools in Google Docs is “Revision History.” Add-Ons Recently, Google released a suite of “Add-ons.” Leave Voice Comments Sometimes written comments are not enough. Image Editing
Save This List! 21 Top Websites for Social Studies Teachers Every day on our Facebook page, teachers post "Helpline" questions and receive resource recommendations, lesson and classroom management ideas, career advice, and so much more. Recently, a high school teacher asked readers to suggest their favorite sites for teaching social studies. The list was so awesome, we just had to share it! 1. iCivics icivics.org 2.
Didaktisk design Staffan Selander reflekterar över teknikens inverkan på lärande och undervisning: Avsnitt i introduktionstexten: Didaktisk forskning och didaktik i relation till skolarbete Ett designteoretiskt perspektiv på lärande Multimodalitet Den digitala och globala utmaningen Utbildningens grundläggande uppgifter Design av lärsekvenser Förutsättningar och iscensättning Första transformationscykeln Andra transformationscykeln Ett dialogiskt och mångdimensionellt perspektiv I didaktisk design presenterar vi digitala verktyg för undervisning och lärande samt ett antal länkar med en mängd konkreta exempel från olika lärmiljöer. I den här (löp)texten kan du läsa mer om ett designteoretiskt, didaktiskt och multimodalt perspektiv på undervisning och lärande i digitala miljöer. Didaktisk forskning och didaktik i relation till skolarbete Didaktisk forskning handlar i stort om att se på världen med en viss sorts ögon, och om att ställa vissa typer av frågor till olika fenomen. Till textens början
Twitter for Teachers: A Quick Start Guide Technology is a growing part of the classroom, with tablets and smart TVs quickly integrating themselves into the curriculum. But fast-paced change – and the fact that students are often miles ahead of both teachers and parents when it comes to the latest apps and social networks – can intimidate even the most tech-savvy teacher. Here’s a quick-start guide for teachers who are looking to incorporate Twitter into their classroom as a learning tool, without getting lost in the millions of tweets sent every day. There are a variety of ways that teachers can use Twitter to augment their student’s time in the classroom, a number of which we outline below. To broadcast On the simpler end of the spectrum, Twitter can be used as a secondary, online bulletin board. You could also use Twitter to broadcast links to additional reading that expands on the course content, or your own thoughts and opinions to help students understand complex topics. To learn To discuss Resources for teachers
På begäran: #flipsv och #GAFE för yngre elever i samarbete med @SwensonAnna Lånat struktur av @Askeback | Att lära för livet Vi hade en planerad hangout idag, @sarabruun3, jag och ett helt gäng som hänger på twitter och ventilerar, planerar, delar och delar och delar. Till mångas glädje. Frågan kom hur vi i de yngre åren använder Google Apps for Education – förkortat GAFE. Vad gör vi? Vilken nytta har vi av de olika funktionerna? Varför ska man ha det? @Askeback bloggade om 10 anledningar att använda Google och det är en bra början. En plats att samla dokument och arbeten från olika appar i iPaden. Skapa en blogg. Svenska: Läs din faktatext varje dag – flera gånger Texten finns här: Matte: Se filmen om läxan här: Matteläxa repetition additionRepetera addition på Det finns många, många fler användningsområden. Dela, dela, dela…. /Susanne
Advanced Level Projects with Scratch: Fun with Fractals In his book Program or Be Programmed, author Douglas Rushkoff describes computer programming as an essential literacy for the 21st century. It makes sense, as we recognize the importance of teaching students to communicate by listening and speaking, and we go to great lengths to teach reading and writing. Now, in an increasingly digital world, we should ensure that our students have experience using and making programs. In our previous tutorials about elementary and intermediate level Scratch, we practiced programming by using code to draw 2D geometric shapes commonly covered in elementary mathematics curriculums. There is an interesting example of recursion found in nature called a fractal. Here's How A Quick Review Visit scratch.mit.edu. 1st Challenge: Basic setup and variable creation. 2nd Challenge: Make three custom blocks for drawing fractal art. The "Make A Block" feature allows you create custom procedures that you can reuse in your Scratch projects. How It Works (Click to enlarge.)
Track & Rate Skills Directly in Google Drive Track & Rate Skills Directly in Google Drive One of my favorite tools for providing feedback in Google Drive is Kaizena, which allows you to leave voice comments on documents. Today Kaizena launches an enhanced feature: tags. Here is a summary of what these new features in Kaizena can do: Track and rate skills - tags can be rubric criteria, common core standards, your local state, region, or country’s standards, learning objectives or outcomes…anything. Voice comments saved educators time while enabling better student outcomes, and tags continue this legacy: Better student outcomes Knowledge of strengths and weaknesses is a prerequisite for improvementTransparency: showing the evidence behind a rubric score builds trust between educators and students Save time Re-use your feedbackGet rubric criteria out of your head as you read Like this: Like Loading... About Jennifer Carey My name is Jennifer Carey and I am a student and educator of the human condition.
6 Entertaining Games Made Entirely in Microsoft Excel Excel — your friendly (and perhaps most dreaded) office tool. But it's not just for spreadsheets anymore. Believe it or not, you can turn the data-analyzing, number-cruncher into one unbelievably cool game. The Microsoft software has a few secrets up its sleeve; many people have managed to design new games or recreate classics like Monopoly from its offerings. Below, we've highlighted six games made entirely in Microsoft Excel. Note: For most of these games, you'll need to enable macros. You may have heard of the addicting game 2048 by Gabriele Cirulli. In 2048 two tiles of the same number can merge into a new tile that equals the total value of the two. The geniuses at Spreadsheet1.com built an Excel version that allows you to play the game, and track your moves to help analyze your strategy. But what if you want to play this game and be discrete at work? To download this sneaky version, click here. 2. In four days, Canadian accountant Cary Walkin created Candy Number Crunch Saga. 3. 5.
You will soon be able to run any Windows application on a Chromebook Google, VMware, and NVIDIA were on hand at VMworld 2014 to show off a collaborative effort utilizing VMware Blast Performance and NVIDIA GRID vGPU technology. The result will be high performance virtual desktops and workstation-class graphics for Chromebooks. Imagine getting hardware-accelerated graphics, and at the same time, enjoying the flexibility of a virtual environment. With the flexibility of the Chromebook, manufacturers can design complex 3D models and share them with engineers around the globe. “We are breaking down traditional barriers to adopting virtual desktops and offering new economics for the delivery of graphics-intensive applications through the power of the cloud,” said Sanjay Poonen, executive vice president and general manager, End-User Computing, VMware. Chromebooks featuring NVIDIA Tegra K1-processors will be among the first ones to get access to this technology. What do you guys think? source: VMware » See more articles by Robert Nazarian
The future is here: New ed tech targets the brain Measuring and even changing a student’s brain activity was once a science fiction concept. But technology advances are pushing to market more products that use attention levels and plasticity of the mind to raise academic achievement. “I think it’s the direction we have to go in,” says Tom Kelchner, director of special education at Goose Creek CISD in Texas, a district of 22,000 students outside Houston. “We have to look at innovative approaches based on research to do something different for students who have reading and math deficits, and we feel these cognitive development programs are part of the answer.” Over the summer, the district began implementing the program Cogmed Working Memory Training from Pearson in special education classrooms. Measuring attention At the end of the study session, students can see where their attention was highest and lowest, and go back to the exact place where attention dropped. Tapping neuroplasticity
How BYOD/T is Getting Easier, How it’s Getting Harder I’ve written more posts on BYOD/BYOT (Bring Your Own Device/Technology) than Sylvia Plath penned woebegone prose, so I’m going to put all of you out of your misery and promise you this is the last one. It’s been just over five school years now that I’ve invited students to bring their own wifi enabled devices into the classroom to use for learning. The first couple of years were a whirlwind of learning for everyone involved, but I can say fairly that the dust has settled quite a bit in the time since. Has it gotten easier or harder, you ask? And another thing: “easier” and “harder” aren’t exactly the most appropriate words here, but they’re as correct as one can get. Equity My experience doing BYOD has always been in relatively affluent public school communities. Stakeholder Support In the first few years of this initiative, my part-time job was as communicator and, unfortunately, evangelist for why BYOD should at least be allowed in a classroom. Apps and Software Focus and Attention
Why Some Schools Are Selling All Their iPads For an entire school year Hillsborough, New Jersey, educators undertook an experiment, asking: Is the iPad really the best device for interactive learning? It’s a question that has been on many minds since 2010, when Apple released the iPad and schools began experimenting with it. The devices came along at a time when many school reformers were advocating to replace textbooks with online curricula and add creative apps to lessons. Four years later, however, it's still unclear whether the iPad is the device best suited to the classroom. Meanwhile, the cost of equipment is going down, software is improving, and state policies are driving expectations for technology access. iPads have so far been a gadget of choice at both ends of the economic spectrum: in wealthier schools with ample resources and demand from parents, and in low-income schools that receive federal grants to improve student success rates. However, the L.A. district quickly recalled about 2,100 iPads from students.
mashable If you've ever wanted to build an app for your business, blog, product or service, but the heavy investment of both time and money put you off, you're not alone. The good news is that entering the mobile market no longer necessarily requires thousands of dollars and months of work. There are many mobile platforms available to help you build an app on a budget — quickly, and with no coding knowledge required. With a small investment, you can create and manage your mobile site or application using one of the platforms listed below, and start reaping the advantages of offering your customers a dedicated mobile experience, including increased awareness, engagement and revenue. Show As Gallery Have something to add to this story? Image: Mashable composite. iStock, pressureUA