The Ultimate Guide To Using iPads In The Classroom How Students Benefit From Using Social Media 14.60K Views 0 Likes A lot of criticism has been leveled at social media and the effect it has on the way students process and retain information, as well as how distracting it can be. However, social media offers plenty of opportunities for learning and interactivity, and if you take a moment to think about it, it's not too hard to see how students benefit from using social media. 100 Web 2.0 Tools Every Teacher Should Know About 44.24K Views 0 Likes We're always trying to figure out the best tools for teachers, trends in the education technology industry, and generally doing our darnedest to bring you new and exciting ways to enhance the classroom. To Flip Or Not Flip?
Publishing Learners' Writing Light summer dresses beckon behind the door as the sun finds its path through slanted shades. Memories of green, playgrounds and crystal clear seas entice my mind. However, being an educator, summer is a time when I catch up on professional training, academic studies and research. It is also a time which allows me to look into learning tools with more leisure, playing with assumptions of what may most interest students in coming semesters. With the regular bandwagon terminology regarding E-learning, learning, ways of learning is often on my mind. Whether through games and gaming, virtual worlds or tools which challenge one's creativity and organisational skills, there is something for everyone. One motivational approach is to have learners publish their own work, whether class work, a project or a topic they are interested in and may share with others. Writing is a challenge for most learners, regardless of age or whether studying a second language. What do you want your learners to say?
Lessons from an iPad Rollout Mobile Computing | Feature Lessons from an iPad Rollout Florida's "first iPad high school" has deployed 300 iPads to its high school teachers and students. By Bridget McCrea09/21/11 In March and June, THE Journal reported on The Master's Academy and the challenges it was tackling on the way to becoming Florida's first iPad school. Preparations: Training, Bandwidth, Security "We distributed them about a week before school," said Salerno, "and the teachers and students are doing very well with the devices so far." Campus WiFi coverage was one area that Salerno was holding his breath over when the devices were fired up Aug. 15. The approach has worked well so far. Device security was another point of concern prior to rollout, especially because students would be taking their iPads home every night. Take the app store, for example, which is currently blocked on all student devices. "We haven't made any decisions on the off-campus filters yet," said Salerno.
Look! I'm Learning Documentary Film by Bruce Umpstead What is Look! I'm Learning?In 2010, two elementary school teachers raised their hands and volunteered their students to help lead the way in digital learning. Theatrical Trailer This small story was too good to keep secret, and so a small group of us are working to tell the much larger story about the positive impact technology designed for learning has for all children. What we came up with is Look! Who's the audience? How do I connect? Who's chipped in so far? Shoot the remaining interviewsComplete the off-line editCompose original musicClear the rightsHelp spread the word and get programs like this to all our schoolsCan we exceed the goal? Who's on the team? You. Director/Producer Allyson Rockwell has worked and produced/directed numerous corporate, political, industrial, and educational videos. Creative Director Peter Reynolds is an accomplished writer, storyteller and illustrator, and brings his enthusiasm and energy to every project he creates.
Quality Student Blogs Part One – Posts As I have written about before, I have a system in my classroom where students can earn their own blog. Adapted from Linda Yollis’ idea, I have found the system to work well in both my grade two and grade four classes. Recently, six 4KM and 4KJ students were the first to earn their own blogs for 2012. They join a couple of student bloggers in our class who were in 2KM or 2KJ in 2010. Teaching about and encouraging quality comments is a big part of our classroom blogging program. It is the first blogging skill we teach students and we invest a lot of time in this process. Teaching students about creating quality blogs and writing quality blog posts is another area that needs explicit teaching and ongoing feedback. Over a series of blog posts, I will look at aspects of quality student blogging. What makes a quality student blog post? Over the years, I have discovered my own definition of quality by working with my student bloggers. Overuse of glitter text – very tempting for young bloggers!
World's Smallest Hard Drive Built of Atoms Just 96 atoms make up one byte of magnetic storage space. - Scientists have built a magnetic storage device made of 96 atoms. - The advance could lead to tiny hard drives able to store 200 to 300 times more information than they can today. Hard drives could one day be the size of rice grains, powering music players so small they would fit inside your ear. Scientists at IBM and the German Center for Free-Electron Laser Science have built the world's smallest unit of magnetic storage, using just 96 atoms to create one byte of data. The advance could lead to tiny hard drives able to store 200 to 300 times more information than they can today. PHOTOS: 5 Computer Techs to Replace Silicon Chips "An effect that is common in nature can produce this information storage idea," said Sebastian Loth of CFEL, lead author of the research, which is being published today in the journal Science. The natural phenomenon Loth is referring to has to do with the way electrons spin inside an atom.
At Las Vegas charter school, iPads pave students' path to learning - Tuesday, Feb. 21 By Paul Takahashi (contact) Tuesday, Feb. 21, 2012 | 2 a.m. Explore Knowledge Academy Map Data Map data ©2014 Google A dozen Las Vegas second-graders were given a common English assignment one recent morning: Write a story using new vocabulary words. But instead of picking up a pencil and paper, these students launched the Pages word processing application on their iPads and started tapping. One precocious youngster in the back of the room raised his hand. “Mrs. Katie Gilbert smiled and said, “Sure.” For all the talk about ways to bring technology into education, consider a public charter school in Clark County that provides an iPad for each of its 720 students and 54 staff members. Inside three nondescript former office buildings in the eastern Las Vegas Valley lies Explore Knowledge Academy, Nevada’s first “iSchool,” where students as young as kindergartners use novel technology to learn traditional subjects. “It almost seems too good to be true,” Mattson said, surveying the campus.
Quality Student Blogs Part Two – Post Topics Posted by Mrs Kathleen Morris on Tuesday, June 19th 2012 Last week I wrote about how students with their own blogs can be guided to create quality posts. After I published my post, I showed my class the less ideal post example I used about dogs. It was so interesting to get their opinions on the fictional post. Seeing their “shock” at the lack of proofreading, lack of content and the use of multiple exclamation marks etc. was quite amusing! When students in my class earn their own blog, I generally have a chat to them about the sort of posts they’d like to write about. A common pattern Without guidance or discussion, I have found that students can get into the habit of writing blog posts such as My familyMy petsMy friendsMy favourite sportsMy favourite animalsMy favourite booksMy favourite foods…. The “My Favourite…” theme can go on and on! I saw this pattern emerge many times before realising the students could be encourage to “think outside the square”. Be observant Think about your audience
The Past, Present, and Future of Data Storage As we approach the end of 2011 and look forward to another year, we pause to reflect on the long history of data storage. Mankind's ability to create, process, store, and recall information is light years ahead of the days of cave paintings and engravings on stone tablets. Vast amounts of information can be stored on drives smaller than your thumb, and data centers are cropping up at an increasingly high rate. What does the future of data storage hold? Are we really that close to holographic drives? Embed this image on your site: East Haven schools invest in reading technology- The New Haven Register - Serving New Haven, Connecticut EAST HAVEN -- Reading specialist Gina Tomassi sits with second-grader Isaac Florentino for a quick reading evaluation, listening to him read a short story about a riverside village. She's conducted these informal, frequent assessments countless times with other students in her career, having nailed down a stop-watch monitoring, hand-tapping, note-taking routine that certainly seems a challenge for the uncoordinated or inexperienced multi-taskers. But on this recent morning at D.C. Moore Elementary School, it's all done with the touch of an iPad. School officials see the gadgets as a possible answer to the district's achievement gap, deciding at the end of last year to spend more than $120,000 on 220 iPads and software and equip every school with a set. Now halfway through the first school year of the district's wide-spread iPad use, educators say the tablets are already having an impact. "They're really serving many purposes while transforming the environment of teaching and learning.
31 Online Resources for Better Writing Here are 31 online resources to help you improve your writing and become a better writer. No matter what kind of writing you are doing, whether you are a journalist or an entertainment blogger, a student who has to write an essay or someone who wants to become a screenwriter, there are sites on the Internet that can help you out with your writing. Here we have compiled a list of great sites that will help you with your writing, whether it is your career or you are just doing it for fun. These 31 useful sites have been divided into five different categories of tools and resources that you may need as a writer. Have a look at what we came up with. Organize Your Writing 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. Writing Aids 6. 7. 8. 9. 10. 11. 12. 13. 14. 15. Grammar 16. 17. 18. 19. Dictionaries 20. 21. 22. 23. 24. 25. 26. 27. Social Networking 28. 29. 30. 31. Guest author Janice Blythe is a regular writer for Cometdocs, a free online document conversion service.