The Teacher’s Quick Guide To Pinterest The following article is by Julie Delello of the University of Texas at Tyler. She can be reached at jdelello[at]uttyler.edu if you have any questions or comments. Children learn social skills by interacting freely with peers. Playgrounds provide an opportunity for children from different classrooms to interact and enhance skill development. For some, the relatively new social network site Pinterest has become a virtual playground allowing users to “pin” inspiring images from around the web. As a new teacher, it’s easy to become overwhelmed trying to create motivating lessons while managing the responsibilities within the classroom. Pinterest, created in 2009 and launched in March of 2010, has been ranked 10th out of the top visited social networking sites across the world, allowing users to search for pins with a specific theme or subject. Getting Started Pinterest is straightforward and doesn’t require a lot of technological experience to get started. Set up an account. References
The Connected Educator CLASSROOM 21 | by Greg Limperis {*style:<b> August marks the </b>*} U.S. Department of Education’s month-long celebration of the connected educator. What exactly does that mean to you, to me, and to millions of students we educate daily in this world? Well, years ago, I began teaching students before I even knew I wanted to be an educator. For sure, I was growing my connections, but my connections were limited. Little did I know that, at the time, I was increasing my connections but still limited to the here and now. Nonetheless, it was amazing that this urge forward, this desire to learn from others and share, connect and collaborate brought me to my first real job. During this time, one of those connections suggested to me that I might return to school to become an educator. Upon completing my master’s degree in education, I began working as a teacher in a classroom situation that felt foreign. As the years went by and technology improved, I never lost my passion to be connected.
tools Pinterest Aids Educators in Common Core Prep With more states ramping up their preparations on Common Core State Standards, educators are looking for ways to get a handle on the new standards. The social network Pinterest is becoming a surprisingly valuable tool as they share Common Core resources with one another. In North Dakota, educators received a basic introduction to the Common Core this spring. In the fall, a consortium of local schools plans to hold in-service training for grade-level teams so they can work on the Common Core. The Common Core has been available for several years now, so more online resources — such as Learning A-Z and One More Story — now line up with the standards, said Paula Rogers, a Title I reading and math specialist in Langdon Area Public Schools in North Dakota. "We can work with teachers from everywhere, and we're working on the same apples-to-apples curriculum," Rogers said. How Pinterest helps educators make Common Core less intimidating Pinterest for Government: A Recipe for Success?
Ten Ideas for Teaching Teachers Technology I had never been to an "unconference" before, but when I heard the organizer of SocialEdCon Unconference introduce the event, I knew I was in for something new: "Write your ideas that you want to discuss on the top of the poster board. Each of you can look at all of the ideas and put check marks beside the ones that interest you, and then that will drive the topics that we discuss today." I leaned over to my husband, Brad Flickinger, an "unconference expert," and whispered that I'd love to learn more about educating teachers about technology. He told me to go up and write it down. I gulped! I was here to learn from others -- not lead a session -- but I jumped into the deep end of the pool of unconferencing. As the Director of Instructional Technology for the Poudre School District in Fort Collins, Colorado, I'm responsible for the professional "technology" development of nearly 1500 teachers. What Did I Share? 1) Show, don't tell. 2) Teach with TV. 3) Be "liked." 5) Blog about it.
copyright free audio podcasts 40 Ways Education Technology Will Be Used In The Future Do you know what technology you’ll be using in the classroom 5 years from now? What about 10 years from now? A new visualization may be able to help. Thanks to the hard work by Envisioning Tech , it’s simple to see what we could expect to happen in the next few decades. Better still, the visualization below is categorized into color-coded topics. Want to post this up in the teacher’s lounge or on your desk? The Best Copyright-Free Photo Libraries: - DotGovWatch Exposing the good, the bad, and the buggy - A Blog Monitoring U.S. Federal, State, and Local Government Websites Thousands of photos taken by U.S. Government employees as part of their official duty are free of copyright and free to use. Based on my extensive review of government photo libraries, the best collections below. Search Public Domain Photos: #1 — HiveStock.com Awesome, high-resolution photos of landscapes, sunsets, mountains, flowers, animals, science, and much more. Image Quality: Excellent! #2 — Agricultural Research Service Beautiful, high-resolution photos of plants, animals, agriculture, and agricultural research. Image Quality: Excellent! #3 — U.S. Photos of scenery, wildlife, people in the outdoors, and miscellany. Image Quality: Average – Excellent! #4 — Department of Defense Photos of soldiers, vehicles, and operations in Army, Air Force, Navy, and Marines. Image Quality: Good – Excellent! #5 — Yellowstone National Park Photos of everything in the park including scenery, plants, animals, wildfires, geo-thermal activity, park visitors, etc. #6 — Antarctic Photo Library
Social Media: Guidelines for School Administrators Social media tools like Facebook, Myspace, Instagram, Google+ and Flickr are potentially exciting learning and teaching tools that can help teachers and students make connections to ideas, skills and concepts in a 21st-century learning environment. However, social media are getting a bad rap in education. Some students use the tools in ways that pit their First Amendment rights against their responsibilities as students in brick-and-mortar schools. In 2006, the American Civil Liberties Union filed suit against the Hermitage School District in Pennsylvania after the district suspended student Justin Layshock for creating an unflattering online parody of his principal. Clearly, schools must consider the rights of students to freedom of expression. The courts have determined otherwise. Probationary teachers can be dismissed without cause, and ill-conceived comments on social networks have ruined nascent careers. Protection from Predators There are other boundaries that must not be crossed.
copyright free Top 10 Educational Technology Hashtags for Educators Twitter is a real treasure trove of educational resources for teachers and educators. It is one of my favourite web tools to stay updated about what is going on in the field of educational technology. It goes without saying that everyone of you has got a Twitter account but the question is do you really benefit from Twitter as should be ? By implication, my question is referring to educational and professional development benefits. Yes you might be following hundreds of bloggers and educators ; yet still unable to sift through the tsunami of tweets you have everyday.Tweeting is an art which you should master and the key to the mastery of this art is hashtags. Hashtag is a great way for users to locate and keep track of particular information within the massive tweets. Below is a list of top educational technology hashtags I have meticulously handpicked for you. Check out the list and don't forget to share it with your colleagues : 1- #edtech 2- #edchat 3- #Web20 4- #elearning 5- #mlearning