Apps for Math!!
Free Tech 4 Teachers Website has a blog post about 5 GREAT Apps for Math click here
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Oct 19 - 25, 2014 is Digital Citizenship Week
Edutopia has 6 resources for teachers to help guide them in lessons about Digital Citizenship. click here
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5 Ways Teachers Can use Their iPads Professionally
iPad Apps for School blog by Richard Byrnes has an excellent article just for teachers who have iPads. CLICK HERE to go to the blog directly.
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Digital Citizenship
The Digital Citizenship website (click here) explains the, "norms of appropriate and responsible technology use." Teachers, technology leaders and parents need to be aware of the concept of digital citizenship as not a skill but a way of behaving online. Preparing students for the 21st century involves them practicing and being aware of how to be a good digital citizen.
This website (click above) offers tips as well as books for parents about teaching your child about digital citizenship in English as well as Arabic. The books can be ordered from the website.
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Thinglink Blog has an animate, ongoing, SAMR model slideshow (click here) to help define the SAMR model and show how you can "teach above the line," from enhancing your teaching to transforming your teaching and the student's learning through Modification and ultimately Redesigning your lessons using technology.
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Book Creator App for iPads
Book Creator is simple way to create your own beautiful iBooks, right on the iPad. Read them in iBooks, send them to your friends, or submit them to the iBookstore. Ideal for children’s picture books, photo books, art books, cook books, manuals, textbooks, and the list goes on!
Edudemic blog has a post about other apps for creating books. click here
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The Best 1:1 Device is a Great Teacher
Andrew Marcinek, Director of Technology and co-founder of EducatorU.org, wrote an article for Edutopia's blog entitled: The Best 1:1 Device is a Great Teacher. (click here) In it, he mentions the need for all teachers, as professionals, to constantly widen their horizons, to engage in their own professional development through PLN's as well as iTunes U.
"...the best device a school can roll out is a teacher who can adapt to new and emerging technologies, does not always require formal training for learning and staying current, and is not tethered to a product (such as PowerPoint or a SmartBoard) in order to teach. Education technology will continue to progress, and part of this evolution will be for students and teachers to stay current with both curriculum and digital literacy. Even in the absence of technology, a great teacher will continually seek out ways to engage his or her students in great lessons, simulations or challenges." July 29, 2013
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What is Google Drive and Google Docs?
Google Drive is a drive in 'the cloud' (online) which Google offers to all subscribers for free. It has 15GB of storage space for documents, videos and images. It is where you go to access your Google Docs.
Getting Started With Google Docs (click here) a helpful page created by Google Support which gives you step by step directions on how to open and use Google Docs, share documents, add images and format. Everything you ever wanted to know about using Google Docs can be found on this page.
For more information about all the features offered in Google Docs, check out the Free Technology 4 Teachers Blog by Richard Byrne in the link below.
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How To Create a Bibliography Using Google Docs
Free Technology For Teachers, by Richard Byrne, has a post outlining how to create a Bibliography called Easy Bib, using Google Docs. If students have a Google account, they can access their own Google Docs and save their documents on Google Drive. Google Docs can be used for note taking and now the feature for creating a bibliography on Google Docs, makes it even easier for report writing.
(click here) to see the blog post with easy to follow directions.
*Note for teachers using Google Docs from their school's Google domain (in other words, the email address does not end in @gmail.com) RIS does not have Add Ons (like Easy Bib) as a feature for the Google Docs. The Easy Bib Add On is available to personal Google accounts which students would be using. These are gmail accounts which end in: @gmail.com
*Note for teachers using Google Docs from their school's Google domain (in other words, the email address does not end in @gmail.com) RIS does not have Add Ons (like Easy Bib) as a feature for the Google Docs. The Easy Bib Add On is available to personal Google accounts which students would be using. These are gmail accounts which end in: @gmail.com
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Edublogs Teacher Challenges
Edublogs has a series of challenges with guides and lessons to help teachers with such things as student blogs, personal blogs and developing your own PLN (Personalized Learning Network) (click here) The student blog guides give information about attribution of videos, images and slideshows and the use of Creative Commons. These are relevant to fair use policy and the student's role as a responsible digital citizen.
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Student Blogging Challenge 2014
This year's student blogging challenge has gotten underway. Here is the link to find out more about the components of the challenge (click here).
Students around the world are invited to participate in 10 week's worth of blogging challenges. The program, in its 12th year, is supervised by a teacher in Australia. Student's identity is protected because they only register with their first name, age, blog address and country. Mentors and students are encouraged to read and comment on each others blog to help the bloggers to become better writers and blog posters. Nominations are made upon completion for the winner of the Student Blog Award for 2014. Winners are given a badge to display on their blog showing they have created an award winning blog.
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Richard Byrne, Google Educator and author of award winning blog FREE TECH FOR TEACHERS, has written a helpful post about the benefits of blogging in education. Click on the link above to access the post as well as a PDF document to download which takes you step by step on how to set up blogs in your class, as well as pitfalls and support.
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SAMR Model
The Substitution Augmentation Modification Redefinition Model offers a method of seeing how computer technology might impact teaching and learning. It also shows a progression that adopters of educational technology often follow as they progress through teaching and learning with technology.
While one might argue over whether an activity can be defined as one level or another, the important concept to grasp here is the level of student engagement. One might well measure progression along these levels by looking at who is asking the important questions. As one moves along the continuum, computer technology becomes more important in the classroom but at the same time becomes more invisibly woven into the demands of good teaching and learning.
SAMR model developed by Dr. Ruben Puentedura, PhD.
Read Write Think offers a bunch of great web, iOS, and Android applications for students. One of those that I recently learned about from David Kapuler is Read Write Think's Timeline creator. RWT Timline is available as a web app (Flash required), as an Android app, and as an iPad app. All three versions make it easy for students to create timelines for any series of events.
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The Pedagogy Wheel v2.0
This Pedagogy Wheel is all about transformation and integration. The explanations of the wheel and how it fits within integrating technology are explained in Allan Carrington's blog which you can access by clicking on hthe link in the title above. The wheel gives iPad apps which support the different levels of Bloom's Taxonomy within the framework of the SAMR model.
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Read Write Think Timeline - A Timeline Tool for Almost All Devices
from: Free Technology For Teachers by Richard Byrne
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How Do I get a PLN?
PLN's (Personalized/Professional Learning Networks) are all about collaboration using technology. PLN's promote reflection and collaboration.
This article on Edutopia has lots of good reasons to start your own PLN.
Some suggestions include:
Spend 20 minutes a day interacting and collaborating. Here's how:
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Teaching in the 21st Century
21st Century lessons need to be engaging, relevant and challenging. It all begins with YOU!
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THE POWER OF BACKWARDS DESIGN
In the recently published interview with Grant Wiggins, author of Understanding By Design, he discussed the need for evidence of student learning to be central in all teacher's lesson planning. Wiggins and Mc Tighe's book and theory are the basis for the PYP unit planners. We begin with the BIG IDEA (central idea) and decide what the evidence of student learning will look like.
Along the way, formative assessment, informs our lessons and gives us feedback on the individual student's understanding. Wiggins suggests suing Socratic methods for formative assessments. This is easily achieved using technology as the tool and Socative (teacher and student) as the Apps.
What other ways are you using technology to help you find evidence of student learning?
Educator's Technology and Mobile Learning Blog, rated #7 in good Edutech blogs in 2012, has a blog post called: An Interesting Collection of iPad Tips for Teachers
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Student Blogging Activities That Don't Rely on Text
The Teacher Blog called, Free Technology for Teachers (click here) by Richard Byrne, a Google Certified Teacher, is always full of up to date blog posts.
This week's post is about the blogging phenomenon being used in classrooms around the world. It has suggestions for blogging for kids which doesn't require text.
...the great thing about blogging is that it doesn’t have to be limited to written text. In fact, publishing podcasts or publishing short videos on a YouTube channel can be considered blogging too. Creating and publishing infographics and or interactive images is another form of blogging that isn’t completely reliant on text.
Teachers who try using a class blog to reflect on learning as a class , find students become more engaged in the process of reflection. If the routine of class reflection of the week's learning becomes more common place, then students will start making a point of mentioning ideas for adding to he class blog throughout the week; "We should add that to the blog!"
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This grade 1 teacher had an interesting response to some one who had viewed her blog and questioned why she was posting about her class on a public blog. Her answer will astound you.
She maintains that the positives outcomes of having her kids' learning being shared with the world has opened up so many opportunities for her students. Their ongoing discussions about photos, first names, privacy and being mindful before posting are life lessons for children nowadays. These are opportunities for her to guide them and teach them at a young age, how to be safe when online. The online world is out there. Children will be a part of it, Like it or not. As educators, it is our responsibility to mentor them and guide them to learn how to conduct themselves safely online.
This blog also has ideas and thoughts which are a valuable resource for teachers who are using classroom blogs.
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21 Things for iPad
This blog post comes from REMC Association of Michigan. It has 21 links, which show various ways the iPad can be used for 21st century skills.
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Heidi Hayes Jacob; 21st Century Curriculum, what year are we preparing our students for?
Alan November's TEDx Talk about teaching and technology. (16 min)
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Repost from: Thoughtful Learning Blog
What are 21st century skills?
The 21st century skills are a set of abilities that students need to develop in order to succeed in the information age. The Partnership for 21st Century Skills lists three types:
Learning Skills
- Critical Thinking
- Creative Thinking
- Collaborating
- Communicating
Literacy Skills
- Information Literacy
- Media Literacy
- Technology Literacy
Life Skills
- Flexibility
- Initiative
- Social Skills
- Productivity
- Leadership
New Skills for New Jobs
These skills have always been important for students, though they are particularly important in our information-based economy. When most workers held jobs in industry, the key skills were knowing a trade, following directions, getting along with others, working hard, and being professional—efficient, prompt, honest, and fair. Schools have done an excellent job of teaching these skills, and students still need them.
To hold information-age jobs, though, students also need to think deeply about issues, solve problems creatively, work in teams, communicate clearly in many media, learn ever-changing technologies, and deal with a flood of information. The rapid changes in our world require students to be flexible, to take the initiative and lead when necessary, and to produce something new and useful.
Demand in the Workplace
These are not just anecdotal observations. The following quotations come from Up to the Challenge, a report by the Association for Career and Technical Education (ACTE), Career Technical Education (CTE), and the Partnership for 21st Century Skills (P21):
- The employment titan Manpower reports that despite the recession, 31 percent of employers throughout the world struggle to find qualified workers because of “a talent mismatch between workers’ qualifications and the specific skill sets and combinations of skills employers want.”
- The American Management Corporation reports that employers want workers who can think critically, solve problems creatively, innovate, collaborate, and communicate.
- The National Association of Manufacturers reports, “Today’s skill shortages are extremely broad and deep, cutting across industry sectors and impacting
more than 80 percent of companies surveyed. This human capital performance gap threatens our nation’s ability to compete . . . [and] is emerging as our nation’s most critical business issue." - The National Academies indicate that “The danger exists that Americans may not know enough about science, technology, or mathematics to contribute significantly to, or fully benefit from, the knowledge-based economy that is already taking shape around us.”
- The New York Times reports that low-skilled workers are being laid off and "turned away at the factory door and increasingly becoming the long-term unemployed . . .” This issue results from a disparity between the skills that worker have and those that employers need.
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