by Tech & Learning
With the start of school right around the corner, I decided to revisit a post I’ve done on sites for educational games. This list, presented in alphabetical order, has a nice mix of subjects and grade levels that teachers can use with their students.
http://www.techlearning.com/Default.aspx?tabid=67&EntryId=4724
Share on Facebookby School CIO
A few years ago, the notion of using a smartphone as a legitimate learning tool seemed improbable, if not out-and-out foolish. Students, in most cases were either prohibited from bringing their mobile phones to school, or at the very least told to leave them in their lockers or turned off and stored in their backpacks during school hours. However, according to a recent survey conducted by MDR’s EdNET Insight research services for Mimio, what many students are going to hear is, “Class, turn on your mobile phone; it’s time to learn.” The nine-question survey polled more than 150 educational professionals, including school district technology, instructional media services, and curriculum directors, coordinators and specialists. Respondents were asked the impact that consumer technology devices and bring-your-own-technology (BYOT) initiatives were likely to have on future interactive classroom planning and purchases.
http://www.schoolcio.com/article/survey-nearly-half-of-schools-to-move-to-byot-in-near-future/52928
Share on FacebookBy Matt Townsley, CIO Advisor
One of my roles as district technology and curriculum director is to lead our annual two-day New Teacher Institute. Educators new to our district learn about curriculum initiatives, spend time with a seasoned mentor, and connect with district and building personnel. I’ve struggled with the role technology should play during these two days. Should it be tool-centered—step-by-step tutorials of our primary management and instructional systems? Should it be totally avoided so that the new staff do not feel overwhelmed? The answer for us seems to lie somewhere in the middle.
http://www.schoolcio.com/Default.aspx?tabid=136&EntryId=4839
Share on FacebookBy Jeffrey S. Solochek, Tampa Bay Times
After seeing the course’s popularity and learning that no other online sign-language high school credit-bearing courses were available in Florida (or really anywhere else), Pasco eSchool principal Joanne Glenn decided to launch virtual American Sign Language herself. She conferred with local ASL teachers and saw that the course used technology such as Skyping and videotaping of lessons, suggesting that creating a full online course would be a logical next step. “The longer we waited for someone else to solve the problem, there were more students who were denied the opportunity to learn this language,” Glenn said. “We had the tools and the technology. The only thing holding us back … was us.”
Share on FacebookBy Jon Gold, Network World
“The Course Builder open source project is an experimental early step for us in the world of online education. It is a snapshot of an approach we found useful and an indication of our future direction. We hope to continue development along these lines, but we wanted to make this limited code base available now, to see what early adopters will do with it, and to explore the future of learning technology,” wrote Google director of research Peter Norvig in an official blog post. Google says that Stanford University, UC – San Diego, and Indiana University are all looking to utilize the Course Builder framework in the design of their online offerings, as are overseas institutions like Spain’s Universia and the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Lausanne.
http://www.networkworld.com/news/2012/091312-google-open-source-262438.html
Share on Facebookby Adario Strange, IT Pro Portal
What makes the Next EDU Guru programme unique is that it focuses on an educator’s ability to leverage video to deliver their messages to students. Over the course of the next two weeks, a panel consisting of education and video experts from Google and Khan Academy will review entrants who apply to the programme. Ten winners will be flown to San Francisco to receive further training and support from YouTube and Khan Academy staff, as well as a $1,000 (£615) B&H gift card to be used for video production equipment. A look at the programme’s video message offers a clear signal to would-be entrants that Next EDU Guru is looking for individuals who know how to creatively educate through entertainment and story telling rather than simply posting dry instructional videos online.
Share on Facebookby the Guardian
Some of the examples of where we use mobile devices range from simply taking photos and videos to share in class or recording homework, to creating revision podcasts or animations. The point often is student choice, encouraging independent learning and allowing students to choose what approach will suit them. We have found that encouraging mobile device use has enabled our students to access resources that we cannot provide otherwise. For example, students access the internet for research (such as the internet or our department blogs/Facebook support page). On fieldwork, students can record images, video, sound, take notes, use GPS technology and mapping software to record information essential to their coursework. In school we have used mobiles to record work, for example the students used chalk around school to leave messages or symbols regarding social spaces and guerilla messages and then used mobiles to take images or record video or sound interviews of them discussing their work which could then be shared with the class. The focus is on the learning, the discussion on what they gained from the activity not on the device.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/teacher-network/2012/sep/10/mobile-phones-classroom-teaching
Share on Facebookby Red Orbit
This list compiled by Kids Activities Blog identifies free educational apps for kids that parents can download for their children’s entertainment learning. The best apps for kids are the ones that can keep them engaged and learning. Now more than ever parents are handing over their phone or iPad to occupy children. There are language apps that teach and drill letters, phonics, grammar and vocabulary. 50 Languages, Dictionary Flashcards, iStorybooks, Practice English Grammar, Speak Spanish, Beginning Sounds, Letter of the Day, Phonics Genius, Phonics Tic-Tac-Toe, and Sight Words List all made the list of kid-friendly free apps that teach language skills.
Share on Facebookby edudemic
The mobile learning revolution is creating a lot of buzz in the education world, and the benefits undoubtedly stand out. But nothing exists as a purely positive entity. While the movement toward “m-learning” (as those totally in the know call it) marks a change in how education approaches technological developments, anyone considering the developing tools needs to research the downsides before making the leap.
http://edudemic.com/2012/09/10-big-but-never-discussed-problems-with-mobile-learning/
Share on Facebookby Marc Saltzman, the Spec
Like many post-secondary students, Steven Nelson realized he was in need of a new computer before heading back to school this fall. But instead of opting for one of the “big brands,” the Seneca College business marketing student purchased a custom-built machine from a local company instead. “All I needed was a budget-friendly Windows 7 computer that could run software for school and power my hobby of producing electronic music,” says Nelson, who lives in Richmond Hill. Nelson paid under $300 for the desktop computer, built into a Xion-branded tower — hardly a household name compared to the likes of HP, Dell, Apple, Lenovo, Toshiba, Sony and Acer. While Nelson says he generally cares about brands — the 20-year-old was wearing a Diesel shirt and Zara jeans — he says he “couldn’t care less” about what company’s logo was on his computer. “The off-brand had the specs I needed for the price I wanted, plus it didn’t have any of that annoying ‘bloatware’ my $600 HP PC had,” he says, referring to the extra software pre-installed on most Windows computers.
http://www.thespec.com/news/business/article/799766–back-to-school-tech-do-brand-names-matter
Share on FacebookBY STANFORD
The newest member of the family of platforms hosting online university courses was formally presented in society last week. Its name is Class2Go, and its proud parents are a team of eight engineers at Stanford’s Computer Science Department. Class2Go stands out for a variety of reasons. It is open-source, it is nonprofit, it is portable and it is designed not only for teaching but also for research, so Stanford professors will be able to learn about learning as they teach.
http://news.stanford.edu/news/2012/september/class2go-online-platform-091212.html
Share on Facebookby: Bianca Da Silva, College Classes
The president of the Khan Academy, Shantanu Sinah, will be taking to the stage at the West Michigan Policy Forum to discuss education and how this subject should be tackled in the near future. The Academy was established as a way to reach out to children who might have found it difficult to keep up with their school curriculum, and the success of these videos have put the institution into the limelight and drawn a lot of attention to its aims. Technology is one of the main focuses of the Academy, and the organization is attempting to use it to benefit students all over the country. According to Sinah, the aim of incorporating technology into the classroom is to personalize the learning experience that students receive at school. “Students right now are kind of forced into a system where they’re pushed forward in almost assembly line model in their classrooms,” he stated, “You can use technology to personalize the instruction and target what their individual needs are. You can fill those gaps and, when you do that and when you empower students to do that, they really run with it. The learning is so much more productive.”
Share on FacebookBy Donna Boynton, TELEGRAM & GAZETTE
Kindle in hand, Clinton High School English teacher Scott Connery talks with students in his senior honors English class. Scott Connery holds all the books he will use to teach his senior honors English class in his hand. Mr. Connery is part of a BYOD — Bring Your Own Device — pilot program being tried out at Clinton High School this year. His students have pre-loaded Kindles — an e-reader — and he teaches from a Kindle Fire, which has a YouTube app for quick references. It is an English class that’s still about literature, but the lingo is no longer about “pages” and “chapters,” but percentage of the book finished, the way in which the Kindle measures the book. “They love it. It fits in with who they are anyway,” Mr. Connery said. “This is fun. I feel like we have taken a step forward. I have all the things I need literally in the palm of my hand.”
http://www.telegram.com/article/20120916/NEWS/109169686/0/NEWS03
Share on Facebookby Richard O Jones, Middletown Journal
Paper is optional, on the way to becoming obsolete in Mollie Marot’s biology classroom at Badin High School. Although her students have heavy, three-inch thick textbooks assigned to them, those are only in case of emergency should the technology fail. Instead, her students use an electronic version of the textbook on their school-provided iPads. “I’m not lecturing at all,” she said, especially in her Advanced Placement classes, where the curriculum is jam-packed with strict time lines. Educators said technology today is only scratching the surface of how education will be transformed in the next decade. They said technology will dramatically drive how students are taught in the future.Technology turns the classroom upside down. Educators said technology today is only scratching the surface of how education will be transformed in the next decade. They said technology will dramatically drive how students are taught in the future.
http://www.middletownjournal.com/news/news/technology-turns-the-classroom-upside-down/nR995/
Share on Facebookby YouTubeEDU
YouTube has commenced a search to find a new type of educator: one that teaches via online video. With growing statistics proving web video has become part of everyday life, YouTube recognized that bringing the world’s greatest educators together, onto their website, would allow people from all walks of life to benefit from their great expanse of knowledge. YouTube’s educational channel, YouTube EDU, currently has more than 700,000 videos stretching over 800 channels. YouTube’s goal is to house the largest educational video library in the world, and seeing a 50% increase in their educational video viewing, YouTube knew it was time to fan the fire for emerging online teachers. The creation of the “Next EDU Gurus” competition is a combined effort with Khan Academy (an educational channel on YouTube), and has a fun twist. Applicants must submit videos teaching topics in creative ways; therefore, showcasing their ability to convey subject matter in a way that’s different, yet easy for people to process.
http://www.equities.com/news/news-headline-story?dt=2012-09-16&val=483824&d=1&cat=headline
Share on Facebookby Academic Earth
Students taking online courses from prestigious US universities will be able to take final exams in a global network of invigilated test centers. Education company Pearson will provide test centres for the edX online courses provided by Harvard and MIT. This will give online courses “real world” value, says the edX president. As well as providing supervised exam centres they will also authenticate the identity of online learners. It will also see formidable partnership between some of the world’s most famous universities and the world’s biggest education firm, Pearson. This year has seen growing interest in the idea of delivering university courses online – allowing universities to reach much bigger numbers of students and cutting the cost of tuition.
http://www.academicearth.org/blog/open-education/harvard-and-mit-online-courses-get-real-world-exams
Share on FacebookBy Cate Long, Reuters
Online higher education 1.0 consisted of for-profit and non-profit colleges and universities providing virtual education that mirrored the classroom experience. It also included elite universities like Harvard and MIT providing free classes via YouTube and other platforms with no feedback loop or credentialing process. Online higher education 2.0 will likely see open classes combined with testing and credentialing processes resting on massive open source platforms. Imagine if this sparked a second renaissance for Western education.
Share on Facebookby Mary Beth Marklein, USA TODAY
About a mile from the main quad at Stanford University, one of the nation’s bastions of exclusive and expensive higher education, a street-level office building across the street from an Olive Garden houses the makings of an up-and-coming contender. In this version of education, learning will be free and available to anyone who wants it while operating like a whimsical playground: No one is late for class, failure is not an option, and a lesson looks something like Angry Birds, the physics-based puzzle game that has been downloaded more than 1 billion times. “You want learning to be as much fun as it is to play a video game,” says Sebastian Thrun, a Google vice president and Stanford research professor best known for his role in building Google’s driverless car.
http://www.digtriad.com/news/article/245338/175/A-World-Where-Grades-Will-Be-Left-Behind
Share on Facebookby Keith Uhlig, Wausau Daily Herald
The Wisconsin Virtual School, a 13-year-old online school operated through the Cooperative Educational Service Agency No. 9 in Tomahawk, is part of Wisconsin Digital Learning Collaborative, which was recently formed through the state’s Department of Public Instruction. The collaborative also includes CESA 9, DPI and the Wisconsin eSchool Network, another Wisconsin virtual school that serves 12 large districts mostly in the southern half of the state. Any Wisconsin student will be able to take online courses through the collaborative, which in essence combines the virtual educational offerings of WVS and eSchool Network. The collaborative will allow the partners to share resources and avoid redundancies, said Dawn Nordine, the director of WVS.
Share on FacebookBy Arnold Kling, American.com
A professor from 150 years ago could walk into a classroom today and go to work without missing a beat. Is this about to change? Many entrepreneurs and commentators believe so. Here, I offer my own assessment of the prospects for technologies to revolutionize education. This essay will explain why I label various technologies as winners, losers, and magic bullets in the table below. My opinions are not based on exhaustive research. They are based on my experience both as a high school teacher and as an entrepreneur. My evaluations are based on whether I view these technologies as supporting a model of education that is one-to-many or a model that is many-to-one. The latter is the model I prefer, as will become clear in the rest of this essay.
Share on FacebookBy Tanya Roscorla, Center for Digital Ed
California colleges could have more open-source digital textbooks beginning in 2013 if Gov. Jerry Brown signs two bills sitting on his desk. SB 1052 and SB 1053 would bring the University of California, the California State University and the California Community Colleges together to find or develop open education resources. Private and independent institutions also would participate. These open education resources include textbooks, videos and simulations that others can use because they are licensed under an open copyright license or are in the public domain.
http://www.centerdigitaled.com/news/New-Medical-Test-Shaves-Time.html
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