Come spend an hour with BookJams author and California's 2007 Teacher of the Year Alan Sitomer as he hosts a webinar on how to sensibly incorporate technology and new literacies.
Your benefits of participating will include:
• Understanding why the bells and whistles of technology will not replace the need for students to critically read, write and think
• Seeing how cutting edge tech tools can (and should) coexist side-by-side with projects that can be done by candlelight.
• Recognizing that successfully incorporating technology in today's classroom BEGINS WITH THE WRITING!
• Getting comfortable with the idea that technology is evolving at such a rapid pace that there is no more "keeping up".
• Re-conceptualizing our methodologies so that we can allow students to demonstrate their full capabilities without unnecessarily holding them back simply because we, the educators, do not have the same technological abilities that they, the students, possess.
http://bit.ly/9CduNT
Learning logs were a core part of my classroom practice, having seen the effects they have on improving student performance in the bilingual schools of New Brunswick in my first year of teaching. A student there would write down what they had learnt and what they felt they'd have to learn tomorrow in order to achieve the goals of the project they had set out on. In paper format they were quite tricky to manage, and as students peer-assessed there would be paper flying all over the place.
more => http://bit.ly/cqwo6r
Third-grader Kelsey Tweden, dressed in her favorite purple shirt, diligently moved a large yellow mouse across her desk, typing out her daily spelling words. The 9-year-old Lemme Elementary student who has cerebral palsy uses assistive technology to make learning easier. Much of the technology used to help people with disabilities learn is new, and many teachers aren’t yet familiar with it. But the Iowa Center for Assistive Technology Education and Research is working toward educating future teachers about the latest tools available by teaching part
A Sports for the Mind class. Instead of grades, students receive report cards with levels of expertise like ‘‘novice’’ and ‘‘master.’’
One morning last winter I watched a middle-school teacher named Al Doyle give a lesson, though not your typical lesson. This was New York City, a noncharter public school in an old building on a nondescript street near Gramercy Park, inside an ordinary room that looked a lot like all the other rooms around it, with fluorescent lights and linoleum floors and steam-driven radiators that hissed and clanked endlessly.
Doyle was, at 54, a veteran teacher and had logged 32 years in schools all over Manhattan, where he primarily taught art and computer graphics. In the school, which was called Quest to Learn, he was teaching a class, Sports for the Mind, which every student attended three times a week. It was described in a jargony flourish on the school’s Web site as “a primary space of practice attuned to new media literacies, which are multimodal and multicultural, operating as they do within specific contexts for specific purposes.” What it was, really, was a class in technology and game design.
more => http://linkee.com/40RD
As students enter the classroom this year they will be met with a host of new technological teaching tools, including the Smart Board and the Mimio. This is the first year that the Newington Public Schools has incorporated “Smart Boards” in every classroom in the school district. “We have been chipping away at this over the last six years,” said Superintendent Dr. William Collins, adding he was excited to see the technology in place.
“The technology is what engages [the students],” he said.
more => http://bit.ly/bMZ0lD
Jim David and Sandra Farlow are completely different teachers, both thrust into the classroom of the future. A relatively young teacher, David said he lives for technology. Farlow, on the other hand, calls herself a “digital immigrant,” not having taught on computers since the late 1970s. Nevertheless, this fall the two are spearheading Cleveland Middle School’s Virtual Learning Academy, a technology-driven effort to achieve a “paperless classroom,” principal Jeff Elliott said. The school is beta-testing two Virtual Learning Academy classrooms with 20 students each, 15 fewer pupils than normal, David said. Students selected for the project use the same classroom and keep the same teacher all day long, he said.
http://bit.ly/cemvpS
Librarians, scholars, and publishers alike are asking questions about how to manage the increasing amount of unverified content (both good and bad) that is now easily available through our computers. We are all drowning in it. The situation poses a particularly challenging problem in the educational arena, where students and scholars need reliable sources of information. Whether today's researchers are doing initial research for a book, working on a doctoral dissertation, or an undergraduate term paper, it's harder and harder to know what sources to consult. Register now to hear our esteemed panel, moderated by Library Journal's Cheryl LaGuardia discuss this crisis of validation in the Google age, and the new roles that Libraries, Publishers and Scholars play in the culture of information overload.
Speakers:
Casper Grathwohl is Vice President and Online and Reference Publisher at Oxford University Press. In his 13 years at OUP, he has led the transition of Oxford's renowned dictionary and reference list into one of the leading online academic publishing programs in the world. Most recently he oversaw the build and launch of Oxford Bibliographies Online and Oxford Dictionaries Online. Prior to OUP, Casper worked for both Princeton University Press and Columbia University Press. He currently splits his time between New York and Oxford managing the two online and reference centers of the Press.
Luis F. Rodriguez is the University Librarian at the Nancy Thompson Library of Kean University. Mr. Rodriguez is a past president of the New Jersey Library Association College and University Section/New Jersey Association of College and Research Libraries Chapter and received its Distinguished Service Award in 2007. He currently serves as the legislative representative for the group, as well as the New Jersey Legislative Advocate for the Association of College and Research Libraries.
Margaret King is a Professor of Renaissance History at Brooklyn College and the Graduate Center at CUNY. Her publications include Women of the Renaissance, The Renaissance in Europe and Western Civilization: A Social and Cultural History. King received her BA from Sarah Lawrence College in 1967 and her PhD from Stanford University in 1972. She has taught at Brooklyn College since 1972 and at the Graduate Center since 1987.
Moderator: Cheryl LaGuardia, Research Librarian, Harvard University, Cambridge; author of the e-Views Blog and e-Reviews columns for Library Journal and Editor of Bowkers' Magazines for Libraries.
REGISTER FOR THIS FREE WEBCAST TODAY AT www.libraryjournal.com/OUPOnline2010
Can't make it on September 21? No problem!
Register now and you will get an email reminder from Library Journal post-live event when the webcast
is archived and available for on-demand viewing at your convenience!
It's one thing to talk about Mount St. Helens erupting in science class. It's another thing altogether to watch a video of the mountain's summit exploding into dust. Teachers all across the country are finding that judiciously chosen videos help students engage more deeply with the subject matter, and recall the information they've learned longer.
read more => http://bit.ly/dbW1oQ
The implementation of technology into classroom instruction has been a major focus in California public schools for several years. Prospective teachers in credential programs across the state are drilled as to the importance of exposing students to the technology tools available to access important data and information to use in their academic and professional life. Given the recent explosion of computer and cellular technology, such a focus is logical and well-reasoned. To be sure, current and future students will have to stay abreast of the ever-changing world of technology should they hope to stay competitive with their peers both in the classroom and in the boardroom. But, as with the case of many well-intentioned educational goals, this objective is one that looks much better on paper than it does in reality.
While its hard to argue that students need to be able to learn how to use technology to ease the accessibility of information and knowledge, I wonder how much the average classroom teacher can teach students much that they already don't know. High School Students today now use technology several times a day, the vast majority of which view their iPod or iPhone as an appendage rather than a non-living device. A good deal of students not only use computers and related devices-they are quite masterful at doing so. They complete homework faster than ever and know where to look for getting just enough information to complete an assignment They also know the quickest ways to do something truly "valuable," such as how to illegally download music without being caught and which proxies are the best to bypass the security firewall on the school's network.
I wonder then, how much can the average teacher teach THEM about technology? And, will the students really get anything new out of using it-other than a slight, temporary relief from their boring teacher? Another problem is in the very nature of most internet or technology based lesson plans, as virtually all are by nature are designed for the student to research and collect parts of information to arrive at a conclusion of sorts. The problem is that the majority of today's high school students have one thought when receiving an assignment-"What is the fastest, shortest way to the correct answer?" With students bypassing much of the investigatory "fact finding" elements of the assignment, little to nothing is gained and the time is wasted.
Virtually all students now have adequate tech skills. Further, many use them to engage in academic dishonesty. I regularly catch several students each year submitting cut and paste essay papers, and a good number more in the "pocket iPhone" attempt of accessing online information during a test. The alarming thing is that many students do not see the harm in plagiarism-especially if it is using cut and paste "just a little" when writing a paper.
Again, it is not my intent to argue the importance of students gaining high tech skills. Rather, my point is that most students already have more than enough, and are rather unlikely to gain much more from a teacher who did not grow up as part of Generation Text (I just made that up). Actually, I would like to see more emphasis on students learning how to complete their work while NOT using technology. Here is a concept. How about we keep the technology focus, but include standards regarding the traditional research and academic work? As I remind my students, there was a time without the internet, when people went to a place called the library. No, it wasn't like the library where you go to use the computers. No, back then, the library was a mystical place that had these strange, cumbersome objects that people used to find the info needed to complete term papers. Yes, these great devices were made of paper, and didn't require batteries or electricity, and were wireless. The main problem, though, is that they required actual effort to use them!
Troy Alexander is a High School Social Science teacher and owner of www.chipsdigitalpc.com
AN amazing list relevant to "every teacher no matter what grade level or subject".
It includes tools for file sharing, photo and video editing, networking and software just to list a few.
Check it out at http://bit.ly/cdfzSe
