Saturday, May 12, 2012

Radical experiment in teaching – World Simulation, Twitter, and media literacy | adambohannon

Radical experiment in teaching – World Simulation, Twitter, and media literacy | adambohannon: "Last week Dr. Wesch and his class ran the 5th(?) successful World Simulation for Intro to Cultural Anthropology here at K-State. I was there helping get things set up and video taping the action. Every year the World Sim always proves to be an awesome experience. Having taught for Dr. Wesch twice and guided more than 60 students in creating their own culture to let loose at the simulation, I can attest for the simulation’s effectiveness. Afterwards, students always give it rave reviews. It’s valuable to be able to roughly simulate world history and get the feeling that you are a part of something rather than a casual observer (having taken the class back in 2004 and participated in the simulation, I can attest to that as well)."

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Friday, May 11, 2012

An Education Revolution Beckons in the Digital Age



By Joe Robertson - Kansas City Star






While educators try to imagine it, students who’ve already freed themselves are galloping through the digital world.
At their best they are collaborating, creating, seeking justice, making art, defining their significance.
“Don’t we want to create students who can do that?” says Michael Wesch, a gone-viral phenomenon on the Internet who essentially launched himself digitally five years ago from the basement of his small farmhouse outside Manhattan, Kan.
He’s a 36-year-old cultural anthropologist at Kansas State University who has become the prophet of an education revolution.
They’re already out there, he says. Students and young adults who have made their mark persisting at new ideas, starting companies, connecting the world to social justice issues, fueling citizen rebellion in Egypt, distributing humanitarian aid to Haiti.
Read the full article here.

Monday, April 23, 2012

PBS Teachers | Cyberchase

PBS Teachers | Cyberchase: "CYBERCHASE, the award-winning, research-based adventure series and website, helps kids develop strong math and problem-solving skills. Explore this site for ways to help your favorite kids get the most out of math! Designed for kids ages 8 to 12 and packed with mystery, humor, and action, CYBERCHASE delivers positive messages about math by teaching concepts in a fun way that kids can understand. "

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Tuesday, March 27, 2012

A Gopher Guesses Your Number - A Math Game

Free Technology for Teachers: A Gopher Guesses Your Number - A Math Game: "Magic Gopher could be a fun little way to get students thinking about the "magic" of mathematics. Allow them to struggle with the challenge of figuring out how the gopher gets it right every time then explain it."

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Saturday, March 24, 2012

Board approves new principals, tech fee

Today's News-Herald - Serving Lake Havasu City & The Lower Colorado River Area: "The $5 technology fee will help offset costs “associated with providing technology and software license for general student use district-wide,” the agenda states. Annual costs have reached around $225,000 for technology licenses."

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Saturday, March 10, 2012

How to Make Contact with Parents – SimpleK12

How to Make Contact with Parents – SimpleK12: "Every morning before my students started trickling in, I’d write three emails out to parents about three children who had blown me away (or made progress, or made me smile, or shared something new, etc) during the previous day. I kept track, and by the end of my five months teaching, last year, I had ALMOST sent one email to each parent."

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Free Technology for Teachers: What's Your Goal? Thinking About Tech Choices

Free Technology for Teachers: What's Your Goal? Thinking About Tech Choices: "I am often asked by educators (classroom teachers, school administrators, librarians) to help them “use technology.” My response to their requests is always, “yes, I will help you.” The next thing out of my mouth is, “what is your goal for using technology?”"

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Tuesday, March 6, 2012

Insanity — Mandatory Retention Of Third Graders Who Don’t Read At Grade Level? | Larry Ferlazzo’s Websites of the Day…

Insanity — Mandatory Retention Of Third Graders Who Don’t Read At Grade Level? | Larry Ferlazzo’s Websites of the Day…: "Several states are considering requiring mandatory retention of third graders who don’t read at grade level. Here are some articles and posts about this insanity, and I’m adding them to The Best Resources For Learning About Grade Retention, Social Promotion & Alternatives To Both:"

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Tuesday, February 21, 2012

Myths and legends teachers' resources

Myths and legends teachers' resources: "This section provides access to a range of resources created or recommended by teachers for use in lessons. These have been categorised in to 'general resources'; i.e. those that could be used with any of the myths and legends within this site, and resources specific to a particular myth or legend. There is also an opportunity for you to add your own resources to share with other teachers."

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Friday, February 17, 2012

7 Educational YouTube Channels – SimpleK12

7 Educational YouTube Channels – SimpleK12: "YouTube is packed full of great content for educators and students. A few great things about online videos...

there are a lot of them out there.
they cover a wide range of subjects.
they are free!"

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Saturday, December 24, 2011

Free Technology for Teachers: Watch 75 Full-Length National Geographic Films

Free Technology for Teachers: Watch 75 Full-Length National Geographic Films: "I've highlighted Snag Films and Snag Learning in the past. It's been a while though so I thought I should point out that Snag Films has some great educational content available for free viewing. One great example of this is their National Geographic channel containing 75 full-length documentaries. You can view these videos online or use the iPad, Android tablet, and Kindle Fire apps to watch Snag Films."

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Monday, December 19, 2011

Free Technology for Teachers: 11 Places to Find Free eBooks for Yourself and Your Students

Free Technology for Teachers: 11 Places to Find Free eBooks for Yourself and Your Students: "The Internet is full of ebooks. Much to the chagrin of textbook publishers, some teachers are now using ebooks instead of issuing textbooks to students. Others are building their own etextbooks. If you would like to find some free ebooks that you and your students can use take a look at the following resources."

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Thursday, November 3, 2011

Response: Can Teachers Be Friends With Students Using Social Media? - Classroom Q&A With Larry Ferlazzo - Education Week Teacher

Response: Can Teachers Be Friends With Students Using Social Media? - Classroom Q&A With Larry Ferlazzo - Education Week Teacher: "Can we be friends with our students? Where do we create barriers? How about social-media wise? I'm interested to hear about your experience, lessons learned, regrets, what you would offer as advice for new teachers."

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Thursday, October 13, 2011

Free Technology for Teachers: 10 Sites and Services I'm Using This Semester

Free Technology for Teachers: 10 Sites and Services I'm Using This Semester: "Every year in the course of writing this blog I look at and try out hundreds of new services that educators can use. So it's not surprising that usually after I give a "best of the web" presentation at a school or conference people ask me which services I'm actually using in my classroom. The answer changes from semester to semester, but here are the ones my students and I are currently using. This list is in no particular order other than how I thought of them as I wrote out the list."

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Sunday, October 9, 2011

Publish Your Book

Google Accounts: "Books
Promote your books on Google for free
You'd sell a lot more books if a lot more people knew about them. We can help make that happen."

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Monday, September 26, 2011

Free Technology for Teachers: Aww App - A Collaborative Whiteboard that You Can Add to Your Site

Free Technology for Teachers: Aww App - A Collaborative Whiteboard that You Can Add to Your Site: "Aww App is a super simple browser-based application for creating drawings. To get started just go to AwwApp.com and click on "start drawing." To invite people to collaborate on your drawing just send them the link assigned to your drawing board and they can join in the drawing fun."

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Free Technology for Teachers: Vocalyze - Listen to the Web

Free Technology for Teachers: Vocalyze - Listen to the Web: "Vocalyze is a free service that reads the content of popular websites to you. You can subscribe to popular sites across twelve different categories. To build up your playlist just click on a category then click on a site. If you want to delete a website from your playlist just click the "x" next to it in your favorites list. Vocalyze works on your computer, Android device, and iOS device."

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Wednesday, September 14, 2011

Free Technology for Teachers: 12 Useful YouTube Accessories for Teachers and Students

Free Technology for Teachers: 12 Useful YouTube Accessories for Teachers and Students: "If you can access it in your school, YouTube has a ton of useful educational content. Here are ten tools that can make using YouTube in your classroom a better experience for everyone.
"

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Monday, September 12, 2011

American History Demographic Chart Book

Free Technology for Teachers: American History Demographic Chart Book: "The American History Demographic Chart Book is a website featuring dozens of graphics about US demographics from 1790 through 2010. The site is divided into seventeen chapters each containing multiple dynamic graphics. The chapters are labeled according to demographic categories such as age, marital status, education, and birthplace."

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Odosketch - A Simple Online Sketchpad

Free Technology for Teachers: Odosketch - A Simple Online Sketchpad: "Odosketch is a free online sketchpad that I learned about from Danny Nicholson's The Whiteboard Blog. Odosketch, like many similar sites, provides a blank canvas on which you can create drawings from scratch. You can save your work to a free Odosketch account, share it online, or download it. Odosketch's niche appears to be creating drawings with "charcoal pencil" effects. Odosketch is well suited to use on touch screen computers and interactive whiteboards."

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The Best MATH Sites That Students Can Use Independently And Let Teachers Check On Progress

Larry Ferlazzo’s Websites of the Day… - The Best MATH Sites That Students Can Use Independently And Let Teachers Check On Progress: "The Best Sites That Students Can Use Independently And Let Teachers Check On Progress is a “The Best…” list that can come in very handy for teachers and for students. It lists free sites where teachers can register their students, and both can keep track of their progress. They can be useful for reinforcing concepts and language learned in the classroom. Most, thought not all, of the sites on that list focus on English."

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Monday, September 5, 2011

Wikispaces Projects: A better way to work in classroom groups

Projects: A better way to work in classroom groups: "We’re calling this new feature Projects. Whenever you have a particular assignment or activity, you can create a project for it, then define teams of members, each with its own unique pages, files, and permissions. Team content (that is, pages and files) are grouped together, separate from the main area of the wiki. That way, students in teams can do their group work completely independently from other teams."

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Tuesday, August 30, 2011

Watch2gether - Watch Videos and Discuss Them at the Same Time

Free Technology for Teachers: Watch2gether - Watch Videos and Discuss Them at the Same Time: "Watch2gether is a neat site through which you can watch YouTube videos and host text chats about them at the same time. It is really quite easy to use Watch2gether. To get started enter a nickname for yourself (it could be your real first name) then search for a video or enter the url of a video that you have previously bookmarked. When you have found the video you want a chat column will be present on the right side of your browser. You can invite others to chat with you by sending them the url assigned to your chat. Together you can watch a video and discuss it."

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How To Do Research - An Interactive Map

Free Technology for Teachers: How To Do Research - An Interactive Map: "One of the challenges that every student faces at one time or another is conducting focused and efficient research. The folks at the Kentucky Virtual Library know this and put together an interactive map of the research process for students. The map, titled How To Do Research, walks students through the research process from start to finish with every step along the way. One of the things about this map that school librarians will like is that it is not focused solely on web research. How To Do Research includes a good section about using library catalogs, books, and magazines. "

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Kentucky Virtual Library

Kentucky Virtual Library:

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Sunday, August 28, 2011

Free Technology for Teachers: How to Embed Videos into Microsoft Office Documents

Free Technology for Teachers: How to Embed Videos into Microsoft Office Documents: "I haven't created a document using a Microsoft product in years. Because of that, I did not know, and perhaps you didn't know either, that you can embed YouTube videos into your Microsoft Office documents. For readers who use Microsoft Office, the HP Teacher Experience Exchange has a short video tutorial on how to embed YouTube videos into Microsoft Office 2010 documents."

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Wednesday, July 13, 2011

Get Your Google Toolkit

Get Your Google Toolkit: "Lessons, Webinars and Workbooks that provide exactly what you need right now so you can get the most out of Google Tools..."

Sunday, July 10, 2011

Museum Box Homepage

Museum Box Homepage: "This site provides the tools for you to build up an argument or description of an event, person or historical period by placing items in a virtual box. What items, for example, would you put in a box to describe your life; the life of a Victorian Servant or Roman soldier; or to show that slavery was wrong and unnecessary? You can display anything from a text file to a movie."

Create A Graph

Create A Graph: "Graphs and charts are great because they communicate information visually. For this reason, graphs are often used in newspapers, magazines and businesses around the world."

Wednesday, July 6, 2011

Geography Action! 2009 -- National Geographic

Geography Action! 2009 -- National Geographic: "Geography is a critical component of a 21st century education, and National Geographic is working to raise awareness so that all students have opportunities to know and understand their planet. Each year the Geography Action! program offers tools and resources for educators to bring geography to life through school and community events. You can participate and raise awareness by using these materials for a school or community event any time of the year, or during Geography Awareness Week, November 15-21, 2009."

Wednesday, June 29, 2011

Free Technology for Teachers: 7 Tools Students Can Use to Create Music Online

Free Technology for Teachers: 7 Tools Students Can Use to Create Music Online: "Yesterday, I gave a short presentation on digital storytelling to the folks in attendance at the Ed Tech Teacher Teaching History With Technology workshop. One of the points I made to participants is that when creating multimedia digital stories the best way to avoid any kind of copyright issues is to have students create their own sounds and images to include in their projects. Here are some tools that students can use to create their own sounds online."

Monday, June 27, 2011

Download details: SyncToy 2.1

Download details: SyncToy 2.1: "There are files from all kinds of sources that we want to store and manage. Files are created by our digital cameras, e-mail, cell phones, portable media players, camcorders, PDAs, and laptops. Increasingly, computer users are using different folders, drives, and even different computers (such as a laptop and a desktop) to store, manage, retrieve and view files. Yet managing hundreds or thousands of files is still largely a manual operation. In some cases it is necessary to regularly get copies of files from another location to add to primary location; in other cases there is a need to keep two storage locations exactly in sync. Some users manage files manually, dragging and dropping from one place to another and keeping track of whether the locations are synchronized in their heads. Other users may use two or more applications to provide this functionality."

Tuesday, June 21, 2011

Welcome to FolderBoy

Welcome to FolderBoy

Free Technology for Teachers

Free Technology for Teachers: "One of the parts of the Google Across the Curriculum workshop that I ran today was about using Google Bookmarks. For most of the participants in today's workshop using a web-based bookmarking service instead of a browser-based service was a new and welcome concept."