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This post first appeared on Edudemic. If you have email, iTunes, Facebook, or any other online account, then you are familiar with Terms of Service; you know, those excessively long, confusing legal documents that we all click “accept” on so that we can download the latest episode of Modern Family. These documents are confusing, and very few of us have the time or knowledge necessary to process 56 pages of legalese (yes, the iTunes Terms of Service is 56 pages!). Fortunately, there are several movements out there to encourage technology institutions to present easier to understand and more transparent Terms…
This post first appeared on Edudemic. For years, I spent my summers teaching sailing and leadership skills to high school students on a 50-foot boat in the Caribbean. I cherished the three months without phones, television, or computers – both for myself as well as my students. As an adult, I value any time unplugged. However, on my last hiking trip, I found myself with an unexpected companion – my iPhone. I absolutely loved having it in my pocket, which may seem counterintuitive, except for the fact that I left it in airplane mode. It wasn’t that I wanted my…
EdTechTeacher News It was our biggest week of the Summer Workshop Series yet! We had four workshops in Chicago with Beth Holland, Shawn McCusker and Holly Clark as well as four in Cambridge with Samantha Morra, Douglas Kiang, Suzy Brooks, and Brenda Doucette. Check out all the Summer Agendas below. Greg Kulowiec lead a 4 day workshop on the Google Infused Classroom in Shrewsbury, MA and kicked off a new full-year program in Waltham, MA. Summer Workshop Agendas We publish all of our Summer Workshop resources under the Creative Commons license. These sites are full of great resources, and we are happy to share. Chicago Workshops this week…
This post first appeared on Edudemic. Fueled by an incredible demand in the workforce for proficient programmers and the need to teach critical thinking skills, the coding movement in schools has exploded. Furthermore, we all communicate through technology, so we should at least know the basic premise of coding because the gadget sitting in our pocket, or on our desk, should not be a mysterious black box to us or our students. Just like writing, multimedia, art, and music are mediums to show ideas, coding can be another form of expression. “Learn to code, code to learn” We need to…
This post first appeared on Edudemic. Rapidly approaching the dog days of summer (give or take a few days or weeks), I felt a need to share a power packed suitcase of tools that could be used to archive your summer highlights and memories. Many educators never really go on vacation. While they may appear to be leisurely sipping daiquiris on the beach, let’s be realistic… their brains are constantly running, reflecting, and mentally archiving away ideas for the next school year. To meet both the recreational and curricular needs of educators, I have concocted a special blend of FREE…
This post first appeared on Free Technology for Teachers. The year may be winding down, but you still have your students for a few more precious weeks of school. If you have access to iPads in your classroom, a great end of the year activity with your students is to make pictures talk, create animations that anthropomorphize objects, or use personification to demonstrate understanding. It’s actually a great activity anytime of the year. You can create with your students and keep them engaged and learning right up until the last day. Two fantastic sets of apps for creating talking pictures on…
This post first appeared on Edutopia. We have always struggled to envision the future, often superimposing new technology over our current views. Remember the Jetsons? Though they lived in a futuristic society marked by flying cars and advanced technology, the students still learned in a lecture-based system with the teacher (albeit a robot one) directing the process from the front of the room. The challenge of imagining the future of learning can seem daunting. However, snapshots already exist. We just need to look beyond our current classrooms to identify some of the key tenets for our learning environments of the future.…
This post first appeared on Free Technology for Teachers. While gathering resources to share with campus teachers, I stumbled upon the Photo Mapo app and quickly added it to my list of tools for summer archival. The intent was to provide a repository of tools and applications that educators could utilize in the midst of their staycations and vacations that could also be extended to the classroom. Photo Mapo is a FREE app that does just that. Applications for Recreation Transform your photos into mapped masterpieces with textual anecdotes, pics, and actual maps of places you visit. While map styles and formats…
This post first appeared on Edudemic. The end of the school year is a time for reflection. What did we do well? What do we need to improve upon? These are the typical questions that both individuals and school districts ask at the end of the spring. However, there is another important question that I struggle to answer as well. This is the question about how we have changed? What have we done differently this year to push our thinking and the thinking of our students? To be more specific, I find myself dwelling on the R in Dr. Ruben…
This guest post from Martha Slack (@slackmartha) first appeared on Edudemic. The recent 3D printing explosion on the educational market has left many educators wondering how they can afford to integrate this technology into the classroom. Most schools do not have the luxury of purchasing a 3D printer but still want to provide the experience for their students. 3D pens made their debut on Kickstarter this year as an affordable 3D printing option. After the initial investment of the pens, they are an incredibly affordable tool for classrooms. The pens allow students to illustrate – in 3D – concepts in math,…
What a week! Our team traveled from Atlanta to Toronto and led 16 different workshops! Shawn McCusker and Beth Holland kicked off our Summer Workshop Series in Atlanta with The iPad Classroom, The Advanced iPad Classroom, and Teaching Technology in the Elementary Classroom. We still have space in a number of our other workshops, so check out the Course Catalog and come join us! Team members worked with schools in New York, New Jersey, Atlanta, Chicago, and Toronto, and even started another Full Year T21 program in Massachusetts. ETT Summit Update We have updated our sessions page to include all sessions from keynotes and featured presentations, to EdTechTeacher…
Cathy M. Rubin, author of The Global Search for Education Series on the Huffington Post interviewed Carl Hooker last weekend about the ongoing “Device Debate.” “Which digital device is the better learning tool for students – a Chromebook or an iPad? If you’re not aware of the hottest current digital device debate, you’re probably not a parent or an educator. Once upon a time, that debate might have been about VHS vs. Beta, or Mac vs. PC. However, in prime time ed tech school district circles, folks are fiercely focused on Chromebooks vs. iPads (both now below $400). The big question? Which…
This post first appeared on Edudemic. The modern classroom is a messy one! Schools are entering the world of technology at different speeds and levels; some institutions have invested in full 1:1 programs where the school selects a single device (such as iPads or Chromebooks); others have instituted Bring Your Own Devices (BYOD) initiatives, some specify a single device while others permit a broader selection; and most of us operate in some type of hybrid environment where students have access to a device at school, such as a tool issued to them, a computer lab, and/or laptop cart and/or a…
This post first appeared on eSchoolNews. For nearly a dozen years, I’ve traveled to various schools and districts to deliver professional development workshops and presentations. These experiences have taught me that if our goal is to create fundamental change in classrooms, professional development workshops should ultimately devote less time to the “nuts and bolts” of technology and more time addressing pedagogy and best practices. Technology, in and of itself, doesn’t necessarily change learning. So, the primary focus of any workshop must be the educator’s vision of a technology, and not the technology itself. To this end, I’ve learned that great…
This guest post from Summer Workshop instructor, Maggie Keeler (@KeelerMS), first appeared on Edudemic. As more and more states adopt the Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS), teachers are beginning to wonder what tools they will need to implement the new standards in their classrooms. The NGSS focuses on three dimensions: core ideas in science and engineering necessary to prepare students to gain more knowledge independently; concepts that cut across content areas; and practices employed by scientists and engineers as they investigate, design and build (National Research Council 2011). The framers of the NGSS emphasize the need for students to do…
