World’s Simplest Online Safety Policy by Lisa Nielsen

Tech Learning TL Advisor Blog and Ed Tech Ticker Blogs from TL Blog Staff – TechLearning.com

When it comes to upgrading education to the 21st Century, those who are less supportive of change, often hide behind, or are frightened of acronyms like FERPA, CIPA, COPPA. This is sometimes done intentionally for convenience, or unwittingly out of ignorance. Of course in a litigious society such as ours has become, law suits are foremost in the minds of administrators. It is for that reason that a clear understanding is needed by all constituents. Our students need adults to stop being afraid, and stop hiding, so education can get out of the shadows and into the light of the world in which our children live.

14 Steps to Meaningful Student Blogging

14 Steps to Meaningful Student Blogging

So you have heard about blogging with your students and you are considering taking the plunge but just not sure what or how to do it? I am here to tell you; blogging with my students has been one of the most enriching educational experiences we have had this year, and that says a lot. So to get you started, here is what I have learned:

Interactive Whiteboards - a waste of $$?

Why are we STILL Wasting Money on Whiteboards? - The Tempered Radical

Why are we STILL Wasting Money on Whiteboards?

If you’ve spent any time reading the Radical, you know that I hate Interactive Whiteboards—and the companies that sell them as instructional silver bullets—with an unhealthy passion.

Recently, though, I’ve dialed back that passion. I guess that’s because—thankfully—conversations about teaching with technology have started to shift into healthier places.

I hear less and less from educators who just HAVE to have an IWB.

41 Websites for Teachers to Integrate Tech into Your Classroom

41 Websites for Teachers to Integrate Tech into Your Classroom « Ask a Tech Teacher

This list has a little bit of everything, and will kick-start your effort to put technology into your lesson plans:

Technology Integration Matrix

Technology Integration Matrix

The Technology Integration Matrix (TIM) illustrates how teachers can use technology to enhance learning for K-12 students. The TIM incorporates five interdependent characteristics of meaningful learning environments: active, constructive, goal directed (i.e., reflective), authentic, and collaborative (Jonassen, Howland, Moore, & Marra, 2003). The TIM associates five levels of technology integration (i.e., entry, adoption, adaptation, infusion, and transformation) with each of the five characteristics of meaningful learning environments. Together, the five levels of technology integration and the five characteristics of meaningful learning environments create a matrix of 25 cells as illustrated below.......

Twitter in Education

Why Twitter Is a Teacher's Best Tool - Education - GOOD

Teachers are increasingly bringing the real-time communication power of Twitter into the classroom to help students learn. But I've come to the conclusion that it's great for helping teachers learn as well. Twitter has simply become one of the best places for teachers to collaborate, share solutions to common classroom problems, and discuss education policy. In fact, it might just be the best forum teachers have ever had.......

TV on the iPad

Couch Potato on the Go: Watching TV on an iPad – AllThingsD
Television programs, like music and books, are migrating from their traditional form of delivery to transmission over the Internet for consumption on computers, tablets and smartphones. A growing number of people, at least some of the time, are choosing to watch shows on these devices rather than on television sets.

Video Conferencing

Free Technology for Teachers: Face Flow - Free Video Conferencing for Four

Face Flow is a free video conferencing system that can accommodate up to four participants at a time. Using Face Flow you can text chat while video conferencing. To invite people to join your Face Flow call all you have to do is send them link to your conversation. And if you're so inclined, you can watch a video and chat about with your friends.

Discussions in Google Docs

Mind Map and Brainstorm

Online Mind Mapping and Brainstorming app - SpiderScribe

SpiderScribe is an online mind mapping and brainstorming tool. It lets you organize your ideas by connecting notes, files, calendar events, etc. in free-form maps. You can collaborate and share those maps online!

5 Tools to Introduce Programming to Kids

5 Tools to Introduce Programming to Kids | MindShift

It’s hard to argue with the importance of teaching students how to use computers — how to turn on, log on, search the Web, and use applications. These skills are absolutely necessary for students’ academic success as well as for their future job prospects.

Why Social Media Tools Have a Place in the Classroom

Why Social Media Tools Have a Place in the Classroom : Tech News and Analysis «

The New York Times has an interesting trend piece on a number of teachers who are incorporating social media tools into the classroom to prompt more participation from students who might not otherwise speak up. The idea is that by using Twitter and other microblogging platforms, teachers can establish “back channels” to help foster a discussion and surface ideas that kids are too shy or intimidated to voice out loud.

10 Open Education Resources You May Not Know About (But Should)

10 Open Education Resources You May Not Know About (But Should) | MindShift

This week, the OCW Consortium is holding its annual meeting, celebrating 10 years of OpenCourseWare. The movement to make university-level content freely and openly available online began a decade ago, when the faculty at MIT agreed to put the materials from all 2,000 of the university’s courses on the Web.

Education Apps on the Android Platform

Top 8 Android Apps for Education

Whether you’re currently in school or just seeking a little self-improvement, a plethora of Android apps are just waiting to enhance your knowledge base, expand your skill sets, improve your memory and more

Google Aoos in Classrooms and Schools

32 Ways to Use Google Apps in the Classroom

10 Must Have iPad Apps for Students and Teachers

10 Must Have iPad Apps for Students and Teachers - Distance Education.org

Everyone knows that to succeed in education you need all the help you can get, and what better way to find that help than through the electronic device of the decade, Apple's iPad. For those of you living in a cave, the iPad is a small tablet computer, 9.56 inches x 7.47 inches x 0.5 inches, which is poised to be the device that changes it all. And, while the reviews of the iPad have been mixed so far, there is no doubt that it has the potential to become one of the greatest assets to education that there has been since Gutenberg's invention of the printing press......

4 Ways Mobile Tech is Improving Education

4 Ways Mobile Tech Is Improving Education

Communication centers, computers, laptops, mobile phones and tablets have all been spoken about at one point or another as technologies with promising applications for education.

But mobile phones stand apart in an important way. In United States high schools, 98% of students have access to some kind of smartphone, according to a report by Blackboard and Project Tomorrow............

Free e-books

20 Best Websites To Download Free EBooks

We understand that reading is the most simplest way for human to derive and constructing meaning in order to gain a particular knowledge from a source. This tendency has been digitized when books evolve into digital media equivalent – E-Books.

It would be nice if we’re able to download free e-book and take it with us. That’s why we’ve again crawled deep into the Internet to compile this list of 20 places to download free e-books for your use

ZooBurst - 3D Augmented Reality Books

Free Technology for Teachers: ZooBurst - 3D Augmented Reality Books

ZooBurst is a new website that offers an exciting free service. ZooBurst allows users to create 3D pop-up books using nothing more than public domain clip art and ZooBurst's web-based editing tools. Users can view ZooBurst 3D books in augmented reality by enabling their webcams (click webcam mode) then clicking the ZB button present on each story.