EDUC 506 Sum12

"If you're flipping over the flipped classroom, you may also be looking for a tool that can record and broadcast real-time screencasts in your chosen platform (i.e. Skype, MSN Messenger, UStream) that you can use for capturing webcasts, tutorials, and more."

"Does your school have an iPad plan? On paper it sounds great when you tell parents the district is using iPads this year, but there needs to a very clear plan on how the iPads will be used."

Steve Spangler Science offers hundreds of science experiments and science demos that inspire the imagination and make learning fun. Sign-up for our award-winning Experiment of the Week... it's free... or check out Steve Spangler's latest book, Fire Bubbles and Exploding Toothpaste.

ThingLink's technology makes it possible to embed audio, video and rich media links directly in images and share them across the web.

"By using a new website for much of the last year to help manage his middle school charges, California teacher Ricardo Higuera said, "I found myself doing a lot less yelling." The free website ClassDojo, the brainchild of a former teacher and a computer game developer, launched quietly about a year ago, and today the education startup announced it has more than 3.5 million teacher and student users in 30 countries, most of them in the United States. It officially shed its beta label, too."

"Ariel Braunstein, co-creator of the Flip Video camcorders, announced the launch of Knowmia, an online tutoring service for K-12 students. Knowmia is a digital repository with more than 7,000 videos culled from the Internet by the site's moderators in subjects from microbiology to Mandarin Chinese. The new site automatically searches through thousands of tutoring videos and recommends lessons based on the user's personal preferences"

Digital Citizenship is a concept which helps teachers, technology leaders and parents to understand what students/children/technology users should know to use technology appropriately. Digital Citizenship is more than just a teaching tool; it is a way to prepare students/technology users for a society full of technology. Too often we are seeing students as well as adults misusing and abusing technology but not sure what to do. The issue is more than what the users do not know but what is considered appropriate technology usage.

Digital citizenship can be defined as the norms of appropriate, responsible behavior with regard to technology use.

free education apps

This is a news letter you may want to subscribe to. It is free and chalked with good tech information. I tried to reproduce the news brief I received today which talked about the fallout Apple and Google had over Google's involvement with the Android operating system (Iphone's major competition) and how Apple did not renew its license with Google to include the You Tube app on their phones and IPads. Here is s snippet from this week's most read stories: Apple and Google have played a key role in education over the years. With the news earlier this week that Apple will not pre-install the YouTube app on their latest iOS upgrade, coupled with the news that they will have their own map app, you have to wonder how secure their relationship is. It seems that Apple wasn't too pleased about Google's purchase of the Android operating system, which now runs on half of the world's smartphones. If these are indeed the first steps in severing that relationship, what does this mean to districts that support both Apple iOS devices and Google? My district would fall into this category and I have to say both companies have something in common with end-users: their ease of use. Could this break-up actually make usability worse in the future? If I email a link from my Apple map app to my gmail account, what will open when I click on it? If I post something on YouTube, how will I view it on my iPhone? (for the record Apple says it will support in-browser YouTube) I don't have the answer yet, but let me Google it on my iPad and get back to you. - Carl Hooker, SchoolCIO advisor

Sites is Google's free tool to create custom websites. Similar to a wiki, you can develop the site by yourself or choose to collaborate with others on the creation and content of the pages.

Make your classroom a community

PBWorks Directory of wikis from all grade levels, K-higher ed

Seven tutorials on how to create a web site using Wordpress and Bluehost

When schools and districts put in place top down policies they fall short exactly because they are top down. Effective policies are developed with stakeholders, not just lawyers and policymakers. Parents, students, teachers, and school leaders should be brought together to discuss and create such policies. Additionally, district policies should allow room for school-by-school customization that works best for the students in each community

Below is an info graphic on who is using social media (pretty much everyone is aware of it) to which actual social networks they prefer. The info is surprising.