The Digital Era Needs Human Guides: Why Your School Should Keep, Not Cut, the Librarian

See the extensive list of great tools and websites for teachers and librarians in the newest of great tools and ideas for education utilizing technology and the internet.  Too much for most people to get their head around unless you have a librarian to help guide you and facilitate this broad and deep technological world.

Go to this great blog by Anne Weaver to check out the article/post: http://readingpower.wordpress.com/2011/07/05/the-digital-era-needs-human-guides-why-your-school-should-keep-not-cut-the-librarian/#comment-2712

E-Portfolios Evolve Thanks to Web 2.0 Tools

Great article on the many benefits of studnet's following and documenting their own progress (as well as teachers and parents as well) with electronic portfolios or e-portfolios.  Benefits are: sparks parent and teacher discussion of student progression; helps student to buy-in to education and their self-worth; etc.
Check out the article at:
http://www.edweek.org/dd/articles/2011/06/15/03e-portfolio.h04.html

What is a 21st-Century Classroom?

Check out this article from Digital Education stating how the definition of a digital classroom has changed from 2010 -11.   As well see the documented data on the increased learning successes then  students begin using technology.
Link to article here:  http://blogs.edweek.org/edweek/DigitalEducation/2011/06/what_is_a_21st-century_classro.html

Research finds middle school students want online activities

Article from Texas Library Journal pg. 132-135
http://www.txla.org/sites/tla/files/pdf/TLJ86_4.pdf

Many resources/links for flip teaching- video blogging of lessons for students

Check out this blog with many links:
http://readingpower.wordpress.com/2011/05/25/flip-teaching/

YA author speaks on filtering

A table of uses of Blogs in Education

It is at this link: http://www.edtechpost.ca/wordpress/files/2003/10/matrix2.gif

10 great Technology training and tools for Teachers and Librarians

   Bibliography on Technology training and tools for Teachers and Librarians

TILT: Technology Integrated into Learning and Teachinghttp://www.4j.lane.edu/tilt

   Sponsored by the Eugene, Oregan School District.  This website has many resources for teachers to use or integrate technology into lessons.  This website has several Wikis that contain lessons in many subjects across grade levels.    They have Wikis on Smartboard usage  and technology tutorials/workshops, and ideas for Googleapps and many other 2.0 technologies and tools.

Teacher Training Videoshttp://www.teachertrainingvideos.com/

   This website is created by Russell Stannard who is a professor who specializes in Multimedia and ICT.  He has won several national awards for his innovations and website.  His website has training videos in Web 2.0 for English language and ESL teachers as well as all teachers.  His training videos range in topic from how to build a wiki to mindmaps to moodle to in-depth twitter, and many more.  He also offers a website or tool of the month and workshops.

Free Technology for Teachershttp://www.freetech4teachers.com/

    This blog is created and maintained by Richard Byrne who is a certified Google instructor and this site has received 3 Edublog awards in 2008-2009.  This blog site contains many blogs that have been archived into great subject headings such as: 15 of the most view blogs.  And in this blog you can find lists of great 2.0 resources for teachers and librarians such as: a list of 6 websites students can use to create videos and 12 websites students can use to create and post slideshows.

Commoncrafthttp://www.commoncraft.com/

       This website is owned by a small company created by a couple based in Seattle and since beginning to create videos in 2007 they have more than 30 videos produced which have been viewed by more than 20 million people worldwide.    Their company creates short, simple, and to-the-point tutorials, with a bit of humor mixed in on many topics especially technology, such as on: blogs, social media, podcasting, wikis, and much more.  This is a great resource to introduce those teachers who are reluctant to learn and utilize technology in the classroom.

Classroom 2.0 http://www.classroom20.com/

     This website is a social network for those interested in integrating 2.0 tools into the classroom.  The author of the website, Steve Hargadon, states that it is a great place for ‘beginners’ to be comfortable.   This website has received 3 Edublog awards for their social network and webinar series. This website is unique and useful in that they have a separate blog with ongoing conversations for each and every tool that you can imagine. They also have many videos on various uses of various 2.0 tools with case studies as well.

DiBlasihttp://www.drhowie.com/

               This website created by Dr. Howie DiBlasi has received the 2009-10 CILC award (Center for Interactive Learning and Collaboration).   The website has various instructional pages for various tools and many pages/sites contain idea pages – ideas for teachers in using the tool or website -such as:  many Google tools; Glogster; etc.  He has a great resource under the topic ‘Creativity’ that contains many useful links to critical thinking websites with cool exercises.  Critical thinking is one skill students consistently score low on in standardized testing.

Bernie Poole’s Website for Teaching Technologyhttp://www.pitt.edu/~poole/

         Bernie Poole taught Computer Science at the University of Pittsburgh for 13 years and was awarded the Fullbright Scholarship to teach in India for 6 months.  He has online books he has written such as Education of the Information Age which in my humble opinion can be considered the bible on ‘technology and mindtools for teachers’.  He also has complete and simple to follow tutorials on how to use Microsoft Office software.  His tutorial on Office is for teachers and includes a tutorial on Office 2007 -drawing and diagramming tools- which are great mindtools - semantic and diagramming tools -for increasing the effectiveness of pedagogy.

The Blue Skunk Blog
http://doug-johnson.squarespace.com/

          Doug Johnson is the Director for Media and Technology for Mankota (MN) public schools and he has written several books on the use of technology for student learning in schools.  He has a Blue Skunk blog, website and Facebook page.   The blog contains hundreds of archived posts on issues of technology and the advocacy of technology.  Even though the archives are organized by date he has a search engine in the archive.  In his blog he speaks on the philosophy of technology in eductation as well as introducing  new 2.0 and technology/hardware tools and he speaks on their usage and effectiveness.

100 Apps for Teachershttp://www.rasmussen.edu/student-life/blogs/main/100-apps-for-teacher

    This blog is sponsored by the Rasmussen College. This blog contains short summaries on each of the 50 tools and 50 smartphone applications listed and how they may of be of use for the teacher.  They also show a picture of the application with some of the listings. The applications are not only 2.0 apps but iPhone apps as well.  They list interesting tools such as Moodle, Mindmoto, ClassMarker –for creating online tests, and ‘Grammar up’ to stimulate students via interesting grammar quizzes, and many more tools as well.

Woopidhttp://www.woopid.com/

    Thousands of tutorial videos for free on how to use applications and programs in Mac and PC.
    Also some tutorials for websites on the internet such as Google and Facebook.  You can also get basic assistance on various hardware such as: iPhone, Blackberry, Xbox 360, etc.  If you do not find the tutorial you need on their site you can request a custom tutorial.  However it is a dot com and they make money by offering space for advertisers.

Update Google doc and share instantly from Microsoft Office

Google Cloud Connect for Microsoft Office available to all

Thursday, February 24, 2011

Labels: Cloud Connect

Many of you already use Google Docs for editing your documents, but there are still many people that are tied to desktop applications and haven’t experienced the numerous benefits cloud applications to bring. To help bring more people to the cloud and take advantage of features that result, we’re happy to announce that Google Cloud Connect for Microsoft Office is now available to everyone. Google Cloud Connect is a free plugin that improves Microsoft Office 2003, 2007 and 2010 on Windows PCs. It adds simultaneous collaboration, revision history, cloud sync, unique URLs and simple sharing to the Microsoft Word, Excel and Powerpoint applications:



Take it for a spin on your Windows PC by downloading the plugin.

To learn more about how Google Cloud Connect can help businesses, check out the more detailed post on the Google Enterprise Blog.

Posted by: Shan Sinha, Google Apps Product Manager

Update: Many of you have also asked about availability for Macs. Unfortunately due to the lack of support for open APIs on Microsoft Office for Mac, we are unable to make Google Cloud Connect available on Macs at this time. We look forward to when that time comes so we can provide this feature to our Mac customers as well.

Great website for new 2.0 tools for teachers - eduTecher.net

It even has a free app for the phone.
eduTecher.net

Great short and simple tutorials on technology!

http://www.commoncraft.com/

 They also have a blog with an RSS feed.

The Young and the Digital - New book & website

Digital Media and teens, etc. on PBS

Digital Media: New Learners of the 21st Century

Examining ways that mobile devices and digital media can enable young people to direct their own learning.

broadcast times | about this program

coming up next:

Tuesday, February 15  —  8:00pm

9 - KLRN

Examining ways that mobile devices and digital media can enable young people to direct their own learning.

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Frontline

Digital Nation

An exploration of how the Internet and digital technology are changing the way people work, learn and interact. Included: multitasking and its negative impact on attention spans; the use of technology to boost student attendance and test scores; BlizzCon.

broadcast times | about this program

coming up next:

Tuesday, February 8  —  9:00pm

9 - KLRN

Digital Media on PBS - Feb. 13th

Live and Learn with Technology
Digital Media:  New Learners of the 21st Century,a one-hour PBS
documentary produced by National Productions and Mobile Digital Arts,
explores how exceptional instructors are increasingly using digital media
and interactive practices to ignite their students’ curiosity and
ingenuity, help them become civically engaged, allow them to collaborate
with peers worldwide and empower them to direct their own learning. The
documentary also dives into cutting-edge educational and cognitive
research to explore how increasingly powerful forms of digital media
impact today’s learner. Viewers meet some of the country’s most noted
educational experts and thought leaders in the digital education realm.
The documentary premiers nationwide on February 13, 2011; check your local
listing.