PREAMBLE: Tools aren’t teachers, they aren’t students, and they aren’t magic. We need to know the limits and possibilities of our twenty-first century tools and the role of teachers and administrators in ethically and responsibly using digital media to enhance and foster learning. 
The Department of Veterans Affairs today announced the Badges for Vets contest for creating digital “badge” systems to help Veterans translate their military skills into civilian jobs. 
One of the most popular posts on Edudemic in 2010 was The 35 Best Web 2.0 Classroom Tools Chosen By You and I felt it might be time for an update to that list for 2011. In order to put together a list of the best Web 2.0 classroom tools, I polled my Twitter followers, Facebook fans (are they still called fans? Likes?) and ran a contest to try and get as many submissions as possible. Until now, teachers have struggled to harness the power of the Internet to find learning resources proven to work in the classroom. They've needed to visit countless websites in search of resources to help them create compelling lesson plans. Today's search engines do many things well, but they aren't designed to directly support teaching and learning. The Learning Registry aims to fix this problem. It makes it possible for teachers to find the best resources, not just for their grade or classroom, but for individual students. This is an important step toward reaching our goal of personalizing learning and differentiating instruction. This Learning Registry also creates a way for teachers to share what they know. The Registry also allows content developers, curriculum coordinators, principals, counselors, and everyone else who supports good teaching in the classroom to benefit from the combined knowledge of the field. The Registry can be an invaluable tool for parents, as well. When they're looking for tools to help their children master a specific skill or learn about a specific topic, they will have access to methods that others have found to be successful in classrooms across the country. http://www.learningregistry.org/ This video documents the outcomes of a mobile learning community game used by the Boston Public Schools to engage the public in planning for quality schools. It took place between September 15 and October 20, 2011. 
Massively multiplayer games like World of Warcraft can teach communication and the higher-order skills needed to achieve collective goals. Simple, rule-based games, such as Minecraft, showcase the value of preservation and exploration. Via Be Learning
During this live webinar, the fifth in our series, we will discuss and answer questions about designing badges and badge systems. 
A recent study showed that certain brain areas expand in people who have greater numbers of friends on Facebook. There was a problem, though. The study, in Proceedings of the Royal Society B, was unable to resolve the question of whether "friending" plumps up the brain areas or whether people with a type of robustness in brain physiology are just natural social butterflies. But with the help of a few monkeys in England, teenagers everywhere may now have more ammunition to use against parents. Via k3hamilton 
As parents try to rein in video game usage at home, some teachers are including it at school. Via JackieGerstein Ed.D., k3hamilton 
The incentive system we integrated into the Learning Center along with our community discussion forum in November of 2010 is helping to deepen engagement with these plentiful resources. The new capabilities of the discussion forum enable science teachers not just to consume content but to curate it based on their own expertise and interests and to progress through it in community with other learners. The new system includes over 40 initial badges and a series of points teachers may earn for various activities and online learning achievements. Teachers may earn points for simple, yet thoughtful community and learning activities such as diagnosing their learning needs using our PD Indexer tool, or aggregating personal digital resources and creating collections—coupling them with NSTA e-PD resources—to share with others online. The response to a recent post in GeekDad about the “A Magazine Is an iPad That Does Not Work” Video was significant, both personally and for the creator of the video (with whom we hope to have a discussion-based post up soon). However, it also lead me to a range of great research and thinking around children and mobile technology. There are people out there interested in changing the way we talk, think and engage in discussions about children and technology. Discussions beyond “good vs. bad” that are interested in the nuances of the role technology plays in children’s lives and how we can or can’t shape that in ways that support our children as they grow. 
Over the past two or three weeks I have noticed something really interesting. I got in contact with or read about at least six startups that were all working on kind of the same project: connecting teachers, students and parents via text messages. Text messages, the old fashioned way of sharing status updated before Twitter (which interestingly enough started off as text message based service), Facebook, Google+ or group messaging apps. From inside the tech bubble this seems like an odd step back into the stone age. From the real world perspective it makes total sense. |
Harvard University researchers have launched the Peer Instruction (PI) Network, a new global social network for users of interactive teaching... Via JackieGerstein Ed.D. 
It sounds like a fantastic idea that will be incredibly difficult to pull off. But the idea that workers should be recognized for the unique set of skills and capabilities that they possess, most earned over time and on the job as opposed to in formal education and training settings is certainly compelling. Additionally, one of the sub-projects that the MacArthur competition addresses is specific to a set of badges and recognitions for military veterans, aimed to help them translate their skill sets to better match civilian employment opportunities. And any efforts that can potentially help veterans transition to civilian work should be explored and supported.
Massively multiplayer games like World of Warcraft can teach communication and the higher-order skills needed to achieve collective goals. Simple, rule-based games, such as Minecraft, showcase the value of preservation and exploration. 
I teach in an inquiry, project-based, technology embedded classroom. A mouthful, I know. So what does that mean? It means I lecture less, and my students explore more. It means that I create a classroom where students encounter concepts, via labs and other methods, before they necessarily understand all the specifics of what is happening. Via Gust MEES 
Adrien Treuille, an assistant professor of computer science at Carnegie Mellon University, creates online challenges that tap gamers to solve complex scientific problems. Via Be Learning If a Google engineer is confused about the privacy settings, what does that mean for the rest of us? Interesting read and practical tips. Via Ken Morrison 
Whether you design classroom training, eLearning, m-learning, or work with another medium entirely, storytelling is a learning tool that possesses the power to motivate, persuade, educate, and even entertain. Via Nik Peachey 
To make digital more accessible, a number of tech and media companies are working to level the online playing field all around the world. Here are five of them. Via Leonardo Ornellas 
Learning Styles & Retention - How Best to Engage? Two infographics worth viewing. Via Dr. Richard NeSmith, Dennis T OConnor 
Teachers who once shunned the idea of students citing Wikipedia on class assignments now are embracing the Web site as a teaching tool. 
Excellent collection of innovative learning technologies, mostly to promote STEM learning through multimedia projects. Topics cover national parks, astrophysics, citizen science, telescopes, conservation, siftables, videogame creation and lots more. 
Pearson, the publishing and learning technology group, has teamed up with the software giant Google to launch OpenClass, a free LMS that combines standard course-management tools with advanced social networking and community-building, and an open architecture that allows instructors to import whatever material they want, from e-books to YouTube videos. The program will launch through Google Apps for Education, a very popular e-mail, calendar, and document-sharing service that has more than 1,000 higher-education customers, and it will be hosted by Pearson with the intent of freeing institutions from the burden of providing resources to run it. It enters a market that has been dominated by costly institution-anchored services like Blackboard, and open-source but labor-intensive systems like Moodle. |
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