Wicked Good Technology

Using tech tools that students are familiar with and already enjoy using is attractive to educators, but getting students focused on the project at hand might

Via John Evans

This is the second in a special Edutopia blog series about developing 21st century skills through project-based learning. In the first post, "Yes, You Can Teach and Assess Creativity!

Via John Evans

" The ability for classrooms to beam in authors, subject experts, and fellow students from around the world has been one of the great advantages afforded by Skype. Commonly used by librarians and other K–12 educators to provide real-time engagement for their students, the service just got better. As of today, existing members of Skype in the classroom or new registrants can use Skype’s Group Video Calling free of charge."

Via John Evans

Guest author Matthew Young recommends several iPad apps to easily incorporate science into your home education. Every student who graduated from high school would have done any of these experiments...

Via Sam Gliksman

"Sparky Teaching believes teaching is about much more than ticking off lesson objectives and setting pupil targets... These clearly have their place, but so often creativity is planned out of lessons and in getting pupils to jump through the hoops we've made, something small but important has got a little lost along the way."

Via Ana Cristina Pratas, BookChook, Tom Perran, John Evans

"Using Google to look for text is simple enough, but not until recently did I realize you could use it to search by reading level. And it typical Google fashion, it’s slightly more convoluted a process than it needs to be, but is otherwise dead simple.

 

The screen shots below walk you through the process–well, the two steps. This post comes on the heels of our recent post on digital tools that can be used to evaluate text complexity."

Via John Evans

It never quite caught on in lower grade schools. See Also: 25 Ways To Use iPads In The Classroom by Degree of Difficulty. Now, it is the age of the tablet.

Using tech tools that students are familiar with and already enjoy using is attractive to educators, but getting students focused on the project at hand might

Via John Evans

"Whether you are a teacher, parent, relative, boss, or fellow community member, each of us has a chance to make a positive and impactful difference in a child’s life.

 

But in order to do this, we must carefully consider this question:

 

What do you think matters most to our children?"

Via John Evans

Robin Good: Rachel Smith explains in very simple words how you can use your iPad to capture and record visually the key ideas and concepts presented during a lecture, keynote, training class or presentation.

She provides a good round-up of four relevant tools that can be used for this task, analyzing their key pros and cons as well as providing logistic and technical advice on how to best organize and setup yourself for doing visual recording on the iPad.

As similar tools will provide more ready-made icons, templates and patterns available for this kind of real-time idea-capturing, this rare and pioneering visual recording work will begin to catch up even more rapidly.

 

Very useful. 8/10

 

Full article: http://www.teachthought.com/technology/how-to-capture-ideas-visually-with-the-ipad/

 

 

 

 

Via Robin Good

"f you like to use your iPhone, iPad or laptop in your classroom because it allows you to effortlessly navigate the learning space, one of the greatest frustrations can be having to constrain yourself to the vicinity of the projector cable every time you want to share your screen with the class.

 

 

I have seen this as a common practice even in open plan learning environments, which instantly does away with it’s greatest feature by forcing the teacher to move back to the front of the room.

 

 

Whilst you can get wireless projectors at great expense, have you ever thought of using Apple’s $99 Apple TV? I hadn’t until recently, but since using it I could never go back to a physical projector/tv connection for the following 4 reasons:

 

Via John Evans

"Reading comprehension is a matter of decoding, reading speed, and critical thinking about the text, all of which can improve with tiered practice.

So below, in an order of general complexity, are 15 apps for improved reading comprehension, ranging from word and sentence fluency, to recall, to critical thinking skills, to reading speed."

Via John Evans

The number of games, apps, and software to help students learn to read and increase their literacy skills is growing fast, and the tools themselves are becoming more interactive and animated.

Via John Evans

"New to Twitter and wondering how to get started? We've made this fun 'how to twitter' infographic to help you get going quickly. We try and answer beginner questions such as how to set up your Twitter account, how to start tweeting, and how to use hashtags and lists. Hope you enjoy!"

Via John Evans

Therefore, today's classrooms and learning tools need to evolve and change to better appeal to and engage students. Many schools are bringing technology in the classroom though 1-to-1 initiatives, some through BYOD ...