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Event Lobby (EVENT: 167710)
"The rise of interactive technology has created exciting new possibilities for teacher professional development, from facilitated online courses to social-learning communities to live multimedia presentations. Many observers now believe that, when used effectively, digital technologies could ultimately break the grip of the one-shot, drive-by workshop in schools and spur the growth of teacher-learning opportunities that are truly collaborative and job-embedded. Yet many questions remain. In this webinar, two experts will address these questions and bring you up to date on the latest ideas and trends in online teacher learning and how you can take advantage of them. "
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YouTube Blog: Curator of the Month: Michael Wesch
"Anthropology professor Michael Wesch has the awesome job of studying YouTube and thinking about what it all means. We asked him to curate a playlist of his favorite videos, and he came back with an impressive list of clips that exemplify how the "wonderfully playful participatory culture" you've created manifests itself on YouTube. Four of those videos are on our homepage today, but he also wrote this thoughtful blog post to accompany his picks. Reading it, you'll get a sense of how a single video or person can create a ripple that swells into something so much bigger than ourselves."
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Challenge Based Learning
Traditional teaching and learning strategies are becoming increasingly ineffective with a generation of secondary students that have instant access to information, are accustomed to managing their own acquisition of knowledge, and embrace the roles of content producer and publisher.
Today’s high school curriculum presents students with assignments that lack a real-world context and activities that lead to uninspired projects and end in a letter grade. Many students either learn to do just enough to get by or they lose interest and drop out. In this interconnected world, with ubiquitous access to powerful technology and access to a worldwide community, new models of teaching and learning are possible. -
100 Best Blogs for Tech-Savvy Teachers - Online Courses
While there are still some educators who dispute the importance of technology in the classroom, there is no dispute over the fact that technology is here to stay in schools. Whether you are one of those tech-savvy teachers who can’t get enough of technology news and ideas or you are a teacher just learning to embrace technology in the classroom, these blogs offer a wealth of information straight from teachers and other professionals in the education field themselves.
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CriticalThinking.org - Critical Thinking Model 1
Why the Analysis of Thinking is Important
Everyone thinks; it is our nature to do so. But much of our thinking, left to itself, is biased, distorted, partial, uninformed, or downright prejudiced. If we want to think well, we must understand at least the rudiments of thought, the most basic structures out of which all thinking is made. We must learn how to take thinking apart. -
The Hierarchy Of Digital Distractions
The Hierarchy Of Digital Distractions (larger version), an interesting visualization on levels digital activity by David McCandless on Information is Beautiful.
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DIGITAL LEARNING ENVIRONMENTS: Tools and Technologies for Effective Classrooms
10 Technologies to Use in A Laptop/Tablet Classroom
As more and more work migrates to the web, these ten+ technologies are particularly effective for classrooms and schools with one-to-one programs. They could be used in traditional classrooms with some modification too. -
The Tempered Radical: Voicethread Tips for DuFour Conversation
As regular Radical readers know, we're in the middle of planning for an asynchronous Voicethread conversation with school change experts Rick and Becky DuFour (see here and here) who will be helping us to think through the nuts and bolts of restructuring schools as professional learning communities from September 8th and the 11th.
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Ten Great Ways to Crush Creativity - Stepcase Lifehack
Leaders have more power than they realize. They can patiently create a climate of creativity or they can crush it in a series of subtle comments and gestures. Their actions send powerful signals. Their responses to suggestions and ideas are deciphered by staff as encouragement or rejection. If you want to crush creativity in your organization and eliminate all the unnecessary bother of innovation then here are ten steps that are guaranteed to succeed.
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Technology that Supports Instructional Strategies
This guide from ASCD provides some questions that will help guide you through the chapters of the book: An ASCD Study Guide for Classroom Instruction that Works
This site identifies and provides technology resources which can be used to support the nine instructional strategies:
* Identifying Similarities and Differences
* Summarizing and Note Taking
* Reinforcing Effort and Providing Recognition
* Homework and Practice
* Nonlinguistic Representations
* Cooperative Learning
* Setting Objectives and Providing Feedback
* Generating and Testing Hypotheses
* Questions, Cues, and Advance Organizers -
Teacher Training Videos Free on-line training in using technology in teaching
These videos were created for teachers to help them to incorporate technology into their teaching. Just click and a video will open and take you through how to use that technology.
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21 Things for the 21st Century Educator - Home
The purpose of this course is to provide ”Just in Time” training through an online interface for K-12 educators based on the National Educational Technology Standards for Teachers (NETS-T). These standards are the basic technology skills every educator should possess. In the process, educators will develop their own skills and discover what students need in order to meet the NETS for Students, as well as the new MMC Online Experience requirement. Participants who fulfill all of the requirements have the opportunity to earn SBCEU’s. To learn more about the session, look under the tab “The 21 Things”. We hope you take advantage of this unique opportunity.
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Beyond Social Networking: Building Toward Learning Communities -- Campus Technology
Web 2.0 tools have critically elevated the social networking activity and skills of individuals. Not only are young people highly active in social networks, but older individuals are also showing a huge increase in their use of these tools. The attraction of older age groups is, of course, social connection and community building among professional and casual peers and friends.
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Creating Assignments That Work for Digital Learning Environments -- THE Journal
Teachers who spend time actually thinking through assignments that align with the learning outcomes of a course are the most effective in assessing the learning that has taken place. It's debatable that evaluating learning in the purest sense might ever really be possible given the scope of variables in any context of learning, but when assignments are linked closely to outcomes, the results are more significant.
