Sunday, January 30, 2011

What is the Technology Footprint in Your Classroom?


What is the Technology Footprint in Your Classroom?

Jan 28, 2011 By David R. Wetzel

What Is The Technology Foot Print In Your Classroom - jaylopez
Strategies and techniques are provided regarding the benefits of using digital tools to support teaching and learning in any content area or grade level.

In contrast to the technology teachers’ use in a classroom for their professional use, what is the technology (digital) footprint students’ use in your classroom? When effectively integrated into teaching and student learning, technology has the power to transform a classroom into an influential learning community. Within this digital community students use technology tools to create collaborative and personal learning networks to support their learning.

So what is the technology footprint? This is the digital toolbox containing offline and online technology tools and programs students select from as they complete assignments or projects. These digital tools may include and not limited to computers, iPod Touches, cell phones, online problem solving situations, blogs, podcasts, interactive websites, and other Web 2.0 tools.

Benefits of Optimizing a Classroom Digital Footprint: Building a Learning Community
Through optimizing the power of digital footprint within your classroom, students benefit by transforming from passive to active learners. The effective use of education technology components – hardware, software, interactive websites, online research sources, and blogs or wikis – means movement beyond the novelty of using technology. When incorporating technology within your curriculum, it must leverage students’ prior knowledge and experiences (PKE) with content.

By leveraging students’ PKE with technology components comprising a digital footprint, they are able to build learning communities within and outside the classroom. These communities are often referred to as personal learning networks. Regardless of term used, when describing this technology, group work has moved into the 21st century.

Using a classroom's digital toolbox students are gain new content knowledge with the assistance of technology to support collaborative team work and learning, instead of playing games or texting. This is an important skill they will need later in life as they enter the 21st century workforce.

To Continue to Read Full Article: http://www.suite101.com/content/what-is-the-technology-footprint-in-your-classroom-a339675#ixzz1CaKaRbPJ

Wednesday, January 26, 2011

Improving Access to Global Literacy for Students


Newspaper Map shows you the front pages of newspapers from around the world, displayed on a Google Map and lets you click on the front page to gain access to the entire newspaper. And, even better, with one quick click, you can choose the language you want the paper translated into. It’s very simple and easy to access!

Sunday, January 23, 2011

Blog Booker


What is this ?
BlogBooker produces a high-quality PDF Blog Book from all your blog's entries and comments.
Archives can be generated from any blog running on WordPress, LiveJournal (and derivatives) or Blogger.

The whole process takes about 3-4 minutes, depending on the size of your blog.

"BlogBooker: From your Blog to a PDF Book."

Blogbooker is a FREE service offered thanks to donations.

How does it work ?
You submit an export file provided by your blog system to BlogBooker.
Your file is verified and all linked images are fetched.
Entries, Comments and Images are assembled into a high-quality PDF.
PDF is provided without any restriction and thus can be submitted for printing to third-parties.

How to export your blog ?
Exporting your WordPress blog.
Exporting your Blogger blog.
LiveJournal export/backup is automatically handled.

Why ?
You can print your BlogBook and make it real, read it more comfortably or share it with friends, publish it ...
The main purpose is to let you have an archive of your blog/journal. The PDF embeds all images and is consistent over time.

Creative Commons


Creative Commons

Our Vision
Realizing the full potential of the internet — universal access to research, education, full participation in culture, and driving a new era of development, growth, and productivity.

Share, Remix, Reuse — Legally
Creative Commons is a nonprofit organization that develops, supports, and stewards legal and technical infrastructure that maximizes digital creativity, sharing, and innovation.


10 Steps for Educators New to Twitter


Educators from all around the world are beginning to use Twitter as a valuable piece in their professional growth toolbox. As professional development continues to evolve and transform, we will need new ways to encourage teachers to embrace new opportunities. Here is a "How to Twitter Guide" to share with new and veteran teachers. Enjoy!

1) - Sign up for your Twitter account! Click Here!

Sign up for your Twitter account and get started. Make sure to fill out your profile as much as possible, and it is also a great idea to make sure you upload a picture of yourself! Educators on Twitter will feel more comfortable knowing what you look like...it also helps to keep the social in social media - say cheese!

2) - Spend some time watching and observing others...

Take some time to learn the ins and outs of Twitter. This step is important because it will lay the foundation of how others are using and embracing Twitter as a professional development tool. If you are looking for a few awesome educators to follow and learn from, here is a great list to start with:

@gcouros @web20classroom @mcleod @NMHS_Principal @tomwhitby @kylepace @cybraryman1

@Becky_Ellis_ @principalspage @ShellTerrell @MrWejr @shannonmmiller @bhsprincipal @L_Hilt

3) - Talk to educators who are using Twitter...

I would be willing to bet that you learned about or heard something about Twitter from a colleague. This is great news! This means you most likely have someone in your building or in your district who is using Twitter, and this gives you the opportunity to question them about how they use Twitter as a professional development tool. Tap into their experience and find out how Twitter has affected them professionally. These colleagues can be huge when it comes to supporting you and your future growth and development. Treasure them!

Continue to full blog post by Justin Tarte- Life of an Educator:
http://justintarte.blogspot.com/2011/01/10-steps-for-educators-new-to-twitter.html

Sunday, November 28, 2010

10 Ways to De-clutter Your Digital Life: 2010 Edition



LifeHacker offers their latest blog on how to help clean up email, fix digital files and tidy up your digital life in 10 steps:

Click here to get to the original blog post and hyperlinks that LifeHacker offers: http://lifehacker.com/5513009/top-10-ways-to-declutter-your-digital-life-2010-edition

10. Declutter and Streamline Google Reader Feeds
RSS feeds can start out as a convenient way of streamlining your news and site reading. After some time, and a few too many feed additions, it can feel like opening up a fire hydrant in front of your face. Read up on how the How-To Geek streamlines and declutters his Reader inbox, starting with some statistical work, stepping deep into folder organization, and then filtering the remaining feeds with a little Yahoo Pipes tweaking.

9. Clean Up Your Contacts
These people that show up when you start typing in a Gmail address—where did they come from? Google Contacts, where Gmail and other Google apps keep your peeps, can get real messy, real quick. We've offered a complete (for now) guide to fixing Google Contacts, along with some tools that help in Outlook, like the Outlook Duplicate Items Remover, and a date-sorting trick that works best for those who haven't made huge imports. (Original post: Outlook Duplicate Items Remover)

8. Compact and Manage Social Network Alerts
Facebook has a way of making you sorry you use it, at least if you regard your inbox as something more than just a junk pile. To trim down on the messages that Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, MySpace, and other services send you, we've suggested a two-part filtering and management scheme for social networks. The short version: use Nutshell Mail and a good RSS reader. Facebook has made email management a bit more convenient itself, offering in-email replies to comment mail, which we took as an opportunity to show off our Facebook-taming Gmail filter.

7. Build Yourself Serious Gmail Filters
We know, we know—nothing we haven't said before, right? There is, however, some new stuff under the sun. If you're not already keeping annoying stuff out of your inbox and making it easy to get at the real communication, do so by building advanced filters and persistent searches. Need some inspiration? Download ten of our own filters and install them in your own inbox. Maybe you've found a filter need that's not quite covered by Gmail's built-in tools? At least one editor (ahem) digs how Syphir adds a few key criteria, like timing and number of recipients, to the mix. (Original post: Syphir)

6. Pack a More Efficient Laptop/Go Bag
If you know what you need to get work done on the go, you spend less time wondering if you packed the necessities and more time remembering, for instance, to include a bathing suit. We can't offer the ultimate laptop bag, or non-computer "go" bag, for everyone. All we can do is point to our bags, the bags our readers have shown us (in Part I, Part II, and Part III of our show-and-tell series), the bag that NYT tech columnist David Pogue carries, and hope you get a sense of how the right kind of geeky gear can actually feel liberating, rather than just more stuff taking up bag space.

5. Clean Out Your Hard Drive
Dig your way through your hard drive, and you'll find all sorts of stuff. Most of it can be deleted to make room for more important stuff, like your complete collection of Herb Alpert import album tracks. Digging through his own drive, Adam found lots of room for cleaning, so he showed us how its done. He used the simple, pretty Disk Space Fan, the classic and open-source champion, WinDirStat, recommended Disk Inventory X and Grand Perspective for Macs, and some automated tasks, like setting up CCleaner to run on a schedule.

4. Free Up Space in Gmail
You never thought you'd use up all those free gigabytes in Gmail—seven, as of this writing—until you went and did. Need to clear up space to stop losing archives, or step a bit further back from the brink? Gina's previously provided a seven-step clean-out system, while the New York Times recommends a back-up-and-wipe-out solution, akin to how we've suggested backing up Gmail with Thunderbird. You get the added benefit of likely having access to Gmail when it's down, and an offline copy of all your data, which is never a bad thing.

3. Automate Your Folder and File Organization
Downloads go in the Download folder. Unless they're finished video downloads—then they should go in Videos. And anything older than 30 days? That should get stuffed in a folder marked for deletion. You could do this yourself and give your mouse hand a workout, or you could automatically clean up and organize your folders, using Belvedere for Windows, Hazel on Macs ($22, but with a 14-day trial), and some clever settings that Adam, the creator of Belvedere, details in his step-by-step explainer.

2. Use Dropbox—For Almost Everything
The file syncing service Dropbox does one thing very well, and that is give you access to a certain amount of file space (2 GB in free accounts) on any computer you use, as well as on smartphones. By doing so, geeky types have figured out many ways to use that hard drive in the sky. Make it your ultimate password syncer, as storage for any file on your system, and, as the How-To Geek explained, just about anything. Keep a copy of Firefox portable in your Dropbox, and your concerns about having a decent browser on any given computer are gone, and you don't have to think about whether you formatted that USB keychain drive or not. That's just one of many de-cluttering steps you can take when liberated by having 2 GB floating all around you.

1. Ban Cables and Clutter from Your Desktop
Your desk is where you use your computer most, and it's likely encroached on by many things, begging for your attention and personal space. Cables tend to multiply and tangle, unless you fight them back with a total cordless setup, or something simple like a $5 coat hanger or cable organizer, or something so simple as binder clips attached to a desk. There are lots of other transient things trying to take up residence on your space. But with the help of pegboards, flush-mounted gadget ports, and other anti-clutter tactics, you can keep the hounds of excess stuff at bay. (Original posts: transient stuff, power basket)

8 Ways Technology Is Improving Education


Don Knezek, the CEO of the International Society for Technology in Education, compares education without technology to the medical profession without technology.

“If in 1970 you had knee surgery, you got a huge scar,” he says. “Now, if you have knee surgery you have two little dots.”

Technology is helping teachers to expand beyond linear, text-based learning and to engage students who learn best in other ways. Its role in schools has evolved from a contained “computer class” into a versatile learning tool that could change how we demonstrate concepts, assign projects and assess progress.

Despite these opportunities, adoption of technology by schools is still anything but ubiquitous. Knezek says that U.S. schools are still asking if they should incorporate more technology, while other countries are asking how. But in the following eight areas, technology has shown its potential for improving education.

CLICK HERE for interactive list of 8 Ways Technology is Improving Education