Thursday 25 March 2010

Teaching and Learning in a Digital World (1)

This collection is an assortment of posts, articles and websites that have an interesting bearing on the broad topic of "effective teaching and learning". Everyone has many and diverse views.

A FutureLab project on Digital participation, digital literacy, and school subjects: A review of the policies, literature and evidence

A useful collection of teacher resources created by the Education Department of Victoria

The Effective Practice Incentive Community (EPIC) collection of professional learning videos.

Project Based Learning wiki
-practice and theory

Talkin' about igeneration

A slideshare presentation by Pip Cleaves on. Her motto of Connect, Collaborate, Create has considerable power for leaders and learners using social media to inspire change.

Citizenship in the digital age

Teen blogging a good thing, study suggests

Wikipedia relaunch - easier to navigate, search and edit ... reports ReadWriteWeb

Look out for more in this topical issue.

Saturday 20 March 2010

Online Safety - Ethical Behaviour (2)

The desire to create responsible digital citizens underpins the proliferation and quality of online safety initiatives.

European trends to online safety

Educators grapple with social media


This video is worth a view: Symantec Tutorial on cyberbullying

Another video series from iKeepSafe: Social networking basics

Along with massive growth in student use of collaborative tools for sharing during school hours and at home, we are seeing more and more attention being paid to effective online safety programs.

Thursday 18 March 2010

Evaluating websites for "classroom" use: What classroom is that?

Recently, jomcleay tweeted:
Thanks to all who answered with their thoughts about twitter, some really good ideas. Now question is Twitter for classroom? Edmodo?

This tweet and many tweets and blog posts before have finally prompted me to comment on this issue.

Teachers have always reviewed and assessed the suitability of resources of any kind including websites before they use them in the classroom.

In the case of
websites that offer login services, it is absolutely vital, that teachers use a checklist of criteria to assess each product or service, before they "direct" students to register or even use during school hours. Some of the critical issues include:
  • being very clear about what is suitable for the age-groups you teach
  • looking for interactive resources and adaptable lesson ideas from reputable sources. They are in no short supply for educators.
  • being fully aware of the risks of using a service website that may reduce the potential benefits
  • reading and understanding any age eligibility requirements in the Terms of Service or Privacy statements
  • understanding the opportunities for and implications of student "sharing" attached to all the features and functionality of service websites.
... a short list to start ...

Finally, these articles touch on some of the relevant issues for educators wanting to engage students with the most powerful content and social media services for learning across all subjects.

Wikipedia fit for the classroom.

Is social media just for kids?

Facebook - To filter or not to filter?

Districts change policies to embrace Twitter, Facebook.

Assorted:

Blended learning - NSW CAP initiative

http://trichorder2.blogspot.com/2010/03/i-stood-at-crumbling-edge.html

New literacies and ambiguity a great overview by Doug Belshaw


Look out for my next post on the key concepts and language for teachers to understand when reviewing digital resources for student access.



"Hands-On" Learning with Laptops and "i"devices (2)

Survey: Student want Mobile Devices in School

Educators struggle to design mobile-learning content

Central York School District, Pennsylvania and the possibility of laptops for high school students

Rethinking plan for educating at-risk students.

Nintendo aims to get consoles in schools

Collection in progress as articles appear ... look out for three in this series

Monday 15 March 2010

DER in New South Wales-Where to now? (1)

Where to for this exciting and successful project? Education in NSW is on the boil.

2010 laptop rollout starts

Education Minister, Verity Firth updates progress of laptop rollout at Kogarah HS.

Brendan Jones speaks about his thoughts on the "Education Revolution". This is a valuable post.

Diane Marshall at the Adobe Leaders Conference

Bandwidth for the DERNSW - Stephen Wilson speaks at the Adobe Leaders Conference

A parent/s view of DER ... how relevant to learning is the website referred to?

Enticing teachers to use technology a useful post by a teacher from NSW, North Coast

Watch out for the next in this series ... DERNSW is on the move ...

Saturday 6 March 2010

Health and Wellbeing (1)

Useful article with lots of tips about sleep

Effects of sleep deprivation

More on the value of naps

Nap boosts brain learning power

A brain on perfect is often late too - about the potential impact of "perfectionism"

Why some brains become leaders and others followers.

Parenting and early learning