Inspiring New Futures

25 Ways Teachers Can Connect More With Their Colleagues | Edudemic : A growing  criticism  of the American education system is that teachers spend too much of their time distanced from their colleagues (a recent survey found that teachers spend just 3% of their school day collaborating with other teachers), encouraging competition rather than collaboration, and making it difficult for teachers to work together to solve educational and institutional issues. Things don’t have to be that way, however, as there are many ways that teachers can reach out and connect with their colleagues and build a more collaborative atmosphere in their schools. We’ve come up with just a few here, but feel free to share your own experiences and ideas that can help other educators to connect and ultimately improve the quality of instruction they can offer students. GET ON THE SAME PAGE . One of the biggest obstacles to connecting with other teachers is making sure that you’re all on the same page...

“The fact that I, as a teacher, get to assume the role as facilitator and guide gives me the extra energy to really see the students as individuals, and to challenge their individual competences and talents.” – Denmark | daily edventures : Martin Lindved’s passion for technology started early, when he got his first game console in the 1980s. Since then, he’s managed to combine his love of technology and play to create meaningful learning experiences for his students. Lindved’s latest innovation, The Digital Tarzan Track (DTT), brings together all of his experience in working with children. Using the didactic model, the approach combines the three things that are crucial in successful teaching and learning: ICT, play and movement. Lindved has been sharing his innovation with other educators, and sees his students gaining real 21 st  century skills, even as pre-schoolers. Here, Lindved tells us more about  DTT , and offers up some insights on the changing ro...

SocialEdCon: What the Heck Do We Do with Social Media? | Edutopia : Betty Ray is Edutopia's senior blog editor and community manager. She was one of the organizers for  TEDxSFED  in San Francisco and is a  regular blogger for Edutopia . Follow her on Twitter  @EdutopiaBetty . Greetings from sunny San Diego. I’m here for the annual  ISTE conference  and its innovative kick-off gathering,  SocialEdCon  -- the one-day  unconference  formerly known as EduBloggerCon. (Organizer Steve Hargadon changed the name to reflect the change in emphasis from blogging to the larger social media universe that brings educators together.) Topics this year ranged from how to expedite technology adoption to the impact of technology on social and emotional learning; blended learning; and tools and ideas for making media in the classroom. (See the  entire SocialEdCon schedule ) Over the next week or so, we’ll hear from some of these participants as gues...

Industry needs more young scientists and mathematicians, says BAE chief | Technology | The Guardian : Six out of 10 UK jobs will need engineering-friendly skills but only one student in 10 takes key subjects beyond 16 Pupils in a science class at Kirkley Middle School, Lowestoft, Suffolk. Not enough pupils are studying science and related subjects beyond the age of 16, according to BAE's Nigel Whitehead. Photograph: Si Barber for the Guardian Britain faces a "national problem" over the lack of young adults studying engineering -friendly subjects such as maths and  science , according to a senior executive at Britain's largest manufacturing employer. The head of  BAE Systems ' UK business, Nigel Whitehead, will warn in a speech on Friday that too few school leavers and undergraduates are tackling the subject areas of science, technology, engineering and maths (Stem). Pointing to statistics showing that only 10% of people in the UK study Stem subjects beyond t...

"What's Worth Learning?" is Key Question for PBL Worldwide | Edutopia : Suzie Boss ( @suzieboss  on Twitter) is a journalist and author of  Reinventing Project-Based Learning: Your Field Guide to Real-World Projects in the Digital Age . She's also a  regular blogger on Edutopia . Editor's note: Today is the second in a series of posts from  PBL World , a global gathering of educators interested in project-based learning. Join the conversation on Twitter by following the hashtag #pblworld. When Claudia Urrea was growing up in Colombia, her family made a point of doing projects together. Whether they were focused on fun -- "building the coolest kite" -- or more practical household matters, projects taught her the value of learning by doing. Today, as director of learning for the  One Laptop per Child initiative  and a member of the Lifelong Kindergarten group at the MIT Media Lab, Urrea is an advocate of project-based learning as a strategy to improve ...

181 Google Tricks That Will Save You Time | Edudemic : Back in 2009, we published  100+ Google Tricks That Will Save You Time in School . But in nearly three years, Google has developed new products, discontinued a few, and offered new features, and more people have found great ways to save time with Google. So we’ve gone and found  even more  great tips for saving time with Google, and this time around, the list has made it all the way to 181 different tricks. Explore our collection of tricks to find new, faster ways to search, read email, manage your time, and more. Search Tricks   Google is so much more than a search engine. It’s a reference book, calculator, even a weather forecaster. Using these tricks, you can find helpful information quickly, plus get to the right links faster.

The Best 9 Free Websites That Offer Free eBooks for Teachers : Education nowadays is talking digital and probably by the year 2020 most of the schools in the US and Canada will have already embraced digital textbooks. Digital learning is gaining ground day after day and the sooner we embrace it the better. There are several ways teachers can benifit from this digital boom in education. One of them is digital reading. This is a kind of reading that is completely free of any charge and can take place anywhere, anytime. I am talking about a set of great websites that provide free ebooks for all kinds of learners and covering a plethora of different subject areas from literature and arts to science and technology. I have been researching into some of these resources and came up with the list below. Enjoy

The Intersection Between the Common Core and School Culture - Transforming Learning - Education Week : Communications scholar Marshall McLuhan once said, "We don't know who discovered water, but we know it wasn't the fish." Water shapes a fish's existence so profoundly — and, swimming right in the middle of it, the fish can't grasp how water impacts them. In education, a school's "water" is its culture, that complicated combination of shared values, norms, beliefs, and expectations. It manifests in actions as simple as the way a principal recognizes staff accomplishments, and as complex as the processes staff members use to mediate conflict or the ideas that shape student motivation. School culture is hard to characterize and cultivate, but it's arguably the defining factor in school change. Shifting culture could prove to be the trickiest — but most essential — piece of today's most pressing education challenge: implementing the Com...

40% of 11 Year Olds Don't Read for Fun | Education News : There is concern that children are failing to read for pleasure and are developing minimal attention spans that hamper academic study. A study by the publisher Pearson has found that concern in schools about children’s reading ability and desire is widespread. By the age of 11, when children move from primary to secondary school in the UK, teachers claim that over 40% of students  fail to read for pleasure . While a decline in the amount of time spent reading recreationally is to be expected in a modern world that holds more competing objects of attention such as television and the internet, having so many children abandon books completely is potentially troubling.

Why It’s Important to Understand Google Ranking | MindShift : "Question Mark Made of Puzzle Pieces" by Horia Varlan Students rely heavily on ranking–or how search tools decide the order in which to display results–to help them select sources to read. Most of us do, but the data about students comes from researchers Andrew Asher of Bucknell University and Lynda Duke of Illinois Wesleyan University. The researchers presented the findings of their latest study and forthcoming paper on  how university students do research , at the  American Library Association  Annual conference, and in the talk they emphasized some of their takeaways about what research skills should look like, including an overall focus on critical thinking skills and the ability to evaluate the quality of sources. Because of the reliance on ranking, Asher and Duke argue, it’s critical for students to have some understanding of how each search tool they use makes these decisions. To that end, here are a ...

“Families who choose online education for their children want the exact same thing that any parent wants – the best education for their kids – they are just choosing a different way to get it.” – USA | daily edventures : As someone who embraces social media and understands its benefits, it is very hard for me to grasp the concept of those in education not embracing it,” says Stephanie Hoaglund. Hoaglund is the director of social media at  K¹² , America’s largest provider of online education for grades K through 12. Their mission is to “fulfill the promise of education for every child.” Hoaglund, a parent of two and a popular  blogger  in her own right (she started blogging after her husband’s cancer diagnosis), has seen education from the traditional “brick and mortar” perspective and the newer, online approach. She is passionate about the use of social media in education.  “It’s powerful and if used correctly, can make a huge impact on students, par...

10 Incredibly Powerful Teaching Tools of the Future | Edudemic : In the June issue of  Edudemic Magazine for iPad , we take a look at 10 ideas for enabling tomorrow’s learning today. Utopian visions of learning are tempting, if for no other reason than they absolve us of accountability to create it right now,  leading to nebulous romanticizing about how powerful learning could be if we just did more of  X  and  Y . But therein lies the rub: Tomorrow’s learning is already available, and we tracked down 10 trends, concepts, and resources to make it happen.

25 Great Educators To Follow On Pinterest | Edudemic : The following is a cross-post from our content partners over at  Best Colleges Online Pinterest is such an exciting medium for collecting educational resources. It’s a great place for academics to share some of the best finds, resources, and learning opportunities in a visual format that’s appealing to students and researchers alike. We’ve found 25 academics that are doing just that, sharing their very own collections of educational and interesting pins. We encourage you to see how they’re using the site, plus check out the amazing finds they’ve collected.

SocialEdCon: What the Heck Do We Do with Social Media? | Edutopia : Betty Ray is Edutopia's senior blog editor and community manager. She was one of the organizers for  TEDxSFED  in San Francisco and is a  regular blogger for Edutopia . Follow her on Twitter  @EdutopiaBetty . Greetings from sunny San Diego. I’m here for the annual  ISTE conference  and its innovative kick-off gathering,  SocialEdCon  -- the one-day  unconference  formerly known as EduBloggerCon. (Organizer Steve Hargadon changed the name to reflect the change in emphasis from blogging to the larger social media universe that brings educators together.) Topics this year ranged from how to expedite technology adoption to the impact of technology on social and emotional learning; blended learning; and tools and ideas for making media in the classroom. (See the  entire SocialEdCon schedule ) Over the next week or so, we’ll hear from some of these participants as gue...

40 Blogs for Special Needs Parents | Edudemic : ECE (Exceptional Child Education) is a growing part of accountability in public education. And with the expansion of technology–including Apple’s recently-announced  update to their iOS –learners with special needs have more tools than ever to accommodates their individual needs. Social media is a great place to turn to keep up with this technology, as can platforms like Edudemic. But if you’re needing something a bit more niche and specific, a blog dedicated to a more narrow “sliver” of education can be a life-saver–an excellent source of resources and ideas. Here are 40 blogs for the parents of learners with special needs.

Think, Wonder, & Teach: Teaching with Technology : I have been meaning to write this post since April but haven't found the time. I received an email earlier this week asking for advice and I knew it was time to finally sit down and write this. I am so grateful and so blessed by winning an opportunity to attend this event. I would not have been able to afford to attend without Janaye. So thank you... again! Every one of the speakers had something relevant and wonderful to share. However, Cara had the most impact on me. Each day I learn more and more about how I MUST incorporate technology into my teaching but rarely does one hear about how. Cara not only tells you how but shares it as well. I recently learned that instead of purchasing a ticket for the whole event, you can now purchase it by the speaker at Teacher's Notebook. When I looked, they were on sale for $4 per one hour talk. So worth every penny! I have used several different forms of technology...

Karl Gude: Five Reasons Why Twitter Is Amazing In Large Lecture Classes : Image by Colin Marshall The guest professor in my large class of 200 journalism students at Michigan State University was just hitting his stride when suddenly  every single student plunged to the ground as though looking for a dropped pencil . Stunned, the speaker continued his talk. About 15 minutes later the students leapt to their feet and applauded furiously!  Shattered, he began to realize that something he was saying, some word, was igniting this explosive response from the students. At the time I was on a flight to Denver and the speaker was doing me a favor taking over my class. As the plane was about to land I got a text message from him (yes, I had my phone illegally turned on) that simply said, "You're dead!" He was right to blame me ... and Twitter. Now, I wouldn't advise doing this to just any old professor. This was a good friend of mine and I knew he would appreciate a G...

Top 15 Android Apps for Children’s Education : Android is the mostly and widely used Operating system nowadays. Android is a mobile system software having operating system, middleware and key applications. Android was first developed in U.S. California at Palo Alto in 2003 by Andy Rubin, Rich miner, Nick sears and Chris White and latterly it was adopted by Google. In Smart Phones, Android is a strong operating system supporting a huge number of applications. Due to these advance applications, user’s life has become more comfortable and responsive. Android has a dominating role in several applications which are present in android world, and developers have chance to make it more advance. Whenever we talk about Education, the very first think comes in our mind is School. Amongst us, most of the people have strong belief that a typical setup of classroom and school can give their ward a quality and worthy learning, while few of them have totally different point of view regarding e...

- Top 10 Sites for Educational Apps : The wave of the future is here, especially for education.  Terms like 21st Century Computing, BYOD (Bring Your Own Device), and Cloud Computing are mainstream.  The introduction of mobile devices, iPods, netbooks, and more specifically, the iPad, has brought technology to more students than ever before.  A one-to-one computing environment is not only a possibility, but also a reality in more school districts than people realize.  With all that being said, below are my 10 favorite sites for finding educational apps. APPitic  - Great site with over 1300 reviews done by Apple Distinguished Educators.  These apps have been tested in different grade levels with different instructional strategies. Mind Leap  -  Excellent site with reviews built on a five-star scale.  Reviews are done on a wide range of subjects and offers a nice breakdown of statistics such as educational quality, engagement factor, and she...

Comprehensive Education > Reading, Math, and Science — Whole Child Education : ASCD and more than 25 other major education organizations (including several  whole child partners ), representing a wide array of subject areas, are promoting  consensus recommendations  for how federal education policy can better support subject disciplines beyond reading, math, and science. The recommendations are a response to proposals that could threaten schools' and districts' ability to provide students with a comprehensive education that prepares them to graduate from high school ready for success in college, careers, and citizenship, and that narrows the definition of such readiness to only the Common Core State Standards. The Obama administration has suggested collapsing programs that support arts, history, civics, foreign languages, geography, and economics into one initiative, requiring these subjects to compete against one another for resources. The administration has al...

“Involving students in their learning to create personal paths and collaboration is helping them, but competition and individualism is getting in the way of learning.” – Finland | daily edventures : Merja Narvo-Akkola  is fortunate to be an educator in a country recognized as one of the best at educating its citizens, but she isn’t taking anything for granted. “No one was more surprised by the  PISA results  and Finland’s relative high standing than the Finns themselves,” Narvo-Akkola has said. In Finland, most students begin compulsory schooling at age seven, and much emphasis is placed during the early years on play, oral language and social skills development. The system has short school days, finishing at 1 p.m., for teachers and students. And there is no system-wide standardized testing. Narvo-Akkola believes that Finnish schools achieve excellence by focusing not on competition, but on cooperation and equality. Her own mission is to promote those values ...

6 Tips for the Successful Online Teacher -- THE Journal : In recent intake interviews with new students of education at  West Texas A&M University , I found that teaching online is the new Holy Grail for many young K-12 educators. They dream about how wonderful it would be to spend part of their day working from home in their bunny slippers and to conduct meaningful interactions with students via Skype while preparing dinner. To this group, teaching online means never having to be anywhere at any particular time, never having to wear uncomfortable "professional clothes," and never being asked a question without having time to research the answer. After two decades in online teaching in both the corporate world and higher education, I regret to report that the grass is not necessarily greener on the other side of the network connection. While online teaching offers many rewards for instructors, it takes a special set of skills and attitudes to excel at it. And these...

iPhone, iPad apps meld music lessons, video games | News | eClassroom News : Some music experts have dubbed this the "gamification" of music education, a way of making sometimes-grueling practice more enjoyable. Don’t kid yourselves, guitar heroes: Racking up mega-scores with that fake guitar won’t get you any closer to playing the real thing. But if students really want to learn the guitar or another instrument, a number of apps for the iPad and iPhone can help—and students will feel like they’re still playing a  video  game. In fact, some music experts have dubbed this the “gamification” of music education, a means for making sometimes-grueling music learning more palatable and enjoyable. A handful of apps with St. Paul, Minn., connections are a part of this high-tech music-education surge. Tone Target, developed by J. Anthony Allen at the McNally Smith College of Music in downtown St. Paul, is a dead ringer for Guitar Hero. Dots representing tones endlessly flow on an i...

Yong Zhao: PBL Develops Students' Creative Confidence | Edutopia : Suzie Boss ( @suzieboss  on Twitter) is a journalist and author of  Reinventing Project-Based Learning: Your Field Guide to Real-World Projects in the Digital Age . She's also a  regular blogger on Edutopia . Editor's note: Today is the fourth in a series of posts from  PBL World , a global gathering of educators interested in project-based learning. Join the conversation on Twitter by following the hashtag #pblworld. Yong Zhao, author of  Catching Up or Leading the Way , kicked off the third day of PBL World with a fast-paced tour of global education challenges and a ringing endorsement of project-based learning as a key strategy to help students succeed. Countries around the world -- and especially China, where Zhao grew up -- are eager to help children "develop the skills, confidence, and creativity to survive in the 21st century," he said. Students in Shanghai may be able to produce world...

Google Brings Free Wi-Fi to Some New York Subway Stations - NYTimes.com : This summer, New York subway riders might be able to actually get some work done on the train (rather than just beating their high scores in  Temple Run ). Beginning Monday, free Wi-Fi will be available at a number of stations courtesy of Google. Boingo Wireless, the Wi-Fi provider well known for its wireless service for airports, has teamed up with Google Offers, the search company’s Web page for getting deals, to offer the free Internet. Google is paying for the service from now until Sept. 7.

An iPad on Legs: Is ActivTable the Next Interactive Whiteboard? | MindShift : Promethean By Lillian Mongeau In the race to develop the classroom of the future, tech giant Promethean has taken another step forward this year with a new product called ActivTable. Think iPad on four legs. The newest gadget is the latest in Promethean’s range of interactive classroom products—smart boards, classroom response systems that resemble game show buzzers, teacher dashboards—and is the first of the company’s products designed especially for small group learning. The table is about the size of a wide coffee table and comes up to the hips of the average adult. It’s a 46”, high-definition LCD touch-screen. The surface is covered in “gorilla glass” for durability. It can respond to touch from up to six kids at a time. Students stand around the table, using it for all sorts of activities, from sorting vocabulary words to working out math problems to basically anything you can think of that can also b...

Malawi school kitchen to be named in honour of school meal blogger Martha | World news | The Guardian : Publicity surrounding the banning of NeverSeconds blog led to £85,000 going to the charity the nine-year-old was supporting Pupils at Lirangwe primary school in Malawi show their thanks to nine-year-old blogger Martha Payne. Photograph: Mary's Meals/PA A school kitchen being built in  Malawi  is to be named in honour of a nine-year-old blogger who has raised £85,000 for charity. Martha Payne started the  NeverSeconds blog  six weeks ago, posting daily pictures of, and opinions about, her school lunches. The blog has received 6m views and won the support of celebrity chefs Jamie Oliver and Nick Nairn. On Friday Martha was told by Argyll and Bute council to stop taking photos for her blog as media coverage had apparently left catering staff fearing for their jobs. But the council reversed its decision after a barrage of negative publicity in the media and on so...

15 Habits For Learning In The 21st Century | Edudemic : Defining  21 st  century skills  is an editorial matter. There are dozens of examples floating range with a range of authority behind them—some inspired, grassroots efforts, other core brands of multimillion dollar organizations making a national push. There is even debate as to whether they are truly necessary, the idea being that learning habits and priorities are timeless, and do not change because the world itself changes. But the scale and rate of change are unrelenting. Culture oozes forward. Trends and movements emerge and overwhelm old habits. Technology does its dizzying dance. And learning has to change with it.

Colleges Experimenting with Teaching Foreign Languages Online | Education News : Two schools have recently launched programs to offer extensive foreign language instruction over the internet, including an accredited German degree online. As online learning begins to play a bigger role in the education landscape, some have questioned if foreign language instructional courses can make a similar transition and  be successfully taught over the internet . Recently, James Madison University became the first institution of higher learning to offer comprehensive online foreign language instruction by partnering with language software maker Rosetta, the company behind the successful Rosetta Stone franchise. The move has caused other education professionals to consider the internet as a medium for language instruction. Inside Higher Ed reports that education veterans have doubts that the internet language courses can deliver the same high quality results as those achieved via traditional ...

Are Charter Schools Actually Serving Students Better? | Education News : A GAO study shows charters enroll 3% fewer special education students, but is this difference down to labeling and better early education standards?   A GAO study has found that charter schools enroll 3% fewer special education students than traditional public schools. Disabled students represent 11.2% of students attending traditional schools — and only 8.2% of students enrolled in charter schools for the 2009-10 year. Data was sourced from the Department of Education. Lisa Snell, writing for the Reason Foundation Out of Control Policy blog, finds the  premise of the GAO report suspect . She draws a distinction between serving a child and merely enrolling them, or labeling a wider variety of children as special education. Indeed, Snell suggests that while the original analysis implies that public schools are serving special needs children better by having a higher rate of special education designation...

Online Testing on the Rise - Digital Education - Education Week : By guest blogger Mike Bock According to a recent press release  from publishing market analyst firm Simba Information, online K-12 testing is poised to increase significantly in the next few years, and will make up 50 percent of the market for testing by the 2014-2015 school year. Presumably, the report speculates, big publishers like CTB/McGraw-Hill and Vantage Learning are starting to ramp up their online test production to meet the demand for more virtual assessments. In the 2011-2012 school year, only 38 percent of assessments were offered online. Simba Information is attributing the big jump to the rise of Common Core assessments: "New Common Core classroom assessments, which will be used to help drive instruction and gauge individual student progress, will focus on more performance-based and media-driven items, including adaptive learning technologies. Coupled with a move towards digital textbooks and in...

Yes, Schools Have an Alternative to Zero Tolerance - Democracy and Education - Education Week : We Welcome Derek Slaughter, a high school student from Baltimore.  He calls on a timely issue that is blocking many students’ opportunity to learn. -- Greg Justice for All By Derek Slaughter Throughout my educational career, I have heard my peers say that things aren’t fair or that they have been unjustly punished in schools. Administration being overzealous to implement extreme disciplinary action is a common theme in schools throughout the country, which I have observed in my travels. For this reason the National Student Bill of Rights movement believes in installing restorative justice systems in communities and schools. The principles of restorative justice require people to look at the root cause of the offender’s actions before the implementation of an arbitrary “punishment.” Through the restorative justice process, there is no need to enact zero tolerance: particip...

Michigan Explores Ideas on Computer-based Student Assessment | Education News : As part of an effort by reps of 26 states, Michigan is considering an adaptive test-taking system which tailors questions based on students’ previous answers. Michigan is exploring the possibility of using  online exams for student assessment  in order to better gauge each test-taker’s achievement level. The implemented system would be adaptive to the skills of every student, substituting questions on the fly based on the difficulty of the question the student had answered correctly during the course of the exam. Michigan is one of 26 states in the U.S. working to develop and roll out the system, which they hope will go live after the 2014-2015 school year. The new system is thought of as a replacement for the Michigan Education Assessment Program, which will be retired. Not only will the new system give districts a better idea of academic outcomes, the data provided will also go to helping the ...