The Innovative Educator: 21st Century Educators Don’t Say, “Hand It In.” They say, “Publish It!

• The Innovative Educator: 21st Century Educators Don’t Say, “Hand It In.” They say, “Publish It! - Annotated

  6 ways teachers can move from "hand it in" to "publish it". Good examples of actual assignments which can be used in any classroom.

  tags: web 2.0, education, publish

  • All this data, assessment, and evidence that lives nowhere that is authentic, relevant, or important to the actual student we are trying to develop. It takes more than collecting data or creating on computers to be a 21st century school. If educators are not having students publish regularly in thoughtful, authentic, and relevant places they are NOT preparing them for today or tomorrow.
  • 6 Ways Innovative Educators Can Move from “Hand It In” to “Publish it” Teaching
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    • - post by robert_alford

Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.

Digital Youth Project: What kids are really doing on-line.

• Digital Youth Project: If you care about kids and want to understand how they use technology and why, this is a must-read - Boing Boing

  New research into what/how today's "digital youth" use the internet.

  tags: education, web 2.0, digital youth

  • The conclusions are sane, compassionate, and compelling: in a nutshell, the "serious" stuff we all hope kids will do online (researching papers and so on) are only possible within a framework of "hanging out, messing around and geeking out." That is to say, all the "time-wasting" social stuff kids do online are key to their explorations and education online.

Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.

Twitter in the classroom. Is it in you?

• Teaching With Twitter: Not for the Faint of Heart - Technology - The Chronicle of Higher Education - Annotated

  tags: twitter, web2.0, education

  • OK, asking 250 students to post questions on Twitter during a class doesn't risk life or limb. But it can cause ego damage if the mob of students in his course on personal finance gets disorderly online.
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    • - post by robert_alford
  • During one session this month, students took over the back channel to ask the professor to cancel class Thanksgiving week so they could have a longer vacation.
  • Opening up a Twitter-powered channel in class—which several professors at other universities are experimenting with as well—alters classroom power dynamics and signals to students that they're in control.
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    • - post by robert_alford

Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.

Google Makes World Bank Data More Discoverable

• Google Makes World Bank Data More Discoverable

  Google search to start displaying graphs using World Bank public data.

  tags: google

  • Google just announced that it now uses public data from the World Bank to display graphs for queries
  • Google makes uses of the World Bank's public API. Through this, Google can access 17 World Development Indicators. Google displays this data in interactive graphs that make it easy to compare stats for different countries
  • Google also added data from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics and the U.S. Census Bureau's Population Division to its search results page.

Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.

Using Google Forms and graded quizzes

• Google Quizes | Screencast-O-Matic

  tags: googledocs, tutorial, googleforms

Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.

Netbooks are dead? Just when I thought these were the answer to the one to one situation.

• Netbooks are dead. Long live the notebook. | Tech Sanity Check | TechRepublic.com

  tags: netbooks

  • - post by robert_alford
  • Even Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer and Dell CEO Michael Dell have spoken out about the poor user experience of netbooks. Ballmer is especially bullish on CULV systems, even though Microsoft only makes a little bit more money on CULV machines than netbooks.
  • To these consumers, the term “netbook” meant two things: cheap and portable. What many of them quickly found out was that these PCs had LCDs so small that they didn’t work well with many applications and Web sites, had non-standard keyboards that were not meant for extended use with adult-sized fingers, and had CPU power that was ill-equipped to handle heavy multi-tasking or anything other than standard Web or productivity applications.

Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.

Twitter for Teachers

Twitter Handbook for Teachers

Personal Learning Networks

So I have begun my journey into the world of personal (professional) learning networks. You may be asking, "What the heck is a PLN?" Well, a personal learning network is a collection of resources a person uses to gather information. Traditionally this network consisted of your co-workers, friends, collection of books, magazines, and and other resources you could tap into discover new information. This was/is a useful system but it tends to consist of dated information and, generally speaking, information from a relatively small geographic area. But thanks to the Internet and all it's wonderful social networking sites we can now vastly increase the size, reach, and timeliness of our resources. The social networking sites have been harnessed for educational purposes. You expand your pool of information expects and meet people from literally all over our planet who have similar questions as you. By using Twitter, Google Reader, Diigo, and many others we now have the potential of increasing our pool of information resources exponentially. Instead of hunting and pecking all over the Internet (or simple relying on Google for an answer) you now have the ability to ask a question of a very large audience and get a much more relevant and timely answer. On your pln you are also a member of a community. Not only can you get information but you get to give it as well. And, as I believe, teaching others is the best way to learn it also is the right thing to do.

Many Eyes - Visualiztion for the masses.

Visualization of data for the masses. Many Eyes, a creation of CUE's Visual Communication Lab, believes in the power of human visual intelligence to discover knowledge through patterns. Transforming data sets into images on a screen transforms the data from sets of numbers to visual works of art. Visual images have a way of bringing data sets to life. And, like all good web 2.0 packages, Many Eyes is build upon the social sharing platform. Visualizations are shared to enhance the communities understanding of our world.

I sign up and uploaded some data to Many Eyes and was impressed with the ease of use and the results. Many Eyes is truly a visualization solution for the masses.

*Requires Java Script

TweetDeck - get Twitter under control

With all the buzz regarding Twitter's new feature "Lists", which allows users to group the people they follow, I wanted to share my experiences with TweetDeck. TweetDeck has the same capabilities as "Lists" but offers a wide range of additional features I find useful. TweetDeck allows for the grouping of the people you follow (for example you can have a group for work, social, technical, .....etc.) but it also can update your Twitter, Facebook, and MySpace accounts in a single click. You can manage multiple Twitter accounts easily view photo as thumbnails directly from TweetDeck. By setting up multiple columns in TweetDeck you can follow several tweeters simultaneous. TweetDeck reduces the overwhelming roar of Twitter to a more manageable and useful tools.

Check it out.

http://tweetdeck.com/beta/

Using Twitter to manage Remember the milk

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=Mobile Joy!

Using the power of Twitter it is possible to manage your RTM to-do list via SMS text messaging. Being on the road all the time I invariably find myself needing to do and/or remember something and writing a note to myself is just not practical (if my head was not attached......). So I thrilled to learn that RTM has taken advantage of Twitter's direct messaging capability to make it possible to SMS text message directly into RTM. Now when the boss needs you to send her a report as soon as you return to the office you quickly send your RTM account a direct twitter message, it gets posted to your to-do list, everybody happy! Now if you don't pay attention to your to-do list that's not twitter or RTM's problem.

For instructions see link below:

http://www.rememberthemilk.com/services/twitter/

Remember the milk - keeping organized volume 2

Remember the milk is another good program for keeping organized on-line and remotely. You can keep a to-do list, share your list with anyone with an email address, and add it as a gadget on your gmail and google calendar pages. As a gadget RTM updates automatically and you can manage your to-do's right from both gmail and google calendar.

For instructions see link below.

http://www.rememberthemilk.com/services/gmail/gadget/

Keeping organized with Google Calendar and SMS.

Using Google Calendar from a computer is a rather straight forward undertaking. But add the power of your cell phones SMS capabilities and you now are organized on the go.

Using your cell phone's SMS capabilities you can set up Google calendar to send you a text message reminder of an upcoming event. You can also add events to the calendar.

For instructions see the link below.

http://www.google.com/support/calendar/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=37228

Google University

Starting to train staff on Google Docs. Will they see the light? Or should I say the 'cloud'. Will this be a big step? Many people are already familiar with web based email, this is simply the next step. BUT how much can an educational organization legally use cloud based products? Big question.