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Sunday, February 22, 2015

Diigo Bookmarks (weekly)

  • tags: personalized learning montessori blogpost

  • tags: add-ons google apps google drive blogpost

  • tags: blogpost future ready automation teaching

    • What technophiles forget, neglect, trip over—pick a verb–are the multiple purposes for tax-supported schools in a democracy. They and many others futurists err—my verb choice—in equating access to information with becoming educated. The purpose of schooling is reduced to acquiring information.
    • Googled facts do not add up to knowing something.
    • Tax-supported public schools have been and are social, political, and moral institutions whose historic job has been to help children and youth acquire multiple literacies, enter the labor market well prepared, vote, serve on juries, contribute to their communities, think for themselves, and live full and worthwhile lives.
    • Few policymakers, philanthropists, technology futurists have challenged (or are willing to challenge) the swelling embrace of automated instruction that promise transforming schools into information factories.
    • Effective teaching, like work in other helping professions such as medicine, social work, and religious counseling is anchored in relationships. Those student/teacher relationships convert information into knowledge and, on occasion, knowledge into wisdom about the self and world. Teachers, then, from preschool through high school  are far more than deliverers of information.
    • No software program that I know has algorithms that either make instantaneous decisions when events pop up unexpectedly or split-second moral decisions.
    • So, because of multiple purposes for schooling and the daily press of classroom decisions, I believe that automation of teaching is not around the corner.
  • Ting Vogel - Director of Technology

    tags: blended learning blogpost edtech schools

  • tags: blogpost tools design thinking

  • tags: blogpost tools history African_American race

  • tags: blogpost google apps presentation

  • Harvard Law

    tags: blogpost sped

    • 15-year-old had the kind of PTSD that is suffered by combat soldiers
    • Trauma and Learning Policy Initiative, a collaboration between Massachusetts Advocates for Children and HLS
    • Education Law Clinic, where children and their families can get legal help securing education services
    • linked childhood trauma to developmental problems. Its victims, they have found, are often unable to focus on learning or to trust adults. They often suffer from hopelessness, lack of control and diminished self-worth. Remembering traumatic experiences triggers anxiety that suppresses the area of the brain associated with language, making it difficult for them to communicate effectively.
    • children who experienced trauma were two to four times more likely to skip school, act out or bring other problems to the classroom
    • U.S. schools suspend more than 3.3 million students annually, according to the National Education Policy Center, 95 percent for reasons other than using drugs or carrying weapons.
    • landmark publication “Helping Traumatized Children Learn,” which came out in 2005. Colloquially known as the Purple Book, it has become a go-to resource for educators, advocates, and parents, and has been bought or downloaded more than 100,000 times, with requests for translated editions coming from as far afield as Brazil and the Netherlands.
    • In an elementary school in Brockton, south of Boston, educators got a graphic representation of the issues many of their students were facing when a social worker from the district attorney’s office superimposed the coordinates of gun and drug offenses over a map of the school district. Gasps were heard in the room, the principal, Ryan Powers, later recounted for a New York Times blog. But then the teachers went to work. For students who had trouble grappling with their emotions, they set up beanbag chairs in quiet corners, gave them headphones to listen to classical music or excused them from class to go for walks. Police began letting schools know when they visited an address where children live so counselors could look out for problems. Eisner and Ristuccia worked closely with the school, and after two years of integrating this new approach, the number of students sent to the principal’s office with discipline problems plummeted by 75 percent.

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

Sunday, February 15, 2015

Diigo Bookmarks (weekly)

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

Sunday, February 8, 2015

Diigo Bookmarks (weekly)

  • tags: blogpost technology edtech projector Apple TV

  • tags: blogpost technology education edtech e-rate internet

    • “E-Rate,” a little-known but critical program under the auspices of the Federal Communications Commission (FCC). E-Rate is an 18 year-old program originally designed to help schools and libraries pay for telecommunication services
    • using it as a tool to support broadband Internet deployment in our schools
    • The modernization of E-Rate, by bringing Wi-Fi enabled broadband Internet to our schools, creates the necessary backbone for the deployment of technology in education
    • economics of education technology finally make sense
    • experience now shows that digital learning transforms education
  • tags: blogpost technology tech integration

  • tags: pd student-centered blogpost

    • included choice in sessions - everyone had the opportunity to choose between three different PD sessions where various apps were being featured and basic training was being offered
    • professional development was led by our students
    • thirteen fifth graders facilitated our staff learning by sharing various apps that they loved using and felt like experts in regards to application
    • student voice (#StuVoice)
    • "Geek Squad"
    • students had an opportunity to teach others about various tech resources based on the fact that they had developed a level of expertise with those resources
    • Educreations, Sticky Notes, Bitmoji, iMovie, Haiku Deck and Near Pod
    • children were given time in their classroom to prepare presentations and then had a chance to present to their classmates and refine their presentations. The groups were then paired up and assigned to a room so that each room featured two app presentations by two different groups (3 rooms in total). The staff then had a choice of which presentations they wanted to participate in and went to that room. The staff members were informed in advance about the apps that would be featured and were encouraged to download the apps of interest and bring their devices to the PD sessions so they could be more interactive.
  • tags: blended learning blogpost

    • 1.  KEEP GOALS AND MISSION IN MIND
    • Technology shouldn’t force a school away from its guiding principles; it should be implemented thoughtfully to complement those goals
    • 2.  TECH SHOULD COMPLIMENT NOT REPLACE
    • needed to do more conceptual building.” That’s why she chose ST Math as a
    • 3.  INVOLVE FAMILIES
    • When Vinci donated tablets to its kindergarten students, Encompass had the company train parents on how to use them.
    • Achieve3000 in Language Arts because it offers letters home in Spanish, access to student dashboards by mobile device and even an audio function so parents can listen to the articles their students read
    • 4.  DON’T LET TRENDS DICTATE DECISIONS
    • Although tablets and laptops are trendy right now
      • Tablets? Maybe. Laptops? Don't seem to fit the mold of a 'trend.' 
    • 5.  SUPPORT TEACHERS
    • They need professional development and the ability to offer input into what software and models the school uses. “It’s not about the online content, it’s about the structures and putting it in a meaningful way for teachers to use it,”
    • 6.  USE TECH TO FREE UP TEACHER TIME
    • Computers aren’t teachers, but they can offer a space for students to practice skills they’ve learned or explore new ones while a teacher is working with smaller group of students.
    • 7.  TRACK DATA
    • 8.  EXPECT EXCELLENCE, NOT ACHIEVEMENT
    • “In private schools it’s about excellence, it’s not about achievement,”
    • 9.  UNDERSTAND START-UP WORLD
    • good luck working with small start-up businesses, in part because she’s entered those relationships with her eyes open.
    • hen a start-up company changed its business model, deciding not to work directly with schools anymore she wasn’t surprised or taken off guard
    • 10.  BUILD RELATIONSHIPS WITH VENDORS
    • When she interviews a potential tech partner she is looking for how responsive the company will be to her school’s needs and whether they can produce data in useable ways.
  • tags: google drive add-ons blogpost

  • tags: chromebooks google apps administrators pd blogpost

  • tags: chromebooks screencasting thinglink edtech blogpost

  • tags: blogpost future ready innovation

  • tags: blogpost pd survey assessment

  • tags: blogpost edtech data big data privacy

    • important to have a written data governance plan that recognizes the different sources of data that the school district has. I think districts should have policies about how the data can be used — how do teachers sign up for apps, how is information given to online vendors, what’s the process before signing contracts for data use?
    • data governance at the district level
    • actually know what data you have. This means creating an inventory of what you are collecting, and then to be transparent, to post that inventory on your website. Also include information about what data the school collects, how it is being protected and what it is used for. Once you build in the governance and the transparency around your data systems, the technical challenges are the easy part.
    • Make information about student data practices and polices easy to find.
    • Publish a list of the personal student information you collect and you plan to use it.
    • Make sure parents know what, if any, personal student information you plan to share with third-party vendors.
    • Effectively communicate your data usage plans and policies to parents and members of the public.

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