15 Things You Can Do With Edmodo & How To Get Started
My son uses edmodo at school (6th grade) and it is great!
How The Best Web Tools Fit Into Bloom’s Digital Taxonomy
http://www.edudemic.com/2013/07/best-web-tools-blooms-digital-taxonomy/ This is a really cool post by 
.
Using Technology For Assessment
I am new to using prezi for presentations, but decided to give it a try. Here’s the link to my prezi, which is about technology and assessment:
http://prezi.com/q5mmrbw3deew/?utm_campaign=share&utm_medium=copy&rc=ex0share
Free Online Resources Engage Elementary Kids (Tech2Learn Series)
Having students create videos is a great way to create cross curricular lessons and allow kids time to work on collaboration skills. It is also another fabulous example of how to use technology for assessment purposes.
More Math Games
My second graders love the website www.coolmathgames4kids.com It is loaded with fun math games and logic games. The website has a dark background with bright neon colors. Very appealing to kids. The current favorite game of the boys in my class is “Sticky Ninja Academy”. How can you go wrong with a name like that?
Digital Leaners Need Parents and Teachers To Guide Them
Digital Learners Can’t Do It On Own
Barry Joseph Says They Need Adults To Guide Them
By Barry Joseph
You know me, right? I’m the one you call to fix your computer or set the clock in your car, the one you can count on to have the latest electronic gadgets.
But I am coming to you now as an educator with the unique privilege (and challenge) of working with today’s generation of so-called “digital natives.” I am here to explain that there is no such thing as a self-directed learner — or, perhaps more the point, to explain that parents and educators still matter.
My techno-passion was first piqued about 30 years ago, just a few months before I became a bar mitzvah, when I began learning an arcane language with an unforgiving syntax: Beginner’s All-purpose Symbolic Instruction Code, otherwise known as BASIC. Yes, at 12 years old, as an upper-middle class kid on Long Island, I was learning how to program a computer. Those initial classes led me to join some of the first online communities, and I even engaged in some pretend hacking of government agencies.
Back then I learned a lot in school, but I was also learning a lot at home, on my own. Today, as an after school educator training urban youth to use digital media to address global issues, it is hard to say which shaped my career path more: my formal education or my informal, interest-driven learning. You could say that my childhood passions, which once marginalized me as a nerd, have now gone mainstream. In fact, the computer skills I pursed as a child are now essential for all young learners, and they are acquired through playing video games, texting on cell phones, networking on Facebook, sharing videos from YouTube and more.
I can sympathize with the instinct to critique the time today’s youth devote to digital media, as well as the instinct to see it as separate from their education. But all this does is reinforce the gap between school subjects and students’ real lives. The opposite approach, however, is no better. We shouldn’t presume that inviting the digital into our learning environments requires us to fade into the background. Doing so plays into the myth of the self-directed learner.
What is this myth? I see it in action all the time. Take, for example, the new video “The Voice of the Active Learner,” posted on YouTube by Blackboard, an educational technology company. It paints a portrait of today’s young self-directed learners as superheroes breaking away from the guidance of an outdated educator.
“Very soon I will be in your classroom,” the young student challenges. “I will not take out a pencil or open a textbook … To learn I look online because the classroom is not enough for me … it’s your challenge to keep up with me.”
The taunts of this ponytailed cartoon character can be a source of deep anxiety for many educators and parents. But the truth is that there is no need to worry.
Yes, digital media can support youth to form deep engagement and pursue their own learning. The danger comes in presuming that if only the well-intentioned but old-fashioned adults would get out of the way and let the computer work its magic, a million minds would blossom. But this is not the time for us to admit defeat. In fact, now is the time for us to claim our unique role in the new learning ecologies of the digital age.
The MacArthur Foundation, for example, recently switched from over two decades of funding school-based education reform to what they now call Connected Learning — promoting changes in how youth learn and how we adults can support them. Connected Learning, in short, encourages youth to pursue knowledge or expertise about something that gets them excited while receiving support from both their peers and the institutions around them. From MacArthur’s perspective, we have to stop asking, “What is a child learning?” which focuses on the outcomes, and ask instead, “Is the child engaged?” which focuses on the experience of learning and creating a need to know.
The myth of the self-directed learner suggests youth can do it on their own. But, in fact, they need our help to develop that need to know. Sure, we can all point to an exceptional young person, but most don’t know how to pursue their own interests. They don’t yet know their own minds. That is where we come in.
To ignite their “need to know” we need to train young people to learn how to learn, to be able to navigate the rich “learning ecologies,” or networks, they will cultivate throughout their lives. We already know how to help them navigate their identities as they move in and out of Jewish contexts — why should navigating between their online and offline lives be any different?
The fact is, I may have developed an interest in computers as a teenager, but I could never have pursued that interest without the active engagement of the adults around me. My parents introduced me to my first computer class, while my teacher nurtured within me an aesthetic appreciation of computer code. The anonymous adults who ran my favorite online bulletin boards counseled me on safe online practices and provided me with invaluable leadership opportunities that inform how I teach to this day. The technology might have offered me the opportunity to pursue my own interests, but thanks to the adults around me I also learned how to do that.
Will today’s youth receive the support I enjoyed to apply their new skills and knowledge, learned through digital media use, to better themselves and the world around them? Or will they be left to fend for themselves?
The choice is not up to them. It’s up to us.
Barry Joseph directs the Online Leadership Program at Global Kids, Inc., and is writing the first book on seltzer water.
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This is the thinking that led us to create Mitkadem Digital, an online companion to the URJ’s Hebrew curriculum. Not only is Mitkadem Digital created to appeal to the various learning skills and styles of students, but it is made to give educators the ability to customize the program to better suit their needs. The Mitkadem learning management system allows teachers and educators to track student progress, upload their own lessons, and manage their classrooms online.
Online Jewish learning should not exist in a vacuum, but with the guidance of professional and inspiring educators.
Michael Goldberg Publisher & Editor-in-Chief, URJ Books and Music
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Read more: http://forward.com/articles/161499/digital-learners-can-t-do-it-on-own/?p=all#ixzz2NNEwvakt
Presentation Tech Tools For Kids
Laura Candler is a passionate educator who always had wonderful information to share on he
Check out this great article on her blog about presentation tech tools that are kid friendly!
http://corkboardconnections.blogspot.com/2013/03/techtools.html
Assessment in the 21st Century
Here is a great article discussing assessment and why we need to make some changes in our classrooms. We may have to live with standardized tests, but we can assess differently in our classrooms. She offers teachers some wonderful tips to help you get started with 21st Century Assessments.
Classroom Assessments for a New Century
One teacher’s quest to move beyond the bubble test.
Heather Wolpert-Gawron, a language arts teacher, works with her 7th graders at Jefferson Middle School.
http://www.edweek.org/tsb/articles/2010/10/12/01wolpert-gawron.h04.html
Teach Your Students How To Use The Technology They Already Have- Alternatives To Google
Alternative Search Tools: These options to Google will help students become better researchers
Collaboration- Two Heads Are Smarter Than One!
The Best Sites for Collaborative Online Studying
Students like to study together. Last week I walked into my local coffee shop and saw two of my former students doing just that, and I couldn’t have been prouder.
Peek down the hallways of your own school, or in the cafeteria or library around final exam time, and you’ll probably see students quizzing one another over the content they anticipate encountering on the test. Thanks to the Web, they don’t have to be in the same room to work together.
Let’s take a look at some platforms that help students connect for online study sessions.
Google+ opened up to teenagers late last year. There are some good tools built into the social platform that students can use for group study. An important element of Google+ that you and your students should get to know is Google+ Circles. These are groups of contacts that you create in your Google+ account. When you share an item in your account, you can specify who can or can’t see what you’ve just posted. Google+ Hangouts allow you to video chat with the people in your Circles. While in a Hangout, you can share your screen, share and collaborate on Google Docs, and use a collaborative whiteboard. While still relatively new—it’s only nine months old—Google+ has the potential to be a great place for students to study.
Think Binder enables students to organize online study groups in which they can share files and links, chat, and collaborate on a whiteboard. Think Binder could be used as a place for all students in a course to share their notes. By sharing notes and other materials, a student who’s absent from class can catch up by viewing the materials created by others that day. Users can create and join multiple Think Binder groups.
Open Study is a collaborative study tool that enables students to create online study groups. At its core, it’s a message board to help those seeking help in answering difficult questions. In addition, Open Study offers students the option to create or join online study groups, subscribe to other users’ updates, and record their notes online. There’s also a “public access” option for students who don’t want to register. Students using this feature can view public study materials but cannot post questions of their own. Students can register for Open Study using an email address or connect to it with their Facebook account.
Study Blue is a free service for creating, studying, and sharing flashcards online and on mobile devices. When students create flashcards in Study Blue, they can view up to 30 related flashcards from the community. For example, if I were to create a flashcard about geometry, I could access 30 other flashcards on the subject. I could then review all related flashcards, including my own. In addition, I could import any or all of those community flashcards to my own set.
Study Hall is a relatively new service for sharing information and studying with friends. The basic idea of the site is to enable teachers and students to upload content to a common place for access via an iPad, iPhone, or iPod Touch, as well as some Android-powered devices. Students can search for, view, and comment on course materials using Study Hall’s mobile apps. When using the iPad app, students can communicate in real time about the content that they’re viewing. The other mobile apps are currently limited to viewing only.
Together we’re smarter, and the same goes for our students, too. These tools can enable our students to connect, share notes, and work through difficult problems together. The next time your students bemoan the difficulty of getting together to study, you’ll have multiple places to send them online
Technology Tips For Teachers 