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STEM Education = Scientific Success - Huffington Post (blog)

2012-05-18T19:53:43Z

STEM Education = Scientific Success
Huffington Post (blog)
While yesterday's results make clear that we incubate top young scientists in this country, when we look at our education system as a whole it is also clear that we in the US can learn from our global neighbors. Countries such as Canada, Finland, ...

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Do Too Many Kids Go To College?

2011-10-18T15:46:00Z

Getting a college degree is often touted as a way to increase your income and your ability to compete in the job market. But are too many unprepared students being pushed into taking on large amounts of debt? A team of experts faces off in the latest Intelligence Squared U.S. debate.

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Teaching Digital Citizenship in the Elementary Classroom

2011-10-12T16:10:42Z

Teaching digital citizenship and internet safety is a lot more meaningful when students can engage in authentic online experiences.

Discovery Education Offers Free Tools for Teachers, Students - T.H.E. Journal

2011-10-11T20:25:16Z

Discovery Education Offers Free Tools for Teachers, Students
T.H.E. Journal
Discovery Education has partnered with a variety of organizations and companies to offer free educational technology tools for the classroom and several sweepstakes programs for teachers. New Teacher Survival Central, which provides online ...

Reach for the Stars Using Media in Your Classroom

2011-09-29T15:00:13Z

These are the slides, resources and videos I shared during my keynote address, “Reach for the Stars Using Media in Your Classroom,” on September 28, 2011, in Concord, New Hampshire. This presentation was shared for a gathering celebrating the 30th anniversary of NHSTE (New Hampshire’s Affiliate of the International Society for Technology in Education) at the McAuliffe-Shepard Discovery Center in Concord. The presentation focused on our obligations to be multimedia communicators as educators, the basics of “Playing with Media,” and examples of outstanding student media projects from New Hampshire students. Amidst a continuing barrage of exciting new technologies like the Apple iPad, Amazon Fire and Google Chromebook, the right question to ask is NOT, “Should we buy X device for our students?” The right question to ask is, “What do we want our students to DO with the tool we buy?”

Reach for the Stars Using Media in Your Classroom

View more presentations from Wesley Fryer

What happens in 60 Seconds on the Internet (April 2011)

“What Technology Wants” by Kevin Kelly (a great book to read or listen to on Audible)

The Kindle Fire

Kindle Fire TV Commercial (30 sec)

Google Chromebook

“You had me at 8 seconds”

Chromebooks for Education (2:13)

See resources for digital text, image, audio and video sharing on playingwithmedia.com

See examples of shared student projects on share.playingwithmedia.com

Purchase “Playing with Media: simple ideas for powerful sharing” as an eBook or paperback

Google Sketchup software (free)

Scratch software (free)

Green Cities – New Businesses

Green Cities – New Businesses from DeerfieldCS on Vimeo.

The Subtle Knife by Philip Pullman Book Trailer by Alec G.

The Great Book Stories project (examples of student-created VoiceThread-based book reports)

Roman Weapons In Plain English

Technorati Tags: blog, book, edtech, education, inspirational, inspire, new, playingwithmedia, report, school, schools, share, sketchup, student, technology, video, vimeo, youtube, nhste, hampshire, newhampshire, work, bookreport

Reach for the Stars Using Media in Your Classroom originally appeared on Moving at the Speed of Creativity on September 29, 2011.

Should We Still Teach Students to Write in Cursive?

2011-09-21T17:10:50Z

Bright Meadow

Reading and writing are fundamental to learning. But as more kids read and write via some sort of computing device — laptop, tablet, cellphone — how we teach those skills is changing, and one significant change is the decision to teach cursive. When it comes to equipping students with “21st century skills,” typing is in, cursive is out.

In part, the disappearance of cursive from the curriculum stems from the Common Core State Standards (now adopted by the majority of U.S. states), which no longer requires cursive as part of language arts and writing instruction. According to the Common Core’s mission: “The standards are designed to be robust and relevant to the real world, reflecting the knowledge and skills that our young people need for success in college and careers. With American students fully prepared for the future, our communities will be best positioned to compete successfully in the global economy.” And the global economy, so the argument goes, requires students to be prepared to type, not prepared to write in cursive.

The global economy, so the argument goes, requires students to be prepared to type, not prepared to write in cursive.

This isn’t to say, of course, that handwriting instruction itself is scrapped. Students will still learn to craft their letters, and plenty of students are still likely to curse the requirements for neat penmanship. But in lieu of requiring students to specifically learn cursive, the imperative now is to teach students to produce and publish their written work by typing and word processing.

Knowing how to type and how to create documents on a computer is obviously important. And for most people, writing in cursive is a rare event. Once touted as more efficient than print, typing is more efficient than either form of writing by hand. And as such cursive may seem like an extraneous skill.

Nevertheless, removing cursive from the curriculum has been controversial. Some have argued that learning cursive isn’t simply about learning how to write efficiently. It’s about learning how to write beautifully. It’s about fine motor skills. It’s about expression. And according to a report in The Wall Street Journal last year, there are a number of benefits to cognition and memory that come from writing by hand.

Some fear that if we stop teaching students to write in cursive, they’ll no longer be able to read cursive either, leaving a swath of written materials that will be undecipherable. Arguably, that’s something historians and archeologists have long faced; whether it’s cursive, calligraphy or otherwise, handwriting has changed immensely over the years.

And without cursive, how will people be able to sign their names, some argue, pointing to the one place where most adults probably do regularly use cursive in lieu of print. Of course, teaching cursive just so we can all add our personalized squiggle to the bottom of official documents probably isn’t an effective use of class time.

So is it time for cursive to go? Or should we retain it as part of the curriculum?

"Go without a coat when it’s cold; find out what cold is. Go hungry; keep your existence lean...."

2011-09-14T20:32:12Z

“Go without a coat when it’s cold; find out what cold is. Go hungry; keep your existence lean. Wear away the fat, get down to the lean tissue and see what it’s all about. The only time you define your character is when you go without. In times of hardship, you find out what you’re made of and what you’re capable of. If you’re never tested, you’ll never define your character.”

- Henry Rollins

(via Jimi Axelsson)

TechCrunch Review: Google Wallet

2011-09-19T20:24:20Z

I have seen the future, and it is called Google Wallet.

Note, however, that this future is just that: the future. As in, something not now. I’ve lived with Google Wallet in my life for the past week or so, and have walked away thoroughly impressed — but while Google Wallet may be launching today, don’t expect it to kick your actual wallet out of your pocket any time soon.

How It Works:

Back in May, Google announced their mission to kill your wallet.

Tying into the near field communication (NFC) system built into select Android handsets, Google Wallet allows your phone to act as your credit card. By tapping your Android phone against a compatible card reader available in select retailers, your payment credentials are transferred to the merchant without any swiping or physical cards required.

While the idea of combining your phone and your credit cards may terrify some, Google Wallet is (at least in theory) more secure than their real world plastic counterparts. If your phone’s screen is off, the transmitter chip can not be powered and stores no data (thereby preventing a passing hacker from skimming your card as he walks by). If you haven’t used Wallet in the past 30 minutes or so (or if you’ve manually locked it), a PIN is required before anyone can use your cards or even see which cards your Wallet contains.

My Experiences:

“What? Wait, do that again.”

“Is that legal?”

“Whoaaaaaaaaaaaaa.”

Every time I use Google Wallet, the person on the other side of the register looks at me like I’m Marty McFly and I’ve just stepped out of the DeLorean, hoverboard in hand. More than once, as I touched on above, they wondered aloud if I’d just pulled some techno voodoo on their system (though my favorite reaction of all was easily “Oh my god! iPhone 5!”)

When Wallet works (as it did for nearly all of the transactions I tried at compatible NFC readers), it works really, really well. It’s lightning fast, ultra-intuitive (turn on display, tap phone to reader. If you haven’t punched in your PIN recently, do so and tap the phone again. You don’t ever need to launch the app manually.) The merchant simply sees it run through their point of sales machine as any other card might, the receipt prints out, and you’re on your way.

When it doesn’t work, things get a bit… awkward. The one time the system failed, the merchant legitimately had no means of figuring out why. My phone’s screen read “Sent!”, their card reader made all of the appropriate bloops, and then.. nothing. I tried an NFC-enabled AmEx card I had handy, and it worked without a hitch. This was a location that I’d used Wallet at before. These same mystery issues can pop up with any credit card payments system, of course — but with the newness of NFC and that air of caution that a few folks conveyed, you should probably be prepped to explain yourself.

Where It Works:

Google Wallet will not work everywhere your credit card will. It won’t work everywhere there’s an NFC-friendly card reader, either. Wallet requires an NFC reader based on a new-ish specification, and only a select bunch of retailers have gotten around to updating.

With that said: even out in the relatively low-tech East Bay of California, I had no trouble finding locations to at least test things out. Making that effort considerably easier was an included MasterCard PayPass application, which can find and display all compatible retailers near your current location or any location you manually input. The list of compatible retailers within a 5-mile radius of my home was about a dozen items long, almost entirely made up of Jack In The Boxes, CVSes, and 7-11s.

Therein lays one of Google’s biggest challenges: getting these card readers everywhere. The readers are by no means Google Wallet specific (as mentioned above, the reader just needs to be based on a relatively new spec, but is the same tap-to-pay reader already used by Visa/AmEx/Mastercard) and the card vendors themselves have long been making the push — but until these things are nearly ubiquitous, your wallet (or at least one physical credit card you keep at arm’s reach) isn’t going anywhere.

How You Pay:

On Day 1, Wallet supports just one third-party card: the Citi Mastercard.

I don’t have one of those, and had a hard time finding anyone who does.

Fortunately, Google is well aware of this. For those of us with other banks and other cards, they’ve created the Google Pre-paid card. You add funds to the pre-paid card from any other credit card you’ve got, then tap into this pre-paid pool whenever you make a purchase. It’s not the most convenient extra step, but it at least opens up Wallet to just about anyone with a credit card. Google has just announced that they plan to support Visa, Discover, and AmEx cards in future releases — alas, no timeframe was given and it’s not clear whether or not support will be rolled out on a bank-by-bank basis.

The App

The Google Wallet app is executed with near perfection. It’s gorgeous, thoughtfully designed, and perfectly intuitive. The app is made up of four sections: Payment Cards, Loyalty Cards, My Offers, and History.

Payment Cards displays all of your Wallet-ified credit cards in a horizontally scrolling carousel. A small toggle below each card allows you to set anything in your e-plastic armory as the default. You can also add retailer-specific giftcards to your collection, though the only retailer supported at launch is American Eagle (Google promises more are on the way. I believe Subway is on board for the future.)

Loyalty Cards looks nearly identical to Payment Cards, but is meant for your myriad “Buy 10 sandwiches, get one free!”-type cards. As with giftcards, though, the only retailer at launch is American Eagle (but again, more are said to be on the way.)

My Offers lets you view any nearby promos you’ve purchased through Google’s daily/local deals app, Google Shopper.

The History section is a bit bare bones on day 1. It can currently display only the timestamps of your recent transactions (here’s a screenshot), leaving out any details regarding where it was used and even how much was spent. Google tells me this is something they plan to address quickly, but they just couldn’t get it done in time for launch.

Conclusion:

Google Wallet is great, magical, impressive, and all sorts of other positive adjectives. But today’s launch is just a small, but meaningful, first step. NFC-based payments via Mobile is something the world has long unanimously agreed would be awesome, but nearly all of the progress toward it (at least in the US) has been behind the scenes. This is the first time the public has really gotten to play with it — and while it’s going to take a few years (at the very least. Think about how many shops still insist on “Cash Only”.) before it’s ubiquitous enough to kill your wallet, Google seems in it for the long haul.

(… now, can anyone tell me what the heck I’m supposed to do when the battery dies and I’ve left my wallet at home?)

Here’s a quick demo of me using Google Wallet to buy food at a drive-through:

Crunchbase

GOOGLE

Company: Google

Website: google.com

Launch Date: July 9, 1998

IPO: NASDAQ:GOOG

Google provides search and advertising services, which together aim to organize and monetize the world’s information. In addition to its dominant search engine, it offers a plethora of online tools and platforms including: Gmail, Maps and YouTube. Most of its Web-based products are free, funded by Google’s highly integrated online advertising platforms AdWords and AdSense. Google promotes the idea that advertising should be highly targeted and relevant to users thus providing them with a rich source of information....

Learn more

Can a "gadget guy" also be an "education guy"?

2011-09-19T04:03:26Z

A university student takes issue with my approach and brings up some great points about educational technology.

For Charter Schools, Managing Mission Is Crucial

2011-09-19T11:00:04Z

Strategic mission management is crucial for charter schools, Peter Frumkin, Bruno V. Manno, and Nell Edgington write.

An Open Letter to Techy Teachers

2011-09-14T18:00:49Z

If you're helping other teachers, the best way to go is to listen, let them practice, and follow up.

Library School at U. of North Carolina Offers Students Lifelong Digital Archive

2011-09-16T21:11:32Z

Incoming students at the University of North Carolina’s School of Information and Library Science this year are getting a new kind of welcome-to-campus perk: Free data storage, for keeps.

The service, called LifeTime Library, works on students’ personal computers, allowing them to automatically archive files and folders. The data are preserved on the Web, where students can search for files by name or by date saved.

Students can continue to use the online storage locker after they graduate, and the plan is for the program to remain free, said Gary Marchionini, the school’s dean. About 60 incoming students out of a total of 160 have signed up for the first year of the program, he said.

The idea is to “help students learn to manage their digital lives,” Mr. Marchionini said. Dealing with large amounts of online data is a big part of what students learn at the School of Information and Library Science, and the LifeTime Library can serve as a teaching tool for students to figure out the best ways to organize reams of their own digital information.

For example, two courses will focus at least in part on ways to make the service more useful. Mr. Marchionini hopes that with student input, the program will soon be able to save every version of a file—such as, say, a Word document that has been edited multiple times. Perhaps the program will be able to archive mobile phone data, too, or crawl a student’s Facebook page, Mr. Marchionini said (the public parts only, of course).

The school has no plans to scan what students are putting in their digital archives, though it retains the legal right to do so, and students must adhere to an acceptable-use policy. “It’s not our intention to go looking for abuses,” Mr. Marchionini said.

The school has at least doubled its data-storage capacity, but much more space will be needed to keep the service sustainable in the long run, the dean said. He’s hoping he can get alumni donors on board.

As the program continues, not only will more students stash their data, but users may well store more than they would have otherwise. That makes it hard to know how much storage will be needed—and therefore how much the school will have to pay to maintain the service, Mr. Marchionini said.

For now, though, these 60 graduate and undergraduate students get to back up their files free. And, later on, if they’re feeling nostalgic, they can dig through their old work.

Five Ways to Bring High-Tech Ideas into Low-Tech Classrooms

2011-09-08T20:00:38Z

Flickr:quacktaculous

By Sara Nolan

Even the most wired classrooms know the screeching silence of that great technological dis: “Unable to Connect to Server.” It’s the 21^st century classroom’s equivalent of nails on a chalkboard. But whether you’re trying to connect kids to learning in a fully loaded classroom or one with no technology – or even if it’s at the kitchen table during homework time – high-tech ideas can translate and be relevant in low-tech environments.

More than just stop-gap measures for tech-less teaching environments, these no-tech ideas can actually help students deepen their digital literacy by giving them an opportunity to see, explore, and understand the parts and purpose of the digital media they take for granted – tweets and status updates, for example – by recreating them in an analog context. Here are five simple ways to help students tap into learning using high-tech ideas and low-tech tools (i.e. pen, paper, brain).

Put the Facebook page on paper. Use the template and terminology of a Facebook page as a reading log. Students can write a “Status Update” for a main character, “Like” the pages of organizations and people related to the main character, “Post a Picture” of their favorite figurative language from the reading (write the quote and illustrate it), and make a personal comment or question for the character (or author) on the “Wall.” This kind of log gives students opportunities to show and deepen their understanding of the text, while connecting it to a context that means something in their daily lives.
Build a classroom search engine. Create a dedicated reference source space in your classroom (or home) library that you label “Search Engine.” Or, better yet, get the kids in on the effort and have them create and organize the section based on the kinds of questions and information they think they’ll need in the class. Be sure to include those quaint old bastions of facts: encyclopedias, newspapers, and magazines. Design protocols and tools for using this section that give students opportunities to hone their online research skills, such as choosing key words before beginning their search, and using multiple sources to check for accuracy of information. For extra credit, run a class contest to come up with a name and design a logo for the search engine, using the stories behind how Google, Yahoo, and Bing developed their logos and names to create a list of criteria and goals.
Tweet to Learn. Create a “tweet” worksheet that students use to summarize new ideas, concepts, or short texts as a way to develop their close reading skills. Pass out these “tweet sheets” during a guided reading or viewing of a new text, asking students to stop at teacher-designated points to consider the main ideas of what they have just read/seen/heard, and then to summarize those ideas in a tweet. Instead of a character limit, which could become an end in itself, these tweets can be limited to 20 words. In limiting length and presenting a framework for writing, these tweets allow students to try on and express their understanding of new terms or concepts in a low-stakes context. Sharing these tweets during or after the reading gives students a chance to expand their understanding with their classmates, and gives teachers an opportunity to check the students’ understanding of the text and make any adjustments or enhancements as needed.
Encourage students to “chat.” While classroom discussions are great for extroverts, quieter students often feel too inhibited to speak up. To get them involved, create a classroom “chat room,” a poster or section of whiteboard where students can “post” comments on a particular question or topic using sticky notes. This can be used as a way to help generate ideas for and guide a discussion (students post their response to a question or prompt, then identify “threads” and develop guidelines to “moderate” the discussion); as a way to add commentary and questions through a sort of offline backchannel discussion (students post relevant ideas, questions, or comments as the discussion occurs); and as a way to reflect on the discussion process and content (students post notes reflecting on what they learned, what they liked, what they still wonder about, etc.).These offline “chat” alternatives open up the discussion to more students, while also providing an opportunity to introduce and practice conventions of thoughtful communication, both online (netiquette) and off.
Talk the Text Talk. Kids are prolific writers, but sometimes in ways different than what traditional schools reward. Capitalizing on this propensity in its latest form – texting – presents a two-birds-one-stone opportunity: first, allowing students to write an informal response using text talk (for instance, a five-minute “quick write” in response to a prompt from the teacher that links to the topic of the day) hooks them into writing on their own terms (literally); and second, bringing text talk into the classroom as a valid means of expression gives students a chance to see and feel the power of their own language, while also giving teachers and parents an opportunity to discuss code switching and conventions around standard English without dismissing other student discourses. At least, that’s m.02 :D

Sara Porto Nolan is a writer and Language Arts teacher who has worked with Bay Area students in high-need schools.

Let the kids touch the computer

2011-08-12T08:56:58Z

Eric Marcos says:

Let them touch the computer. That’s how the world changed for me, for all of us. If you give kids a little bit of trust and let them try out some stuff, they’re going to come up with fascinating things that will surprise you.

You can read more about Eric and his students’ Mathtrain.tv project. Beginning this fall (and every year afterward), start asking your child’s teachers - or, better yet, your principal, superintendent, or school board members - this oh-so-important question:

You know, it’s a digital world out there now. How much time per week does the average child in this class / school / district get to use computers as part of his or her learning experience?

If you get an answer of more than 30 to 60 minutes per week (that’s only 6 to 12 minutes per day), you’ll be lucky. And, no, that’s not enough.

Image credit: Curious

Kno Adds Khan Academy Resources to E-Textbooks for iPad -- Campus Technology

2011-08-26T12:29:00Z

via campustechnology.com

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Google's Redesign Garners Praise

2011-09-02T00:44:00Z

Source: http://goo.gl/Igeff

Clif Mims (Clif's Notes) points out that Google has redesigned their look for their products:

In the past few days I’ve noticed that the new Google toolbar (the dark box across the top) has pretty much gone live across all the Google services I use. Google has never been known for their graphic design prowess, but I’d say the update is an improvement. I especially dig the redesign of the Google Docs interface.

Some have complained that the GoogleDocs looks is kind of plain:

And, at first glance, it is. However, this approach at simpler design look is appealing over time...it has grown on me and I've come to prefer it to the look of other productivity tools with their crowded toolbars, etc.

Simplicity is about subtracting the obvious, and adding the meaningful.The simplest way to achieve simplicity is through thoughtful reduction.Source: The Laws of Simplicity by John Maeda

With that in mind, I have to admit I love the new blogger compose window:

As I reflect on the new look, it's all more manageable somehow. Instead of clicking on all these tabs--the old look--scattered across the top of my screen, I now have an easy place to compose and manage blog entries. Contrast this look with the one Wordpress blogs have, where all your space is taken up with this or that...as you can see from the image above, the focus is on content creation.

Thanks for the update, Google!

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States Search For Answers To Cheating Scandals

2011-08-28T11:19:00Z

Cheating scandals in Atlanta, Philadelphia and Washington, D.C., have highlighted the pressure schools feel to raise standardized test scores. And as test scores become more and more important, experts say more attention will be required to guard against cheating.

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Apple Quietly Kills 99¢ TV Show Rentals

2011-08-26T21:46:32Z

Bad news for anyone who was looking to rent the latest episode of Top Gear from iTunes, as Apple has quickly and quietly removed their 99¢ television rental option today.

The functionality has disappeared from both the Apple TV’s interface and the iTunes store proper, signalling a drastic shift in Apple’s pricing policy. Individual episodes of a series can still be bought as usual, and movie rentals still cost the same going rates, so not every iTunes customer will be weeping over the loss.

AppleInsider has also found that support documents pertaining to iTunes episode rentals were similarly pulled, although cached versions can still be found for those who don’t mind a little digging.

In a perfect world, this would be a not-so-subtle signal that Apple’s looking at different ways to handle television rentals. Apple’s big push into cross-device music and app sharing with iCloud could carry over, and rentals could reappear in a new form (and maybe a new price point) but with the ability to be pulled onto any iDevice for the same 48 hour period.

Alas, it’s also completely within reason that factors like mounting studio strife forced Apple to axe the rental service. Major studios have scoffed at the low price tag for iTunes episode rentals, with players like NBC Universal’s Jeff Zucker stating that such renting episode for 99¢ “devalues” their content. Rentals, to be fair, weren’t terribly well-priced for people who have cable television, but here’s hoping they live on in a new shape.

Rural Student Success Critical to National Goals

2011-08-23T20:12:00Z

The number of rural students is growing and we can no longer afford to look the other way, writes Marty Strange.

Missouri Teacher Sues State over ‘Facebook Law,’ Says She Can’t Contact Her Own Child Online

2011-08-23T03:01:43Z

Read 'Missouri teacher sues state over ‘Facebook law,’ says she can’t contact her own child online' from our blog The Lookout on Yahoo! News. A Missouri teacher has sued the state over a new law that prevents teachers from contacting their students over the Internet, arguing that it will make it illegal for her to chat with her own child over Facebook. The law, which has been nicknamed the Facebook law, prohibits teachers from having exclusive communications with students [...]