Archive for Category: "Professional Development"
April 15, 2012 8:00 am
Google Voice: Not Your Mother’s Voice Service
In everyday life, the Google Voice service is a way to combine all your numbers into one and to conveniently receive voice messages. ListenIn™ even helps you decide which calls to answer after the caller has started to leave a message. Teachers can use a GVoice number for parents without giving away their primary phone number. Easily created custom voicemail greetings for parents and a different greeting for students make messages personalized and relevant. Educators can put a call widget [...]
January 27, 2012 8:00 am
Kicking and Screaming All the Way into the 21st Century
The 20th Century Classroom is dead. You see, I know this to be true because I had the funeral for the 20th Century Classroom in like 2006. I was there- in person. It was a poignant ceremony; you should have been there with the rest of my sixth grade science students. She helped us out in the beginning of that industrial age, but she just had to be laid to rest, chalk board and all. To mark the occasion, we took our antiquated [...]
January 7, 2012 10:06 am
Permission to Play
I was lucky enough to have a great conversation with some teachers last month, regarding creativity and play in the classroom. It was one of those discussions that really got me thinking. As educators, I think we all value the idea of creativity and play. It all sounds so positive and rejuvenating — it sounds like something we’re supposed to value. And yet, how many of us are actually comfortable playing anymore? There certainly are moments, among trusted friends, where [...]
January 1, 2012 12:00 pm
Need a New Year’s Resolution? … Try a Personalized Professional Development Plan!
Happy New Year everyone and good luck with those New Year’s resolutions. I have a dozen resolutions myself, but I don’t want to change too much! If I could get every educator to commit to one resolution, it would be to create a “Personalized Professional Development Plan.” While many dibble and dabble with online tools and social networks, I don’t think enough of us have a plan for organizing our learning with these tools. Here is my framework for what [...]
Just Try Something…and Share How It Goes
Making the move to a 1:1 environment this year at Burlington High School has been exciting. The move has gotten us a lot of attention from area schools that want to come out and speak to our staff and students to see how we got this point. Being a big proponent of sharing and the fact that we have a moral imperative to do so, we have welcomed everyone who has inquired about a visit. During the course of each [...]
November 7, 2011 8:00 am
EdCeptional #22 – EdCeptional ROCKS ATIA!
Tonight’s show is all about things we saw and heard at the Assistive Technology Industry Association conference that took place in Schaumburg, IL last week. We are sharing an audio cast of the full 1 hour session Deb and I led called – Everyone deserves and EdCeptional Education. If you are interested in the notes from this session you can find them at http://bit.ly/edceptionalnotes. Show Host: Tricia Lazarro (@tlazzaro11) Show contributors: Patrick Black (@teachntech00) Deb Truskey (@debtruskey) Subscribe to The [...]
Digital Citizenship: Boy, Are We Bad at This…
Let’s be honest: In the area of digital citizenship, as educators, we are not doing our jobs. Sure, there are pockets of excellence and teachers here and there that are raising this issue, but overall, it’s just another buzz word that we read about in the headlines, right next to “cyberbullying” and “blocking/filtering.” But why does it feel like a ghetto? It’s as though digital citizenship has been relegated to the bottom rungs of curricular society, clearly taking a backseat [...]
October 31, 2011 8:00 am
Non-Technical Innovations for Techie Teachers
I do quite a bit of consulting work related to educational technology. Most of it involves leading workshops to help teachers apply today’s web and mobile technologies to their classrooms. Most teachers are eager to incorporate technology into their instruction, however I am always wary of teachers implementing technology for the sake of technology without enhancing classroom learning. To discourage this, I usually start my session by asking participants to think of a classroom innovation that does NOT involve technology. [...]
September 7, 2011 8:00 am
Exploring NETS: Did you know there are National Education Technology Standards?
With the dramatic advancements in technology over the last decade, classroom-based technologies have exploded throughout education. However, in many districts, technology is often taken for granted. That is not to say that teachers and students do not appreciate the technology within their schools. Both teachers and students use technology in schools everyday, but often focused instruction in the appropriate use of technology is simply not the intended goal for educators. For many teachers, classroom and lab technologies are leveraged to [...]
August 9, 2011 9:46 am
Support Teachers by Giving Them EdReach
When we talked about creating EdReach, we talked about how we can support emerging innovators with relevant content. We talked about how poorly teacher colleges prepare new teachers with technology- that EdReach could help new teachers starting new jobs that have little technology support. We talked about EdReach being a place where teachers could drop by every day, and find some new tool, strategy, or relevant news item. Getting that content to those teachers is a challenge. Many of them [...]
July 28, 2011 8:41 pm
Google+ Building (or Re-Building) your PLN
Twitter just became 5 years old and many of us can remember the first time: we heard of twitter… the first time we experienced powerful collaboration on twitter… some of us can even remember our first tweet (not me, though I can imagine it was something like: “I just don’t understand this…” So, for many it feels like a shock when after 5 years, thousands of tweets, hours of growing and grooming our personal learning network we look at Google+ [...]
July 3, 2011 2:55 pm
ISTE11: Four Days and Twenty Thousand Tweets
As part of our coverage for the International Society for Technology in Education conference, we live blogged each day of the conference using Scribblelive. The tool was really dynamic, and allowed us to pull in content from the #ISTE11 hashtag, upload our own photos and video, as well as have any EdReach reporters contribute as writers. What I didn’t expect, is that the #ISTE11 hashtag would be so important. Originally, the content was just our own, but I quickly realized [...]
![Using iDevices in the Classroom: A Live Event [Archived]](http://edreach.us/wp-content/themes/tribune/scripts/timthumb.php?src=http://edreach.us/wp-content/uploads/2011/06/vivu.png&w=70&h=65&zc=1)
June 28, 2011 12:46 pm
Using iDevices in the Classroom: A Live Event [Archived]
Update: Thanks to everyone for dropping in on this session. Our wired internet went out on us here at the conference, so we were forced to stream from the Wifi, which, you know, had like 8000 other people using it. So the archived session is a little choppy, but digestible. EdReach will be using our new tool Vivu.tv, to broadcast a Birds of a Feather presentation from ISTE: Using iPads, iPod Touch, and iPhones for Learning and Teaching will begin [...]
June 28, 2011 7:00 am
Day 3: ISTE Liveblog- Silicon Valley Finds its Way to ISTE
Monday, some of our EdReach contributors (myself included) hung around on the vendor floor, looking for innovative products and ideas that might take education forward. We found some passionate coders in Desmos.com, also had a great conversation with Class.io, a simple, cloud-based LMS, that integrates with Google Apps (also a startup- based out of New York). Edmodo.com, the “Facebook of education,” is here, and another sign that the apocalypse is nearing, Evernote.com showed off Evernote Peak- all of this- a clear sign [...]
June 27, 2011 7:30 am
Day 2: ISTE Liveblog from EdReach
Well, the keynote from yesterday was not quite what we expected (getting booted, and all), but the ScribbleLive blog, we’ve found is a great way to view the #ISTE11 hashtag, with some added components for sharing like webcam comments. As you can see, it’s clean and updates smoothly. It also adds images that people are posting directly into the stream. Today, we’ll be tweeting out and sharing, but, of course you’ll be adding to the experience. If you want the [...]
June 26, 2011 3:00 pm
Day 1: ISTE Liveblog from EdReach
EdReach will be liveblogging each day of ISTE. Today, ISTE kicks off with a keynote from Brain Rules author, Dr. John Medina. We’ll be sharing our liveblog, adding pictures, tweeting, and adding to the discussion of taking education forward. Check back on this page, for the Liveblog stream. Let’s engage, and feel free to comment!
![Inside EdubloggerCon 2011 [Slideshow]](http://edreach.us/wp-content/themes/tribune/scripts/timthumb.php?src=http://edreach.us/wp-content/uploads/2011/06/edubloggercon.png&w=70&h=65&zc=1)
June 26, 2011 8:00 am
Inside EdubloggerCon 2011 [Slideshow]
EdReach had a great time at #EdubloggerCon 2011! We met some great new educators (new to us), met the Desmos.com guys, Symbaloo team, and we had some in-depth discussions with the creators of some of the best education tools out there, like Wikispaces. As for the conference, numerous ideas were shared about Khan Academy, Bring Your Own Device, and the state of education in the news media. Good to see that the TechCrunch spillover (Desmos.com) is finally finding its way [...]
June 23, 2011 8:00 am
EdReach Show #26: Our ISTE Preview!
Exciting! Scott, Judi, and Jay all join me to talk about getting into the ISTE van, and heading to Philly this week for the ISTE Conference. The big story at ISTE definitely seems like it will be iPads and tablets. We discuss the controversy over the ISTE Keynote, which has always been a point of contention for some of the attendees of the conference. We talk about many of the awesome, innovative educators to keep an eye out for, such [...]
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