A March 9, 2010, article in the Washington Post was titled, “Wide Web of diversions gets laptops evicted from lecture halls.” I found the article very interesting and have selected some passages: A generation ago, academia embraced the laptop as the most welcome classroom innovation since the ballpoint pen. But during the past decade, it has evolved into a powerful distraction. Wireless Internet connections tempt students away from note-typing to e-mail, blogs, YouTube videos, sports [...]

Doug Johnson, the Blue Skunk Blog fame, from TEDxASB last month: Entertainment tends to be for amusement or diversion, for leisure or for fun – passive. In Doug’s terms, entertainment is ephemeral. However, engagement requires emotional involvement or commitment – it is active. One way to engage students is through authentic problem-solving. Assignments or projects that simply require information collection or recall is not engaging. What Some other highlights from the presentation that caused me [...]

From the February 2010 issue of eSchool News: A new booklet released by the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) and other government agencies helps parents and teachers steer kids safely through the online and mobile-phone worlds. The booklet, titled “Net Cetera: Chatting with Kids About Being Online,” was unveiled last month at Jefferson Middle School in Washington, D.C., by FTC Chairman Jon Leibowitz, U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan, and Federal Communications Commission Chairman Julius Genachowski. [...]

For those of you, like me, who love to use Firefox, here are some cheat sheets that you might find helpful. Enjoy! Firefox Keyboard and Mouse Shortcuts Source: AccessFirefox.org Firefox Keyboard Shortcuts Tri-fold Source: CHRISdotTODD Mozilla Firefox Cheat Sheet Source: Leslie Franke

In a previous post, I shared how to set the starting point of a YouTube video by appending the link URL with some extra code. I thought this would be helpful for many. But no, that wasn’t good enough for some, and I was asked how to do the same but with an embedded YouTube video. Thanks, Tim! Well, you asked, and I will answer! Below is the embed code for the same video by [...]

Sometimes you might need to show a clip from a YouTube video but don’t want to show all of it. If you are presenting in front of a class, fiddling around with the slider to the proper location might be distracting for the students and waste valuable class time. So, how do you get a video to start at just the right place? Well of course, you could have the video preset so that when [...]

While working on another post I came across this video by Sir Ken Robinson. Something to think about…

A colleague asked me if I could suggest a way to communicate with parents about their elementary-age children during the school year. She wanted a record of all correspondence, feedback from parents/guardians, and a simple way to manage it. As I listened to her needs I considered a variety of options including Moodle, WordPress, and Outlook e-mail groups. But ultimately, I recommended a Ning site for this situation. Ning is free social networking software. Create [...]

Dr. Scott McLeod says, “As I’ve said many times: If a teacher gets it, a classroom changes. If a principal gets it, the whole building begins to change. If a superintendent gets it, the whole district begins to change. [And, if state or federal policymakers get it, the statewide or nationwide climate begins to change.] Seems obvious, right? So why are so many government / corporation / foundation educational technology reform initiatives (money, time, training, [...]

Courtesy of LearningToday.com, here are two posters with a NETS Pledge for Teachers. NETS-Poster-Color NETS-Poster-Black/White The National Educational Technology Standards (NETS) are a set of standards published by the International Society for Technology in Education (ISTE). The standards serve as a guide for educators to improve teaching and learning through the effective use of technology in K-12 education. These performance indicators were developed to help teachers motivate their students, create engaging learning environments, improve their [...]