EdTech

You’re going to want to turn on your printer and fire up a PDF viewer. This is just that good. It’s called the Padagogy Wheel and it offers a fantastically useful perspecitve on how to figure out which iPad apps work with Bloom’s Digital Taxonomy. Created by Allan Carrington, this thing is a monster and deserves some focused attention. So I’d make a personal plea to save the hi-res image below or print out the PDF available here and then spend your long weekend closely examining this thing.The Padagogy Wheel takes an expanded approach Bloom’s Digital Taxonomy and offers 62 iPad apps that fit into the organized chaos that is Bloom’s. On Allan’s blog check it out, it’s great! he explains that not every app is perfect and that there’s always room to improve. So I’d recommend you check out his blog and offer up your comments, questions, etc. as he ha spent a pantload of time on this thing and I just know you’d enjoy learning about this if you haven’t already.

via Integrate iPads Into Blooms Digital Taxonomy With This Padagogy Wheel | Edudemic.

Google has made it possible for us to have instant information gratification. Just start typing the first letters of your search word and the site intuits your question and offers you the smartest choice of answers.

Seems simple enough. But as quick and facile as the process is, there are ways to be even more efficient, more search-savvy. And it’s our responsibility to teach kids how to find and research information, how to judge its veracity, and when it’s time to ask for a grownup’s help. I spoke to Daniel Russell, Google’s “search anthropologist” in charge of Search Quality and User Happiness (yes, really), who brought to light some important tips you may not have known.

via 12 Ways To Be More Search Savvy | MindShift.

Chris Merkert, a veteran teacher who has spent nearly two decades in the classroom, is constantly tweaking his lesson plans. Its become a kind of obsession.One recent evening, he sat watching TV with his wife when the news broke that an infrared camera had helped capture Dzhokar Tsarnaev, the man charged with setting off explosives during the Boston Marathon.Mr. Merkerts response? He began retooling the following weeks lesson on the electromagnetic spectrum, using a YouTube clip of the news broadcast as a hook to lure in his middle school science class.Mr. Merkert, 41, teaches 8th grade earth science at East Hampton Middle School in New York. Its one of three schools in a district of around 2,000 students on the eastern tip of Long Islands South Fork.”My wifes asking me to put the iPad down, but I dont even want to watch television,” he said during a break between classes. “It makes the next day so much more interesting. Its really lit that fire.”

via Education Week: Digital Trends Shifting the Role of Teachers.

We try our best to keep our thumb on the pulse of the best education apps and web tools. In fact, we have probably spent way too much time attempting to offer up as many useful product reviews and helpful lists over the past several years. But we’re just two people. Katie and I can’t cover the entire education app industry by ourselves. Luckily, there are dozens of other sites specifically devoted to education app reviews for teachers and students.

via 46 Education App Review Sites For Teachers And Students | Edudemic.

We’re proud to introduce you to a new set of resources we think you’ll enjoy. It’s a curated list of the best education technology resources. But it’s not just organized by us. It’s now YOUR turn to share, vote up, and learn about all the best education technology out there. Got a favorite app? Add it to the list! See a particular laptop you think is awesome for teachers? Vote it up! It’s all thanks to a new collaboration with Listly where we showcase the best resources in an easy-to-use format.

via A Crowdsourced List Of The Best iOS Education Apps | Edudemic.

Yesterday at Google I/O the company’s annual developer conference, Google released a major new education program called Google Play for Education that organizes and manages the way teachers share apps, books, and other learning content with their classes.  The new store is scheduled to launch this fall and it aims to simplify content searching for schools, and to give teachers and students access to the same tools that are now native to the Google Play experience.While much of the technology news that is presented at these large companies’ conferences may seem unimportant until the products are actually released – and in many cases, completely irrelevant to classrooms – this is one of the most education-relevant announcements that has been made in recent memory. It also marks the first big push into the tablet classroom by a company that is not Apple. In classrooms, iPads currently dominate the landscape, so it will be interesting to see how the Google Play For Education will play into that dominance.

via What To Know About Google Play For Education | Edudemic.

There is a myth, perpetuated for little more reason than it’s sellable-fallacy, that kids are gravitating to Twitter and Facebook. From this point, numerous arguments have been made in the sub-culture Alan Lavine brilliantly described as “Edlandia” – a sharp and humurous hat-tip to Portlandia the TV show (relates to MOOCS).

There is pervasive notion that the issues today are the same as those even three years ago. They might continue to sell this obsolete rhetoric to Edlandians, but kids are using very different networks – and here’s why.

Kids are being given hand-held devices. iPod touch, low end Androids and so on. They are no using desktops, laptops or TABLETs. If Edlandians paid attention to advertising data and sales data as much as they do their Twitter feed-bowls they’d know this.

Kids are heading to Instagram and Kik because they are essentially the two messaging services that appeal.

via Twitter and Facebook are not where kids are heading. Meet Kik and Oink. | Playable.

In most ways, teachers that use technology in the classroom aren’t much different than those that don’t.Any teacher worth their salt assesses, and then revises planned instruction based on data from those assessments.They manage their classroom in a way that works for them, create a positive learning environment, and great teachers especially collaborate with a variety of stakeholders to make sure every humanly possible attempt is made to meet all students need.But using technology in the classroom–and using it effectively–might require some slight adjustments on the part of the teacher to sustain the effort, creative problem-solving, and innovation required to actually improve learning through the use of technology. And great administrators, too.

via 7 Habits Of Highly-Effective Teachers Who Effectively Use Technology.

In fifty years, if not much sooner, half of the roughly 4,500 colleges and universities now operating in the United States will have ceased to exist. The technology driving this change is already at work, and nothing can stop it. The future looks like this: Access to college-level education will be free for everyone; the residential college campus will become largely obsolete; tens of thousands of professors will lose their jobs; the bachelor’s degree will become increasingly irrelevant; and ten years from now Harvard will enroll ten million students.

via The End of the University as We Know It – Nathan Harden – The American Interest Magazine.

From Chalkboards to Tablets: The Digital Conversion of the K-12 Classroom is the first in a two part series to document the key national findings from Speak Up 2012. For the past few years, Project Tomorrow has used the Speak Up survey to diligently document the growth in educators’ access to emerging technology devices, tools and services, and how that increased familiarity has resulted in greater interest in digital learning. The Speak Up survey data has also highlighted the growing expectations of parents each year for interactive and collaborative digital learning environments that they believe are essential for preparing their child to compete in the global information society. And, we have shared information and research over several years about the widespread national interest in enhanced college and career readiness for all K-12 students. Given all of those positive conditions, why is there so much new fervor around digital conversions today? What makes today’s education landscape different than last year, the year before or five years ago? What is different?

via Speak Up Reports.