As most high school students are gearing up for summer break, many teachers and administrators are planning and prepping for the next school year. Part of their planning may include strategies to integrate technology in the classroom through digital textbooks, gaming and social media.
Publishing has gone digital and it’s never been easier for teachers to create high quality and engaging lesson plans for their students. The ability to distribute digital instructional content has been simplified through the new Association of Alaska School Boards K12 iTunes U site. Through this digital distribution center, your multimedia-rich, place-based/theme-based lesson plans can be delivered directly to student iPads in any school classroom across Alaska, or the world.
The Digital Lessons for Digital Learners (DL2) Contest is an opportunity to turn your lesson plans into digital books and enter them for a chance to win cool prizes for your school and be posted on Alaska's K12 iTunes U site!
Grand Prize: Ten iPad 2 tablets with padded cases, Bretford Sync Tray
2nd Prize: Teaching Station: One iPad 2, Apple TV, 60” flat screen TV
3rd: Prize: One round trip ticket + lodging to ISTE 2012 in San Diego
Watch our video tutorial explaining how Pages can be used to make lesson plans into digital books that can be read on an iPad.
NEXT: Read the DL2 Contest Guidelines and learn How To Enter.
MINNETONKA, Minn. – Backpacks are lighter this year for ninth graders at Minnetonka High School.
“I have most of my textbooks in iBooks,” said 9th grader Rachel Marks. That not only makes her load lighter, Marks can highlight text and digitally assemble all of her notes in an iBook, something she can’t do in a school textbook. It’s just one aspect of a pilot program Minnetonka High School unveiled this year — to put iPads in the hands of students.
“We’ve long believed in technology as an accelerator of learning,” explained Julie Carter, Executive Director of Technology for Minnetonka Public Schools. The district has been digitizing its curriculum for the past decade, and was looking for a way to put that information in the hands of students. (more…)
Paper textbooks could be a thing of the past as school districts are pushed to go digital. U.S. Education Secretary Arne Duncan and Federal Communications Commission chairman Julius Genachowski challenged schools and companies this month to get digital textbooks in students’ hands within five years.
The Obama administration’s push comes two weeks after Apple Inc. announced it would start to sell electronic versions of a few standard high-school books for use on its iPad tablet. Digital books are viewed as a way to provide interactive learning, potentially save money and get updated material faster to students.
In Wisconsin, many Fox Cities school districts have adopted digital textbooks and are test-driving programs for use of electronics in the classroom.
As debate continues over whether schools invest wisely in technology — and whether it measurably improves student achievement — Mooresville, a modest community about 20 miles north of Charlotte best known as home to several Nascar teams and drivers, has quietly emerged as the de facto national model of the digital school. (more…)
A proposal expected to be discussed during the 2012 Alabama legislative session is one that, if passed, would put 21st century technology in the hands of all high school students in Alabama.
Sen. Gerald Dial (R-Lineville) and Rep. Jim McClendon (R-Springville) announced in December their plan to propose the “Alabama Ahead Act” in the legislative session, which convenes Feb. 7. The proposal suggests purchasing pen-enabled electronic tablets for each student in grades 9-12. The tablets would allow students to use digital copies of textbooks instead of the traditional printed copies.
“Some will ask, ‘How can we afford to do this?’ My answer is, ‘How can we afford not to,’” McClendon said. “If our students are going to compete in a 21st century job market, they need 21st century tools.” (more…)
When the 2011-12 school year began, students in about 600 districts nationwide returned with a new piece of tech: their own personal Apple iPad. Since the iPad launched last year, some schools have replaced textbooks with E-books. Programs in two thirds of the 600 districts are new for this year; others started these “one-to-one” programs, in which schools provide one iPad for each student, soon after Apple released the tablet in April, 2010.
In 2005, Talbot County Schools, located on Maryland’s eastern shore, launched an innovative initiative that provided a new laptop computer to each ninth grade student for use at school and at home. This video documents the initiative’s evolution into an example of systemic change within the school system that has resulted in significant positive outcomes for students, families, teachers, administrators and the community. Superintendent Karen B. Salmon, school administrators and teachers involved discuss the project’s philosophy, goals, and migration from drill and practice instruction to experiential learning. Watch video.
UPDATE: CodeAcademy has launched CodeYear to encourage people to learn computer programming skills as a New Year’s resolution. Nearly 300,000 have signed up so far, including New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg, who announced via Twitter, “My New Year’s resolution is to learn to code with Codecademy in 2012! Join me.” Co-founder Zach Sims envisions CodeYear as “the beginning of an initiative,” noting that in an increasingly technical world, programming skills are becoming a sought-after asset by employers, and even basic-level skills can make the difference between two résumés in the competitive job market.
As society grows increasingly digital, being conversant in code—the language that makes websites, games and apps run—is quickly becoming the new literacy of our time. Columbia University students Zach Sims and Ryan Bubinsky believe that using a computer is the equivalent of knowing how to read, and knowing how to program for a computer equates to the ability to write. Their start up company, CodeAcademy is a free, easy, interactive and fun way to learn how to code with friends, while tracking and sharing personal progress. The site has attracted close to 1 million users and $2.5 million in funding from tech investors.In this video interview Zach and Ryan discuss what it takes to launch a company with the huge vision of teaching the world how to code.
In just the past couple of years, Salman Khan has built a huge following for the Khan Academy. He’s created more than 2,700 free educational videos that have been viewed tens of millions of times over. In the very foreseeable future, teachers will be able to upload their own videos to the Khan Academy website, but also be able to create their own “knowledge maps” or repositories of content for their classes, using videos – within or outside of the Khan Academy – and all of Khan’s analytics, and reporting tools, in order to customize their own curricula. (more…)
