Preparing Alaska’s Students for Success in the Global Economy
By Andrew Marcinek, Edutopia.org
While it’s a tad early for a back-to-school list, Andrew Marcinek and Edutopia.org share five applications for the iPad that will take the place of student supply lists. View the blog article here.
CLICK HERE to visit and follow this frequently updated Twitter feed for a host of recommended iPad apps, tutorials, and tips related to education and lessons for the classroom.
By Sandra Tan, BuffaloNews.com
In the long history of technology innovation, the iPad is an infant. But since its unveiling three years ago, the skinny, 10-inch wonder device has been transforming education at every level. It’s changing how teachers teach and improving how students learn.
The improvement has been so dramatic that – despite the cost – some schools have begun issuing iPads to every child. Read the rest here.
By Monica Burns, Educator and Blogger, ClassTechTips.com
There are so many tools that educators can use to get students interested and engaged in their work. Like most teachers today, I integrate technology into my instruction everyday. I’m lucky to work in a school with one-to-one technology and use iPads with my students throughout every school day. That makes it easy to use QR codes in my classroom — and there are many reasons I love using QR codes!
What is a QR Code? Read the rest here.
Technology has become an integral part of our daily lives: we use it to learn, to shop, to pay bills, and to entertain ourselves. Not surprisingly, younger generations are heavily influenced by computers and mobile devices in a way that changes the way they retain information and the ways they develop opinions about culture. Today 70% of children between the ages of 2-5 can operate a computer mouse, but only 11% of them can tie their own shoes. At the start of the 21st century only half of all school classrooms had Internet access, compared to 98% today. The proliferation and sheer breadth of accessibility that the Internet offers has in many ways redefined the process of “growing up.” The graphic below, produced by LearnStuff.com, explores this redefinition and examines the impact of technology on learning.
Graduating with Technology by LearnStuff.com is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License. Based on a work at http://www.learnstuff.com/graduating-with-technology/.
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.
On May 8, the nonprofit Edutopia released “How to Create Social Media Guidelines for Your School.” The free guide, released during Teacher Appreciation Week, is part of a collaboration with Facebook. (more…)
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!
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…)
