Technology Services Blog

The 21st century skills, the digital citizen, we need our students to become today!

The Networked Student was inspired by CCK08, a Connectivism course offered by George Siemens and Stephen Downes during fall 2008. It depicts an actual project completed by Wendy Drexler’s high school students. The Networked Student concept map was inspired by Alec Couros’ Networked Teacher. I hope that teachers will use it to help their colleagues, parents, and students understand networked learning in the 21st century.

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Ten by Ten - Visual Links to the World News

Ten by Ten is a unique program that links images with news stories. Every hour the top 100 news stories from around the world are linked to images on a ten by ten grid. The stories are ranked. Clicking on an image will provide you with more information including links to more articles about the story. (You must allow pop-ups for the article links to work).

Application for teachers
Ten by Ten could be used as a way for students to find information about news stories they’ve heard about. Ten by Ten’s photographs may spark interest in a story that students may not have heard anything about. In other words, Ten by Ten can expose students to a larger world. I have used Ten by Ten as conversation starter with my classes. I gave students time to explore the images and stories then had the students share what they discovered.

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Twitter Search in Plain English from Common Craft

Here is another great production from Common Craft. Twitter Search in Plain English reviews what Twitter is and what Twitter search (and real-time search in general) can offer you that static searches cannot.

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Helping build a shared culture

In this video, some of the leading thinkers behind Creative Commons describe how the organization is helping “save the world from failed sharing” through free tools that enable creators to easily make their work available to the public for legal sharing and remix.

This is a big part of being a good digital citizen;

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Teaching With SMARTBoard Video Podcasts

Teaching with SMARTBoard is a great video podcast that I stumbled upon early this week. As you would expect from the title, Teaching with SMARTBoard is about tips, tricks, and lessons for teaching with SMARTBoard. This video podcast is produced by two mathematics teachers from Naperville, Illinois. While the focus of the podcasts is about teaching mathematics with a SMARTBoard, the concepts in many of the episodes can be applied to other content areas. Along with each episode there is a PDF of the material covered that episode. You may also want to explore the resources section of Teaching with SMARTBoard for additional ideas.

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Top 7 Twitter Tutorials on YouTube

YouTube () is not only a great way to watch endless hours of cute kittens doing people things, but a way to learn about a range of topics visually. Users have put up thousands of tutorials ranging from animal care to our favorite microblogging tool, Twitter ().

Whether you want to get your best friend started on Twitter or want the scoop on some of Twitter’s best desktop apps, the following YouTube videos will keep you entertained while educating you about various aspects of the Twitterverse. Oh, and be sure to look out for the video of the man in the fur suit.

Read the rest of this entry »

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Twitter in the classroom!

Dr. Rankin, professor of History at UT Dallas, wanted to know how to reach more students and involve more people in class discussions both in and out of the classroom. She introduced Twitter into her classroom with some interesting results documented in this video.

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District Technology Committee meets 5/28/09

Location: ESC Tech Lab
Starting Time: 4:00 PM

Agenda:

News and feedback from the buildings

Instructional Tech Project Updates - Ron

Tech Support Updates - Kris

• End of Year Procedures - All Staff Email

State technology Plan Update for 2010 -2013 - JB

• SIP form with tech integration plans for the next three years due by February 25, 2010
  • See Board Approved 2007 -2010 Technology Plan for the last one your school completed
• Technology Inventory due by by February 25, 2010
• Staff and Student Surveys will be available by October 22, 2009 and due by February 25, 2010
• District overview and plan will be first discussed on October 22, 2009 and presented to the board in March with each building SIP that describes technology integration plans for the next three years

Budget reduction and their impacts - JB

Current computer placement and future obsolete numbers - Kris

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Fair Use and the Remix Culture

For teachers interested in learning about fair use and the use of media in the classroom the Center for Social Media at American University has some excellent video explanations of fair use. The video I’ve embedded below offers an explanation of fair use as it relates to creating remixes. In addition to the video embedded below the Center for Social Media offers documents about best practices for online video. The Center for Social Media also offers video examples of best practices.

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Photos 8 - Thousands of Public Domain Images

Photos 8 is a great place to find thousands of images that are in the public domain. These images can be used in any way that you and your students see fit. There are twenty-two categories of images of which the largest collections are of animals, birds, and sunsets.

I learned about Photos 8 through a great blog post on Making Teachers Nerdy. I encourage you to read that blog post for more public domain image resources.

Applications for Education
Other than using images of your own creation, using images in the public domain is best way to create a digital presentation. Using images in the public domain means that you don’t have to worry about what is or isn’t fair use or do you have to Creative Commons attributions.

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