Interesting ArticlesWhite House and Barack Obama Scale Up TechHire Initiative, Push for More Makerspaces in K-12“Creating over consuming” may well be the tagline for the White House and Department of Education’s agenda this week in Austin. Plenty of Washington officials are already milling about, setting the stage for President Obama’s keynote at SXSW on Saturday, March 11. In anticipation of his arrival, the federal government announced a slew of updates about its efforts to train learners of all ages, from K-12 to higher education and beyond.
Smart Boards: Yay or Nay?This year, Smart Board has decided to more than double the cost of its software. Since teachers are the number one consumer of Smart Boards, this felt like a slap in the face to educators across the country. You can no longer buy a school license; every teacher has to start paying for an individual license every year. This made us take a long, hard look at what payoff we are really getting from a Smart Board.
Learning to code vs. coding to learnThis week over a million students around the world will participate in the Hour of Code, an annual event designed to excite interest in computer science and computer programming. This reflects a growing interest in some quarters to promote efforts within schools to broaden awareness of what it means to 'code' (i.e. write a set of step-by-step directions that instruct computers to do something) and to help students develop related skills.
NOT YOUR GRANDFATHER’S LIBRARYWhen Sheri McNair, library media specialist at James I. O’Neill High School in Highland Falls, NY, came to her district four years ago, she stepped into a very traditional space that was mostly taken up by free-standing stacks of books, traditional wooden tables, and eight computers that “needed to go,” she laughs.
How to turn your classroom into a hotbed of creativity and innovationEstablishing a classroom that guides and supports students in developing their abilities to innovate and create is not often covered in teacher education or in-service professional development.
NEW FRONTIERS IN BLENDED LEARNINGThe definition of blended learning continues to shift as technology opens up new possibilities and teachers embrace new instructional models.
Online Badges in the ClassroomI have been integrating a little bit of gamification into my 1:1 iPad classes with cool badges that I have been giving my students for their accomplishments in AppClass. I am actually creating my badges by myself but here are a few options for you to create yours if you like.
It's Not About Making StuffMakerspaces and 3D printing have come a long way in higher education, from early excitement over 3D-printed learning objects to a focus on creativity and higher-order thinking.
8 maker tools to inspire next-gen innovation and designHow can schools prepare students to be the designers, innovators, and entrepreneurs our economy needs for future success? That was a key area of focus at the 2016 South by Southwest Education (SXSWedu) conference in Austin, Texas, March 7-10, and a number of ed-tech companies and organizations demonstrated possible solutions.
In some schools, computer science starts in kindergartenFlorida’s Broward County School District is starting young with computer science instruction, integrating it in math and science classes at the kindergarten level. More than 110 of the district’s 139 elementary schools are teaching it this year, reaching about 27,000 students. That’s a significant increase from last year, when 80 schools taught it to 3,000 students.
What Netflix Taught me about Professional DevelopmentAs a Technology Integrationist, I provide training to about 30 school districts in northeast Ohio. As aGoogle for Education Certified Trainer, I conduct Google professional development sessions all around Ohio and across the country. So it is safe to say I think quite a lot about training and what makes it good, what makes it bad, and what can make it better
How to create an exciting learning space
If you have a kid of your own who reads, where does he/she sit when reading at home? Everywhere and anywhere is the answer. They lay on the floor, they slouch on a sofa or sit upside down on a sofa hanging over the arm. They don’t of their own volition sit at a desk or table. Why? Because, duh, it’s not comfortable!
How to Use Augmented Reality To Transform Your ClassroomAugmented Reality is changing education. What started out as something that was simply “cool” has become a way to engage learners like never before.
Maine Announces Learning Technology FrameworkThe true value of laptops and tablets in schools is not learning to use the technology, but rather using the technology to learn. The Maine Learning Technology Initiative (MLTI) have been in place since 2002 and has certainly helped close the Digital Access Divide in Maine. But almost 15 years in, our data show that our students are still stuck at just using their devices for word processing, presenting and online research, skills we certainly want students to develop, but don’t go far enough in supporting student learning. We need to help close the Digital Learning Divide.
Faces in the CrowdWe Are On the Map: Maker/HackerSpaces in Maine
The sky's the limitAt Village Elementary School, there’s a room called the Creation Station that is making a little magic of its own.
MassBio annual meeting kicks off with moving speech by CF patientOn July 18, 2015, Kate Marshall took her first dose of Orkambi, the drug by Vertex Pharmaceuticals approved just two weeks earlier as the first to treat patients with cystic fibrosis with her specific genetic makeup.
Google Expeditions Visits
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New Sites for TeachersKiddlesGoogle Search Tool for Kids
Since Kiddle results are either handpicked and checked by our editors or filtered by Google safe search, you know you get kid-oriented results without any explicit content. In case some bad words are present in a search query, our guard robot will block the search. View PureUse it anywhere. Simply drag the Purify button into your bookmarks bar (or right click and favorite it in IE). Next time you see a video you want to purify, click the bookmark when on the YouTube page and voila!
Introducing Classroom ClimateStudents are complex individuals with unique personalities, circumstances, and experiences that they bring into the classroom. It’s not easy to keep tabs on how students are doing; there’s rarely time to invite them to think about their own emotional state or reflect on how a particular lesson went.
You Have the PowerThe decision is yours! Choose the energy resources—and how much of each—you will use to provide electricity to your community. Be sure to stay within your budget, think about using renewable resources, and pay attention to how your decisions impact the people who live there. You have the power to power the community!
Google Science FairGoogle Science Fair is a global online competition open to individuals or teams from 13 to 18 years old.
#howcanwe make the world better with science? May 18th Competition Applications Close ACTEM Conference 2016 AnnouncedCarl Hooker and Jennie Magiera to Keynote Actem 2016 in Augusta, Maine this October.
My Kids BankMyKidsBank artificial banks are used to assist in the education of personal money management. Each artificial online bank operates similar to a real online bank through a web browser on the internet. The person who signs up for a virtual bank has full control and becomes the banker. Parents find the service helpful for managing allowance for their children. Classroom teachers also use the service to assist in their classroom economy. Each bank can be configured for local country currency symbols and time zones.
Plot GeneratorHow to plot a good story
SciJinks It's All About WeatherSciJinks is all about weather! Short for Science Hijinks, we are a joint NOAA and NASA educational website that puts fun and adventure into learning about weather, satellite meteorology, and Earth science. We are geared toward middle- and high-school aged kids and their educators.
TimesifyTimesify turns articles on TMZ, Buzzfeed, and other embarrassing sites into the look of The New York Times, so you don't have to be ashamed. We cloak your love of Mary Kate and Ashley Olsen in the posture of a concerned citizen
Google Tips and TricksHow to do text-to-columns in Google SpreadsheetsText can live in many places and thanks to copy/paste, text can be easily moved around from application to application. However, when it comes to lists and easy organization, pasting can become a little complicated.
Google for Education Professional Development HandbookThe importance of effective professional development (PD) in education is well-known,* and it becomes increasingly important when implementing new technology. Technology is just a tool; the real impact comes from how those tools are used to improve teaching and learning. Along with the rollout of devices and software, empower your staff with professional development designed for them.
Become a Google Slides Artist With These 7 TricksFrom keyboard shortcuts, to masking images, Google Slides has an impressive set of tools for all end users to learn to become a Google Slides artist.
Type, edit and format with your voice in Docs—no keyboard needed!We launched Voice typing in Docs to help you capture ideas, compose a letter, or even write the next great novel—all without touching your keyboard. Starting today, you can also edit and format your documents with your voice.
Google CS FirstSetting up a CS First club is simple, flexible, and free! Best of all, hosting a club does not require any computer science experience. All CS concepts are taught through our online videos.
CHROME MUSIC LABMusic is for everyone. So this year for Music In Our Schools month, we wanted to make learning music a bit more accessible to everyone by using technology that’s open to everyone: the web. Chrome Music Lab is a collection of experiments that let anyone, at any age, explore how music works. They're collaborations between musicians and coders, all built with the freely available Web Audio API. These experiments are just a start. Check out each experiment to find open-source code you can use to build your own.
Google Slides for Student Created StorybooksWe all know of Google Slides as Google’s version of Microsoft PowerPoint. It is a great online tool for creating and sharing multimedia presentations. Although creating traditional slideshows is a perfectly good use for Google Slides, that is not all it can do.
Google Earth EngineMeet Earth Engine Google Earth Engine combines a multi-petabyte catalog of satellite imagery and geospatial datasets with planetary-scale analysis capabilities and makes it available for scientists, researchers, and developers to detect changes, map trends, and quantify differences on the Earth's surface.
Set the Expiration Date on Your Google DriveOver the next two months, this feature will become available. As an owner or collaborator on the document, you will be able to set an expiration date for users with comment or view access only. You will not be able to add expiration dates for users that are already listed as owners or have edit access.
9 Awesome Add-ons for Google FormsGoogle Forms is already a very powerful, full-featured program that allows you to create forms, surveys, polls, quizzes, and more. However even with all its options, there may still be some features missing from the Forms that you would like.
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