Educational Technology Weblog

If you wold like to add a little personality to your Edline page, possibly lighten up the presentation of some of your content, or try and inject some creativity into your project based learning. I recommend checking out Go!Animate. You’ll find this web based publishing program at www.goanimate.com and it does require an email to create an account, but the service is free and FUN!! Here’s an example of something I put together in about 15 minutes, and I am still learning the interface. Your students will amaze you!!

As information technologies have advanced rapidly, things like Google, blogs, Blackberry, i-Phones, and social networks have become ever more prevalent, and being “connected” has taken on a whole new meaning for many people. For more and more people the thought of being “offline” for even a few minutes is a real cause for concern. I read recently an entry form the creator of one of my favorite “social bookmarking” pages www.twine.com (which is currently in invite only beta to participate) His thoughts are that this prevalence and that the ubiquitous nature of technologies and sharing of information will only continue to grow.

This brief article is definitely worth a read.

Some unintended results have come from all of these advances. Some people find that keeping afloat in this massive wave of information is a challenge. Here’s a link to listen to some very tech savvy individuals mull this over at a session of the Churchill Club that took place earlier this year. (MAY NOT WORK FROM WITHIN OUR FIREWALL)

I will leave you with one more look at the same general trend towards a possibly “techno-centric” future. This is brought to you by the ever sharp Colbert Report

Review your experiences, and what you know of your students’ experiences, and let us know your thoughts…pro…con… or otherwise.

So often, we want to attend conferences but due to many reasons, mostly budget restraints, it’s not possible. Unfortunately, the opportunites missed are enormous. When we attend conferences, we are able to step out of our comfortable, closed circle of like-minded peers and network with teachers and administrators from around the state, nation and world. It’s fascinating to discuss how the same tools we have are being used in other schools. It’s inspiring to hear about enormous progress being made in other schools where they have much less. How invigorating to brainstorm with others on how to solve similar frustrations or to have a debate with a popular, well-known national educational speaker who is sitting next to you in the coffee bar.

All of this is possible with the K!2 Online Conference. It’s free and your participation is mostly on your own schedue. By initiating contact with the presenters, who are only happy to network with you, you’ve taken an enormous step towards expanding your professional learning network and achieving all of those I’ve mentioned above without leaving your home.

Anything you need to participate is available for free (except for your computer, speakers and Internet connection). In addition, there’s a HelpDesk for support if you are unable to get something to work correctly on your computer.

The K-12 Online Conference invites participation from educators around the world interested in innovative ways Web 2.0 tools and technologies can be used to improve learning. This FREE conference is run by volunteers and open to everyone.

The 2008 conference theme is “Amplifying Possibilities.” This year’s conference begins with a pre-conference keynote the week of October 13, 2008. The following two weeks, October 20-24 and October 27-31, forty presentations will be posted online to the conference blog (click here) for participants to download and view. Live Events in the form of three “Fireside Chats” and a culminating “When Night Falls” event will be announced. Everyone is encouraged to participate in both live events during the conference as well as asynchronous conversations.

I encourage you to take even one small step and click on the link to just read further.
K-12 Online Conference

~Lee

I know that realizing something important just a little too late can be very frustrating. I think most of us have had a deadline slip our minds or possibly paid a bill a little past the due date. Usually these are small issues of little consequence in the “Big Picture” However, not to be an alarmist, I am afraid to think that America is on the verge of being caught asleep on it’s feet. As we see our global economy shifting, and the face of “business as usual” taking on a whole new look. There is a large number of people who are calling on American educational institutions to begin to shift as well.

Here is just one more example of article that discusses a study (admittedly by a 21st Century Educational Organization) that outlines some of the most glaring reasons that this shift is so crucial in keeping America a leading force in our world today.

http://pages.citebite.com/l8c1c2v1wkyt

Are you enjoying this blog but do you forget to check it? What about other blogs or websites? Did you know there’s an easy, free way to be notified everytime this blog adds a new post? You can try using a free RSS reader such as Google Reader. Watch this brief tutorial from CommonCraft:

We’re happy to announce that the Palm Breeze Cafe is back online for a new school year and can currently be seen on Comcast Channel 19 in Palm Beach County as well as in the classroom using the webcast from The Education Network. (You’ll recall from last year’s season-ending cliff hanger that Lee Keller and I were doing our best to examine whether or not technology can have an impact on learning.) And of course, we’ll be doing our weekly live, online video conference from the Cafe on Wednesday afternoons for our teachers and media specialists and giving away lots of free software during those sessions. Our first live session will be held on Wednesday, September 6th.

We’re happy to have a brand new set for this year’s show as you can see in the segment below. Hey, we get to stand up this year! Not to mention the addition of a new dynamic member to our team. You’ll definitely want to drop in the show to see our new star! (Hint: She’s a classroom teacher from a school with the initials BRMS.)

As always Palm Breeze Cafe focuses on instructional use of computers and the web and how teachers, parents, and students can use technology in their educational endeavors.

So, watch the clip, and if you can, try to join us on Wednesday afternoons where we have a live discussion to go along with the video clips that we pre-record. It’s a unique experience and one worth taking time to attend. You can see our schedule of upcoming shows at the Palm Breeze Cafe home page.

And finally, we’ve added an entirely new show this year, based on requests from our audience. Our new show is available on T.E.N. only at the moment, but look for episodes of Computers for the Completely Clueless coming to a video hosting service near you soon. This show focuses on computer basics, with Lee and I doing our best to inject a good dose of humor and fun to the topic.

In this time of elections and monumental decisions you might find yourself evaluating your stances on any number of topics. If you would like to revisit some of the things that may have crossed your mind in the past, you might want to check out the poll archive at www.teachermagazine.org. This archive encompasses many subjects of interest to teachers and dates back to June 2006. Please comment on any of the results that you find intersting, or suggest other topics that we might want to explore ourselves!

In the immortal(?) words of wikipedia:

“Educational technology is most simply and comfortably defined as an array of tools that might prove helpful in advancing student learning.”

Thankfully, students have been “learning” for far longer than we have even recorded history. SO…. some things have been working, and undoubtedtly there have been tools employed to aid in the process! So in some sense, working in Educational Technology may well be as longstanding a tradition as some other “oldest professions”. As educators it is imperative that we understand, appreciate, and build on the ideas and strategies that have come before. I think that any discussion of the status of Educational Technology in the classrooms of today and tomorrow must reflect on the successes and failures of the past. To illustrate, I will use examples of much more recent happenings. I ask the following:

Aside from computers and the Internet in general, of the following: what has been the most important technological classroom advance in the past 20 years?

Please select 1 answer:

Document Cameras/Projectors

Blogs/Wiki’s

Cellular Phones

School computer networks

Interactive Clicker Systems/interactive whiteboards

Regardless of what you might choose, I would say that each of these tools is ultimately just an extension of the succeessful practices that have been going on in effective classrooms for years. The recent (past hundred years or so) acceleration of technological tools and the ability to collect, store and distribute information have only made the need for efficiency and technology literacy all that more crucial. I look forward to building on the experiences of the past and collaborating with the great minds of today to provide a wider base of knowledge for those yet to come.

Welcome to the Educational Technology weblog!

Traditionally this entry would have the words “Hello World” somewhere inside it, so we certainly don’t want to disappoint! With that out of the way let’s talk a little about why this service has been created and what we hope to gain from it.

First, what is the purpose of this blog anyway? (Yes, it is a blog.)

Simply put, our team hopes to find a new and better way for teachers in Palm Beach County schools to have a place to discuss the latest successes and challenges in their classroom, particularly when it comes to their use of technology tools.

More than that though, this blog is intended to be a demonstration project where we have the opportunity to lead by example as we collaborate and discuss teaching practices using what has become one of the most ubiquitous tools available today–the ability to connect and share using simple publishing tools. When you hear the term Web 2.0, that is exactly what this new paradigm is all about. Connecting. So please join in the conversation by leaving a comment. It’s easy!

We’re expecting this to be a fun ride, so don’t sit back and relax, but lean forward and engage with us! We want to hear from you and hope that you’ll be as excited about this new service as we are.

Don’t forget that you’ll want to subscribe to the RSS feed for this blog in your favorite news reader. Not sure how to do that? Well, stand by. More will be coming soon!