Blogs In Plain English

"NEW TOOL TO INCREASE THE AMOUNT & QUALITY OF REPORTING ON TEACHING"

"The Hechinger Institute on Education and the Media and the Costen Family Foundation launched a website for journalists that will help them cover one of the most important aspects of education: teaching and learning. The website, "Tools for Reporting on Teaching: What to Look for in Classrooms," provides classroom videos and commentaries from teaching and journalism experts in the hope of helping reporters ask better questions and increase their visits to classrooms. In addition, the site offers summaries of research on the importance of good teachers and how teachers improve their craft. Teaching and learning is perhaps the most challenging and complex issue in education, which makes it all the more difficult to capture in a news story. Hopefully this new tool can help media encapsulate what good teachers do and as a result increase the admiration society has for teachers."

URL: http://cotsen.org/cotsen-hechinger

Referred by: PEN Weekly NewsBlast

"REINVENTING THE BOOK BY MAKING IT DIGITAL TO ENCOURAGE READING"

"As the world becomes increasingly technology driven, with new gadgets coming out every season, it is easy to forget the book, an object which, thanks to Gutenberg, is superbly designed, completely functional and has thus far stood the test of time. In fact, books remain a more reliable storage device than any external hard drive, are easily "turned on" (just open it up) and unless it is one, require no instructional manual, reports Steven Levy in Newsweek. According to Jeff Bezos, the CEO of Amazon.com, "books are the last bastion of analog," as long-form reading has failed to conform to digitization. To fill this market niche, Amazon has released the Kindle, an electronic device that has the dimensions of a paperback with a tapering of width to simulate binding, does not run hot or make electronic beeps, mimics the clarity of a printed book and allows for 30 hours of reading on a single charge. In addition, the Kindle enables users to change the font size and stores 200 books "onboard," with space for hundreds more on a memory card..."

URL: http://www.newsweek.com/id/70983
Referred by: PEN Weekly NewsBlast

"Search Video Lectures"

"A tool from MIT finds keywords so that students can efficiently review lectures."

URL: http://www.technologyreview.com/Infotech/19747/?nlid=700&a=f
Referred by: MIT Technology Review

10 Ways to Manage Laptop Use in the Classroom

Florida State University suggests ten methods for managing a laptop-integrated classroom.

URL: http://learningforlife.fsu.edu/ctl/explore/bestPractices/docs/10WaystoManageLaptops.pdf

"ZOOM ALONG ‘ROUTE 21’ FOR TOOLS TO IMPLEMENT 21ST CENTURY SKILLS"

"Everyone has grown accustomed to business leaders and other stakeholders clamoring for increased attention paid to 21st century skills (global literacy, problem solving, innovation and creativity), as they have become stock skills in an increasingly interconnected global workforce. The Partnership for 21st Century Skills has tried to satiate these calls by launching "Route 21," the first ever online conglomeration of 21st century skills-related tools and resources. The website provides information on standards, assessments, curriculum and instruction and opportunities for professional development. Route 21 also allows users to mark, organize, collect and share content based on their personal/professional needs. The site is intended to be a living entity by being continuously updated and providing an online forum where users can share their experiences on implementing 21st century skills. It’s not quite the Jetsons or hover cars, but it does serve as a great tool for educators."

URL: http://www.21stcenturyskills.org/route21
Referred by: PEN Weekly NewsBlast

"Better Search in Virtual Worlds"

"Second Life's new search tool helps users find 3-D objects."

"As Google's stock price can attest, good search engines are what make the Internet useful and entertaining. But in virtual worlds, which are made up of not text but 3-D renderings of people, places, and objects, the search problem is harder. Residents of Linden Lab's Second Life have long been able to perform large, general searches--for a listing of a Spanish-language event, for example, or for the location of a particular group. But while it was possible, with a little effort, to find a shoe store, there was no good way to locate a pair of red shoes. Since much of the entertainment value of virtual worlds lies in creating objects and trading them, that's been a frustrating limitation. But Linden Lab recently released a new search tool that begins to address the problem."

URL: http://www.technologyreview.com/Infotech/19664/?nlid=661&a=f
Referred by: MIT Technology Review

"New Class(room) War: Teacher vs.Technology"

"A column from the New York Times speaks to the exasperation of countless teachers and professors in the computer era. "Their perpetual war of attrition with defiantly inattentive students has escalated from the quaint pursuits of pigtail-pulling, spitball-lobbing and notebook-doodling," writes Samuel Freeman, professor of journalism at Columbia University, to a high-tech arsenal of laptops, cellphones, BlackBerries and the like." ...

URL: http://www.nytimes.com/2007/11/07/education/07education.html?ex=1195189200&en=fd5b2671ba70b508&ei=5070
Referred by: eSchool News

"Classroom Blogging - Taking it to a New Level"

Great resources about educational blogging published by UW-Stout InfoByte Newsletter

"Study Explores the Online Behavior of Tweens and Teens
The results of the National School Board Association’s online behaviors study show that 96% of students with online access use social networking tools such as text messaging and blogging. How to convince your administrator blogging has value? Read the complete report at: Creating & Connecting: Research and Guidelines on Online Social and Educational Networking(pdf)

Exemplary K-12 Classroom Blogs
UW-Stout provides a list of innovative and exemplary student-written classroom blogs which model meaningful and thought-provoking collaborative learning with peers and others outside the classroom.

Blog Pedagogy: Classroom 2.0
Fourth grade teacher Matt Kish discusses with other blogging educators: "What does complex blogging look like at the elementary school level? How can teachers scaffold this type of powerful blogging and learning?"

Rationale for Educational Blogging
Anne Davis explains how blogs are reshaping the learning environment and fostering the development of new literacies.

Student-Created Blog Policies
Bud Hunt shares student-created blog policies and blogging rules.

Blog Rubric
The staff at San Diego State University shares a blog reflection rubric to evaluate students’ blog entries."

URL: http://www.uwstout.edu/soe/profdev/blog

"EdubloggerCon 2008: The Collaborative Conferences"

"Last year's EduBloggerCon in Atlanta, the all-day meet-up of educational bloggers, was a really fun event. EduBloggerCon and the NECC "Bloggers Cafe" were watershed events in some ways--the physical gathering of educational bloggers and the real-time conference collaborating and communication helped to raise expectations about ed tech conference participation. Whether they led, mirrored, or followed (maybe a little of each) the dynamic changes in networked learning that are taking place in the world of Web 2.0 for educators, they definitely generated an excitement about gathering and learning together.

So it is great fun to announce that we'll be having EduBloggerCon meetings in both Palm Springs (California) and San Antonio (Texas) in 2008, with the great and appreciated support of CUE and NECC. CUE, in fact, is sponsoring a whole series of Web 2.0-style additions to their conference (including a cool social network) which I'll be posting about shortly--and EduBlogger Con "West" will be Wednesday, March 4th, 2008, in the Palm Springs Convention Center in Palm Springs, California. NECC is also graciously hosting again, and the mothership EduBloggerCon 2008 will be Saturday, June 28, 2008 in the Henry B. Gonzalez Convention Center in San Antonio, Texas."

URL: http://www.infinitethinking.org/2007/11/edubloggercon-2008-collaborative.html
Referred by: Infinite Thinking Machine newsletter

"Social Networks Let Scholars Remix Their Articles"

"Clearly we are well into the sharing, giving season: The number of scholarly social-networking sites is growing monthly. The phrase “it’s kind of like an academic version of Facebook” can now be applied to Pronetos, a new site launched at the end of October, a few weeks after the kickoff of a humanities scholars’ network and about two months after the Espilen Environment and The New York Times’s Knowledge Network combined for another venture into online scholarship exchange.

At Pronetos, scholars “can post work for their peers to comment on, in any discipline. If the discipline does not exist, any user can create it,” writes Chief Executive Chris Blanchard in an e-mail message to The Chronicle."

URL: http://chronicle.com/wiredcampus/article/2534/social-networks-for-scholars-get-another-new-entry?at
Referred by: The Chronicle of Higher Education, Wired Campus

"School laptop program begets writing gains"

"Maine's pioneering program to give every middle school student a laptop computer is leading to better writing, according to a new study.

Despite creating a language all their own using eMail and text messages, students are still learning standard English, and their writing scores have improved on a standardized test since laptop computers were distributed, the study says.

Moreover, the students' writing skills improved even when they were using pen and paper, not just a computer keyboard.

"If you concentrate on whether laptops are helping kids achieve 21st-century skills, this demonstrates that it's happening in writing," said David Silvernail, director of the Maine Education Policy Research Institute at the University of Southern Maine.

The study, authored by Silvernail and Aaron Gritter, is the first in a series in which educators aim to evaluate Maine's first-in-the-nation laptop progra."

URL: http://www.eschoolnews.com/news/showstoryts.cfm?Articleid=7467
Referred by: eSchool News

"State leaders convene to discuss ed tech"

"3D social networking, global awareness, responsible internet use among the topics explored at SETDA's annual leadership forum"

"Keeping kids safe on the internet and allowing them to learn and explore online don't have to be mutually exclusive goals: That was one of the key messages delivered to state educational technology leaders who attended a recent event in Washington, D.C..."

URL: http://www.eschoolnews.com/news/showstoryts.cfm?Articleid=7470
Referred by: eSchool News

"Wading Into Web 2.0"

"Over at ACRLog, Steven Bell flags "Sharing, Privacy and Trust in Our Networked World," a new report released by the OCLC Online Computer Library Center. The report -- drawn from surveys of American librarians and library patrons in six nations -- should provide plenty of grist for librarians as they debate how their institutions should make use of Web 2.0 tools and other new social media. "Becoming engaged in the social Web is not about learning new services or mastering new technologies," according to the center. Instead, the group argues, modern libraries should be "dismantling the curre nt structures and inviting users in to create their content and establish new rules." That's heady stuff, and it's unlikely that too many libraries will embrace radical change, Mr. Bell writes. But the report makes another point that should strike a chord: Libraries' forays into Web 2.0 are only as useful as the number of patrons who use them. The center polled more than 500 college students about their social-networking habits, and the results prove that, for campus librarians, not all Web 2.0 platforms are created equal. About 84 percent of the students said they used YouTube, and (a surprisingly low) 56 percent reported using social networks like MySpace and Facebook, but just 10 percent said they had visited Flickr, the popular photo-sharing site. For college librarians wondering where to start with Web 2.0, statistics like those should be quite handy. --Brock Read"

URL: http://chronicle.com/wiredcampus/article/2544/wading-into-web-20

"Can Wikipedia Ever Make the Grade?"

"As questions about the accuracy of the anyone-can-edit encyclopedia persist, academics are split on whether to ignore it, or start contributing"

Skeptics, Proponents, and New Attitude about Wikipedia

URL: http://chronicle.com/free/v53/i10/10a03101.htm

Social Annotation - Diigo

URL: http://www.diigo.com