Miscellaneous Tools and Topics

Call To Action – Comment on the Gainful Employment regulations before time runs out (Sep 9)

September 1, 2010

The last date for public comment on these perplexing regulations (slated to become law on Nov. 1) is coming fast! The only soapbox I tend to hop on here is the one where I advocate for education technology, but these new regulations are seriously disconcerting and I just have to weigh in, and reach out to [...]

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The Evolving Role of Mobile Computing in Education

August 18, 2010

Guest Post By Daniel Cawrey Many of us think about technology as something that we sit behind: maybe a desktop computer or a laptop that we type away on. But the reality is that technology is becoming more about what is in our hands, or in our pockets, and that significantly changes the way that [...]

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Facebook as an Instructional Technology Tool

August 11, 2010

Can the wildly popular social network be used constructively in the classroom? This student’s story says it can. Yesterday, student Kristen Nicole Cardon submitted a comment in response to my post 5 Reasons Why Educators Need To Embrace Internet Technologies in which she explained how she used Facebook in a course she took. I really appreciated her [...]

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Microsoft announces 2010 winners of U.S. Regional Innovative Educators of the Year

August 4, 2010

Congratulations to first place contest winners Cheryl Arnett and Rawya Shatila and all the other honorees! On Monday, Microsoft announced the winners of the U.S. Regional Innovative Educators of the Year at Microsoft’s  U.S. Innovative Education Forum (IEF) in Washington D.C., where outstanding teaching teams were recognized for integrating 21st century skills into student learning projects. This year’s [...]

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Flatworld Knowledge – a chance to escape the high price of school text books

July 28, 2010

The site provides “Remixable textbooks by expert authors. Free online and affordable offline”. Have you heard about this? Remixable free online textbooks? Check out the introductory video: Seems like a pretty awesome idea to me, yet there are only a couple dozen books published or in development on the site. The site is quite new though. [...]

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Steven Laster’s 8 Factors for Successful IT Management

July 25, 2010

Harvard Business School’s CIO delivered an engaging keynote address at the Campus Technology 2010 Conference. It included this set of recommended practices that all IT shops should strive to incorporate. For this week’s post I’m taking off my Ed Tech hat, and swapping it for my ”IT Manager” hat. While I am undeniably an Education Technology enthusiast [...]

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Campus Technology 2010: Time and Money Well Spent

July 22, 2010

The cost of attendance has been more than justified by the learning, technology exposure, and networking opportunities. I’ve been attending the Campus Technology 2010 Conference in Boston for the last few days, and I learned a good deal in most of the Conference Sessions that I’ve attended. I heard some folks gripe a bit about some of the sessions [...]

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12 Great Resources To Help Keep Student’s Math Skills Sharp Over The Summer

July 4, 2010

These online resources provide plenty of great ways for students to stay on top of their math skills, or to build on them, over the summer. This is the kind of thing I really love about the Internet - easy to access and use sites and tools, many of which are free, focused on a specific [...]

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Microsoft focuses on Critical Thinking Skills in ISTE 2010 launch

June 30, 2010

Free eBook, resource guide, Wiki, and more Critical Thinking educational resources announced. This week at the International Society for Technology in Education’s (ISTE) annual conference, Microsoft announced that they have worked with the ISTE and Howard Rheingold and created a various materials and a curriculum that helps to teach kids how to evaluate information found online. This [...]

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Skype in the classroom

June 23, 2010

We’re finding the popular, free voice and video conferencing solution to be very useful in the classroom. How about you? This year, there have a been a growing number of cases where we are being asked to set up Skype in our classrooms and provide webcams to facilitate video calls.  This free application makes it easy [...]

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