Education Technology sites, recognized as ‘Language Technology’ category winners.

Lexiophiles.com has announced this year’s winners in their new “Language Technology” web sites contest category. These sites are actually great Internet based Education Technology blogs (they are not focused specifically on language or languages).

No sense in me repeating all of them here, just click on this link to check them out. I did check them all out myself, and following are my favorites from this listing. I thought these sites had particularly appealing designs and quality content:

• Self Made Scholar
• Box of Tricks
• eduFire
• Education & Tech

Of course, all 10 of the sites in the Top 10 list are worth a visit. Stop by and take a look!

[Note: In June, I was delighted and honored to learn that EmergingEdTech.com was nominated in the category of Top 100 Language Technology sites by Lexiophiles.com. The competition wrapped up on July 30, and while EmergingEdTech.com did not place, just being nominated was pretty cool considering that we are still in our infancy here, having been blogging consistently for a little over 4 months at the time we were nominated. I look forward to the challenge of placing in the top 10 some day!]

The U.S. Department of Education has just published this “Guidance on Enhancing Education through Technology (Ed Tech) Program Funds Made Available under the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009“.

This is certainly one of the most significant things to happen to Education Technology here in the US in years. The ARRA adds $650 million in funds to the original 2009 appropriation of $265 million, bringing the total allotment of funds for Education Technology for 2009 to $915 million! The allocation of funds by state can be found here: http://www.ed.gov/about/overview/budget/statetables/index.html.

The guidance document explains (on page 8 ) that an eligible entity may use these funds to support such activities as:

• Increasing accessibility to technology, particularly through public-private partnerships, with special emphasis on access for high-need schools.
• Adapting or expanding applications of technology to enable teachers to increase student academic achievement, including technology literacy, through the use of research-based teaching practices and innovative distance learning strategies.
• Implementing proven and effective courses and curricula that include integrated technology and that are designed to help students reach challenging academic standards.
• Using technology to promote parental involvement and foster communication among students, parents, and teachers about curricula, assignments, and assessments.
• Preparing one or more teachers in schools as technology leaders who will assist other teachers, and providing bonus payments to the technology leaders.
• Enhancing existing technology and acquiring new technology to support education reforms and to improve student achievement.
• Acquiring connectivity linkages, resources, and services for use by students and school personnel to improve academic achievement and technology literacy.
• Using technology to collect, manage, and analyze data to inform and enhance teaching and school improvement efforts.
• Implementing enhanced performance measurement systems to determine the effectiveness of education technology programs funded with Ed Tech funds.
• Developing, enhancing, or implementing information technology courses.

We’ll be discussing these potential uses further in coming weeks (after wrapping up my series on Internet resources for educators who work with special needs students). In the meanwhile, I’d love to hear from any readers who are involved in working with their local educational system to consider best uses of these funds, as well as any educators who have an opinion on this important topic! What are some of the options under consideration, or that you would like to see you school districts consider? Adding equipment, increasing bandwidth, measuring impacts, using existing equipment in a more integrated and impactful way? The possibilities seem endless. The big question is probably how to determine which possible uses of the funds can have the farthest reaching impact. What’s your opinion?

This week’s mid week post is a straightforward plea for a quick click or two. EmergingEdTech.com has been nominated in the Language Technology category in a “Top 100 Language Blogs 2009″ competition. I know language tech is not the main focus here, but education tech is, and recognition like this can go a long way in helping to spread the word about better integration of Internet technologies in education. I hope you don’t mind my asking for a quick click and vote. There is a button on the right hand menu bar (you might have to scroll down a little), or you can just click on this link to the voting page: http://www.lexiophiles.com/language-blog-toplist/top-100-language-blogs-2009-voting-language-technology.

Voting ends July 30th. Thanks so much for your support! See you next week for the first post in a series on the use of Internet apps for Special Needs students.

These inspiring, insightful videos make the case for stepping up the integration of technology in today’s classrooms

As an advocate of the use of Internet technologies in education, my fundamental goal is to inspire instructors and other members of the educational community to embrace the use of these technologies in today’s educational process. I’ve attempted to make the case myself in a couple previous blog posts, such as the popular 5 Reasons Why Educators Need To Embrace Internet Technologies and 10 Internet technologies that educators should be informed about. Of course, many others have made the case as well (and generally done so in a more captivating manner) as the videos below will attest.

Anyone who cares about this topic will be moved by some of these videos, and anyone who hasn’t been sold yet owes it to themselves (and the students they help to educate) to view at least a few of these, and be inspired to embrace today’s technologies in (and out of) the classroom.

(1) Michael Wesch’s A Vision of Student’s Today: If you are an educator and you haven’t seen this yet, there are some who might say you’ve been living under the proverbial rock. Professor Wesch’s outstanding (< 5 minute) video perspective on today’s students has been viewed over 3 million times, and is simply a must for this listing (and a must-see for you if you haven’t seen it already).

(2) Learning to Change - Changing to Learn: ”The US Dept of Commerce ranked 55 industry sectors by their level of IT intensiveness. Education was ranked number 55, the lowest. Below Coal Mining.” This startling statement opens this excellent (5.5 minute) video, consisting of one well spoken statement after another, woven into an insightful and thoughtful narrative supporting the undeniable need for the US educational system to seriously step up their level of technology integration. Education can lead us into the future (rather than playing ‘catch up’) and position our children, and adult learners, to excel in today’s world and the world of tomorrow.

(3) A Vision of today’s K-12 Students: This (4 min.) video borrows from Michael Wesch’s work and the popular “Future is now” video, using elementary aged kids to hold signs up to tell the story. This is well done, if derivative, and should strike a point with those involved in educating young children.

(4) Education Technology Showcase: In this brief (< 3 min.) video, we follow a walking tour demonstration of many education technologies, which took place following a U.S. House of Representatives’ Committee on Education & Labor hearing on the “Future of Technology: How Technology is Transforming Public Schools”.

(5) Using Technology in Education (mental health focus): This well done (6 1/2 min.) video is focused on mental health, and supports the idea that Internet based applications can provide a useful route for kids suffering from depression or other mental health issues to be able to reach out for help in a way that may work well for many of them.

(6) The Future Is Now: This widely viewed (5 min.) outstanding video is rather mesmerizing with its opening “Did You Know?” question and answer format, its propulsive music, and the onslaught of fascinating ‘factoids’. While it is not focused specifically on education, it implies the need for it, and I think I would be remiss not to include in this list. (This is not the original copy of the video, but a different posting of it that seems to be the same as the original one I saw). [Note: Click here for an excellent updated 8 min version of the video].

(7) 3 Phases of Educational Technology : This (7 minute) video provides insight into how teachers typically adopt technology. I thought this was a useful inclusion here because it provides awareness of where an instructor (or educational institution as a whole) is in the cycle. Phase 1: Teacher uses technology to support/facilitate lecture; Phase 2: Students use online resources to access knowledge; Phase 3: Student becomes a producer of info (not just a consumer). Hopefully many have reached phase 3. I feel there is in fact a Phase 4 which consists of teachers and students working together, and in groups, in an interactive “community” setting to produce work, conduct research, etc. Where are you in this adoption cycle?

(8) Vision for technology in K-12 Education: This (4+ min.) video uses a “What If? …” question format, a walks through events in the student and teacher environment, showing how technology can be integral to the educational experience.

I’ll wrap up with a ‘bonus’ video - an amusing plea from the future to fix education now (before it’s too late) - just another way of trying to make the point.

I hope you found some of these videos enjoyable and motivating, and share them with others! Have you seen any other technology-in-education videos that you found inspiring? Comment and let us know about them, please. Thanks, and see you next week when I start a series on the use of emerging Internet technologies for students with special needs.

This blog’s recent nomination for an award in the “Language Technology” category made me feel compelled to learn a little more about Internet based technologies for learning languages. A little searching and clicking led me to a number of sites that offer language lessons, and there were actually some sites that appeared to provide useful training for free. For this week’s mid-week post, here’s a few free sites for learning a language that look worthwhile:

www.babelnation.com: Offers free online lessons for learning basic German, French, Spanish, Italian, and Portugese.

www.livemocha.com/Learn/hub: This site offers training on almost 30 languages. Registration is required. Premium content is available for a fee.

www.101languages.net: Not as thorough an offering as the above sites, this site offers some translations for commonly used phrases, grouped into about 20 sections, such as Basics, Phrases, Transportation, Eating, etc.

As always, I welcome any feedback any readers might have. Have you used these sites, or others? What kind of experience did you have?

I am very happy to announce (the first of what I hope will eventually be many ) blogging award nominations - the EmergingEdTech blog has been nominated for the Top 100 Language Blogs 2009 competition, in the Language Technology category. Voting begins July 8 (details to follow). While EmergingEdTech is not focused specifically on Language Technology, our focus on the use of Internet technologies for education is certainly germane to this category. Anyway, it’s pretty cool to be recognized by anyone. Hopefully this sort of thing helps in my quest to raise awareness of the potential for the (many free and low cost) tools that exist on the Internet that can be used to make the classroom experience more engaging and productive for our students and our teachers.

Read this article by Trent Batson recently on CampusTechnology.com, and thought it made for an interesting mid week follow up to this week’s “5 Reasons Why Educators Need To Embrace Internet Technologies” post. Here is a excerpt from this article:

“Culturally speaking, with the advent of Web 2.0, the “traditional classroom” with one speaker and many listeners is now an oddity, a throwback, a form that should represent 15 percent of undergraduate interaction with faculty, not 85 percent as it does now. With so many ways to create knowledge now very rapidly and collaboratively, we are freed from the necessity of a singular approach to teaching. It no longer makes sense. If you are a faculty member and you are still walking into the classroom with a lecture in mind and “the points to cover,” as I did for many years, you are living in the past, a past that is now obsolete. Granted, your job is easier and the students love it if you just talk, but do you feel right about what you are doing?”

Bold statements. Naturally, not everyone who read this article agreed with it. How about you? Is this taking Web 2.0 in the classroom too far too fast, or is Mr. Batson right on target?

In April I wrote a post about 10 internet technologies that educators should be informed about. This quickly became my most read posting. I included some references in this article to why educators should be aware of and informed about these tools, but most of those comments were really about why each specific technology was included in the list, as opposed to why, in a more general sense, it is important for educators to make an effort to embrace these technologies. So that is the topic for this week - why you should care, as an educator, about these tools. What’s in it for you as an instructor, and what’s in it for your students?

Please note that while I have numbered these, this is not to imply that any one of these takes precedence over the other. Which of these factors are most motivating to you as an instructor is rather subjective.

Reason No. 1: Professional Development
As the world continues to embrace and evolve the Internet, businesses and organizations are increasingly looking to tap into this resource. It is in the best interest of educators, and professionals in general, to be aware of what the Internet has to offer. We can choose to sit back and wish it would all just go away because it’s too hard to find the time for it, or we can choose to embrace it, and look for simple ways to learn more about it. Another unavoidable fact is the growing desire for experience and familiarity with the Internet and other computer technologies as a hiring requirement in the educational field.

Reason No. 2: The Power To Engage
Internet tools can be fun! Internet tools are interactive! What a great way to engage students in the classroom. Many of the tools are collaborative, and they are all hands-on. Applications that allow for the creation of cool looking timelines, videos, or other dynamic presentations can be a lot of fun, and when a student realizes that they can easily make the resulting creation available for viewing on the Internet, it can be pretty exciting!

Reason No 3: Students Use Them Already
“Meet them where they live!” We’ve all heard this, and there is a solid undercurrent of wisdom in it. Many students use Internet tools on a regular basis. If you use some of them in the classroom, you will be talking to them in their language. And for those who have not been exposed to a given technology, you’ll be teaching them something they are probably predisposed to learning more about.

Reason No. 4: It’s Not Going Away (It Will Only Grow)
The Internet is here to stay. It’s been well over a decade now that ‘average users’ have had access to the Internet, and we’re now knee deep in the Social Media revolution that has defined Web 2.0. It isn’t going away. It isn’t a fad. It’s only going to grow and evolve. It’s already woven into the fabric of the daily lives of millions of people. Yes, a lot of folks are wasting a lot of time doing things on the Internet that don’t contribute to society or offer much in the way of personal growth, but at the same time, there are countless ways in which the multitude of tools and technologies available on the Internet are being used in wonderfully constructive ways. Come and be a part of it, and contribute your voice.

Reason No. 5: Businesses Want to Hire Workers Who Understand The Internet
Yes, they do. If you introduce your students to technologies like Blogs, RSS Feeds, Wikis, and so on, you will be helping to build their resume. Businesses and organizations are more interested in these types of tools every day. They’re thinking about how to get on board and get ahead of the curve, and how they can offer value in the workplace. Blogs are being used to provide updates about new developments, Wikis are being used as knowledge bases, RSS Feeds are being used to capture a steady stream of information about topics of interest, Social Bookmarking tools are being used for research, and the list goes on and on. Name any Internet technology, and there is a growing list of business applications for it. Go to Google and search “Twitter for business” and see the list of articles on the subject. Businesses want to hire workers who understand the Internet.

Conclusion
I am not suggesting by any means that every teacher needs to use as many Internet technologies as possible in their classroom every day. In fact, there are some tools, such as social networking sites like Myspace and Facebook, that some can make a good case for leaving out of the classroom entirely. What I am suggesting is that you learn a little about the many different kinds of tools that are out there (many of which are free or very low cost) and give a few a trial run. Online interactive whiteboards, Wikis, virtual worlds, workgroup tools, mind mapping, collaborative documents, the list just goes on and on, and the potential is endless. You owe it to yourself and your students to be informed, to participate, and to embrace the opportunities.

In addition to the reasons I’ve listed above for learning about and using Internet technologies in (and out of) the classroom, I’m sure some of you may have other reasons you’d like to see on this list - please comment and let us know what they are!

Next Week
Next week we’re going to take a look at the use of Blogs in instructional applications, then we’ll follow up with some insight into some great Blogs for educators to be aware of. Until then, keep those eyes and ears open for new opportunities to embrace the possibilities!

This week I read a number of articles that reference a recently released paper from the Ontario Public School Boards’ Association that asks, “How can schools continue to be connected and relevant in the world of the 21st century?” This article from the London Free Press states, “one thing is for sure: today’s students are hungry to learn, enthusiastically embracing technology, and well aware of the potential of one to help further the other. ” This article about the paper, published on GlobalInvestor.com, notes that the “Innovative use of technology is proliferating in our schools but it is not … keeping pace with the integration of multi-media in the lives of our students”. I come across articles like this all the time. How about your school? What are you doing to keep pace with evolving technologies?

[Note: I could not find the paper itself online, perhaps it is not going to be available online, but if anyone comes across it, please comment and provide a link. Thanks!]