5 Reasons Why Educators Need To Embrace Internet Technologies

May 17, 2009

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?

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Mid Week Update: ‘Beginner’ Series Webinars starting today

May 13, 2009

A new beginner level series of webinars gets launched at Classroom 2.0 today, starting with a three-part series titled “Go Wild with Wikis”. As explained on the Classroom 2.0 site,”these webinars will be hosted on Elluminate and facilitated by Sue Waters, Edublogs Community Facilitator. In the first session Sue will take you on a guided tour of what [...]

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Collaboration & Brainstorming Tools (Part 3)

May 10, 2009

This is the final post in a 3 part series on web based collaboration and brainstorming tools for educational application. In the first post, we examined some mind mapping (a.k.a. idea mapping) tools, last week we looked at some collaborative document editing applications, and this week we wrap up by checking out a free collaborative workgroup application for teachers and students, and some alternative tools. Edmodo.com is a tool that has been around for a little more than a year now, and provides workgroup functionality specifically for education, and I am going to sign up and give a trial run.

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Mid Week Update: Keeping pace and staying connected and relevant in today’s classrooms

May 6, 2009

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. “

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Collaboration & Brainstorming (Part 2)

May 3, 2009

This week in our investigation of collaboration and brainstorming tools, we’re checking out collaborative document editing tools. Last week we took a brief look at some mind mapping/idea mapping tools and next week we’ll wrap up with a look at some workgroup applications. As I researched no cost or low cost online document collaboration tools, [...]

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Mid Week Update: Real world uses of mind mapping tools in the classroom

April 29, 2009

All this talk about technology in the classroom means nothing if the tools aren’t actually being used, and in a way that really supports the teaching and learning process. I conducted a quick search for comments about uses of collaboration tools in the classroom this morning in the forums on Classroom 2.0 (an excellent social network focused on the use of Web 2.0 technologies in the classroom - I highly recommend it - click here to learn more). Here are a couple (abbreviated) comments I came across:

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Collaboration & Brainstorming Tools (Part 1)

April 26, 2009

In a recent survey of faculty at my institution, this was one of the most frequently cited topics to learn more about, so I am taking a cue from this and will spend a few weekends briefly researching some of the tools available on the internet for collaboration and brainstorming. On reflection, I may have erred somewhat by lumping ‘collaboration’ and ‘brainstorming’ together, since the former includes an expansive array of tools and ideas, whereas the latter could be considered just one, specific collaborative concept. Nevertheless, let’s dive in and start exploring!

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Mid Week Update: Wordle word clouds

April 22, 2009

I couple readers inquired about the image at the top of this week’s “10 internet technologies educators should be informed about” post. I used Worldle (www.wordle.net) to create this image. Wordle is a free web based application that lets you create word cloud images quickly and easily. These are not true tag clouds, since the words [...]

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10 internet technologies that educators should be informed about

April 19, 2009

There are so many different tools and technologies available on the internet today, and so many associated terms and concepts. As I think about topics to focus on here in the coming months, I want to make sure we’re touching on the most important ones. What are the most important internet technologies for educators to be aware of, and informed about? I’m sure many people would come up a slightly different list, but based on my observations and experiences, and feedback from faculty at my institution, I have selected the following technologies.

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Mid Week Update!

April 16, 2009

Now that this blog has been up for a few months and readership has been growing, I’ve been getting more feedback (here and on related sites) about topics I am posting about. Of course, this is great, as the dialogue and sharing of knowledge and ideas is a big part of what I’m looking for! With this growing stream of feedback, it probably makes sense to do a brief “midweek update” to share observations (especially those that come to me from sources other than comments on the postings here). I’ll keep them real brief - no thorough reviews, just a little info.

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