World Languages in Our Schools

Schools are looking not only to expand offerings in foreign languages, but also in helping students learn more about the cultures of the people who speak these languages. As we become a global community and as technologies bring us closer together, it’s important for students to learn the languages of other cultures and to better understand these cultures. Today’s students can learn languages online, practice speaking/writing skills with native speakers/writers through the Internet, and learn about cultures through global social media, blogs, video conferences, video, and other technology communication tools. Teaching global languages today differs from teaching of the past because a great emphasis is placed on communication and culture—skills which our students will need to make their way in a global economy.

Why Educators Should Blog

Edubabbling for the Masses! features K-12 Teaching Resources for teachers, students, and parents. In the blog, created by an educator from Canada, you’ll find ideas to motivate yourself and your students, current events, opinions, and resources. Some of the latest blog entries include reasons why you should get involved in blogging, ELL instructional strategies, information on whether bullying prevention programs are working, and four of the top trends in Education for 2013-2014. 

So, what does Edubabbling consider the emerging trends? Answer: virtual learning, personalized learning, early childhood education, and environmental/outdoor education. How about you? What do you think are the top trends for this school year?

Project RED: How to Implement Tech Programs

In Project RED’s 2010 study of schools and tech, 997 schools in 49 states and the District of Columbia were represented. The study found that the leadership of the school principal was highly important in whether programs were successful; “online collaboration increases learning productivity and student engagement”; schools that put the key implementation factors to work outperformed other schools; and to get the best results, tech should be used every day. Based on research results, Project RED Community was launched to help transform education.

Be sure to take a look at the key implementation factors.  Those should benefit all schools.

Texting Parents

Lisa Neilsen, in SmartBlog on Education, gives us four ideas for connecting with parents through texting. These include use of services such as Remind101, Mobile Commons, ClassPager, Twitter, and Poll Everywhere. Remind101 and Mobile Commons are for mass messaging and are perfect for alerting parents about school closures and scheduled events. Messaging through ClassPager can be used for messaging to students and parents for homework, links to resources, and notices. Even if parents have not joined Twitter, they can receive tweets by following their children’s school and/or teacher messages. Poll everywhere is one of the “voting systems” you can use to survey parents’ opinions/ideas about school events, curricular offerings, summer reading, and/or other input you may want from parents. Neilsen’s blog entry gives links to the services and to selected schools that have put the services to work.

Passion-Based Learning: An Example

The article, How to Fuel Students’ Learning Through Their Interests, by Ian Quillen features inquiry, open-source, and passion-based learning.  High School teacher David Preston uses students’ personal blogs to help them think critically through responses that include text, video, and audio. Preston’s students take part in virtual discussions with peers and in video-conferencing with experts such as Bryan Alexander of the National Institute for Technology in Liberal Education and author Cory Doctorow.  Students select their own cross-curricular questions to answer in a research-type “paper”, map ideas for achieving personal goals, and work collaboratively with others who share their personal interests.  They exchange ideas and help each other to move forward in their Advanced Placement coursework and in other areas of learning.

Advocates of inquiry-based learning believe that by making education more meaningful for students there will be greater student interest in learning, more opportunities for cross curricular learning, additional ways to enhance creativity and critical thinking, and more opportunities for students to learn to use analytical tools.

Fifty Tech Tools for Teachers

Edudemic says that smart phones make a difference in learning, since when using them. students spend more time studying, use app flashcards and quizzes to help them, and are more likely to track their progress in learning. In order to be able to use smart phones, iPads, and other digital devices for learning, students look to apps and are will to pay up to $7.80 for a learning app. Edudemic lists apps that are valuable tools for learning (some for teachers, some for students, and some for both) and divides them into the following four categories: Social Learning, Learning, Lesson Planning and Tools, and Useful Tools. Some of the recommended apps are: Khan Academy, StudySync, Educreations, ePals, Ning, Pinterest, Skype, QR Codes, Google Docs, Evernote, Twitter, Google Education, Popplet, and AudioBoo. Go to Edudemic for the complete list and links to the apps.

Technology Megatrends

One hundred “global thought leaders” working with the Horizon Project met in January 2012 to talk about research relating to technology and education. They came up with 28 megatrends of which 10 were considered the most important. These megatrends are bringing about significant changes in our world, our interactions, and the way we learn. Although you can read more about the top ten in the New Media Consortium’s Communique´on the Horizon Project, some of the trends include the following:

• People expect to work, learn, socialize, and play whenever and wherever they want....
• The Internet is becoming a global mobile network....
• The technologies we use today are increasingly cloud-based....
• Legal notions of ownership and privacy lag behind the practices....
• The Internet is constantly challenging us to rethink learning and education, while redefining our notion of literacy.
• There is a rise in informal learning as individual needs are redefining schools....

Techedge offers information on the megatrends as they relate to young learners and asks, “After Megatrends...What Next?” Some of the solutions suggested to help teachers with tech expectations of their students are: using LiveMinutes for online discussion, Audicity for interviews, ShowMe for “re-imagining the learning process”, UStream for video capture, and Dropbox for file sharing. For additional information, check out the very useful article by Pat LeMay Burr, “What Young Learners Expect and How Technology Delivers”.

Cool Cat Blog

Vicki Davis’ Cool Cat Teacher Blog is designed to inspire teachers and to introduce  tools and techniques that can be used in teaching. Cool Cat is packed with ideas from a teacher who enjoys learning about new tech tools and using helpful sites.  Among her recommendations are: Got 2BSafe! Think Smart. Take Charge, Lenovo Dream to Do, Innovate My School, Time for Mail: Services That Improve GMail Productivity, OpenStax College, and When Teachers Demand to be Co-Creators not Consumers. You might also want to take a look at her “11 Essential Tools for Global Collaboration.”

Sign Up for Resource Shelf

The Resource Shelf combs the Web for useful resources you might miss. Not all of them will work with your courses, but there are many resources that you’ll find of interest. You can sign up for the Resource Shelf Newsletter, which offers a weekly selection of content and links from the ResourceBlog or look for the Resource Shelf on Facebook. One of the links in the 11/17/11 Newsletter was to a report on Computer and Internet Use at Home and another was about librarians voting to make an alliance with the Internet Archives Open Library.    

PBS Presents “Digital Media: New Learners of the 21st Century”

Digital Media: New Learners of the 21^st Century will be presented as a one-hour documentary featuring cutting-edge education and cognitive research related to use of digital media and interactive practices in schools and how these practices and “ignite...students’ curiosity and ingenuity” while helping them learn to work collaboratively with other students all over the world. The premiere will air on February 13,^, 2011, but the  documentary will be available on-demand at http://video.pbs.org/video/1767314964/ for a limited time after the premiere. For addition information about on demand, go to National Productions and Mobile Digital Arts, the organization that produced the video for PBS.