Learning to Change—Changing to Learn

The YouTube video Learning to Change—Changing to Learn describes what schools might be like in the future if technology were used to prepare students for life. In it we hear about 21^st Century Skills, how teachers must learn to use the tools of technology to help their students with these skills, and how we need to give teachers time to help them keep up with what's best for educating their students. The video stimulates thought about what a school is—is it a place, a community, a world? It asks us to think about where our students learning most of what they know about technologies. After watching the video, be sure to browse through some of the comments. The motivation for us to change is there in the video, but changing is the difficult part. How do we keep the best of what our schools and curricula have today and merge this into the best of what technology has to offer?

Do You Know How to Make a Great Podcast?

Apple Computer, Inc. offers free podcast seminars 24-7 on the Internet. You and your students can learn how to create, perform, record, and promote podcasts. Some of the topics featured in the three-part seminar are: microphone tips, GarageBand and podcasts,  and promoting with iTunes, and .mac, and Podcast technical specifications. Each seminar is about 1.5 hours in length. A fast Internet connection is recommended. You'll need to register to take part in The Podcast Recipe: Producing a Successful Show seminars. In addition to the Podcast seminars, Apple offers seminars and events in the following categories: audio, business, design, enterprise, photo, science & medicine, and video. Check the site for information about the offerings in each category.

Tool Factory Podcasting Software Free Upgrade & Grants

Tool Factory's Podcasting V3 software free upgrade adds multi-track recording to its options for podcasting. The software offers an easy way to create podcasts with students because it includes tools for organization, script writing, audio recording, RSS feed generation, and podcast uploading. It's an all-in-one program for Windows system users, which provides libraries of music and sound effects in addition to free server space. Tool Factory and Olympus also offer Podcasting Grants worth $3,000 each.

Looking into the Future of Education through Podcasts

EdNET conferences tackle what's going on in education markets and directions for the future of these markets. These conferences are where developers, businesses, and educators get together to discuss key issues and directions. If you want to be in on the latest thinking related to educational marketing, which means what may be available to schools in the next five years, tune into Apple's free Podcasts of EdNET 2008 sessions. You can hear Mark David Milliron (President of Catalyst Learning International) talk about how all ages will be learning together through " blended learning, mobile devices, gaming, social networking, high-impact presentation technologies, and analytics" and how we can retain the human touch as we move into these types of learning. In another Podcast Thomas Payzant, Harvard School of Education and former school superintendent, takes on globalization, effective education for all students, and the levers of change. You'll also find EdNET Podcasts on widgets and gadgets, open source opportunities, educational optimism, educational transformation through online collaboration, how to afford to differentiate learning—the list continues on with so many really interesting topics. Besides the EdNET Podcasts, Apple provides Podcasts of sessions from a number of conferences including NECC and FETC.

$50,000 in Weekly Prizes for Teachers

Discovery Education, Walden University, mimeo, Adobe, Elmer's Products, and CDW-G have joined forces to launch New Teacher Survival Central, which is designed to support educators who are just entering the teaching profession. On the site, teachers will find a Best of the Web Survival Tool Kit, Technology 101 tools and techniques, lesson planning ideas, and suggestions for classroom environments, classroom management, and parent communication. Weekly prizes ($50,000 worth) will be offered until January 31, 2009, and one first-year teacher will be selected to receive a grand prize package featuring mimeo interactive systems, Adobe PhotoShop Elements and Premiere Elements, a color laser printer from CDW-G, a $2000 Elmer's Products' Creativity Collection, and $5,000 in multimedia resources from Discovery Education. New teachers can enter the sweepstakes each week.

Don't Forget Common Sense Media

Common Sense Media is a site that can help educators keep up with what's happening with media for kids. It's also a great site to recommend to parents of your students.  There they can get the scoop on the latest movies, books, DVDs, television shows, video games, and Web sites so that they can decide what is appropriate for their children. Some of the advice articles on the site include helping kids understand political advertisements, learning about addictive behaviors, helping parents understand social networking sites, learning about food marketing for kids, and providing parents with what they need to know about cell phones, video games, and MP3 devices. Signing up for the Common Sense Newsletter is easy. Just enter your email address and zip code.

Grammar Girl Knows

You may want to introduce your students to Grammar Girl's Quick and Dirty Tips for Better Writing. The tips are a fun way to understand the rules of grammar-lots better than most grammar books I've encountered. Mignon Fogarty, Grammar Girl, offers free tips through Podcasts and her Website. There's also a Grammar Girl book packed with great grammar practice including guidelines for written interaction through email and text messaging. Grammar Girl reminds us that there is no "unsend" button, that we may not want to reply to "all", and that computer slang/abbreviations may not always be appropriate. I don't know about you, but it's difficult for me to decide about a salutation in an email. No salutation often seems rude and "dear" sometimes seems too formal. I often turn to Hi Diane. Grammar Girl tells me know that such a salutation is commonly used, "but not technically correct". It should be "Hi, Diane." Now you know. I find it difficult to write about Grammar Girl without worrying about my grammar. Perhaps she'll be able to stimulate your students to think "grammar", too?

Want to Learn to Podcast?

It's not difficult to create a podcast but that depends upon the type of podcast and how professional (or splashy) you want it to be. Tech for Teachers - Podcasting Classes provides a nice introduction to examples of podcast use in education. You can watch an easy-to-understand video describing podcasting, check out classes at Cal Berkeley, and visit a school in New Mexico that's putting Microsoft's Zune to use in podcasting. One of the easiest ways to put a podcast together is to use Apple's Garage Band software. If you need them, you'll find tutorials on the Apple site.  About.com has a step-by-step tutorial for learning to create for all those MP3 players, and Power to Learn's Jim Lengel has some excellent guidelines to help you with podcasting. . Have you created any podcasts for your students and/or are your students creating podcasts for assigments? Think about creating a podcast as your summer technology project. If so, we'd love to hear about your successes, and even problems with, podcasting.

Your Professional vs. Virtual Life

When might your virtual life come in conflict with your teaching career and/or with your ability to get a teaching job? Maybe during college you posted something on a social networking site and forgot about it? Maybe you put a sexy photo online, had second thoughts about it, and then thought you'd removed all traces of it? Maybe you think what you do online won't be found by your students, their parents, or your supervisors? Today pre-service teachers and in-service teachers are finding that what they've put online can haunt or destroy their careers. Some teachers have been denied credentials, some have been suspended, and others have lost their jobs because of Web postings. The Washington Post article, When Young Teachers Go Wild on the Web discusses the problems involved when sites on the Web show teachers looking and acting, well-not so professional.

Teens & Their Secret Digital Lives

Prevention Magazine (April '08) published The Secret Life of Teens and a number of other articles (Secret Life of Teens by Rich, Secret Life of Teens: Clubbing by Cuomo) and books (The Secret Life of Teens by Patnaik and Shinseki) have targeted this topic as well. Those writing about teens cover topics such as alcohol and drug abuse, teens' lives, hopes and dreams; teens' nightlife; and how to help teens survive these often exciting and dangerous years. It's evident that teens look to online communities and digital communication for interaction. Going to FaceBook, for example, helps them get away from the adults in their lives. In an online community they can share their secrets, which often aren't secrets for long. It's their world, and probably many of us ex-teens would have liked to have that world available at times when we were teens. But it's also a world that can become addictive. Aside from the possibility of online dangers, there's the danger that teens are so drawn to digital communities that they go there instead of interacting with those around them. It's not just online communities that are keeping our students from being part of the real world. Katie Baldo, the guidance counselor quoted in the Prevention piece warns that kids, because of being wired to their digital connections, aren't getting the practice they need with non-digital social interaction. She recommends that use of technologies such as cellphones, MP3 players, and video games be limited to one-hour on weekdays and two-hours on Saturdays and Sundays. Of course, teens and even pre-teens would say that this digital world is an important part of their real world.