Top Ten Tech Skills for Teens

With all that teens are learning as they use digital devices and the Internet, it is difficult to sort through what they actually need to know. Cindy Donaldson in her article on Education.com (August 2013), polled companies in Silicon Valley to find what their leaders thought were skills all teens should master. The skills recommended are typing, word processing, spreadsheets, PowerPoint, eMail, electronic calendars, Netiquette, social networking, basic computer upkeep, using Internet searches properly for research, and use of databases. Other skills suggested are related to blog making, photo processing, and making a Web page. 

It seems to me that using critical and innovative thinking skills, learning to work collaboratively, and adapting to new technologies should be added to the list, because these skills will certainly be needed.

Creating Presentations Through Sites and Apps

As we look beyond PowerPoint for tools and software to help our students and us create the best presentations, it’s difficult to tell which way to turn. That’s because so many digital resources are available. To the rescue comes Tech & Learning’s David Kapuler, who after an extensive search through the expanding universe of sites and apps offering presentation and slideshow creators, has compiled a list of his 40 favorite tools.

Digital Storytelling with Multimedia Tools

Mind/Shift recommends what it calls cool, new, and easy-to-use multimedia tools for students.  Meograph (with teacher licenses beginning at $19.99) helps students create multimedia stories with “Meograph Moments” that may feature video, audio, timelines, text, images, maps, links, and student narration about their moments. Zeega, free to individual users, lets students make their own interactive Web stories as they capture content available in the cloud. Zeega stories developed by students may be viewed by others who “click their way through each story, one webpage leading to another. . .  WeVideo, with free and for pay versions, is a video-editing collaboration tool that your students can use to upload media clips and edit them.  A group of students can work on a project at the same time, and projects can be stored in WeVideo’s Google Drive App.

If you are interested in digital storytelling, you’ll want to take a look at the handy Mind/Shift chart that compares the following video editing tools: Windows Live Movie Makers, iMovie11, WeVideo, Zeega, and Meograph.

Got a Great Tech Idea? Ignite It at ISTE 2013

The folks at ISTE (International Society for Technology in Education) are looking for thirty dynamic speakers to spark creativity in an Ignite session. Those selected will have five minutes to show twenty slides which tell about a great ed tech idea, an exciting new tool, or a personal story about getting students involved in learning.  If you are heading to San Antonio for ISTE, why not submit an Ignite idea? The deadline is May 1.

Haiku Deck—Presentations Made Simple with an App

The free app Haiku Deck gets applauds from publications such as TIME and The Wall Street Journal. The word is that using the “fiendishly simple” Haiku Deck, you and your students can create beautiful presentations (called decks), which are both clean and concise.  Be sure to browse through Haiku Deck’s Gallery of Featured Decks, especially Book Reports: iPad Style. Decks can be shared on Facebook and Twitter and through email—and it’s fun to use.

Teacher’s Secrets Series

Direct your students to the Power to Learn Teacher’s Secret Series. There, they will learn not only how to make their assignments target the content you expect but also how to create reports and projects that have all the elements you are looking for. We all know that students can get carried away with the pizzazz of technology and forget the essentials of an assignment. This series, which so far includes PowerPoint presentations and podcasts, should help students to avoid the pitfalls of including animations, video, fancy colorful type, and graphics that do not enhance the target content. The series is in the Computers and Homework section of Power to Learn, so while you are there you might want to browse through the list of articles to see which others might be of use to you and your students.