Keypad Keeper Template

A Great Resource for teaching kids how to use numerical keypad.

Is public education largely a value-chain business?

The framework of a value chain is the delivery of a mix of products and services (wiki). It identifies where the value is added in an organization and links the process with the main functional parts of the organism. In education value is defined by the students. The chain includes identification of competence needs, learning/competence development and the use of competence performance (Hansen 2007). In the text the author references students being herded into a classroom at the beginning of the school year, and at year’s end having value added to them when they are promoted to the next grade. The product can best be identified as textbooks which are developed utilizing a states comprehensive curriculum as the guide. The decisions of this curriculum are developed by elected officials, administrators, and teachers. The information is then delivered to the student by the teacher, who is providing the service (Christenson et al).

Are Clickers Right For You and Your Classroom?

Clickers are also called Classroom Response Systems. The clickers look like remote controls. Clickers are anonymous to the whole group, but can be identified by number by the teacher/facilitator.

The benefits of utilizing a clicker provides for:
1. Engagement,
2. Increased interest,
3. Increased discussion.

Using Clickers to Access Data:
Benefits
1.Immediate feedback for both teachers and students.
2.Teachers are able to evaluate and identify learning gaps. Clickers allow for informal assessments.
3.Presented using a gamers approach with graphics, which is ideal for digital natives lending them to have a more postive outlook on materials presented.

Research done by Margie Martyn concluded that there wasn't any significant change in outcomes between students who utilized clickers and others who didn't, which resulted in questions related to Return on Investment. This can only lead one to suggest that there are other links to student success while utilizing clickers and it could be tied to other aspects of teaching pedagogy.

Using Clickers to Access Data:
Drawbacks/Concerns
1. Lack of paper trail for disputing answers
2. Cheating- A student could use someone elses'clicker
3. Tech problems- Issues of a clicker not responding to a quesion and the question being marked wrong.

Reference:
Clickers retrived on October, 5, 2011 from http://ocio.osu.edu/elearning/toolbox/depth/clickers

Kelly K.G.Student Response Systems in the Psychology Classroom: A Beginners Guide. retrieved on October 5, 2011 from http://teachpsych.org/otrp/resources/kelly09.pdf

Martyn, Margin.(2007) Clickers in the Classroom: An Active Learning Approach.

Free Race Car/Track Bulletin Board Kit

One day I had an idea and took to photoshop and within a few minutes I had a complete bulletin board kit. I thought I would share it with you, the only thing you need is a color printer, have fun!! This is a free download.

Teacher Guide to Accessing Last Session Reports: Successmaker 4

Blogging as A Learning Tool

What is a Blog?
A blog is a website where individuals write commentaries on an ongoing basis. Visitors can comment or link to a blog. Some writers use blogs to organize thoughts, others use it to to gain web influence.

There are numerous types of blogs and topics that people choose to write about here are a few:
*Chronicles of life experiences
*Blogs about unique perspectives such as news, and politics
*How to/tutorial blogs
*Personal blogs

Integrating the use of Blogs as a Teaching Tool could be done by a teacher who posts an assignment, discussion topic, or a theme on a blog and could require students to respond.
The teacher who uses blogging as a tool will focus less on content delivery and more on student discovery.

Advantages:
*One advantage to this is that students can log on at different places and times.
*Blogging should be used to engage students and to stimulate thinking.
*Blogging makes way for more self-directed learning, and peer to peer collaboration.

Hands on Teachers meet hands on Learning

This is a great site for teachers by ipad and a wonderful way to have an ipad introduction to the possibilities of usage in the classroom take a look and I'm sure you will see this is a great beginning to a new wave of teaching.
http://education.apple.com/ipad-learning/

How can Wikis be Used In Education

Take a view and listen to how wikis can be utilized to create a community that is built for collaboration for reflection and feedback.

Technology As a Civil Rights Tool- Lessons to Be Learned

Who would have thought the facebook could free people literally the opportunity to voice opinions and to be a change agent is possible more than ever. A few weeks in the news we were hearing about how facebook was responsible for the intial efforts to overthrow the government in egypt now today we are still hearing of it doing the same in Libya. Well so its fair to say that we can learn a thing or two about facebook, and governments. I mean look at whats going on in Wisconsin lets see if it will get worse with facebook. Well that leads us to what's next to this addicting giant of facebook and the web. Will there be changes only time will tell.

Finding the Right Projector for Your Church

I usually get questions to projectors and screen installation. I think that installing a projector and screen indicates to visitors indicates that you have arrived and have embraced the technical era of the church.

Here are the facts and well I hope that you embrace them. I can say that it will cost money to integrate technology but it will save you money knowing the facts:

My Take On Minds On Fire

In conclusion I have agreed with the author as it relates to where learning is headed and as it relates to where the workforce will evolve. The retirement ideals are gone and now a career will be driven by a type of apprenticeship that will be completive based on the ability of an individual to retain information and model the processes in a digital environment. I would to think of our world evolving as it relates to specialties and my ideal would be to utilize this knowledge to find out the answers to complex problems in our world as well as coming up with cures to diseases. In the end digital natives will be able to identify with their passion and I would like to believe that this world will be a better place.

Reference
Brown, J. S. & Adler, R. P. (2008, January/February). Minds on Fire: Open Education,
the Long Tail, and Learning 2.0. EDUCAUSE Review. http://net.educause.edu/ir/library/pdf/ERM0811.pdf

What I Learned Watching Social Network

The movie starts out talking about strategic partnerships as it relates to finals clubs. It quickly moved from being your typical movie about drunk college kids to the one of the most defining moments in the digital era. The question was when it would be approrpriate to monetize this product into something profitable through the eyes of the co-founder Eduardo. I mean I didn't see anything wrong with wanting to garner a profit off of the intial investment especially when it comes to the validity of the investment. I sympathized with Eduardo because imagine trying to explain to your parents that you have just invested 19 thousand dollars of their money into a product that has yet to yield a return because you are harnessing the idea of keeping the product exclusive.

What was amazing is the speed in which this idea shifted into overdrive, yeah I know this was a movie but it put technology into perspective as it relates to intellecutal property and capital. The truth is that technology will drive us to create in virtually light speed. Technology will indeed be a valued asset of almost all companies. I could not help but wonder how will intellectual property and copyrights will be affected by this shift I mean look how much Mark had to pay the Winklevoss twins for an idea, well 68 million dollars to be exact. Eduardo might not have been a techie but for being a financial front man he is now worth billions. So with that being said changes are in the horizons no wonder why Mark need us to be friends because he didn't seem likeable maybe that is why he was so successful.

Integrating the Use of Wiki Projects into the Classroom

It is fair to say that many approach the ability to share openly on the web with much hesitation. Once educated and armed with new knowledge a teacher is faced with some very serious issues as it relates to intial classroom use:
it leaves many to question what to do once I have finally made the intial step in embracing the use of wikis in the classroom. As it relates to the field of education Blooms' taxonomy serves as a map to accomplish the goal of allowing students to reach high order thinking. There are some prerequisites that are required before introducing a wiki to the class such as the ability to write and edit, process skills , self organization, openess and integrity. The teacher should then identify the purpose and the domain. After this is done the porject is ready to be kicked off, but not without a few roles and rules, as well as to determine how the students will be assessed. The assessment is usually done using a detailed rubric.

Reference:
West, J. & West, M. (2009). Using Wikis for Online Collaboration: The Power of the Read-Write Web. San Francisco, CA. John Wiley & Sons

Identifying Basic Pitfalls of Web 2.0

There are a few issues as it relates to the pitfalls of online collaborations and web 2.0, but the reality is that knowledge is power. The key to this is knowledge as a teacher it is important for you to know what you are doing prior to presenting or opening this superhighway of targeted information. I suggested that a teacher has to know his/her role, the days of old have almost faded away and know to run a successful classroom one has to be willing to be more democratic. One has to be confident enough in the knowledge of both oneself as well as the students to loosen the reigns of the traditional classroom. This superhighway is just that, it is a highway that could lead to many different tunnels to somewhere else; which could compromise the security of our digital environment. We can further protect ourselves from vandals and others by being willing to provide an invisible blankets by using passwords and filtering options that require prior approval before posting. I have identified four potential pitfalls or issues that could hinder the growth of a digital environment which is knowledge, freedom, power struggle, and security.

Reference:
West, J. & West, M. (2009). Using Wikis for Online Collaboration: The Power of the Read-Write Web. San Francisco, CA. John Wiley & Sons