Educational Technology: Current Trends and Future Directions

Future-TechnologyThis is my slide deck for my keynote presentation at today’s Tennessee Administrator’s Technology Academy. The following serves as an outline of some of the topics that will be highlighted and demonstrated.

  • Standards, 21st Century Learning, and Higher-Order Thinking Skills
  • Classroom Examples
  • Web 2.0 Tools and Services
  • Benefits and Barriers
  • “Telecollaboration”
  • Audio and Video
  • Mash-Ups
  • Mobile Learning
  • Interactivity
  • State of Innovation
  • A Personal Experience
  • Conclusions and Discussion

 

 

 

Scenes from Today’s DEN Event at the Apple Store

Today’s capacity crowd made the Tennessee Discovery Education Network Leadership Council’s (TN DEN LC) professional development a fantastic event. Thanks to everyone at the Apple Store for being great hosts.

Join Us for a DEN Event at the Apple Store

The Tennessee Discovery Education Network Leadership Council (TN DEN LC) is hosting a professional development opportunity at the Apple Store in the Memphis area. These events are always informative and fun! During this time the Apple folks and the TN DEN will explore green screening and iPads. Join us for a great morning of learning! You won’t want to miss this!

Make your reservation soon as seating is limited.

Event Details
Topic #1: iPads in the Classroom
Topic #2: Green Screening and iMovie
Date: Saturday, February 26th. 2011
Time: 8 am -10 am
Apple Store in Saddle Creek
7615 W Farmington Blvd Germantown, TN 38138


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Video Ad for the 2011 Martin Institute Spring Conference

A video advertising the 2011 Martin Institute Spring Conference was released today. It highlights some of the key benefits of participating in 2 days of high quality professional development. You are encouraged to share this video with friends and colleagues via email and social networks (Twitter, Facebook, Plurk, Posterous, etc.) and you are invited to embed it on your own website, blog, wiki, etc.

2011 Martin Institute Spring Conference from Martin Institute on Vimeo.

Encourage Student Questioning

“The test of a good teacher is not how many questions

he can ask his pupils that they will answer readily,

but how many questions he inspires them to ask him

which he finds it hard to answer.”


–Alice Wellington Rollins

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DEN SciCon 2011 Is This Saturday

(Cross-posted from TN DEN LC Blog)

The Tennessee Discovery Education Network Leadership Council (TN DEN LC) is hosting 3 live events for the DEN SciCon Virtual Conference happening January 22nd! So, no matter where you live in TN, you can attend a live event with relative ease and be part of one of the most fantastic groups of educators anywhere on the planet…the DEN!

So why go to a live event? First, you will get to spend quality time with educators who share the same passions for Discovery and science that you have. Second, there will be live workshops at the events that will not be available to you online. Third (as if you need another reason), the food is on us! And fourth, we will be skyping all three groups together so we can all meet one another across the state!

Join us for all of the event or just part of it. Breakfast and lunch will be provided to registered participants (and this event is FREE)!

Here are the locations and links to register:

Cleveland, TN

Ocoee Middle School

Register at: http://tinyurl.com/38bue6n

Knoxville, TN

West Hills Elementary

Register at: http://tinyurl.com/2b4vuvz

Memphis, TN

St. George’s Independent Schools, Germantown Campus

Register at: http://tinyurl.com/29v9qzw

On site registration begins at 7:30 AM. The first session kicks off promptly at 8:00 AM.

You must pre-register online to attend the live events of the conference. This will help us coordinate room space and food expenses. If you register, but later decide you cannot attend, please contact the coordinator for your event at least 48 hours prior to let him or her know you cannot attend.

This year’s SCIcon will have a special presentation from Reed Timmer, Extreme Meteorologist and TVN team leader, for Discovery Channel’s hit series Stormchasers.

Join thousands of educators from around the world for an amazing day of professional development sessions, networking and sharing.

Agenda (all times CT)

8:00 AM
Opening Keynote

The Five E’s of Inquiry-Based Instruction

Patti Duncan, DEN Guru

9:00 AM

The Student Experience: Engaging and Assessing Young Scientists

Mike Bryant

10:00 AM

Spotlight Session
Real Students, Real Teachers, Real Results: Implementing Discovery Education Science

Cindy Moss, Director of Science and Math, Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools

11:00 PM

Top Ten Free Science Resources from Discovery Education

Porter Palmer

12:00 PM

Hands-On Digital

Brad Fountain and Lance Rougeux

1:00 PM
Closing Keynote

Into the Storm: Following the Love of Science

Reed Timmer, Extreme Meteorologist

Did You You Change the World Today?

I think it’s important that we ask ourselves this question from time to time. I know it helps me to readjust my priorities and tweak my moral compass. So,…

Did you change the world today?

world on a table (#153)


Creative Commons License photo credit: j / f / photos

Join our EduPLN: Together We Learn More

I encourage new visitors to the website and blog to join our professional learning network (PLN) via Facebook and Google Friend Connect so that we can all engage in more active and collaborative ways. I hope you’ll join our educational community (click on the buttons below) and let’s have fun learning together. Please feel free to invite other educators, preservice teachers, homeschool families, and anyone with an interest in education and technology, too.

Alltop Education

I recently discovered my blog is included in Alltop Education‘s feeds. I’m flattered and grateful. Here’s a bit about Alltop for those that are unfamiliar with it.

“The purpose of Alltop is to help you answer the question, “What’s happening?” in “all the topics” that interest you. You may wonder how Alltop is different from a search engine. A search engine is good to answer a question like, “How many people live in China?” However, it has a much harder time answering the question, “What’s happening in China?” That’s the kind of question that we answer. We do this by collecting the headlines of the latest stories from the best sites and blogs that cover a topic. We group these collections — “aggregations” — into individual web pages. Then we display the five most recent headlines of the information sources as well as their first paragraph…You can think of Alltop as the “online magazine rack” of the web.” (Source)

I think it’s worth your time to browse through the listings at Alltop Education and make some additions to your RSS reader.

Easily Connect with Students, Parents, and Colleagues Online

Posterous Groups is the simplest way to communicate with your students, colleagues, family and friends. Posterous Groups may be the next evolution in email communication.

Messages and attachments submitted to the group will be emailed to everyone in the group. Send any type of file to your group and Posterous will convert it to the most web-friendly format available. Photos will be sent to your group members inline, and if you send multiple photos, Posterous will automatically create a photo gallery for you. Submit a YouTube URL to the group and Posterous will grab the embed code and automatically embed it in your site. Email replies can include photos, videos or any other rich media and will be automatically shared with the rest of the group via email and stored on the group website.

A Few Benefits

Most everyone has access to email and understands how to send and received messages and attachments.

No account required. Anyone can participate in your group simply by emailing your group address while receiving email updates without ever having to visit your site.

Your group can be public or private.

Posterous Groups have been optimized for viewing on mobile devices. Your students and their parents can access your Posterous materials from their cell phones and iPads.

Multiple people can have full control of your group. That means you can share administrative rights to the website/group with others if you choose to do so.

Worth Noting

Best I can tell (and I certainly hope I’m wrong) it isn’t possible to have a Posterous website and a Posterous Group integrated together in the same domain. This is disappointing because it means that we can’t connect blog posts and web pages with the group features in one site. This can be worked around by setting up a Posterous site and a Posterous Group and linking them together, but it means having to administrate two different instances. This isn’t difficult for teachers comfortable with technology, but will likely be a bit overwhelming to those entertaining the idea of developing their first class web presence. In this case, I’d suggest they simply stick with setting up a website (in most instances).

Get Started

Get started by creating a group for your classes, clubs, groups, teams, or students’ parents. You can also start groups for your family, friends, church, and more.