50 Years Later...

50 Years today, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. delivered his most replicated speeches "I Have A Dream". It's hard to imagine the progress of this country without the boldness of Dr. King. Students today take for granted the freedom to socialize on their precious networks,naively believing the this is the way it has always been. To keep the nation in a state of gratitude, we need to keep reminding our young people from whence we came. Problem, students speak in a different language today. So how do we continue to teach them the past and keep them interested? As we continue to meet students where they are audio and video mashups are a great way to impart historical wisdom and impress upon today's students. Using simple tools like audacity or Garageband on a Mac, students can take exerts from Dr. King's speeches and put them to music. This is so easy to do, but can have a great impact. Students learn a great deal about the power of words from a great man, while infusing relevant media that keeps them engaged. Students can also take video clips of recorded speeches and still images to create a video mashup put to music. iMovie and MovieMaker can be used to accomplish this task. It's vital that we keep history alive, especially when it comes to teaching our students about the impact of Great people such as Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. We just have to meet them where they are to do so.

How Technology Is Empowering The Learners - Edudemic

Since I started working with Montessori schools, I have seen the most amazing faces of discomfort when I walk in the classroom to talk technology. Though each classroom is far from being traditional, the argument about adding technology leans toward the student's need for tactile learning. I'm told consistently that the student needs to feel the beads, touch the manipulative, learn certain grips to be able to be successful in the classroom. This article, though not completely disagreeing with the responses I receive, serves as a aid to my own argument of technology is their to enhance the learning. This is a great read.

How Technology Is Empowering The Learners - Edudemic.

Another iPad In The Classroom Push

Dealing with a large school district can be difficult when it comes to spending money on meaning technology. Everyone wants a bulk discount or instead of finding the best tool to meet the needs of the students where they are, the least expensive is what is chosen. Well, as my mom always said, "You get what you pay for!" Hopefully, this article from +EducationDive will help the big districts rethink their implementation strategies.

18 iPad uses: How classrooms are benefiting from Apple's tablets | Education Dive.

Just 30 Minutes

It's been many moons since I have been able to blog, but I'm back for Twenty Thirteen. My new position that took on this fall along with starting my own business has kept me away from sharing my educational technology passion. However, as the job has finally settled, I find it imperative that I get back to keeping up with the Ed Tech world.

In my Technology Lab our new challenge for this year is to take at least 30 minutes a week to learn something new. I myself have chosen to spend at least 30 minutes a day bettering myself by learning a new skill or adding on to the skills I already have. The thing is with students though, the computer is their number one resource for learning and when they get on the computer, they were immediately lost when it came to referencing learning opportunities.

So, I found a site for them that I highly recommend called Great Websites for Kids. This site is sponsored by the Association For Library Service To Children a division of the American Library Association. Great Websites for Kids actually is a safe site aggregate that suggest amazing and stunningly beautiful websites that are astetically pleasing to kids while providing relevant information to both the trending and standard topics that students are interested in from endangered species, to trivial facts about everything all while filled with vivid images interesting creatures like the coconut crab which I had never seen before or heard of in my life.

Great Websites for Kids divides the suggested sites into academic categories: Animals, The Arts, History & Biography, Literature & Languages, Mathematics & Computers, Reference Desk, Sciences, and Social Sciences. This could be a one-stop-shop for students doing research on various topics and keeps them steered clear from unwanted sites that are suggested when searching via Google. They also highlight a website for the week that appears when you first enter the site, bringing notariaty to some very information friendly sites that contain wealth of knowledge but delivered in a way that engages the students. Great Websites for Kids also has a link for Parents, Caregivers, Teachers & Others taking the search challenge away for us adults also when looking for useful information for our kids. I guess this my Website of the Week and I hope that students would at least spend 30 minutes a week accessing it to learn something new.