Technology Director

National Education Technology Plan — The draft National Education Technology Plan (NETP) was released March 5, 2010. It provides the context and vision for how information and communication technologies can help transform American education. The plan provides a set of concrete goals to inform state and local educational technology plans, as well as recommendations to inspire research, development, and innovation.

The 5 goals:

1. The first goal is learning—creating more effective and engaging learning experiences for all students.
2. The second goal is assessment—measuring what matters in ways that add to rather than detract from the learning experience.
3. Third, teaching—connecting teachers to the tools, resources, experts and peers they need to be highly effective and feel supported.
4. The fourth goal has to do with infrastructure.
5. The fifth and final goal in the technology plan is productivity.

I am pleased to read the committment to Open Education Standards and Personal Learning Networks.
Emphasis on mobility and accessibility as well as the requirement to prepare teachers for full integration and implementation of technology through their curricula sounds great.  How will we accomplish this?
—————————————————
Should time be put into teachers instead of students?
How do we evolve into a non-classroom teaching digital content, digital citizenship in authentic / project based learning?

You decide:
exec. summary: http://www2.ed.gov/about/offices/list/os/technology/netp-executive-summary.pdf
Sec. Duncan’s speech  - http://www2.ed.gov/news/speeches/2010/03/03032010.html
plan  http://www2.ed.gov/about/offices/list/os/technology/netp.pdf

NETP
national educational technology plan

How the Teaching Profession Is Changing

ASCD Express is looking for short, 600 to 1,000-word essays on the theme “How the Teaching Profession Is Changing.” The theme description is below, and guidelines for submissions are here. Send us your submissions by March 17, 2010. 

from the ASCD express page:  ASCD Express seeks to give a new generation of educators in the United States and around the world the practical information they need to be the best-informed in the field.

This is your chance to have your voice heard and to bring some of the innovative ideas from the new teacher field to the frontlines.

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The Alfie Kohn Live Chat from “Educators PLN“.
There were nearly 175 educators involved in this chat!

Alfie Kohn Live Chat from Shelly Terrell on Vimeo.

Technorati Tags: alfiekohn, edupln
cross posted from SharonsShare

Ever wish you could use a particular YouTube video except for a couple of questionable words?
Have a 20 minute video that has a 2 minute section in the middle that is directly related to what you wish to teach?

Here comes SafeShare.TV

SafeShare.TV – The Safest Way To Share YouTube videos.

Not only does SafeShare.TV remove distracting and offensive elements around YouTube videos, but it also allows you to crop videos before sharing them.

There is a bookmarklet that you can drag to your Bookmark toolbar and be ready to SafeShare at a single click. The simple interface and ease of use is worth a try. 
Technorati Tags: safeshare.tv, sharonbetts

crossposted from SharonsShare

Worth a look – and some thoughts for all of us regardless of student age. 
Gotta smile at the Power-Point on using Technology in the Classroom!!

Sophie is an open source product that allows you to create interactive books.  It looks like a great tool for teaching Multi-media Journalism.  Sophie was initially designed and developed by the Institute for the Future of the Book. The University of Southern California’s School of Cinematic Arts assumed sponsorship of Sophie 1.0 and, with a generous grant from the The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, has significantly revised and improved a new 2.0 version that was released on December 11, 2009. The Sophie project is being developed by Astea Solutions AD and additional contributors using a Java code base contributed to the project by Astea Solutions.

I think that putting this product into the hands of students would be its best test.  It is available for Windows, Mac and Linux platforms.  Experimenting with new forms of writing and producing – try this!

Sophie Presented by Holly Willis

Technorati Tags: sophie, journalism, multi-media books, hollywillis
cross posted from SharonsShare

Go!Animate is a simple animation / cartoon program that allows personal uploads as well as simple WYSIWYG tools.  The site is setup socially with embedded twitter references and a friend system.  I can think of so many applications with students…

Make easy animations with your students.  Have them compose simple tutorials, PSA’s and more.
There is even an option to put the system on your own servers for a price.
A very short clip to test:
GoAnimate.com: Google Login by sharonbetts

Like it? Create your own at GoAnimate.com. It’s free and fun!

crossposted from SharonsShare

USC media professor describes the role of digital media in cultural transformation.  From Edutopia

Technorati Tags: edutopia, henryjenkins

I saw a nice post about mashing wordle images using Photoshop today.
Thought I would try it in GIMP –
I copied the words from Elie Wiesel’s 1999 speech in Washington D.C. on “The Perils of Indifference” into Wordle.
Then I set some vibrant colors through the Custom Color options.
Saved the image and opened it in GIMP.
I removed the background by adding an alpha layer.
Took the image of Elie Wiesel and opened it as a layer
Added one more layer and added a gradient.

I could  have done a better job with the colors – but I can see so many uses for this as creative additions to student research – and there was NO COST!
Use of web 2.0 and open source wins the day.
My example:

Technorati Tags: eliewiesel, sharonbetts, GIMP, wordle
cross posted from SharonsShare