WELCOME TO THE TECHFORUM PAGE ON "NEW TECHNOLOGIES THAT ARE CHANGING EDUCATION"
Please weigh in by adding URLs, descriptions or examples to any of the tools or technology categories below or by adding a BRAND NEW tool/category using the established format. As the page grows longer, we'll cut and paste into several sub-pages with a menu.
Presentation Slides used in Long Beach, CA
Changing Shape of Information
Some books to consider:
- The Search by John Batelle -- amazon
- The Long Tail by Chris Anderson - amazon
- Wikinomics by Don Tapscot - amazon
- Everything is Miscellaneous by David Weinberger - amazon
Blogging
Description: Blogging is an entirely unimpressive technology. You fill in a web form, press the submit button, and you have updated a web page. We've been doing that for years. What has made blogging so phenomenally special is what people have done with it. What has emerged on the Internet, over the past handful of years is a growing layer of content that can best be described as conversation.
Its benefits to education are both obvious and subtle. Come to the New Technologies that are Changing Education for more.
URLS for learning more:
Blogging Tools
Designed for the Classroom
David Warlick recently conducted a casual and unscientific survey of teachers who use Class Blogmeister for student and class blogging. Fifty teachers participated in the survey and here are the Informal Survey Results.
Contributors so far: David Warlick, Dan Schmit, Arlene Anderson
OTHERS, PLEASE CHIME IN RE. HOW YOU OR OTHERS IN YOUR SCHOOL OR DISTRICT USE BLOGS.
Flickr
Description: With over 400 million photographs, Flickr is the largest photo sharing site on the Web. The applications of Flickr imagery to visual literacy instruction in education is wide-ranging, from single image writing projects to mulitple image digital storytelling events. As a Web 2.0 tool, Flickr supports social networking tools such as groups, commenting, and RSS. Flickr users also have the capability to apply Creative Commons licensing to the photos they upload, providing students with the opportunity to understand how online intellectual property rights are applied to original works. Finally, Flickr's open API infrastructure has enabled programmers to tap into the Flickr database of imagery, and develop a huge number of third-party online applications for the creative use of Flickr photograph, further increasing the site's value to educators.
URLS for learning more:
Contributors so far:
OTHERS, PLEASE CHIME IN RE. HOW YOU OR OTHERS IN YOUR SCHOOL OR DISTRICT USE FLICKR.
Video Games
Description: Until recently, video games have been viewed as little more than a distraction. Some games have been used in education, but more during the early years of instructional technology than recently. But while we were not watching, a video game culture has emerged -- a way of life and a brand new story- and myth-base for a generation of youngsters. We are starting to pay attention now, and starting to wonder if this video game experience might be a golden opportunity. Are video games learning engines?
URLs for learning more:
Contributors so far:
OTHERS, PLEASE CHIME IN RE. HOW YOU OR OTHERS IN YOUR SCHOOL OR DISTRICT USE VIDEO GAMES.
Simulations and Immersive Environments
Description: Simulations extend our reach by allowing us to test ideas and see concepts from angles that are unreachable in the physical world. We can step inside molecular models to understand chemistry, fly around the world to understand geography and world events, or test out theories about gravity or genetics.
Google Earth: is a virutal globe that layers satellite images and GIS data over a three dimensional globe. Google Earth is immediately intriguing to students who can zoom into their homes, neighborhoods and communities from outer space and create explorative activities that move them around the globe. Google Earth
Google Sketch Up: is a free 3D modeling program available from Google that allows students to create models of real or imaginary buildings and structures. Working in a 3D environment offers students the chance to experiment with mathematic skills like estimation, measurement and geometry as well as aesthetic and practical concepts related to architecture and culture.
Sim City:
Contributors so far: Dan Schmit
OTHERS, PLEASE CHIME IN RE. HOW YOU OR OTHERS IN YOUR SCHOOL OR DISTRICT USE SIMULATIONS AND IMMERSIVE ENVIRONMENTS.
MP3 Players
Description: This is one of the coolest technologies out there with huge impact for education. Most students already know the technology, it's just a matter of making it work fof us. On the average, 28% of your students are audio learners and the benefit to them is direct and quick. We also know that the research shows us the more ways we can deliver content, the better the chance of it sticking. How are they being used in your district?
URLs for learning more:
Contributors so far:
OTHERS, PLEASE CHIME IN RE. HOW YOU OR OTHERS IN YOUR SCHOOL OR DISTRICT USE MP3 PLAYERS.
Unfortunately, our school district does not allow the students to bring in electronics. Some of our staff, however, at Discovery Academy of Lake Alfred, have their own personal iPods and have started using them for downloading videos and music to use in their classrooms and presentations for lessons. I look forward to when each student will have access to mp3 players and other smaller electronic devices to be used in the classroom environment.
Digital Texts
Description: In an age where we are digitizing anything and everything, that last bastion of the publishing world is trying to hold fast to its traditional ways. As computing becomes cheaper, and access therefore more ubiquitous, the next logical step will be to obtain digital rather than paper texts. University publishers seem to be more amenable to this idea, with a little over a quarter of the market share being in the digital realm. K-12 is a little slower. There are several issues in play here. (Feel free to add to this list)
- The current pricing structure in K-12 is to offer the digital text as an "add-on" dependent upon the purchase of the paper text.
- The definition of a digital text is variable and open to interpretation.
- Sometimes a text in the hands of every child is a political decision based on what adults want rather than an instructional decision based on what students need.
URLs for learning more:
Contributors so far:
OTHERS, PLEASE CHIME IN RE. HOW YOU OR OTHERS IN YOUR SCHOOL OR DISTRICT USE DIGITAL TEXTS.
Some of the comments made by the 'system' or textbook companies usually revolove around the students needing this particular book or that one. When they would state this, they did not take into consideration that no teacher teaches the same things in the same order or the same style, just like students learn in different medias. We, as professionally growing educators, realize the need for more webbased or digitized books, with one or two paper ones as resources. When I was in the classroom, teaching science or technology, I always would refer the students to my classroom computers to find answers to questions rather than the 'textbook'. We would than reinforce the answers we found by lining it up with the print books I had in the classroom.
Social "Noteworking"
Description:
URLs for learning more:
www.notecentric.com 
(My Web 2.0 Up and Coming App of the Year) A "Social Noteworking Site". Developed by an actual student at the University of New Mexico using Ruby on Rails. The site uses a login/network similiar to that of facebook, where networks are created solely based on the end of an educational email system such as .edu, or .k12.wi.us, etc... Students use the application to add courses, take notes, and share notes with others in the network. There is an RSS on courses, so if a fellow student in Biology 120 just added some new notes and chose to share them, you will be up to date. The system also allows you to create discussion forums within the courses. An extensive search funtion, recently created notes page, and the ability to browse by year, subject, course, semester, will allow students to access notes from past years/courses quickly.
Contributors so far:
OTHERS, PLEASE CHIME IN RE. HOW YOU OR OTHERS IN YOUR SCHOOL OR DISTRICT USE SOCIAL NETWORKING.
Oh Snap! Snap.com
Description: image preview site
URLS for learning more:
- www.snap.com
- Bethune Student Links 4th-8th Grade (Our school links site using snap) This is nice snippet of code that has enabled our younger web surfers to correctly identify the sites they want to go to. So many time on school web pages, TC, teachers, and librarians list "useful" links upon links using only text. This leads to students "blind clicking" until the wanted site is found. With a snip of code from snap.com, webmasters can help students get a visual of the sites they might go to before the actually go. Snap was used to add the previews to the links on this site. If for some reason it is bothersome, please let me know, and we can remove the code.
Contributors so far:
OTHERS, PLEASE CHIME IN RE. HOW YOU OR OTHERS IN YOUR SCHOOL OR DISTRICT USE SNAP.
Freebase -- "The Semantic Web meets Web 2.0"
An emerging Alpha product from Metaweb Technologies, Freebase is an attemption to tap into the collaborative spirit of Wikipedia to form a Tim Berners Lee style of semantic web, resulting in an information environment with intelligence.
URLS for Learning More:
OTHERS, PLEASE CHIME IN RE. HOW YOU OR OTHERS IN YOUR SCHOOL OR DISTRICT USE YOURPACK
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Audacity
Description: The Open Source audio recording program for more that just podcasting.
URLS for learning more:
http://audacity.sourceforge.net/
Most people have used this program when they don't have Garageband, or don't have a Mac. But there are so many more educational uses for this voice recording program. Think improving reading fluency, language acquisition, running records, and working with speech articulation students. Having the ability for students to "see" their voices as they listen to their speech opens up so much more. Extremely user friendly. This is another technology that is changing education.
Contributors so far:
Arlene Anderson
OTHERS, PLEASE CHIME IN RE. HOW YOU OR OTHERS IN YOUR SCHOOL OR DISTRICT USE Audacity.
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YackPack
Description: Site for sharing casts, conferencing, leaving messages, lots of uses
URLS for learning more:
http://www.yackpack.com (To Join the Tech Forum Pack Use the log-in window below.)
Contributors so far: Tom Story
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