iPads, MakerEd and More in Education

Ajay Bhatt was struggling to upgrade his computer when he began to see the need for one plug to rule them all.

If you're looking to reboot your tech behaviors in 2019, here are a few ways to use your smartphones, laptops, apps, and feeds without getting used by them. 

We've gone through hundreds of resources to assemble these guides which are meant to help you learn, teach, and share as much as possible.

Have you ever heard a dial tone or a busy signal? How did we call someone before speed dial and push-button telephones, but after people stopped needing to speak with a switchboard operator? Behold the rotary dial:

The term “digital immigrants” and “digital natives” is almost as annoying as the fights are about the terminology.  These terms are often credited to Marc Prensky, and from when I have had the opportunity to have heard him speak, he doesn’t believe that kids have an innate ability to use technology over adults. They have not known a world with anything different.  It made sense to me when I thought of my parents who came to Canada as immigrants. They knew one life and then thrust themselves into another. Where growing up in Canada, I have not known anything but what it is like to live in that country.  It doesn’t mean that one group has the ability over another, but their past experiences do shape a lot of what their future looks like. Although my parents were immigrants to Canada, I saw them as less traditional than many people who lived here their entire life.  

So then why do we continue to say things like, “Kids are sooooo much better with technology than adults are”?  Yes, many kids have never known anything BUT a world with iPhones and YouTube, but the same adults have lived in that world the same amount of time kids have, and sometimes, even more.  Add the years of experience in other parts of life; there is no reason that kids should be better at technology than adults.

The difference between kids that are deemed better than adults with technology is not some innate ability; it is their willingness to push buttons. To see what happens. To act on their curiosity.12  That’s it.

An exciting array of online tools can help children make up and share their own stories.

Technology supports both synchronous and asynchronous learning, which opens up flexibility and choice of when to learn. Audio podcasts allow learners to listen to recordings wherever they choose to, and many do this as they commute to or from work. Webinar technologies have enabled group verbal conversations to take place online, along with chat functions where users can type short messages to each other. Videos can provide helpful ways to learn visually and at your own pace with the ability to rewind and replay.  Indeed through YouTube videos I learned how to mend my washing machine! As a result, there are now a multitude of online learning opportunities available, many of which are free. Choose from informal or formal, short or extended courses, and learn with others or independently. Develop or learn new skills, take up a new hobby or engage in a full online course.

Below are a just a selection of some of the online courses now available.

What are our screens and devices doing to us? Psychologist Adam Alter studies how much time screens steal from us and how they're getting away with it. He shares why all those hours you spend staring at your smartphone, tablet or computer might be making you miserable -- and what you can do about it.

The NMC/CoSN Horizon Report > 2017 K-12 Edition is a collaborative effort between the New Media Consortium and the Consortium for School Networking (CoSN) and made possible by mindSpark Learning (formerly known as Share Fair Nation).

The preview provides summaries of the trends, challenges, and important developments in educational technology which were ranked most highly by the 2017 expert panel and will be featured in the official NMC/CoSN Horizon Report > 2017 K-12 Edition set to be released in August, 2017. View the Panel of Expert’s work and discussions in the 2017 Horizon.k12 Workspace.

In order to meet the needs of all students–and to equip teachers with a consistent process to do so–Superintendent Dr. Philip Hickman created a new instructional model. The K-16 Instruction and Technology Integration Model, or “K-16 ITI” is transforming teaching and personalizing learning for students in Mississippi and beyond.

We teamed up with Dr. Hickman to design an easy-to-use guide so that educators across the country can benefit from this model.

The SAMR Model for integrating technology into teaching, developed by Dr. Ruben Puentedura, has gained a good deal of exposure in recent years. “SAMR” is an acronym that stands for Substitution, Augmentation, Modification, and Redefinition. The SAMR model provides a technique for moving through degrees of technology adoption to find more meaningful uses of technology in teaching and move away from simply using “tech for tech’s sake”.

We recently discussed the SAMR model during an Academic Technology Work Group meeting at The College of Westchester. We examined the video, SAMR in 120 Seconds. One thing that really struck me is how much the example helped, so I made it a point to gather and/or create some more examples.

Are you looking for educational activities to keep your students engaged as the academic year comes to a close? Perhaps you are looking for ways students can review material or reflect on their year. Here are 10 easy to implement ideas that involve the use of technology:

As technology evolves, so does its role in industry and society. Its impact is felt across nearly all industries with education being one of the highlights with record worldwide investment in EdTech companies in 2018 so far. With an increase in educational technology-based solution providers, families are increasingly becoming involved in their children’s education. Independent learning methods facilitated by technology allow children to have a more personalized experience as well as allowing for more transparency for parents to monitor progress and even learn together. Here are 5 impacts of educational technology on families:

It’s hardly fair to point a finger at the young cohort of 13- to 23-year-olds known as generation Z and accuse them of being “addicted” to their phones. After all, you’d be hard-pressed to find an adult these days who isn’t constantly Googling during a conversation or checking the news during dinner.

Yet, generation Z is often on the receiving end of criticism for the amount of time they spend using technology. Some of this is fair — it’s estimated that they log about 10 hours a day online (an informal Global News survey found that number to be closer to six hours) and a whopping 96 per cent own a smartphone — but this is less an “addiction” than it is a way of life, experts argue.

Several years ago, I was a part of a community network of parents who brought Barbara Coloroso to our school community to talk about parenting from her book, “Kids are Worth It”.

I will NEVER forget her talk as it really resonated with me as a daughter, a mother, and an educator. Now, as I prepare my own talk for a school community in a few weeks (kind of crazy how it has come full circle for me), I am thinking about Coloroso’s parenting message as it applies to cell phone conversations.

She talks about three kinds of parenting styles: the brickwall parent, the jellyfish parent and the backbone parent. 

Every year since 2001 we’ve picked what we call the 10 Breakthrough Technologies. People often ask, what exactly do you mean by “breakthrough”? It’s a reasonable question—some of our picks haven’t yet reached widespread use, while others may be on the cusp of becoming commercially available. What we’re really looking for is a technology, or perhaps even a collection of technologies, that will have a profound effect on our lives.

For this year, a new technique in artificial intelligence called GANs is giving machines imagination; artificial embryos, despite some thorny ethical constraints, are redefining how life can be created and are opening a research window into the early moments of a human life; and a pilot plant in the heart of Texas’s petrochemical industry is attempting to create completely clean power from natural gas—probably a major energy source for the foreseeable future. These and the rest of our list will be worth keeping an eye on. —The Editors

In the last ten years, technology has changed the way we work and communicate with others — and it’s also changed how we interact in the classroom. In fact, some educators argue that technology can improve the classroom by eliminating the need for a physical one, and allow students to learn remotely, from wherever they do their best work. While it’s still too early to know if this is the most effective way to teach, it’s important to stay-to-update on these innovations in education and see what we can learn from them. In these TED talks, students and educators share their …

This is the world's first drone jump. A 28-rotor drone lifted a man about 1,000 feet in the air before he let go. 

The stunt shows the drone's potential in rescue operations, where they could be used to save lives.