10 Tips on Creating a School 2.0 from Chris Lehmann

In the above video, Chris Lehmann, Principal of the Science Leadership Academy in Philly speaks on the future of education (which is now) at the #140 Character Conference this Tuesday. In 12 minutes, Lehmann sums up the ever-changing world of education, how it is affected by the real time web, what schools need to do to change and how we can get there. What seems like a painful task for our nation seems pretty simple for Lehmann.

Free Audio Books

Thanks to Educational Software Blog, for sharing this resource.



Article written by Lauren Grossberg

AudioOwl is a great resource for free high quality audio books. Audio books, like the ones found on this site, can serve as a great free resource for all teachers and students, especially with students who are not visual learners. Because students can hear actual language as a story is read aloud, audio books are a great way for them to get interested in storytelling. They are also helpful for teachers of struggling readers or those who are not fluent in English.

On this site, you will find books of over forty categories! You can search for a specific book, author or key phrase. It even allows for previewing of the book before downloading so you can hear the reader's voice. Because the books are in public domain, they are free for everyone to share and download!

There are also featured books on the main page that are the displayed because they have been recently popular with downloads. I previewed several of the books. The recordings are very clear and easy to follow along with. Some books are even offered in different languages.

When you do decide to download a book, you can either add it to your iTunes as a podcast or you can download it to your computer, which gives you an MP3 file for each chapter.

Teachers would find AudioOwl useful for story time with a classroom or using it to practice reading along with their students. Instead of listening to their teacher, children might also find it a nice change to listen to a story read to them by someone else. Whether you want to entertain your class with a good story, or engage them with a new reader, AudioOwl will get the job done.

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Refseek

Currently in public beta, RefSeek is a web search engine for students and researchers that aims to make academic information easily accessible to everyone. RefSeek searches more than one billion documents, including web pages, books, encyclopedias, journals, and newspapers.

Here are two of the collections I think you might enjoy:

RefSeek's guide to the 25 best online resources for finding free educational videos. With the exception of BrainPOP and Cosmeo, all listed sites offer their extensive video libraries for free and without registration.




Teacher Resources

2009 Edublog Award Winners

The sixth International Edublogs Awards where a huge success. The 2009 awards, recognize the best edublogs out there.

See the complete list here!

2009 K-12 Online Conference Presentations

Yesterday I posted about the 2009 K-12 Online Conference .

If you read the post then you probably saw the conference schedule. I will be posting some of the presentations but not all 50 of them. If you want to browse the rest just follow the conference schedule.

This is the keynote speaker for this years conference.

Going Global: Culture Shock, Convergence and the Future of Education

Presenter: Kim Cofino

Location: Bangkok, Thailand
Link to presenter’s K12Online Ning Profile page

Presentation Title: Going Global: Culture Shock, Convergence and the Future of Education

Presentation Description: Looking at daily life in foreign lands reveals a colorful spectrum of inspiring metaphors for the shifts we need to make in education. Often what we may find initially chaotic, disorienting and strange in other countries can actually spark new ways of thinking about teaching and learning. Through the voices of teachers and students from around the world, we’ll examine the unique aptitudes which allow successful expats to thrive in any environment. These are exactly the skills that future students and teachers will need to confidently enter the digital, global, converging, collaborative world of tomorrow – wherever they might be physically located.

Videos For Kids To Learn

Watch Know is a website for kids to learn from videos. Imagine hundreds of thousands of great short videos, and other media, explaining every topic taught to school kids. Imagine them rated and sorted into a giant Directory, making them simple to find.

This is a video tutoring on how to use Watch Know

Education Innovation

The title of this post is "Education Innovation" Which is also the tittle of Rob Jacobs Educational Blog. I found Jacob's blog to be fascinating for administrators, teachers and parents to read because his focus is on how education needs to be innovating.

Here is one of his posts.

Do We Limit Our Children's Creativity?

Do we limit our children's creativity? Take a look at this short clip about one child's creativity and the reactions from parents, teachers, and doctors. I think you will find it thought provoking.

Larry Ferlazzo's Best Sites for English

As usual Larry Rocks with his best lists!

The Best Ways To Keep-Up With Current Education Issues

Always the Best from Larry Ferlazzo's Blog.

Twitter Search and their new Plain English video

Keeping up with interesting news and people you care about is one dimension of Twitter, but what if you need to find out what’s happening in the world beyond your personal timeline?

There is an undeniable need to search, filter, and otherwise interact with the volumes of news and information being transmitted to Twitter every second. Twitter Search helps you filter all the real-time information coursing through our service.

How Twitter Search creates new opportunities for business feedback, tracking news in real time and discovering trends.

Shambles: Personal Learning Network

It is critical for us to take control of our own learning ... lifelong learning ... we owe it to ourselves not only as a survival strategy but one that contributes to the quality of our own life and also those whose lives we touch and who, in turn, touch us.

Chris Smith is the Shamble's website guru. His website is nothing more than great. You can find almost anything about technology in education.

He created this page visualize and identify his own Personal Learning Network

Education in a Digital World

Shared by sharon' share blog
The first edition, Education for a Digital World: Advice, Guidelines, and Effective Practice from Around the Globe, was published by the Commonwealth of Learning in July 08 and is available to download from their website.

They are know working on a 2nd Edition. The tentative title is Innovations in Education, but it could become Education for a Digital World, Edition 2. It will be published by CoL to coincide with PCF6 in India 2010 from 24 - 28 November. http://www.col.org/progServ/panComm/Pages/pcf.aspx

An organizational meeting will be held online, May 22nd in elluminate. For details and further information visit their page in Wikieducator or our Book Wiki.

Original post by Emerging Internet Technologies for Education

Original post by Emerging Internet Technologies for Education Blog you must read. Specially if you are an educator starting to think about technology in the classroom preparing for the 21st century learning.

"There are so many different tools and technologies available on the internet today, and so many associated terms and concepts. As I think about topics to focus on here in the coming months, I want to make sure we’re touching on the most important ones. What are the most important internet technologies for educators to be aware of, and informed about? I’m sure many people would probably come up with a slightly different list, but based on my observations and experiences, and feedback from faculty at my institution, I have selected the following technologies. I do not mean to imply that every educator should be expected to use all of these technologies in the classroom, but rather that every educator should understand what these are, the potential they have in the classroom, and how their students may already be using them." - by Kelly Walsh

Read the rest by clicking the image

Another great posts by Kelly Walsh, Director of Institutional Information & Technology at The College of Westchester in White Plains, NY and author of this amazing blog.

5 reasons why educators need to embrace internet technologies.

Inspiring Blog Post List

Check this 100 Inspiring Blog Posts for Educators.

A Learning Google Site

A Learning Almanac is a google site created by Cheryl Davis to teach teachers how to involve 21 st century innovation into their curriculum. Her website has two sections, one about ISTE Lesson Plan ideas and the Almanac of Learning Things.

In the Almanac she created a tutorial for teachers to use every other week so they can learn at their own pase and therefore work with it in the classroom. You can learn about how to use Google Earth, Google sites for collaboration, sharing voices, mapping etc.

Check them out!

Great Stuff on Mrs. Smoke Blog!

Mrs. Smoke is aTechnology Instructional Coach and Integrationist for the Andover Schools and an Intel US Senior Trainer. Author of the "Making Teachers Nerdy Blog".

In her blog she has put together great lists of resources for blogs, wikis, Microsoft, Google, websites etc.

Check out this lists of resources:

• Best Embeds for Educational Wikis and Blogs
• 10 Microsoft Word Tricks Every Teacher Should Know
• 12 Best Google Keywords for Finding Classroom Resources
• Best Web Reference Sites for Students and Google Reference Tips
• Educational Blogs You Should Be Investigating
• Free Worksheet Generators - Printable and Interactive
• 15. 10 Websites No Teacher Should Be Without

100+ Free Websites to find out about Anything and Everything

This 100 list of websites was put together by JANE HART C4LPT Founder and Editor, Social Media & Learning Advisor. The Centre for Learning and Performance Technologies (C4LPT) is a place to keep track of learning trends, technologies and tools.

This 100 websites, cover a wide range of informational and educational topics and include general reference resources, how-to guides, wikis, how-to videos, podcasts, courses, lessons, tutorials (including open courseware), e-books as well as other reference resources and places to ask questions both online and on your mobile.

The resources are suitable for learners of all ages: students as well as workplace learners and lifelong learners - as well as teachers, educators and trainers.

Free Videos For Learning

Shared by Free Technology For Teachers Blog

Next Vista for Learning is an online library of free videos for learners everywhere.

With teachers and students from all over the world contributing content, it will get easier and easier to find the presentation a student needs to say, “I get it.”

With the resources of the library available for free to anyone at any time, students will be in a good position to learn when they are most ready to do so. For teachers, the available videos can be used in the classroom to generate discussion, or even when planning lessons to generate ideas. Having a simple system for watching others’ work will strengthen professional development, which is one of NextVista.org’s goals.

All Next Vista videos can be embedded into your blog or website. The videos can also be downloaded directly from Next Vista.

EARCOS Teachers' Conference 2009

The East Asia Regional Council of Overseas Schools is an organization of 112 member schools in East Asia. These schools have a total of more than 72,000 pre-K to 12th grade students. EARCOS also has 102 associate members— textbook and software publishers and distributors, universities, financial planners, architectural firms, insurance companies, youth organizations, etc— and over 41 individual members.

The conference set up a wiki space with information, presenters and workshops given in the conference. You can download each of the handouts given by the presenters.

Googley with Google Tools

Jennifer Dorman from the Cliotech blog has been publishing a weekly series called "Googley with Google Tools" where she writes about the use of google tools in education.

The way she describes the tools and its uses in education are just great. Here are the titles of each week since she started:

Week 1 - The Google site
Week 2 - Google Apps
Week 3 - Google Docs
Week 4 - Picasa for Mac
Week 5 - Google News
Week 6 - Google Earth
Week 7 - Google Reader
Week 8 - Google Custom Search Engines
Week 9 - Google Maps