50 Sites in 60 Seconds

50 Sites in 60 seconds is a not-to-be-missed slide presentation of excellent websites to use for integrating technology tools into your teaching. Go through the slide presentation, and note which sites you know and which you want to check out. There's plenty here to keep you busy and to give you excellent ideas for sprucing up your teaching. With the summer coming, it's an excellent time to play, explore and think about what new tools you want to integrate into your teaching and how you might use them to spark student engagement and learning. Enjoy, and let us know what you find. Post a comment.

Reminder: Free Technology for Teachers

If you have not already bookmarked or created a feed to Free Technology for Teachers, which describes free to use online sites, offers free lesson plans, and categorizes access by an index of subject areas, such as science, math, and so forth, it is time that you have. This is a site worth checking regularly, and it has over 25,000 readers, not surprisingly! New posts appear almost daily. Educators find this site an indispensable resource. Once you have time to explore, let us know what you find of value.

Free Technology for Teacher is maintained by Richard Byrne, and his site has won numerous awards. If you don't find what you are looking for the first time around, check back later. This is not the first time I have posted a blog about Free Technology for Teachers. Just wanted to post another reminder about a blog chock full of resources.

Image credit: banner on Free Technology for Teachers

Teachers' Websites

Let's share examples of excellent teacher websites you have explored. Based on one student's contribution to our class's online discussion, I found an excellent model created by a teacher who has been a student at Saint Joseph College. Please take some time to explore Mercier's Magic. There's plenty to explore here. When you first open the site (be sure to have sound on), you will find her current school year site, but under the Home tab, you will see accessible sites from prior years.

Not only does Ms. Mercier group her content by subject area and audience (e.g., parents), she also provides throughout the site links to wonderful websites for instructional purposes. She uses Weebly to maintain her site. Feel free to explore Weebly as a mean to create your own student-centered website.

Ms. Mercier works with symbaloo.com to create customized pages of recommended sites for students. Here are fast links to some of her Symbaloo pages:
multimedia , math, and writing.

To create your own customized resource pages for your students with Symbaloo, open an account, and then you are set to build your pages of recommended sites by discipline, subject area, or general area of interest, using Symbaloo's database of recommended sites.

Ms. Mercier also maintains a blog through Weebly, allowing her students to post comments. In addition, check her Twitter account.

Webbly, Mrs. Scelia is a site designed by another Weebly-user teacher. Ms. Scelia started this site August 2010 to provide resources to her young students.

Let us know what you think of the websites these teachers maintain.

Post your recommendations of teacher websites worth visiting by providing the URL's.

Photo of Ms. Mercier from Mercier's Magic. Photo Ms. Scelia from Webbly, Mrs. Scelia
Logo from Weebly.

Social Network Sites in the Schools

Digital Directions, an online journal, published a helpfu article exploring the pros and cons of using social networking sites like Twitter, Facebook, and Ning in the school setting. This article should be helpful reading to you as an educator. Let us know what you think after you have read the article, Social Networking Goes to the School.

Illustration Roy Weiman from the article "Social Networking Goes to School."

Digital Textbook Initiative Enters Phase II

Last year, Governor Schwarzenegger of California initiated a digital textbook plan, and the process began for implementation of digital books in science and math classes. This year, as the initiative reaches phase two, the push is for adding social studies and extending the number of online resources to meet a variety of math and science content areas. Check the Digital Education Blog, “California Expands Digital Textbook Initiative.” In Phase I, teachers reviewed online textbooks for alignment with the state curriculum standards. The report, Digital Textbooks, Phase Two, sponsored by California Learning Resource Network, provides links to the state standards and the process for submitting suggested resources for review.

For background on the topic, read the earlier Digital Education blog, California Faces a Curriculum Crisis, as well as a number of blogs posted to “Computers in the Classroom” about digital textbooks. (See below for a list of three of these blogs.)

As California is often a forerunner in reform, do you think the concept of digital textbooks will spread to other states? One respondent to the Digital Education blog California Expands Digital Textbook Initiative wonders if New Jersey will follow California’s lead. What about other states, or do you think the initiative should be a national one?

What do you see as the pros and cons of digital textbooks? Do you think the shift to online books is inevitable? If so, what do we, as educators, need to do get prepared? What are the pedagogical benefits, the financial factors, and other variables to consider?

Here are three other blogs on "Computers in Classroom" that I have posted on the topic of digital textbooks:
"Textbook Graveyard" (September 16, 2009)
"Digital Media Replace Standard Textbooks" (August 9, 2009)
"No More Paper Textbooks" (May 30, 2009)

For some public, local opinion on the initiatives in California, check the "Sacramento Scoop," from which the graphics in this blog was obtained: Governor Schwarzenegger Wants School Textbooks To Go Digital.

Would You If You Could? Online Master's Degree

How would you like to earn a master’s degree by never attending campus? What about professional development for teachers conducted online? EdWeek.org's article, “The Online Option,” declares a growing trend to earn credit through online work. The article cites the National Education Association (NEA), one of the largest teachers unions, with 3.2 million members, as a prime marketer of online professional development and education through its NEA Academy.

There’s even talk at SJC about offering a master’s degree in education technology entirely online. How do you feel about earning a master's degree in an online format? With the proliferation of online courses, webinars (e.g., PBS’s free webinars for teachers at PBS Teachers Live!), and improvements in technology for delivery of online instruction in interactive formats, do you think there's a strong audience for the option? Would you adopt this format for future courses or professional development? For more information, check the links in this post.

Also, check this recent article, Coming Soon to a Classroom Near You, about how schools in Florida on using videoconferencing for teacher professional developoment in an effort to spread "model classroom" practices. The concepts will give teachers a chance to watch model teachers in practice and then dialogue with them through videoconferencing. Do you think this method would also work well in a teacher preparatory undergraduate or graduate program?

Image: Saint Joseph College, Maine