Library Guides

 I got a pointer to Spartan Guides, a treasure-trove of organized links to web sites useful in education. The home page lists the most popular guides. Each of the guides has dozens of categories, which then often break down to sub-categories. Each final page has lots of information. For instance, the New Tools guide includes Digital Storytelling and Google Docs and Apps among it nearly 50 sub-categories.

On the Google Apps page I’d recommend two downloadable Google for Teachers PDFs. The first includes info on uses of Google Maps, including Math Maps (has placemarks with related math questions identified by elementary grade level – Kindergarten through 5th grades) and Climate Change Data (has placemarks tied to current and historical weather data). The second has a section on building custom search engines which I may use to organize links to shareable images. There’s lots more than the few items I’ve mentioned here.

The library producing the above has a wiki page with yet more information. Many of the links take you to pages done by Joyce Valenza using Only2Clicks. These pages have a thumbnail of the relevant web page for each link. There are too may good categories for me to pick just a few. Have a look.

Rural School & Community Trust

The Rural School and Community Trust ” is a national nonprofit organization addressing the crucial relationship between good schools and thriving communities.”

“The Rural Trust provides a variety of services—training, networking, technical assistance, coaching, mentoring, research—and materials to increase the capacity of rural schools, teachers, young people, and communities to develop and implement high quality place-based education.”

The site seems to get new material relatively infrequently. The information is accessible via targeted audience (administrators, teachers, students, etc.) and category (Funding/Grants/Scholarships, Networks/Groups, Place-Based Learning, etc.)

1:1 Resources for VT

The following is from an email from Heather Chirtea of the Digital Wish Foundation.

I want to invite everyone to look more closely within our own VT  borders for 1:1 guidance.

Collective Vision
Here’s the Roadmap for the Digital Wish 1:1 e-Vermont initiative, running in 27 schools across the state. We developed this 3 years ago based on 18 months of research on 1:1, plus input from Apple, Microsoft, VPA, VSA, VSBA, NEA, 6 ESAs, and VITA-Learn.
http://schoolmodernizationinitiative.wordpress.com/the_initiative/vision/

Replicating Success
Unfortunately nearly every school we enter is re-inventing the wheel with 1:1 computing. It’s an incredibly costly waste of time and resources. Digital Wish has reduced the planning time from 18 months, down to just 6 weeks. Every step in the process has been modeled as we go, for easy replication. Digital Wish is releasing 6 curriculum units based on the NETS standards, all of which are part of the 1:1 implementation kit. If you are thinking about 1:1, you should consider at least, getting the 1:1 kit:
http://www.digitalwish.com/dw/digitalwish/product?id=6554

Vermont Data
If you are trying to convince your board to fund 1:1, then here’s Digital Wish’s Vermont research study on improvements in 1:1 computing, based on surveys of 674 students and 45 teacher.
http://www.digitalwish.com/dw/digitalwish/news?id=143

Guidance
Implementing 1:1 computing demands you make an incredible number of decisions, plus you will have to entirely re-design your PD approach – or you won’t succeed. Digital Wish can look at your 1:1 plan today, and quickly tell you the downstream ramifications of most decisions you are now considering.  Then we can share stories of what happened in other Vermont schools that made the same wrong/right decisions, you are potentially now about to make. If you want one of our experts to guide you, or shoot holes in your plan, Digital Wish will provide a consultant for $125/ hour or work on a monthly stipend to answer questions as you go.

Argue for Technology
Here is a video Digital Wish produced, to help you argue for technology funding with your board and parents:
http://www.youtube.com/user/DigitalWishChannel#p/a/u/0/kGDsryLUn8Y

All the best,
Heather Chirtea

Reinvent the High School

Interesting article on an alternative high school that gives students real-world experience on the 21st Century Fluency Project site. It can also be found on the eSchoolNews site.

Bytesize Science

The American Chemical Society has a series of short videos (mostly 2-10 minutes) titled Bytesize Scienceon a variety of topics that might appeal to students – the most recent as I post this are The Chemistry of Cotton Candy and This Bites! What’s the Deal With Deet.

Terrific Cheat Sheets

The site Teaching Degree has a lot of information not directly related to getting an online degree. A page I just ran across is 100 Terrific Cheat Sheets for K-12 Teachers. They are grouped into 9 areas:

• Language Arts
• Humanities
• History, Government, and Social Studies
• Math
• Science
• Technology
• Foreign Language
• ESL
• Miscellaneous

Horizon Reports

The New Media Consortium has been producing its Horizon Reports since 2004. These are produced by a panel of experts who look at technologies that are due to be important in the next few years, and then discuss in detail those that they deem most important in three time horizons – one year or less, two to three years, four to five years. The content is available on the web and as PDF files. The PDFs for 2011 include the regular report and one targeted for K-12 educators.

ANESU’s Technology Grade Expectations

Addison Northeast Supervisory Union’s Grade Expectations web page has a matrix of links to documents, each covering one grade range (K-2, 3-5, 6-8, 9-12) and one “topic” -

Creativity & Innovation, Communication & Collaboration
Research & Information Fluency
Critical Thinking, Problem-Solving & Decision-Making
Digital Citizenship
Technology Operations & Concepts

Each page has a number of performance indicators, associated Vermont GE’s for that grade level, and examples. This is solid work that others may want to adapt for their use.