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As in nearly every other subject area, digital resources for language arts are changing and exploding into a dizzying array of materials. Currently, the number of technology-based language arts resources is so extensive that this article can only scratch at the surface in an examination of these compelling programs and platforms. In this roundup, Charls Doe takes a look at some reading and writing applications, as well some online tool programs and a couple examples of podcasting hardware.
Any number of recent studies are concluding that reading is declining, primarily the reading of novels and longer works of nonfiction. Pundits are remarking that online reading is changing their personal reading behaviors. Doug Johnson infers from this and other observations that we are rapidly becoming a "postliterate society." In Doug's feature, you can find out just what he means by that, and learn how libraries can serve this postliterate society.
According to experts Joellen Killion and Cheryl Williams, in order to reflect the current research, to change teaching practice, and to increase student achievement, professional development must be ongoing, job-embedded, relevant to the teacher’s instructional needs, and collaborative in nature. The advent of quality online professional learning combined with in-person, peer-based professional learning communities has enabled this approach to professional development to have the greatest success for increasing teaching quality and student learning. Read on to learn more of Killion's and Williams’ assessment of the PD scene.
Sharing knowledge: In some form or another, it’s why most educators went into teaching in the first place. But traditional instructional materials don’t lend themselves to sharing between educators. New technologies now allow teachers to share and collaborate locally and globally in ways that generations past could never have imagined. These tools signal what may grow to be true disruptive change in how schools acquire and disseminate instructional and professional development resources. The nonprofit Curriki.org (www.curriki.org) is a 3-year-old organization that offers a large collection of free and open source content and collaboration tools.
Mary Ann Bell recently had the pleasure of attending WebWise 2009, a conference sponsored by the Institute of Museum and Library Services and Miami’s Wolfsonian Museum, where one of the keynote addresses was all about “the cloud,” and other presenters used the term frequently. This month in Belltones, Mary Ann floats some ideas, definitions, concepts, and comments about cloud computing, word clouds, and more.
Multiple-drawer card catalogs have long been relegated to storing bulbs and batteries in media centers or nuts and bolts in garages. Static OPACS accessible only in the media center have become web catalogs accessible throughout the school and beyond; WebPACS have evolved into full-featured, one-stop-shopping access points for media centers’ collections, websites, databases, customized lists of state award winners, top checkouts, ebooks, book excerpts, and thumbnail images of book covers. As Mary Alice explains this month, media specialists use these next-generation systems to create reading lists, webliographies, and more, enabling students not only to find books but to contribute to the catalog's content.
In this month’s column Stephen highlights some thinking in his home province of Ontario. He is encouraged, he says, that some of the political leaders in the educational sector are trying to move beyond testing and actually into practicing 21st-century strategies. At the end of April 2009 the Ontario Public School Boards’ Association (OPSBA) released a discussion paper titled “What If? Technology in the 21st Century Classroom”
Collaboration is certainly the way that today’s learners prefer to work. Technology-savvy students are creating a demand for learning and communicating collaboratively at school, just as they do at home. This trend is not only creating a new kind of learner but a new kind of educator as well—one who specializes in developing and sustaining a nexus for cooperative learning and who has the skills, knowledge, and contacts to connect students with resources. Enter Roxana Hadad—“The Collaborator.”
When he read the recent New York Times article “In Web Age, Library Job Gets Update,” featuring strategies of New York City school librarian Stephanie Rosalia, Stephen was moved this month to list a number of tricky web sites like the one that she uses to teach her kids information evaluation skills. Check out his list. It’ll make you laugh, or cry, or laugh ‘til you cry … but the sites comprise an eminently useful educational tool.
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CyberBee’s Web Pick
For July 1, 2009: Live by the ocean? Or not? Either way, learning about about whales is a cool summer activity. Check out these two sites for loads of whale information.
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In the Spotlight
Saywire
Saywire offers a combination of safe social technology and secure permission-based controls designed to provide “walled garden” social learning networks for K–12 education.
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POPULAR ARTICLES |
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PBS TeacherLine has enhanced its online suite of professional development resources and tools that help teacher leaders, coaches, and mentors provide sustained, collaborative support to peers.
Posted 22 Jun 2009
Pinnacle Accelerated Learning offers districts a secure virtual learning environment.
Posted 26 Jun 2009
According to experts Joellen Killion and Cheryl Williams, in order to reflect the current research, to change teaching practice, and to increase student achievement, professional development must be ongoing, job-embedded, relevant to the teacher’s instructional needs, and collaborative in nature. The advent of quality online professional learning combined with in-person, peer-based professional learning communities has enabled this approach to professional development to have the greatest success for increasing teaching quality and student learning. Read on to learn more of Killion's and Williams’ assessment of the PD scene.
Posted 01 Jul 2009
TurningTalk is a new social learning community for response technology users to provide an open forum for the discussion and sharing of ideas and teaching strategies.
Posted 24 Jun 2009
The collection, "Local and Regional History Online: A History of American Life in Images and Texts," includes hundreds of thousands of images and corresponding texts from every region and state in the U.S. and from many areas of Canada.
Posted 25 Jun 2009
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