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CATEGORY: Online Education/Distance Learning |
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With online learning growing by a rate of 30% over the past few years, according to the International Association for K-12 Online Learning, once-lonely and isolated education professionals are now taking advantage of tech-based tools and platforms and connecting like never before. From self-paced courses, product training, instructional seminars, and real-time information resources to video segments and streaming content, educators have plenty of ways to hone up on just about anything.
Each month registered Module of the Month Club members will have unlimited access to one selected module from the Teachscape XL library.
News/Free Resources - Posted 19 Feb 2010
The companies have partnered to create the Heinle Community, intended as a safe and secure virtual workspace designed for learners to practice English through collaboration on projects in an authentic learning environment.
News/Breaking News - Posted 11 Jan 2010
In her last Media Center column (November/December 2009), Mary Alice examined the power of primary sources and shared ideas for using them to enhance student learning. This month, she discusses how educators can learn how to add power to their teaching by using Teaching With Primary Sources Direct, or TPS Direct, a powerful, high-quality, free online professional development tool from the Library of Congress.
Susan Hixson takes a look at it's learning, an online learning platform for collaboration, planning, authoring, and the delivery of course materials and courses.
There is an economical way to introduce videoconferencing that involves inexpensive laptop computers and programs such as iChat, Skype, and ooVoo. A technology integration plan shared by a few pioneering districts in the author's area proves this point. Through it, schools have been able to make a serious commitment to the "new wave" of interactive technology at a minimal cost.
Central Michigan University, Northwest Nazarene University, and Madonna University are the latest of 28 higher education institutions to offer teachers graduate credit
for PBS TeacherLine's courses.
News/Breaking News - Posted 23 Nov 2009
Available for purchase in January 2010, Interactive Science enables middle school students to read, write, draw, graph, and self-assess all in one place, actively engaging students with real-world content.
News/Breaking News - Posted 13 Nov 2009
The new partnership combines netTrekker's digital resources with CyberSmart! Online Workshops to support 21st century teaching and learning.
News/Breaking News - Posted 02 Nov 2009
An increasing number of K–12 academic institutions are going online, changing the way they teach in response to how today’s students today want to learn. Industry organizations such as the International Association for K–12 Online Learning (iNACOL) believe online learning is revolutionizing global education, and those academic institutions with strong elearning strategies will advance to help prepare students to reach their full potential in a digital age. Today’s students want more options when it comes to education, and online learning is providing new opportunities for universal access to the best possible education for all students, regardless of ability, background, income level, or geography.
The November 17, 2009 webinar focuses on resources and strategies to help students understand how germs, viruses, and vaccinations work.
News/Free Resources - Posted 29 Oct 2009
The collaboration has resulted in the first integration of Moodle and Cisco WebEx Training Center, a live or on demand web conferencing and training platform that engages learners with interactive, media-rich online instruction.
News/Breaking News - Posted 29 Oct 2009
A provider of an enterprise learning management platform with open-source Moodle at its core, Moodlerooms plans to take all feedback it receives into consideration when planning for future developments.
News/Breaking News - Posted 19 Oct 2009
ePals will act as the global education partner for "Team Earth," and will offer an interactive, safe focus area for students worldwide to engage in competitions, voice their opinions and take action.
News/Breaking News - Posted 21 Sep 2009
With expanded math content, improved reporting functionality, and new multimedia features, DimensionM combines technological advances in video game design with new research in math curriculum and instruction to provide an educational tool designed to increase student engagement, time on task, and achievement scores.
News/Breaking News - Posted 14 Sep 2009
Designed for both individuals and academic organizations, the Elluminate Teacher Certification Program is available to anyone as a public or private course, online or onsite. Upon successful completion of the course, attendees earn two academic or continuing education credits.
News/Breaking News - Posted 07 Sep 2009
Collaboration is one of the defining characteristics of the 21st century, but many educators are still searching for ways to embrace this idea in their schools. Some technologies facilitate the creation of a collaborative learning environment better than others, but there are a number of technology tools that can lead to collaborative student and teacher engagement while also addressing budgetary and infrastructure issues. This article offers suggestions for overcoming barriers using simple tools that foster complex thinking.
Now offering 35 languages in total, the updated language translation tool allows more than 1,000 language pairs to be made between educators and students worldwide. The expansion encourages teachers and students from all parts of the world to connect and collaborate without language barriers.
News/Breaking News - Posted 19 Aug 2009
PBS Teachers and Classroom 2.0 host a series of free webinars for educators on digital media and technology in education. The new fall line up of PBS Teachers LIVE! webinars includes topics on science, digital storytelling, geography, social studies, education in the digital age, and online professional development and teaching resources.
News/Free Resources - Posted 13 Aug 2009
The platform now includes curriculum mapping to the core concepts and critical skills found in standards, varied student assessments that provide timely data for teachers, Classroom Walkthroughs for measuring instructional practices against modern research, and a host of online learning modules for driving classroom instructional practice.
News/Breaking News - Posted 16 Jul 2009
Parents who would like to become more familiar with the algorithms in Everyday Mathematics can now see them step-by-step in the Free Family Resources section of EverydayMathOnline.com.
News/Breaking News - Posted 02 Jun 2009
Conspiracy Code offers an original learning environment where students can strengthen higher-order thinking, written communication, problem-solving, and collaborative skills, according to the announcement.
News/Breaking News - Posted 01 Jun 2009
The summit, which will take place solely online, affords education, policy, civic, community, and business leaders the opportunity to interact with one another and discuss important education reform initiatives. The Cyber Summit leads up to the National Education Summit on 21st Century Skills, which will take place on June 12 in Washington, D.C.
News/Breaking News - Posted 27 May 2009
Videoconferencing for K–12 Classrooms serves as a guide to setting up new interactive videoconferencing programs and improving existing ones. The book shows educators how to use interactive videoconferencing to connect to classrooms anywhere in the world, take virtual field trips to otherwise unreachable places, and integrate supplemental resources.
News/Breaking News - Posted 29 Apr 2009
Designed for grades 3-5, Aha!Science gives teachers new tools to teach physical, earth and space, and life sciences with science games, simulations, and instruction.
News/Breaking News - Posted 12 Mar 2009
The new version includes a Create Custom Resource tool, teacher and student communication tools, and enhanced batch enroll features.
News/Breaking News - Posted 11 Mar 2009
Through the partnership, CORE will be able to deliver a 24/7 professional development program for literacy and math educators that will provide curriculum support to maximize student achievement.
News/Breaking News - Posted 04 Mar 2009
Using the immersive characteristics of digital games, Labyrinth blends a storyline with multi-level puzzle play to build pre-algebra skills in several core areas: proportions - fractions and ratios; variables and equations; and numbers and operations.
News/Breaking News - Posted 09 Feb 2009
Today’s students are truly digital learners. Outside of school they are texting, using cell phones, creating social networks on the internet, and playing interactive games online; they often do all of these things at the same time—multitasking. They expect to use some of these tools when they are in school. Teachers can create new learning opportunities for students and turn classrooms into the 21st-century global classroom when they integrate technology into the learning environment. Read on to learn from Sheila Gersh just how teachers can begin to create such environments.
Sally Finley takes a look at Discovery Education Science for Elementary, an online standards-based science curriculum.
With the new courses, Aventa offers a full range of standards-based core and elective middle school subjects, including language arts, math, science, social studies, world language, health, and art.
News/Breaking News - Posted 16 Oct 2008
The Consortium for School Networking (CoSN) launches its fourth annual professional development Webcast series on Oct. 15.
News/Breaking News - Posted 11 Oct 2008
SAM Learning, publisher of Web-based curriculum for high school exit exam prep, now offers science content in biology, chemistry, and physics for SAM Learning.
News/Breaking News - Posted 29 Sep 2008
The International Society for Technology in Education (ISTE) presents an “Introduction to Geocaching” Webinar on Sept. 24.
News/Breaking News - Posted 12 Sep 2008
In the July/August issue of MMIS, Kelly Czarnecki started her "tour of the possibilities" of using virtual environments in K-12 education with a look at two projects based on/in Teen Second Life—Science in Second Life, and Suffern Middle School in Second Life. Here's the rest of the tour, visting Whyville, the River City Project, Quest Atlantis, and McClarin's Adventures.
Susan Hixson reviews an online test prep program for the SAT.
To mark the third anniversary of Hurricane Katrina, youth leaders for Global Kids, Inc. have created an online community and game in conjunction with Game Pill, Inc., AMD, and Microsoft Corp.’s Partners in Learning where young people can engage in and experience the ongoing relief efforts in New Orleans.
News/Free Resources - Posted 27 Aug 2008
With the advent of spring and, now, summer, Mary Ann got the museum and botanical garden bug … which got her to thinking about the beauty, value, and educational efficacy of virtual museum visits, and, further, visits to “virtual gardens”—i.e. websites maintained by actual botanical gardens around the world. Take a tour with her in this month’s Belltones column.
Elluminate Plan! enables educators to pre-package teaching content and interactive activities for use during teacher-led instruction in real time on the internet.
Charles Doe reviews Writing Roadmap 2.0, an online essay scoring tool designed to give students practice in building writing skills.
The 2007 edition of the Horizon Report by the New Media Consortium and the Educause Learning Initiative predicted that in 2 to 3 years, virtual worlds will greatly impact teaching, learning, and creative expression. These scalable and highly creative environments are being used by educators all over the country in a variety of settings and in a variety of ways. This article offers a look at projects using virtual worlds that are currently “happening” in K–12 schools, what we’re learning from them, and what we can continue to learn by charging full steam ahead with these fascinating educational tools.
"Building community" is a powerful phrase and a tremendous responsibility for a library, and even more powerful is the experience of stepping back and seeing the community grow as a result of what you are doing to create new groups of people and new ways to share and discover information. As the technology education librarian for teens and youth at the Public Library of Charlotte & Mecklenburg County (PLCMC) in North Carolina, Kelly Czarnecki believes creating virtual communities is an important aspect of this responsibility as participation in online communities is driven by advances in technology. Find out why, and how, in her article.
The company has partnered with Moodle developers in the U.S. and Canada to connect Moodle to the Elluminate Live! Virtual Classroom.
News/Breaking News - Posted 12 Feb 2008
The latest collection of PBS TeacherLine courses addresses classroom instruction for the fastest-growing segment of student population.
News/Breaking News - Posted 06 Feb 2008
The Princeton Review holds free SAT Strategy Session events in the virtual world of Second Life on Jan. 19 and Jan. 31.
News/Free Resources - Posted 18 Jan 2008
Do you still remember the thrill of receiving a summer postcard from your teacher? How exciting it was to open the mailbox and find that personal piece of mail waiting—and to realize that your teacher was thinking of you. Perhaps the photograph on the face of the card led you to the encyclopedia to learn more about a particular place, while a handwritten line or two described a cultural experience, unusual food, or new language. Travel postcards, sent by thoughtful teachers over the years, have broadened the world of many a child. Yesterday’s postcards have gone high-tech. Weblogs, or blogs, enable today’s teachers to send a new kind of post, sharing their travel experiences as they unfold. Blogs provide an up-to-the-minute opportunity for teachers to continue to educate their students through semester breaks, to interact with their school communities, and to share experiences and locales that encourage understanding of the broader world. And those 21st century postcards come complete with the ability to upload and publish journal entries, photos, slideshows, audio, video, and educational links.
Charles Doe reviews Fluent Reading Trainer (FLRT), a Web-based program that helps students increase reading speed while improving or maintaining reading comprehension.
What Works in K-12 Online Learning serves as a research-based guide to what works from more than two dozen contributors with real-world experience.
News/Breaking News - Posted 18 Dec 2007
This software package allows instructors to easily record their presentations and transfer them into video podcasts.
News/Breaking News - Posted 10 Dec 2007
The National Repository of Online Courses (NROC) is an Open Educational Resource project of the Monterey Institute for Technology supported by a grant from the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation and institutional membership.
News/Breaking News - Posted 29 Nov 2007
The American Association of School Librarians (AASL) launched its first Digital Institute, “Minding Your Students’ Future,” as part of the AASL e-Academy online offerings.
News/Breaking News - Posted 05 Nov 2007
With the growth of Web technologies, the availability of high-quality professional development for educators has increased significantly. There are numerous benefits to professional development for educators, including increased job satisfaction, career advancement, better pay, and improved student learning. However, there are significant challenges that often impede them from pursuing opportunities that will contribute to their growth, such as convenience and affordability. Professional development delivered in an online-learning environment removes many of the constraints associated with traditional forms of professional development.
The Clinton Global Initiative announced that UNICEF has teamed with Microsoft, HP and the International Rescue Committee to launch a new $30 million distance learning initiative that will help 150,000 displaced children, including children affected by the Iraq conflict and children in the occupied Palestinian territories.
News/Breaking News - Posted 28 Sep 2007
HippoCampus, supported by The William and Flora Hewlett Foundation, is an Open Education Resource (OER), part of a worldwide collaborative effort of academic institutions and educators to make quality education available for everyone.
News/Breaking News - Posted 13 Sep 2007
Finding safe, engaging collaborative projects for your classroom doesn't have to be a challenge. There are many mentored and data-entry activities that allow your students to participate with classrooms across the country and around the world. Many of the Internet projects have been around for years with proven track records. Others have the backing of nonprofit foundations. This month, Cyberbee directs you to a range of such sites where you can find a project that is just right for your classroom.
The American Association of School Librarians (AASL) e-Academy will offer five continuing education programs starting on October 1.
News/Breaking News - Posted 30 Aug 2007
Educational videoconferencing has come a long way over the years. It started out very slowly, and, in recent years, there has been a burst of interest on the part of museums and zoos in providing their educational programs via this medium. As schools find it more difficult and more expensive to take their students on physical field trips, students are missing out on the phenomenal resources that these cultural institutions have to offer. When gas prices began to rise, local museums found that even schools in the neighborhood were unwilling to spend their precious fuel budgets bussing students off-site. Those in the museum community chose to take this as a sign that they should begin to promote their distance learning efforts.
The best practices featured demonstrate how students' social uses of technology can be leveraged for constructive learning, and build on the growing trend among online social networking sites, including commercial sites like MySpace and Facebook, to connect youth to social issues and causes.
News/Breaking News - Posted 27 Jun 2007
WebLessons simplifies the process of using the Web as a teaching tool by providing teachers and students with instructions, study questions, vocabulary, quizzes, and inquiry-based projecs centerd on content from a wide range of online resources, according to the announcement.
News/Breaking News - Posted 27 Jun 2007
For the first time, the organization is offering eight-week summer school courses online for full year courses such as Algebra 1, English 9, and English 10, subjects that many students struggle with.
News/Breaking News - Posted 23 May 2007
The Young Adult Library Services Association (YALSA), a division of the American Library Association (ALA), is offering four online courses this summer.
News/Breaking News - Posted 11 May 2007
“Online Facilitator Training I - Mastering the Skills of Online Teaching” offers teachers the opportunity to gain skills in Web-based instruction.
News/Breaking News - Posted 14 Mar 2007
As online learning has become commonplace at universities throughout the country, the option is now being explored to a greater degree by teachers and administrators at the secondary and elementary levels. Nancy Rohland-Heinrich and Brian Jensen take you through the state of the art of online learning in this feature, with special emphasis on the role of media specialists in supporting and furthering it.
To support teachers who want to explore use of video games in education, Muzzy Lane Software has created the MAKING HISTORY Innovative Teacher Challenge, open to all high school history teachers.
News/Breaking News - Posted 07 Feb 2007
With digital curriculum across math, science, English, social studies, and world languages, the new catalog includes courses needed to meet the graduation requirements of most states.
News/Breaking News - Posted 26 Jan 2007
Reviewer John Drag, Jr. reviews Straight Curve Mathematics Series 2, a Web-based math program for grades 3-5.
Field Trip Earth, a project of the North Carolina Zoological Park, is a great place for a “wild” experience, billing itself as “the global resource for teachers, students, and proponents of wildlife conservation.” Through the site, you and your students can get involved in field-based wildlife conservation projects ongoing around the world.
News/Free Resources - Posted 17 Oct 2006
TANDBERG will offer access to free virtual field trips to schools that use TANDBERG videoconferencing equipment, enabling students to experience cultural events in foreign countries, learn about scientific discoveries, or hear stories first hand from those that lived through historic moments.
News/Breaking News - Posted 20 Sep 2006
Internet2 allows unprecedented worldwide communication and collaboration on data sharing, and provides an invaluable opportunity for K–12 teachers and students. In the year and a half since her school district has been connected with Internet2, author Erika Thickman Miller has begun to explore a small part of its capacity—a taste, she says, that has made her feel she has opened a book of wonderful new adventures, and that she feels compelled both to share and to further explore.
Online learning is one of the most rapidly growing areas of education. It is expected to continue expanding as more colleges and universities increase their offerings. What's it like to take an online class? For this article, Mary Alice communicated with graduate students who have taken multiple online courses from several universities, fulfilling a need to earn course credits toward a degree or to meet professional development goals. Read on to see what they say and what hints you can pick up.
The series is designed to help educators get the most from video games in the classroom.
News/Breaking News - Posted 16 Mar 2006
The semester courses are designed to help schools meet diverse learning needs for distance learning and credit recovery.
News/Breaking News - Posted 26 Jan 2006
The Web-based reading, writing, and comprehension tool is intended to build essential skills and save teacher time.
News/Breaking News - Posted 19 Jan 2006
Teachers receive research-based information on principles and strategies as part of Curriculum Associates’ Topics in Education Web site.
News/Free Resources - Posted 06 Jan 2006
Will Richardson, supervisor of instructional technology at Hunterdon Central Regional High School in Fleming, N.J., and now a well-known speaker on cutting-edge educational uses of the Web, has written a book to be published by Corwin Press in February 2006 entitled An Educator's Guide to Blogs, Wikis, Podcasts and Other Cool New Tools That Are Transforming the Classroom. This article is adapted from a chapter of that book, with permission from the publisher.
Teacher-librarian, author, conference speaker, and MMIS Media Center columnist Mary Alice Anderson will be offering this online course through the University of Wisconsin—Stout Department of Education Online Professional Development program.
News/Breaking News - Posted 09 Sep 2005
JASON Adventure: Lost City Hydrothermal Vents will be available this fall.
News/Breaking News - Posted 29 Jul 2005
Entitled “Test Preparation Strategies,” the three-lesson course discloses findings on factors that affect test performance and shows teachers ways to create a positive, anxiety-free attitude toward test taking, according to the announcement.
News/Free Resources - Posted 31 May 2005
The partnership should provide a larger audience for the ETS PATHWISE courses, according to the announcement.
News/Breaking News - Posted 27 May 2005
Tell your school and district administrators about this online course, geared specifically to them, designed to help them learn how to support and maximize their schools' librarary programs to increase student achievement.
News/Breaking News - Posted 15 Apr 2005
News/Breaking News - Posted 16 Mar 2005
News/Free Resources - Posted 11 Mar 2005
Call to Freedom is a complete, online American history textbook covering pre-Columbian America to the present. It offers all of the features, content, and extensions of a traditional print textbook and includes a variety of tools that create an interactive environment for student learning.
Can learning be achieved effectively by the standard measures, via e-learning, or through some blend of technological and classroom strategies? When added to the issues of the digital divide, you have a problem of gargantuan proportions. With effort, thought, and money, however, it is possible.
The free Internet, subscription databases, and e-books make information available outside of physical library walls, 24 hours a day, seven days a week. With the proliferation of information in electronic format, virtual school libraries must be entities of the present, not the future. We must provide access to quality resources and instruction in how to use them, virtually! Learn more and discover virtual school libraries that represent Best Practices in the field in Audrey Church's article.
Streamingmedia.com author Mark Fritz writes how Cisco’s VoIP solutions help school districts consolidate their networks and make videoconferencing a reality. (From Information Today, Inc.'s Streamingmedia.com)
News/ITI Cross Links - Posted 02 Feb 2005
How you lead depends on what you read! Knowledge of best practices, current research, and useful ideas will help you do the following:
* Plan and develop an effective school media/technology program.
* Be an effective, efficient, and credible communicator.
* Support your own professional writing and presentations.
* Be a leader in your school and district.
Among my reading favorites are the books, journals, and Web sites I turn to frequently for reference or inspiration.
To start the new calendar year with a trends and expectations story from a school librarian's point of view, we turned to library media activist, writer, conference presenter, and school library "presence" Pam Nutt. We asked Pam to query her colleagues and herself to find out, well, what's on their minds! What's affecting them and their profession, particularly--but not exclusively--in the area of technology. Read this feature to see what she told us.
As the Web continues to develop and faster Internet access becomes available to more individuals, the likelihood of Web-based programs replacing CD-ROMs is becoming more and more real. The advantages provided by subscription Web-based services will lead them to be used for direct instructional purposes in the classroom.
PLATO Intermediate Writing Process and Practice is designed to supplement and support the teaching of writing in the middle school years. The program contains levels of lessons with a focus on many of the specific writing skills set by NCTE and the Mid-Continent Research for Education and Learning Lab.
The Blobs, an interactive animated program with narration by Jane Horrocks, helps students learn basic number, letter, color, and beginning word skills.
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