Chris, Jamie and Michael discuss the articles of the week and share their edtech tips.
Articles of the Week
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20 Warning Signs That you are Behind the Times with Instructional Uses of Technology emergingedtech.comWorried That You’re Not in Touch with Today’s Technological Tools in the Classroom? Do some of These Describe you? Okay, so some of these are tongue-in-cheek, but some of them are quite serious. It can be challenging to be a teacher in 2014 and be technologically out-of-date. Not only will you be lost when students and other teachers look to discuss some of these technologies with you, but you are missing out on tools that can enable students to stay in touch with learning outside of the classroom, and much more.
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The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development’s triennial international survey compared test scores from 65 countries. Happiness was ranked based on the percentage of students who agreed or disagreed with the statement “I feel happy at school.” Test scores were ranked based on the combined individual rankings of the students’ math, reading, and science scores.
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Why Do Teachers Quit? – Liz Riggs – The Atlantic theatlantic.comThis multifaceted article touches upon so many issues that I placed it into the ed-tech discussion. Respect and mentoring are high on the list of needs.
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MOOCs will always have their niches, especially when they are not so massive.
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According to Code.org, 90 percent of U.S. schools are not teaching any computer science. Eyebrows have been raised this year as the U.K. passed a plan to educate every child how to code. In my opinion, parents of every student in every school at every level should demand that all students be taught how to code. They don’t need this skill because they’ll all go into it as a career — that isn’t realistic — but because it impacts every career in the 21st century world. Any country recognizing that will benefit in the long term. Here’s how you can start.
Tech Tips
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Tiny Chicken learns math apple.comThere are a TON of math apps out there and it’s hard to pick and choose which ones are best. I’ve tried a bunch and among the free apps I’ve found the “Tiny Chicken” apps seem to be the best. There are ones for rounding, time, a math scale, basic numeracy and more.
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Wolfram|Alpha Widgets: wolframalpha.comWolframAlpha is getting so easy to use that it is becoming embarrassing not to have one of their widgets on your blog.
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Learn by Doing – Code School codeschool.comCode School teaches web technologies in the comfort of your browser with video lessons, coding challenges, and screencasts.
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