CSLA Ed Tech Committee eResources

Six technologies soon to affect schools

tomkaun@gmail.com (Tom Kaun) — Thu, 29 Apr 2010 19:57:00 +0000

eSchool News reports that "cloud computing and collaborative learning environments are set to take hold in K-12 schools in the very near future, with mobile devices, game-based learning, and other education technologies to follow suit in the next few years, according to the 2010 Horizon Report’s K-12 Edition, released by the New Media Consortium (NMC)."

iCyte

tomkaun@gmail.com (Tom Kaun) — Wed, 07 Apr 2010 16:25:00 +0000

From Jen Maney, this article in School Library Journal explains a new add-on to IE and Firefox which allows resource saving and sharing.

"iCyte is visually appealing (a major plus) and very easy to use. Highlight some text on a Web site, click the button on your toolbar, and fill out the fields in the pop-up window to capture the Web site you want. You can create projects to group “cytes” (clever, aren’t they?) together in any fashion that suits you."

Readability - clutter cutter

noreply@blogger.com (Jackie S, 2.0 project manager) — Sat, 27 Mar 2010 20:34:00 +0000

Readability is a powerful new cool tool by arc90 that eliminates website clutter when you want to just focus on the content and not the surrounding "stuff". It is meant for newspaper articles, not home pages. According to its website, it is a 2-step process select your settings; add your bookmarklet. It works like a charm! Try it on an article from the SF Chronicle on SFGate.
See the video:

Readability - Installation Video for Firefox, Safari & Chrome from Arc90 on Vimeo.

Deeper Web

noreply@blogger.com (Jackie S, 2.0 project manager) — Sat, 27 Mar 2010 20:20:00 +0000

"Deeper Web", a beta test of a new service to help search Google. It's also available as a Firefox add-on. Very nice. It puts search results in tag or phrase clouds. Very useful.

TutCity

tomkaun@gmail.com (Tom Kaun) — Fri, 26 Mar 2010 04:07:00 +0000

The TutCity site is a directory to free tutorials on topics such as 2D graphics, 3D graphics, office applications, databases, desktop programing, web development, and operating systems.

The End of Publishing?

tomkaun@gmail.com (Tom Kaun) — Fri, 19 Mar 2010 15:48:00 +0000

This video (2:26) was prepared by the UK branch of Dorling Kindersley Books. Originally meant solely for a DK sales conference, the video was such a hit internally that it is now being shared externally. Make sure you watch it up to at least the halfway point, because there is a surprise....
(Via AL Direct)

Video game study

noreply@blogger.com (Lesley Farmer) — Wed, 17 Mar 2010 16:18:00 +0000

Video Games Can Hurt Schoolwork

Young boys with new video game systems don't progress as quickly as boys who don't own such devices, a study found. The new gamers had lower reading and writing scores after four months, and their teachers reported more learning problems, the study found. The biggest gap was in writing. One message from the study is that parents should limit the amount of time their children play video games.
Robert Weis and Brittany C. Cerankosky (2010, March). Effects of Video Game Ownership on Young Boys’ Academic and Behavioral Functioning. Psychological Science.

American education reports

noreply@blogger.com (Lesley Farmer) — Wed, 17 Mar 2010 16:13:00 +0000

The review of National Assessment of Educational Progress trends is among several analyses included in the latest annual report on American education produced by the Brookings Institution. A second study, looking at 20 years of state testing data on more than 1000 California schools, finds that very few of them ever “turn around” to become a whole lot better in terms of students’ academic performance, nor did they get a whole lot worse. A third report, also drawing on data from California, concludes that public schools that convert to charter status tend to look more like regular schools in their demographics and teaching staffs than do charter schools started from scratch.
Brown Center on Education (2010). Brown Center Report on American Education. Wsahington, DC: Brookings Institution.
http://www.brookings.edu/reports/2010/0317_education_loveless.aspx

Gender gap in reading and math study

noreply@blogger.com (Lesley Farmer) — Wed, 17 Mar 2010 16:08:00 +0000

Boys Trail Girls in Reading Across States

In reading proficiency, boys lag by at least 10 percentage points in some states, while girls have caught up in math, a study finds.

Center on Education Policy (2010). State Test Score Trends Through 2007-08, Part 5: Are There Differences in Achievement Between Boys and Girls?

http://www.cep-dc.org/index.cfm?fuseaction=document_ext.showDocumentByID&nodeID=1&DocumentID=304

Ed Tech statistics

noreply@blogger.com (Lesley Farmer) — Wed, 17 Mar 2010 15:55:00 +0000

Technology Counts 2010 (by Education Week) provides district-level statistics about tech use in K12 schools. This year the statistics include mobile device use.
* Online access to the library catalog: 72% elementary and 82% secondary provide it for all students (6% elem. and 2% secondary for some)
* Online access to databases: 60% elementary and 68% secondary provide it for all students (10% elem. and 6% secondary for some)
* 89.5% libraries have automated circ systems, and 87.2% have these systems for student and faculty use
* The average # of computers is 12.2 in elementary and 26.4 in secondary libraries, and almost all have Internet connectivity
Other school data deals with instructional and administrative tech use.

Education Week (2010). Technology Counts 2010.
http://www.edweek.org/media/edtechstats.pdf

An Open Letter to Educators

tomkaun@gmail.com (Tom Kaun) — Wed, 17 Mar 2010 02:17:00 +0000

Worth paying attention to.

Data, data everywhere

tomkaun@gmail.com (Tom Kaun) — Fri, 05 Mar 2010 21:32:00 +0000

A recent article in The Economist gives us a reason for existence (if we needed one!)

"WHEN the Sloan Digital Sky Survey started work in 2000, its telescope in New Mexico collected more data in its first few weeks than had been amassed in the entire history of astronomy. Now, a decade later, its archive contains a whopping 140 terabytes of information. A successor, the Large Synoptic Survey Telescope, due to come on stream in Chile in 2016, will acquire that quantity of data every five days.
Such astronomical amounts of information can be found closer to Earth too. Wal-Mart, a retail giant, handles more than 1m customer transactions every hour, feeding databases estimated at more than 2.5 petabytes—the equivalent of 167 times the books in America’s Library of Congress. Facebook, a social-networking website, is home to 40 billion photos. And decoding the human genome involves analysing 3 billion base pairs—which took ten years the first time it was done, in 2003, but can now be achieved in one week" ....

Featured audio interview with the author

eSchool News

tomkaun@gmail.com (Tom Kaun) — Fri, 05 Mar 2010 20:58:00 +0000

This publication is one which every school library person should pay attention to.

It's a weekly newspaper, available online, which keeps us appraised of educational technology issues.

There are headlines news stories, columns on various issues such as grants & funding and curriculum issues. Departments include Default Lines, eSN Online Update, Stakeholder Relations, Prime-Time Product Preview, Tech Buyer’s Marketplace, eSN.tv Viewer’s Guide, and, because eSN is a commercial product, eSchool Partners.
If you don't already subscribe, take a look. It's well worth the time spent perusing each week.

Click here to sign up for a free subscription.

11 Advantages of Using a Blog for Teaching

tomkaun@gmail.com (Tom Kaun) — Mon, 22 Feb 2010 01:49:00 +0000

An interesting asynchronous presentation about using blogs in education. I wonder how it compares with Moodle or other learning management systems?

11 advantages of using a blog for teaching

View more presentations from Frank Calberg Services.

Mainframe to mobile

tomkaun@gmail.com (Tom Kaun) — Tue, 16 Feb 2010 19:28:00 +0000

Mainframe to mobile The first of a three-part series about how automation has changed libraries over the years.

"The functions, services and audience of library information systems, as is the case with all information systems, have always been dependent on and determined by the existing level of information technology. Mobile devices are the latest step in this development."

ftufth

noreply@blogger.com (Lesley Farmer) — Sat, 06 Feb 2010 23:47:00 +0000

tyety

Blog It

tomkaun@gmail.com (Tom Kaun) — Mon, 01 Feb 2010 19:52:00 +0000

An easy way to post to your blog through a Facebook account. Multiple blog accounts are supported.

noreply@blogger.com (Jackie S, 2.0 project manager) — Sat, 02 Jan 2010 22:27:00 +0000

Social Media - A Force for Good (video)

Teacher Librarian Tom Kaun (Marin, CA) recommends a panel discussion on "Social Media as a Force for Good" with Twitter and LinkedIn founders and UK author/activist Stephen Fry. (1.5 hours).

Stephen Fry realized the power and potential of Twitter about a year or so ago when he decided to use Twitter as "verbal post cards" for a trip to Africa to do a story on Rhinos. He suddenly got thousands of followers. He says that humans are emotional creatures and need to communicate. Writing -- even on Twitter -- is a literary form. Twitter is an instrument of free speech.

Biz Stone (CEO/Founder, Twitter) said early on he saw how Twitter was used for "Tweet-ups" (like "meet-ups") to organize events or meetings. People in a conference session would tweet that a different session was more interesting, and lots of people like a flock of birds would leave the first session to go to the better session. Similar use of "Tweet-ups" can be used for raising money for a charity, to do good. Biz said Twitter was created to do good.

Biz says Twitter was created with mobile devices in mind, and mobile devices are growing way faster than desktop computers. Re: Twitter as news media -- it is good for breaking news, but journalists are better for putting news in context.

LinkedIn's Reed Hoffman, in commenting about social media trends, said "you haven't seen anything yet." "Web 2.0 is power to the people, a '60's expression." Social networking sites are platforms upon which other sites are built ("platforms" rather than "features" on a site.)

Google Personalizes Search

tomkaun@gmail.com (Tom Kaun) — Sun, 20 Dec 2009 07:54:00 +0000

A posting on Search Engine Land blog starts out with the following:

"On Friday afternoon, [Dec. 4, 2009], Google made the biggest change that has ever happened in search engines, and the world largely yawned. Maybe Google timed its announcement that it was personalizing everyone’s search results just right, so few would notice. Maybe no one really understood how significant the change was. Whatever the reason, it was a huge development and deserves much more attention than it has received so far."

2009 Edublog Individual Educational Blog Winner

tomkaun@gmail.com (Tom Kaun) — Sat, 19 Dec 2009 20:52:00 +0000

This year's winner of the Edublog Award for best individual education blog is Free Technology for Teachers.

"A review of free technology resources and how teachers can use them. Ideas for technology integration in education."

Connecting California's Children Report

tomkaun@gmail.com (Tom Kaun) — Mon, 14 Dec 2009 20:49:00 +0000

The Connecting California’s Children: California’s Efforts to Leverage Technology in K-12 Education addresses the general question “how does K-12 education in California use and benefit from the investment being made in technology?”

The Unquiet Library

tomkaun@gmail.com (Tom Kaun) — Fri, 11 Dec 2009 18:30:00 +0000

Keep an eye on this site it's full of stuff about "21st-century" learning and is sure to change and grow as time goes on.
Take a look at the video "Networked Student" for a vision of the future.

in reference to: The Unquiet Library 2009-10 (view on Google Sidewiki)

Is It Too Late to Catch Up?

tomkaun@gmail.com (Tom Kaun) — Thu, 10 Dec 2009 00:32:00 +0000

This is what Seth Grodin (Seth's Blog) has to say:

What if your organization or your client has done nothing?

What if they've just watched the last fourteen years go by? No real website, no social media, no permission assets. What if now they're ready and they ask your advice? And, by the way, they have no real cash to spend...

Google Sidewiki Works

tomkaun@gmail.com (Tom Kaun) — Wed, 02 Dec 2009 21:39:00 +0000

Thanks for the explicit directions! I've seen this before but haven't used it until now.

in reference to:

"Click on the Sidewiki button on any web page Add helpful information about the entire page or any part of the page Publish to the browser sidebar for others to read"
- Google Sidewiki (view on Google Sidewiki)

Boopsie for libraries

tomkaun@gmail.com (Tom Kaun) — Wed, 02 Dec 2009 06:42:00 +0000

Watch this YouTube video to get a peak at Boopsie for Libraries.

First time I've seen an iPhone app for libraries. Boopsie looks really cool and it's probably coming to a library system near you. Probably a bit much for schools but something like this will be available soon for schools as well.
There are also apps for Android, BlackBerry, and Windows Mobile platforms.
Other videos show Boopsie at Indiana University Libraries and on WorldCat.