Educational Technology

The Top 10 Great Things Technology Leaders Do

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Using Blogs to Enhance Middle School and High School Education

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Summer Reading for School Leaders

Read exclusive excerpts from the education technology and innovation superstar authors Clayten Christensen and Alan November. Also: Check out T&L blogger extraordinaire Ryan Bretag's suggestions for the beach.
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They Can Hear You Now

Increasing clarity in speech and instructional media reaps big dividends for both students and teachers. First published in T&L sister publication AV Technology.
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What's New

AVerVision's SPB350 visualizer, SMART's Senteo, Promethean's Activboard+2, SAFARI Montage's Managed Home Access, Qwizdom's Q7 Presenter Tablet, Vernier's NXT Sensor Adapter, Bretford's retrofit kits, Mimio's Studio 6.0 Software, Sunburst Technology's Type to Learn4: Agents of Information, LanSchool v7.1's classroom management system
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Basic Technology Tools for Diverse Learning Needs

Seemingly ordinary technology can make learning much more accessible for students with special needs.
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Basic Technology Tools for Diverse Learning Needs

Seemingly ordinary technology can make learning much more accessible for students with special needs.
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Go Ahead and Blog; the Experts Would Approve

A classroom educator discovers not only the wonders of blogging but all the many reasons that it is an educationally-valid classroom tool.
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Go Ahead and Blog; the Experts Would Approve

A classroom educator discovers not only the wonders of blogging but all the many reasons that it is an educationally-valid classroom tool.
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The eLearning Future Is No Longer Five Years Away

The author explains why he believes that the concept of real-time education over the Internet is coming into its own.
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The eLearning Future Is No Longer Five Years Away

The author explains why he believes that the concept of real-time education over the Internet is coming into its own.
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Events@techlearning.com

Notes from Techforum: Midwest Insight and innovation for technology leaders.
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Best of the Blogs

What Technology & Learning insiders are writing online.
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E-Learning Gets Real

Call it virtual, distance, or online education. For today's curricula, it's no longer a question of whether or not to try but when to start. Our survey of educators who already use these technologies can help the uninitiated.
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School CIO

Recent tech initiatives; a summertime "to do" list; plus, a look at what's in store for top technology leaders in the next five years.
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Learning on a stick Minnesota style

At the most recent meeting of the Minnesota Education Media Organization Technology Special Interest Division (I couldn’t resist writing that out) I learned about a cool professional development opportunity called 23 Things On a Stick. Curious about the name? If you’ve visited the Minnesota State Fair you’d know how we in Minnesota love things on a stick.

The 23 Things… program is a largely self-paced set of tutorials intended for teachers and library folks in Minnesota who want to learn more about Web 2.0 tools. The “Things” include RSS, photosharing, collaboration, social media, online productivity, online gaming, podcasts, video, and social networking. Each participant is required to maintain a blog for the duration of the project to foster reflection and interaction with other participants.

I’d like to see someone turn the 23 Things program into a Moodle course that can be distributed to any school that is using Moodle for professional development. (”23 Things On a Stick” is made available under an Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike Creative Commons license.) Any takers?

New Job: Osseo here I come

Big news in my world this week. Starting on July 1st I will be changing school districts to become the Chief Technology Officer in the Osseo Area Schools. It’s a really exciting opportunity to work in a large metro district (22,000 students in 31 schools) with a great leadership team and a history of innovation with technology. Check out the TICT Initiative for an example of a successful teacher coaching model. (I blogged about TICT at the 2006 TIES Conference.)

One of my first tasks will be merging the existing Technology Management and Instructional Media & Technology departments into a new Technology Division. It’s going to be a wild ride!

Video Streaming To Connect With The School Board

How a geographically large school district employed video technology to reach its far-flung citizens.
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Technology Integration: A Case Study and Personal History

Some very practical advice from someone who's 'been-there-done-that' when it comes to bringing technology to a school.
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Best of the Blogs

What Technology & Learning insiders are writing online.
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Caught on Video

Why the latest in video technology is an essential tool in the classroom for teachers and students.
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Plan and Deliver

For technology to really work in the classroom, professional development is key.
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Digital Age Assessment: Part 2

A look at how technology use in formative assessments improves feedback and reporting opportunities.
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My new favorite survey tool

I’ve been using a variety of online survey tools for quite a few years now including Zoomerang, SurveyMonday, and KeySurvey. My new favorite is SurveyGizmo.

We’ve been increasing the use of online surveys greatly in my district this year. We love how easy it is to gather feedback following a staff meeting, from parents and others during a curriculum adoption, or as a customer satisfaction instrument for my technology department. Here’s what I really like about SurveyGizmo:

• The SurveyGizmo interface is full of tasty Web 2.0 goodness. Various options and settings open without a full page reload which makes building a survey much more like a desktop application. The look and feel overall is clean and modern in contrast to many of the online tools which look a bit clunky to me.
• The SurveyGizmo enterprise account provides 20 separate survey users. This will enable each school and district office department to have their own account.
• Here’s a huge one for me: they have a full API! In particular, I’m excited to see that you can pass information into a SurveyGizmo survey from another web form or via a web link. I’ve been looking for a way to use an online survey to collect customer satisfaction data as my tech department resolves trouble tickets for staff members. The API would really make that easier.
• Other features of note: full support for branching surveys with really complex logic (can even use regular expression matching for full geek compatibility), tons of built-in question types including some I haven’t seen anywhere else, private domain name, and many more really cool advanced features.

So I’d say give it a try. Full disclosure: the SurveyGizmo links in this post are affiliate links.

Technology Helps Leave No Child Behind

Blended learning and other high tech tools help Pennsylvaniaâ??s Cyber Academy to serve the needs of all its students, from the motivated to the reluctant.
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