TLI - Educator Provides Tips on Collaborating with Students

For instructors stumped on how to effectively integrate technology into their lessons, Richard Byrne's Feb. 13 presentation, "Making Learning Collaborative," was invaluable.

Mr. Byrne, best known for his award-winning blog, Free Technology for Teachers, which reaches approximately 49,000 educators on a daily basis, was speaking at the LHRIC's Feb. 13 Technology Leadership Institute held at the Edith Macy Conference Center in Briarcliff Manor.

Seeking information on the Internet is perhaps one of the easiest tasks to get students to commit to, said Mr. Byrne, who taught high school social studies for eight years. While Google is by and large the most popular search engine in the world and the one that most students turn to, there are other alternatives for students to use, added Mr. Byrne, a Google Certified teacher.

One alternative is a site called InstaGrok, a discovery and learning engine that has been set up specifically for educational purposes. By using this tool, teachers can see what their students are bookmarking and clipping, and the product also has a neat evaluation tool that allows instructors to give a series of multiple-choice quizzes, many of them with thought-provoking, insightful questions.

Forget bookmarking websites on one's computer, Mr. Byrne said. Instead, participants were encouraged to use Diigo for bookmarking purposes. "We often think of collaborative projects as being this monster two-week activity," said Mr. Byrne. "With collaboration, we can accomplish more work and go deeper in a lesser amount of time, and Diigo is a great example of this."

Twitter, while wildly popular with teenagers these days, can be equally attractive in the classroom, especially when students and teachers want to search for topics. Instead of using the traditional RSS feed option to receive updates from news sites and other sources, Mr. Byrne said a better alternative is Feedly.com. Approximately 15 to 20 minutes per day is all that is needed to peruse one's favorite websites or blogs using this tool, he added.

Other useful classroom tools include m.socrative.com, a smart student response system that empowers teachers to engage their classrooms through a series of educational games and exercises, and padlet, an application that gives users a blank wall and asks them to create something out of it. In the past, teachers have used padlet to pose questions about a particular topic, receive answers from students and then provide feedback, all on the same page.

"Don't use technology to bore your students," said Mr. Byrne. "Let your kids do the making; it's not a threatening environment for them."

For more information on Mr. Byrne's work and to avail of his many resources, visit www.freetech4teachers.com. His other websites include: Android4school.com, Ipadapps4school.com, and Practicaledtech.com.

21st Century Tools to Teach the Digital Child

Adele Kivel & Amanda Bulson 10:10-11:10

So how does the 21st Century student succeed in today’s world? It is by no accident that the presenters started with a self-created video of their students sharing what the world will look like when they graduate. It had a-Youtube- Edutube like feeling- sharing while students lifted up papers sharing their thoughts about how they- communicate; mainly digital -text, email, web. The students also expressed their concerne with how they might be able to survive in this digital world with the every-growing number of people in India, China & Japan who in their minds seem to be doing better academically. How will they compete in this global world?

How are educators across the globe dealing with this issue of developing problem solvers and entrepreneurs for our 21 Century? Most of us teaching are digital immigrants – as quoted by Robert Murdoch, those of us over 30 , “ …may never fully understand this technology but may assimilate.”

Teachers need to make the classroom active not passive; the guide on the side. Teachers need a current website that goes beyond homework. Teachers need to decide how to use iPods, YouTube, blogs, wikis, podcasts, texting.

How do teachers begin to develop a more technically literate student that can compete with the global world?

Web Sites
www.newspaper.com - a website that gathers papers from around the world. She demonstrated how studying the recent Australian fire outbreak could be reviewed from an Australian resource and an American resource. Is there a different perspective from where the information is written?

CNN Student News – from iTunes, they discuss current news both domestically and internationally. This video podcast is engaging and valuable.

iGoogle – use iGoogle as a jumping point for dragging gadgets that relate to education. For example she used Online English Grammar, Word of the Day, Quote of the Day, History for are sites that will feed iGoolge daily.

iPod technology – how could you create homework assignments that engage and further educate our students beyond the “direct instruction” within the classroom.? They shared a site on NPR –that provides series of podcasts that can be shared with students to download. Creation of podcasts enable students to not only work on writing skills but also on their theatrical performance skills – hopefully tapping into their creative intelligence.

Twitter – social networking site that enables students to share a status update. Where are you and what you are doing – The end user controls who can see their twitter page. Could teachers have students answer a “Do Now” via the cell phone to hopefully get greater participation and potentially hear from students that may be afraid to voice their opinion. Students in the high school and middle school would benefit greatly from this because so many have cell phones. My question to all of you – how many of your schools allow students to access their phones?

As we look at all of these technologies it is very exciting and encourages me to continue searching for appropriate uses of these tools for instructional means. I am curious about how you are using these tools in your classroom. If you are not using them - tell us which one tool you would be interested integrating!