DemoSlam - view, learn from, vote for, and create tech demos

DemoSlam is a very cool site from Google that has all kinds of different technology demonstrations and let the viewer choose their favorite.

You can view the champs and all of the demos created. There are some great demos that can be used by teachers and students alike such as one on how to use Google Docs to create a presentation, and on how to use Google Video Chat.

The coolest part of the whole thing is that ANYONE can create a tech demo using the tools and resources provided. That means this can be used by teachers to create demonstrations to help their students, or by students as a way to demonstrate what they have learned. This is the kind of assessment that lets students demonstrate content knowledge, technology skills, collaboration and teamwork if they work on a team, creativity and problem solving. These are the skills they need for college and the future.

Check it out! http://www.demoslam.com/


Related:

10 Important Skills Students Need for the Future

10 Tech Skills Every Student Should Have

Google for Educators Resources

Digital Learning Tips for Students - from Edutopia

Today is Digital Learning Day which is part of a campaign to improve teaching and learning through the use of digital tools and technology. 

Edutopia has a great article today entitled "Seven Digital Learning Tips for Students" that list and explain seven attributes that students should have or need to develop for successful online learning.

Considering how much learning, whether formal or informal, is done on line, these are important tips and attributes. 

This list complements my list of "10 Tech Skills Every Student Should Have" and "10 Important Skills Students Need for the Future."

Edutopia is a great resource for educators, especially in regards to best practices, project based learning, digital learning, classroom management, assessment, and technology integration. 

Using Adobe Digital Schools Collection to have students create infographics

Infographics, short for information graphics, are collections of information and data presented in a graphical format, are nice resources for educators and students to get information. But students could also create them as a project.

Infographics are a great project for students. They have to research, analyze, synthesize, compare and contrast, and summarize, as well as use graphical skills and software skills. Students can work in groups on the projects, allowing them to develop teamwork, collaboration and communication skills.

Adobe Digital Schools Collection is a collection of software that can be used by students to create infographics. It is available for Windows and Mac and contains Adobe Photoshop Elements 10, Premiere Elements 10 and Acrobat X Pro.

Photoshop can be used to modify pictures and graphics and then Acrobat can be used to publish the project as a PDF file. Students could even create interactive, multimedia infographics with Premiere (video editing) and the fact that Acrobat X can include audio and video in the PDF file.

There are a lot of resources for educators to help them use the ADSC in their classrooms. The Adobe Education Exchange is a great resource for educators and has curriculum and lesson plans for using the ADSC in class along with teacher resources and a community of users. There are 23 lesson plans, tech guides, user guides, teacher guides, and completed examples to view. There are over 36,000 members in the community and that number continues to grow.


Have students create an infographic as a project in your class.


Related:

A Great Collection of Cool Infographics on Pinterest - from Free Technology for Teachers

10 Important Skills Students need for the Future

The future. What do our students really need to know and be able to do to succeed in future education and careers?

Content is a part of what they need to know. Standardized tests test content knowledge and some skills. There are huge debates raging over standardized testing, curriculum, and the like. But what it is that students really need to know for the future. Hint: it isn't all content.

Content is important to a point. Having certain knowledge of facts and information helps us put things in context as we work and live. Content helps us evaluate other information we are working with. However, in today's world of the web and smart phones, facts and content are less important. Students, and the workforce, need to know how to think critically, find and evaluate information, work in teams, communicate effectively, solve problems and apply knowledge and skills to new things and be able to learn on their own. These are some of the "21st Century Skills" that have been talked about for years. I agree that these are the most important skills and I feel that Project Based Learning is one of the best ways to teach these skills.

I learned many of these skills in college because even 20 years ago, my school, WPI, understood these ideas. The WPI Plan is an excellent model of project based learning, core competencies, and needed skills. This base has allowed me to be successful as an engineer, and successfully transition to being an educator. It has also helped me to learn on my own.

Research by the Institute for the Future released in a report entitled “Future Work Skills 2020″ shows that preparing for a specific career area based on content is difficult and, instead, people should be developing certain broad skills. These same skills are important for our students to learn. The report explains each of the skills in detail, and also goes into the implications for education and policies.

Here are the skills:

Sense-making. The ability to determine the deeper meaning or significance of what is being expressed

Social intelligence. The ability to connect to others in a deep and direct way, to sense and stimulate reactions and desired interactions

Novel and adaptive thinking. Proficiency at thinking and coming up with solutions and responses beyond that which is rote or rule-based

Cross-cultural competency. The ability to operate in different cultural settings

Computational thinking. The ability to translate vast amounts of data into abstract concepts and to understand data-based reasoning

New-media literacy. The ability to critically assess and develop content that uses new media forms and to leverage these media for persuasive communication

Transdisciplinarity. Literacy in and ability to understand concepts across multiple disciplines

Design mind-set. Ability to represent and develop tasks and work processes for desired outcomes

Cognitive load management. The ability to discriminate and filter information for importance and to understand how to maximize cognitive functioning using a variety of tools and techniques

Virtual collaboration. The ability to work productively, drive engagement and demonstrate presence as a member of a virtual team

A summary map of the skills:

Related:
Project Based Learning resources


21st Century Skills resources


WPI Plan - a great educational model


ISTE - 21st Century Skills and Educational Technology




Resources:


The Institute for the Future and “Future Work Skills 2020″ 

Gigacom.com article (list of skills came from this site)

Great Prezi for students (and teachers) on future-proofing an education

I just found a great Prezi on Edudemic's site called "How To Future-Proof Your Education." The Prezi was created by Maria Andersen and explains how while content and technology change, the key skills around them stay the same. They skills include learning, explaining, analyzing, solving problems, and communications. If students have these skills, they can adapt to the changing future.

This is a great Prezi for educators to look at to get ideas for skills they should be teaching their students and it's a great Prezi to share with high school and college students.

Partnership for 21st Century Skills - tools and resources for educators

The Partnership for 21st Century Skills is a national organization advocating for 21st century skills for students. The site has tools, resources, publications, and more to help schools and teachers help their students develop these skills.

How technology can help improve education.

(picture from http://www.ipli.com/ini-edu.htm)

(cross posted at http://www.techlearning.com/blogs/25562)

Improving education is a huge issue (and always has been). Test scores, our perceived performance against other countries, and other factors have pushed education to the forefront of national politics, right behind healthcare reform. Technology can be used to improve teaching and learning and help our students be successful.

While smaller schools and class sizes are always desired, technology can not do that physically. However, technology can be a “force multiplier” for the teacher. Instead of the teacher being the only source of help in a classroom, students can access web sites, online tutorials, and more to assist them. Education doesn’t stop at the end of the school day because students have access to teachers, resources, and assignments via the web and access these resources at any time. Students can also get help and tutoring at any time, whether from the teacher via email or online collaboration, or from a help web site.

Parental involvement is another factor that can increase student achievement. Most parents these days have extremely busy schedules, work different hours, and can’t always help their child with homework or come to school for conferences. Technology can help. Parents can go to a class website and see what their child is working on, they can contact teachers via email and web sites, and they can even check their child’s attendance and grades through online systems. They can also talk to their children from work via email and instant messaging.

Inquiry based projects are another way to get students to think rather than memorize. These group projects also help students build important skills such as communications, team work, critical thinking and problem solving. Technology can help with these projects and skills. Students can create things such as web sites, blogs, and multimedia presentations as part of their project. They can use the web for research and as a resource. They can connect with students at other schools and do collaborative work with them. They also learn technology skills while doing these projects.

Money is always an issue in education and technology can help. Virtual field trips, electronic forms instead of paper, email instead of printed memo’s, virtual labs, electronic textbooks, and the thousands of free online resources can all save schools money and give students excellent educational experiences.

Teachers can use technology to find resources and attend virtual professional development seminars and conferences (most are free). They can also create personal learning networks (PLN) with Ning, Twitter, and other resources to find and share ideas and resources, and get support from their colleagues. Technology can give teachers and students great resources, new opportunities for learning, ways to collaborate and create, and save money.

Technology is a very powerful tool for education.

Some resources that can help:

http://www.google.com/options/

http://www.evernote.com/

http://www.zoho.com/

http://www.techlearning.com/

http://www.freetech4teachers.com/ http://educationaltechnologyguy.blogspot.com/2009/10/scribblar-online-whiteboard.html http://educationaltechnologyguy.blogspot.com/2009/10/calculus-lifesaver.html http://educationaltechnologyguy.blogspot.com/2009/08/resources-for-students.html http://educationaltechnologyguy.blogspot.com/2009/10/21st-century-skills-and-education.html

http://educationaltechnologyguy.blogspot.com/2009/05/how-to-get-started-with-project-based.html

Share your ideas on how technology can help improve teaching and learning.

21st Century Skills and Education

There are some great discussions going on at Teach Paperless and Metanoia about 21st Century Skills and 21st Century Education. Below is a compilation of my comments that I have posted on both sites and my thoughts on the topic. There has also been discussions about this on Tech&Learning Magazine's site. I have listed more links at the end of the post.

I feel that 21st century education is more student centered. Students are given a task and then work on it, with the teacher as coach and resource. Project Based Learning is a great way to incorporate this. I am an aerospace engineer and worked as an engineer for 10 years before becoming an educator. I try to have my students do things like I did at work. I try to show them that they will have to be able to find things out for themselves. That they will have to be able to work together as a team and solve problems. I also talk to them about new business trends, world events, and new technologies. I also talk to them about new businesses that are being created.

We can never prepare our students for every specific new thing out there. But, we can give them the skills to be able to adapt to new things. Teach them how to think and solve problems, teach them how to communicate and work together, teach them how to do research and self-teach themselves, and encourage their creativity. Educational technology tools can help us teach students, but they do not automatically make it 21st century education. We can use technology to do things differently (PowerPoint vs. writing on the board), or to do different things (virtual lab or field trip). Instead of the old dioramas and posters, students can create blogs, videos and web sites. Technology can help students explore things and share their work with others.

Technology can also be used to address multiple intelligences. Instead of just written words, students can see videos, sounds, pictures, and interactive demonstrations. Text-to-speech systems can help ELL and struggling students. Technology is also more interesting to students. My students would rather do online, interactive problems than work problems on paper. Same skills learned, but in a different way.

When I think of 21st and 22nd century skills, I think of being able to utilize new technologies and work in new paradigms. However, I see too many educational types using 21st Century skills to mean: project based learning, collaboration, critical thinking, and problem solving. These are things that I was doing as a student many years ago. For me, I see us needing to teach students how to think critically and solve problems, learn on their own, and be creative and adaptable. We should use new technologies and show them how the world is changing so that they can adapt to new things. We can't prepare them for every specific future job or thing, but we can give them base skills that will help them be prepared for anything. I think we need to really define 21st Century Skills better so that this kind of confusion doesn't keep happening (people calling things 21st Century Skills when they are not). Too many people think 21st century skills and 21st century education just means using technology. It is much more than that.

The 21st Century has just begun. We can only imagine what it will bring. Think of the world a hundred years ago, then 50 years ago, and then 25 years ago. Things are changing exponentially and I am excited to see what the future brings. I try to give my students basic skills necessary to adapt to the changes the future may bring. I learned how to type on an electric typewriter. My first computer was a Radio Shack Color Computer. I have learned how to learn on my own. I was taught skills in college that have helped me to adapt to new careers, new technologies, and a new world. I am trying to teach these skills to my students. I'm trying to get them to be creative thinkers and imagine a better world.

One project that I do with students is to have them create a new device, technology or product. They have to talk about the physics behind it, but they can be very creative. They have come up with some great ideas. I encourage them to think about a problem or need in the world and address that. That to me is the epitomy of what the future holds. People solving the world's problems.

We need to give our students the basic skills needed to adapt to a changing world and encourage them to be creative and innovative.

Some more articles I've written on this topic:

http://educationaltechnologyguy.blogspot.com/2009/09/21st-century-skills.html

http://educationaltechnologyguy.blogspot.com/2009/05/how-to-get-started-with-project-based.html

http://www.techlearning.com/blogs/23342

Funny and sad cartoon about 21st Century Education.

Let's keep this discussion going!

21st Century Skills

(cross posted at http://www.techlearning.com/blogs/23342)

"21st Century Skills" is an often used phrase to describe the skills that educators and employers feel that students need to learn in order to be successful in school, careers, and life. I've argued that many of those skills have been needed and taught for decades.

If you think about it, students have always needed to be able to communicate, work in teams, follow directions, solve problems, and find information. I was taught these skills in high school and college and I was doing projects back then also. I graduated high school in 1988 and college in 1992. 21st Century Skills and Project Based Learning are not new ideas. The difference is that these skills need to be applied using new technology.

I was in college when the internet was young. We had text based FTP, email, and newsgroups. In my first engineering job, we started to use the internet for research and communication. Today, everything can be done using the internet and anything and everything can be found on the internet. When I was in school, we had encyclopedias and other reference books that were considered acceptable, reliable and peer reviewed. Today, we have the internet with information published by anyone. This means that today's students need to know how to find the information they are looking for and analyze it to see if it is reliable.

When I was in school, we had to go to the library, or hope our textbook or the encyclopedia at home had the information we needed. Today, students can find information on the internet from home, school, or anywhere using WiFi and even their phones.

This instant access to information means that students don't have to memorize as much information to get things done. They have to know how to find it and analyze it to see if it is reliable or not. We should be teaching them this. Instead of content memorization, we should be teaching content processes.

I feel that critical thinking, problem solving, communications, and teamwork are not 21st Century Skills. They are critical skills that humans have needed throughout our history. I would say that 21st Century Skills would include finding and analyzing data on the internet and using new technologies to do things better and more efficiently.

To do this, we should incorporate projects in our curriculum that require students to use technology to complete the project. We need to go beyond just web research and PowerPoint and have students create and interact. Blogs, web sites, online discussions, videos, and more can all be used in a project. The project then teaches the critical skills mentioned above, as well as the 21st Century Skills.

Projects should be based on real life issues, not just a topic from class turned into a project. To get ideas, look in the newspaper and news stories, as well as hot topics online. You can also talk to local businesses about issues that they are working on. You can even ask the students if there are issues or projects that they would like to work on. Be creative.

Educators need to teach content, critical skills, and how to use technology to find information, solve problems, and achieve goals. Projects are a great way to do this.

For more information on 21st Century Skills and Project Based Learning:

http://www.techlearning.com

and search this blog.

CPEP Day 2009

CPEP (Connecticut Pre-Engineering Program) Day 2009 was held this past Saturday, May 9th, at the Connecticut Convention Center in Hartford, CT. 

CPEP's mission is to help under-represented students explore, prepare for, and reach their full potential in Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math. CPEP is an after school activity that provides students with the opportunity to explore STEM careers and topics and apply STEM knowledge and skills to hands on projects. CPEP day is the culmination of their efforts where they compete against other schools in different events. CPEP is for Middle School and High School students and competitions are separated by category.

Some of the projects students work on are Roller Coasters, Battery Powered Boats, Maglev trains, Mousetrap Cars, Aerodynamics, Egg Drop, Bridges, and Solar Cars. The students learn about the science behind each topic and then design and build models for each topic. At CPEP day, the students compete to see whose project is the best. Points are awarded for many different aspects, including appearance, creativity, and function. 

Central High School is in their first year of CPEP after a hiatus. We had 4 teams compete in two different projects and one team took 3rd place in the Battery Powered Boats competition. In this competition, students are given Styrofoam, a battery, a motor, and a propeller and must design and build a boat. Then, at CPEP day, they race them and the fastest boat wins. The team had some stability issues that were new that day, but they very quickly fixed them and did great.

All 4 teams did a great job, had fun, and learned a lot. 

I recommend programs like this for every middle school and high school. We must emphasize STEM subjects and encourage our students. Programs like this make STEM subjects fun.

How to Get Started with Project Based Learning

(image from education-world.com)

Originally posted on TechLearning magazine.

Project Based Learning (PBL) is a great way to teach students content, 21st century skills, and engage them in something fun and educational. I spoke more about PBL in an earlier blog (http://www.techlearning.com/blogs_ektid17052.aspx ) and we had some great reader comments (Tech&Learning, May 2009, page 14). Today I'd like to give some tips and ideas on how to get started with PBL in your classroom.

First of all, PBL can be used in any classroom, in any subject, at any grade level. Projects can be one class period, or take weeks to complete. Projects can address one curriculum item, or many. It all depends on how you want to implement it and how comfortable it is for you.

PBL does take planning. You need to look at your curriculum and the objectives you want to accomplish and then plan a project that will lead your students to reach these objectives.

For instance, I teach physics and developed a project for my classes on structures and stress and strain. The project started with a very short lecture on the topics of stress and strain and the physics behind it. Then the students completed a webQuest about stress and strain that lead them to information about bridges and bridge design. From here, they used bridge design software from West Point to design a bridge that would meet certain requirements I set up. The final step was to build a model of their bridge and see if it would hold the weight. Each group was competing to see who's bridge would hold the most weight. During this project, students learned about stress and strain, structures, applications of physics to real life, web searching, team work, communications, design, and model building.

Another example of PBL is having the students research a topic and present it to the rest of the class through a multimedia presentation, website, or poster. Each topic should be an extension of something you just did in class. In this way, the students teach each other. They will also learn their topic more in depth when they have to be able to explain it to others.

Start small. Think of a lesson you teach and think of a way that the students could do a project to learn that topic instead of sitting in class listening to you talk about it. Try out a one class period project before moving on to a large scale project. Search the internet for examples of projects and adapt them for your class. An internet search of "Project Based Learning" will get a huge list of results for you. I also suggest searching for "WebQuests", "Problem based learning" and "Projects" with your classes subject and grade.

Another idea for projects is to look at your school or community and see what they need. Art students could research the history of the school and create a wall mural. English students could write a history of the school, or help other groups write letters to lawmakers to get an issue addressed. Music students could write an updated version of the school song, or even a new one. Tech Ed students could build wheelchair ramps, furniture, or other items needed in the community. Biology students could study water quality in a stream nearby or research animal or plant life.

An idea I got from my wife (a Biology Education student) is to have students create a lesson for other students about a topic. I am planning on using this with my AP Physics students after AP testing this month. They are going to create a physics help guide for the honors physics class. Next year, I'm going to have the honors physics class create a help guide for the general physics class. The students will learn their content better and provide a great resource for fellow students.

PBL offers teachers a new way to have their students learn content as well as 21st century skills. The students can have fun while learning, and even provide a service for others as part of the project. Be creative and have fun with PBL.

Some web resources to get you started:

Tech&Learning - http://www.techlearning.com/article/1784,http://www.techlearning.com/article/7942

Project Based Learning online - http://pbl-online.org/

Edutopia - http://www.edutopia.org/project-learning

THE Journal - http://www.thejournal.com/articles/23893,http://www.thejournal.com/articles/17124, http://www.thejournal.com/articles/17105

Checklists for PBL - http://pblchecklist.4teachers.org/

PBL Multimedia Project - http://pblmm.k12.ca.us/PBLGuide/WhyPBL.html

Intro to PBL - http://www.gsn.org/Web/pbl/

Getting started with PBL - http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/help/HA011887851033.aspx

Eduscapes PBL guide - http://eduscapes.com/tap/topic43.htm

Please share your project ideas with everyone!

Updated - another great resource: http://21centuryedtech.wordpress.com/2010/01/16/free-project-based-learning-resources-that-will-place-students-at-the-center-of-learning/