During the 2015-16 school year, I visited schools across the nation to see how technology can transform teaching and learning. The changes I’ve seen have been exciting, meaningful, and more often than not, challenging to get right. The “digital divide” is still very real. In places like Eminence, Kentucky, we’ve seen how creative school leaders have found…
Currently in my district we’ve had some preliminary talks regarding if/how digital portfolios could be implemented on a wide-scale. Of course, while the focus shouldn’t necessarily be on the technology, one of the first questions asked by everyone (both in and out of district) always involves what type of platform we have in mind. While these portfolio…
At Microsoft, we’re passionate about our vision to empower everyone to achieve more. Every day our teams are striving to help educators expand their passion for teaching by using technology that can transform their classrooms and help their students achieve more. And, just as important, we’re committed to celebrating educators and schools that are raising…
Teachers in Littleton, Colorado — like teachers in many places — are increasingly asking students to read and write online. Free tools like Google Docs have made it easy for students to work on the same piece of writing at home and at school, and have allowed teachers to explore collaborative writing assignments and synchronous…
Remember One Laptop Per Child? They distributed a few million cheap, brightly-colored XO laptops running a weird version of Linux called “Sugar OS,” and then… what happened? Well, I’m not sure actually. But OLPC Australia is carrying the torch, sort of. This offshoot now calls itself “One Education,” and has just announced the Infinity:One. Gone…
“We dropped over $10,000 last year on a math product, but I’m not sure if it’s really helped our students learn.” Sound familiar? Source: How Do We Know When Technology Helps—or Hurts—the Classroom? Educators at ISTE Weigh In | EdSurge News Trying to gauge the effectiveness of any teaching strategy is difficult, so this question…
We’ve been previewing Google Springboard and the new Google Sites with a small set of customers, and we’re excited to begin to extend each of these new apps to more customers through an Early Adopter Program. Source: Google Apps update alerts: Powering a more connected and collaborative enterprise Google Springboard sounds like Google Now, except…
Here is a look at the top posts and shared items for the week. ⓔ Who is gutsy enough to use The Most Dangerous Writing App in their classroom Self destructing text if you stop typing? What’s not to love? ⓔ Email subaddresses (plus aliases) in GMail (and others) A post from almost a year…
School Library Budgets Rise 20%, Yet Challenges Remain | Spending Survey 2016 | School Library Journal Yet funding levels remain far below 2010–11, when school library budgets averaged $10,348 and the median, $7,000. Furthermore, the nearly 800 school librarians who responded to SLJ’s survey in January 2016 say they believe their budgets will fall an…
Top 10 Reasons to Create Little Free Libraries in Your Community by Tammy Mulligan and Clare Landrigan We often support schools and communities with promoting summer reading. We want students to continue their “readerly lives” over the summer. A few years ago, we were researching ideas to get books to students in different communities and…