Students connect through technology

Apr 29, 2008 @ 11:59 PM

By LAURA WILCOX

The Herald-Dispatch

HUNTINGTON -- Cabell County teachers are reaching across the nation to share ideas and teaching techniques with teachers in California.

On Tuesday, some Geneva Kent Elementary School teachers and others gathered in the school's cafeteria to connect with elementary school teachers in Linwood, Calif., using Polycom technology.

The school has been partnering with Thurgood Marshall Elementary in Linwood for the past couple of years. The recent purchase of the Polycom communication system provides mutual learning opportunities for staff and students via audio and video in real time.

The groups have been meeting recently through the technology to participate in a book study, reviewing concepts of "Teaching for Tomorrow."

"It's teaching us how to teach children differently in the 21st century, how to solve problems, how to think critically," said Vickie Smith, project coordinator and kindergarten teacher at Geneva Kent.

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Blogging helps encourage teen writing

Survey reveals that student bloggers are more prolific and appreciate the value of writing more than their peers
From eSchool News staff and wire service reports

For most media outlets that reported on an important new survey measuring the impact of technology on teens' writing skills, the big news from the survey was that emoticons and text-messaging abbreviations are creeping into students' formal writing assignments. :-(

Buried beneath the alarm of writing "purists," however, was a promising finding with equally important implications for schools: Blogging is helping many teens become more prolific writers.

The survey, conducted by the Pew Internet and American Life Project with support from the College Board and its National Commission on Writing, explores the links between the formal writing that teens do for school and the informal, electronic communication they exchange through eMail and text messaging.

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The New Face of Learning: The Internet Breaks School Walls Down

What happens to time-worn concepts of classrooms and teaching when we can now go online and learn anything, anywhere, anytime?

by Will Richardson

At some point last year, the Web welcomed its one billionth user. Demographers who study such things determined that this person was in all likelihood a twenty-four-year-old woman from Shanghai. As far as I know, no prizes were awarded.

The striking thing to me about that milestone is not the enormity of the number, however. More interesting, perhaps, is that the one billionth person to jump onto the Web could just as easily been an eight-year-old kid from Sweden or the South Bronx (or, for that matter, an eighty-year-old from South Africa) who sat down at a computer, opened a browser, and for the first time started connecting to the sum of human knowledge we are collectively building online. Furthermore, that eight-year-old had just as much ability to start contributing what she might know about horses or her hometown or whatever her passions might be, becoming an author in her own right, teaching the rest of us what she knows.

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Tweet Spot: Web 2.0 Educators Are Atwitter About Twitter

By Chris O’Neal

4/30/08

Twitter is a Web 2.0 utility that asks the question "What are you up to?" It's a microblogging platform that allows users to share small tidbits about their current activities, locations, plans, and more. I can send out a Twitter update using my cell phone or my blog or by logging into the Twitter Web site.

Think of it as a way to mass-blast your thoughts or schedule to anyone who's interested in following you. These Twitter blasts (also called tweets) are short -- no more than 140 characters per post -- so this is certainly not a way to discuss intense details or give exhaustive updates.

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Audio: Ga. Program Pays Low-Income Students to Study

by Odette Yousef
NPR

Morning Edition, April 22, 2008 · Some kids in Fulton County, Ga., are earning a paycheck just for doing their homework. A pilot project sponsored by a local foundation is offering a group of low-income students $8 an hour to go to after-school study sessions twice a week.

Jackie Cushman, engineer of the Learn and Earn program, said she hopes the money will get the kids into the classroom, but that, once there, they'll start to enjoy learning.

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Tech encourages students' social skills

Studies illustrate how some classroom technology can lead to student collaboration
By Meris Stansbury, Assistant Editor, eSchool News

Well-integrated technology opens social networks for students and allows children to develop key social skills, according to two recent studies conducted by researchers at the University at Buffalo, State University of New York, and the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.

Researchers X. Christine Wang and Cynthia Carter Ching have based both of their reports, titled "Social Construction of Computer Experience in a First Grade Classroom: Social Processes and Mediating Artifacts," and "Digital Photography and Journals in a Kindergarten-First-Grade Classroom: Toward Meaningful Technology Integration in Early Childhood Education," on the theoretical framework introduced by Lev Vygotsky.

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