Building Capacity for 21st Century Learning in Schools

The technology on offer for teachers and learners today can be baffling. The question is: how can schools prepare their teachers so they can succeed in the 21st century? In this free webinar, co-hosted with ItsLearning, Tom and Justin explain how schools, colleges and universities can help their teachers develop the skills – and motivation – they need to use 21st century skills in and outside the classroom. Date: 29 September 2011 Time: 3 PM CEST Duration: 60 minutes We are excited to be presenting with ItsLearning as we use their platform to deliver the online course content for our…

Exploring the Process of Educational Transformation

Technology now permeates almost every sphere of life and has proven transformative in diverse sectors – from marketing and communications to journalism and political campaigning. Technology also offers new opportunities for student-student and educator-student interactions and new audiences for student-created content. Yet, few educators have experienced the transformative potential of these new tools in their classrooms and few schools are aligned to meet the demands and realities of a 21st century society. Schools systems have spent vast sums equipping their schools with hardware, software, and network infrastructure, but classroom instruction remains essentially unchanged. Most educators continue traditional teacher-centered instructional practices, though today’s society demands a broader…

Nurturing Instructional Change In 21st Century Classrooms

Emerging technologies, a globalized world, and a changing labor market are spurring innovative approaches to district and school curriculum design. Innovative educators are incorporating inquiry-based learning strategies that make meaningful and innovative use of the “Read-Write” Web to prepare students to be effective global citizens. With this in mind, we are pleased to offer a unique online institute from November 3rd-21st for school and district curriculum designers, academic department heads, classroom teachers, and other educational leaders, focused on preparing how to use new technologies to foster 21st century competencies in students. Nurturing Instructional Change in 21st Century Classrooms is an…

EdTechTeacher2012 Winter Conference

We are pleased to announce that EdTechTeacher will be bringing together the education technology community for an inaugural EdTechTeacher2012 Winter Conference on March 3-4, 2012, hosted by the Microsoft New England Research and Development (NERD) Center in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Leading Change in Changing Times is a gathering of educational leaders — both in and out of the classroom — to discuss and explore the impact of new technologies on our schools as well as the need to incorporate 21st century competencies into our learning environments. Participants will leave with both powerful conceptual frameworks and sustainable, practical applications for innovating their…

Teacher to Teacher Professional Learning

I’m getting ready this week for MassCUE, the annual Massachusetts gather of the EdTech community. It’s held at Gillette Stadium, which is a quirky and awesome place to go for a conference. The Kraft family is very generous in sharing the space, and John Kraft last year gave the best impromptu “keynote” of the conference in his welcoming address. I’m very fortunate to be presenting at MassCUE with the folks from the Watertown Public Schools; we’re doing a session called “Teacher to Teacher Professional Learning.” Over the last five years, Watertown has built the best teacher-led, job-embedded, blended professional development program…

EdTechTeacher at MassCue2011

The EdTechTeacher team presented throughout MassCue 2011. Co-Directors, Tom Daccord and Justin Reich, as well as Instructor & Presenter, Greg Kulowiec, hosted several sessions during the event. Tom’s presentations at MassCue 2011: Assessment 2.0: Frameworks, Strategies, Examples Primary Sources 2.0 In collaboration with Jean Fitzgerald, Toni Carlson, and Elizabeth Kaplan of Watertown Public Schools, Justin presented Teacher to Teacher Professional Learning. Greg Kuloweic presented YouTube, Twitter, and the Curriculum.

Open Education & Classroom Tools – articles from the EdTechTeacher Team

Justin Reich, Co-Director of EdTechTeacher, just returned from  the Open Education conference in Park City. He has posted his thoughts on The Future of Open Educational Resources to his blog, EdTechResearcher. Instructor and Presenter, Greg Kuloweic, recently wrote about Cell Phones as Classroom Tools for teachinghistory.org – the National History Education Clearinghouse. In his article, he discusses two tools for turning cell phones into classroom response systems, Poll Everywhere and Socrative.

The Mobilization of Research

Last spring, Lory Hough from Harvard’s Ed Magazine and I swapped emails for several weeks regarding the use of Wikipedia in the classroom. Her final product, Truce Be Told, appeared last month. Throughout the process, I started thinking about how I have not only changed the way that I approach finding information for research, but also how I actually work through the process itself. In middle and high school, I first learned the research process – a rigid system involving note cards, encyclopedias, card catalogs, more note cards, and multi-colored paper clips. Begin with an encyclopedia to generate a list of…