Much buzz has been receiving the uses of the iPod Touch in the classroom lately. However, Skype is too, a free and easy way for teachers to open up their classroom and their students to a world way beyond their campus. With Skype, students can learn from other students, connect with other cultures, and expand their knowledge in amazing ways. Teachers and parents can also benefit from Skype in the classroom(vid).Follow the link below to learn how you can take advantage of the power of Skype in... Read Full Story

We woke early today and start browsing the most recent tweets. We came across to an interesting report, licensed under Creative Commons: The Future of Learning Institutions in a Digital Age by Cathy N. Davidson and David Theo Goldberg with the assistance of Zoë Marie Jones. The discovering of this study was possible thanks to Jasom Flom.Thanks to funding from the MacArthur Foundation, both report's authors, "investigate the internet’s transformation of shared and interactive learning. They su... Read Full Story

The Journal:"Technology is core and essential to the strategies we are using to reform education." That was the message from both Jim Shelton, assistant deputy secretary for innovation and improvement at the United States Department of Education, and Aneesh Chopra, chief technology officer in the White House.Sitting comfortably in overstuffed chairs on stage at a packed meeting of the State Educational Technology Directors Association (SETDA), these two top Obama administration representative... Read Full Story

NECC ‘09: Blogging Best PracticesDecisions about your blog: Is it transportable? Where are you going to host it? What’s the policy (your policy) on comments? What’s my school’s policy on sharing? What topics will I cover? Is it under Creative Commons? Should I have a group blog? what colors, designs and templates should I use?Great iTouch Apps for Primary Students Yesterday here at NECC I learned about three fantastic applications for younger / primary age students from an Australian teacher... Read Full Story

On Sunday, I did enjoyed listening Malcolm Gladwell’s keynote. Other interesting streaming I was watching was Copyright Confusion by Renee Hobbs. Unfortunately, today I wasn't able to follow interesting conversations particularly about the uses of iPhone/iPod in the classroom as to what was the percentage of this gadgets to present in a classroom to work effectively with students; or Scott Floyd's talk about Wordpress favorite plug-ins.In exchange, I am going to refer some of the blogs that ... Read Full Story

As a preamble to what is coming, yesterday started the EdubloggerCon. This unique experience has been organized by Steve Hargadon. The EduBlogger Conference is the 3rd time has been organized for free, and Dr Leigh Zeitz thinks there were 200 attendees. Today is the 2nd. day of NECC09 and there will be many formal and informal discussions at the National Educational Computing Conference in Washington about how to turn K-12 schools into more digitally friendly learning environments in tough b... Read Full Story

Much has been written about headlines and how that way we present it has a deep impact on the attention visitors and readers pay to such an article. And this is one of those cases, deliberately I chose the headline, paraphrasing the popular The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People by Stephen Covey, a business self-help book.But what makes teachers highly effective?We should start with two basic premises: Teachers are facilitators and not entertainers even though occasionally have to play t... Read Full Story

There are two paragraphs that really grabbed our attention on this post. As Barnett Berry puts it, lets get real about teacher experience and its effects on student achievement:For your delight, this the most significant defense of experienced teachers I ever read (stressed section is ours):Policy pundits and journalists have few qualms about calling for any seasoned teaching veteran to be put out to pasture. They aren't really interested in whether the teacher is effective, ineffective or ... Read Full Story

Tania Sheko brought up this question on Twitter. What's the best way to follow NECC online? (@taniasheko) and we want to go over it. Not all of us can afford to go, but would still like to participate.So without further introduction let me tell you that Jennifer Ragan-Fore has created http://www.neccning.org/ where participants are gathering to get info about the coming conference. There is also a Virtual NECCers group created by Scott Merrick where he updates you that "Joe Corbett of the I... Read Full Story

2¢ WorthA common feature of some of the most successful Web 2.0 applications is their simplicity, and nothing has demonstrated this more than blogging. Blogger.com, a free blogging platform from Pyra Labs, was launched on August 23, 1999.1 Suddenly, anyone with access to a computer and the Internet, and the slightest typing skills, could publish to the world — for free. Type the title of your article into a textbox, type your article, click [Publish], and your words are available to a glob... Read Full Story