RE: Kelly Kronfeld

http://timsreiki.com/onusl/yte/uzqrq/imdi/xovq/wsop/ilejk.htm

Best regards, Kelly Kronfeld

March Forth: The Grammar Song

5 Reasons Why The Apple iPad Will Revolutionize Education

farbood nivi January 27, 2010

It’s all about the UI. The product is the UI. All these mantras boil it down to one thing. The book is still better than the screen because it has a better UI. Until today. The UI of the iPad gets us over that tipping point. The UI of the iPad will allow a student to be in collaborating with a peer in Grockit one second, in their full color, full page text book, the next second, and on the internet surfing for a information to go with the textbook info they are about to share with their classmate in Grockit. All on the iPad because it will be easy and fruitful to spend your time and interaction-actions with that sort of UI.

1. Price – It’s $599 retail which means Apple can probably already sell it into schools for $299-$399 and in a couple years there should be a $199 version. This is significant. We are talking about 65M K-12 students at $199 so about $12B. They don’t need the 60GB version and they don’t need 3G. Sound crazy to spend $12B outfitting each kid in the country with a device with a UI like the iPad? Not at all. It would single handedly advance education as much as the chalkboard.

2. Touchscreen- Compare the touchscreen of the iPad to a mouse on a regular screen. If you’re learning spatial concepts in Math or any subject, being able to manipulate the object with your hands should make it more intuitive and easier to grasp than manipulating it with a mouse. Imagine highlighting. One of the distinct UI advantages about books is that you can annotate them. Annotating with writing or even highlighting with a mouse is cumbersome. Annotating with an iPad seems like it should be pretty easy and intuitive as well as giving you the additional and awesome bonus of things like searching for just areas you’ve highlighted.

3. Screen Size – There is an old saying that ‘quantity affects quality’. Well that couldn’t be more true here. The iPad is a really big iPhone and that actually fundamentally changes the equation. The interaction I described above about annotating a text book is not possible on an iPhone. Well, technically you CAN highlight with your finger in your iPhone Kindle App but that is specifically not like annotating in your textbook because the Kindle on your iPhone looks nothing like your textbook and the iPad totally does look like your textbook. Screen size also lets you work easily in an app like Grockit which, like a textbook, is fundamentally different with more real estate. And finally, we all know that we loved books with pictures the most when we were in School even the images in textbooks. Making those images come alive and serve as a real learning medium is all about screen size and resolution.

4. Apps – Because the App Store already has hundreds, if not thousands, of apps that are either directly about learning or a useful reference when learning or studying, the iPad is essentially a product that is launching, from day one, with hundreds if not thousands of useful apps for learning. Again, the ones that have text, images or video become even that much more useful because of the screen-size.

5. iBook – Books are still a primary mode of learning in many many learning environments and being able to interact with them in similar and even some better ways than you can with a real book is either here with the iPad or so close that I’m finally convinced it’s happening.

Anyways, I’m pretty pumped to get one and we’re pretty pumped to build Grockit as an app in the iPad to do our part to help with the revolutionizing of education part.

It’s all about the User Interface (UI). The product is the UI.  These mantras boil it down to one thing. The book is still better than the screen because it has a better UI…until today. The UI of the iPad gets us over that tipping point. The UI of the iPad will allow a student to be collaborating in Grockit in one second, in a full color page textbook the next second, and then on the internet surfing for info they are about to share with their classmate in Grockit.  All this on the iPad because it will be easy and fruitful to spend your time with that sort of UI.  Here are five reasons why the iPad will revolutionize education:
1. Price – It’s $499 retail which means Apple can probably already sell it into schools for $299-$399 and in a couple years there should be a $199 version. This is significant. We are talking about 65M K-12 students at $199 so about $12B. They don’t need the 60GB version and they don’t need 3G. Sound crazy to spend $12B outfitting each kid in the country with a device with a UI like the iPad? Not at all. It would single handedly advance education as much as the chalkboard.
2. Touchscreen- Compare the touchscreen of the iPad to a mouse on a regular screen. If you’re learning spatial concepts in Math or any subject, being able to manipulate the object with your hands should make it more intuitive and easier to grasp than manipulating it with a mouse. Imagine highlighting. One of the distinct UI advantages about books is that you can annotate them. Annotating with writing or even highlighting with a mouse is cumbersome. Annotating with an iPad seems like it should be pretty easy and intuitive as well as giving you the additional and awesome bonus of things like searching for just areas you’ve highlighted.
3. Screen Size – There is an old saying that ‘quantity affects quality’. Well that couldn’t be more true here. The iPad is a really big iPhone and that actually fundamentally changes the equation. The interaction I described above about annotating a text book is not possible on an iPhone. Well, technically you CAN highlight with your finger in your iPhone Kindle App but that is specifically not like annotating in your textbook because the Kindle on your iPhone looks nothing like your textbook and the iPad totally does look like your textbook. Screen size also lets you work easily in an app like Grockit which, like a textbook, is fundamentally different with more real estate. And finally, we all know that we loved books with pictures the most when we were in school, even the images in textbooks. Making those images come alive and serve as a real learning medium is all about screen size and resolution.
4. Apps – Because the App Store already has hundreds, if not thousands, of apps that are either directly about learning or a useful reference when learning or studying, the iPad is essentially a product that is launching, from day one, with hundreds if not thousands of useful apps for learning. Again, the ones that have text, images or video become even that much more useful because of the screen-size.
5. iBook – Books are still a primary mode of learning in many learning environments and being able to interact with them in similar and even some better ways than you can with a real book is either here with the iPad or so close that I’m finally convinced it’s happening.
Anyway, I’m pretty pumped to get one and we’re very pumped to build Grockit as an app in the iPad to do our part to help with the revolutionizing of education.

10 Ed Tech Apps That I’m Thankful For | Emerging Internet Technologies for Education

10 Ed Tech Apps That I’m Thankful For | Emerging Internet Technologies for Education

10 Ed Tech Apps That I’m Thankful For

by K. Walsh on November 29, 2009

Sharing my gratitude for some great online software applications.

In the spirit of the Thanksgiving Holiday, I’m taking a break from my series on Interactive Whiteboards, to post this list of internet and instructional technology products that I am grateful for. Some of these tools are purely education focused, and some are much more general. They have each played a role at the school where I oversee technology, or for me personally in my pursuit of education technology knowledge and awareness.

• SurveyMonkey: This low cost online survey tool is easy, flexible, and really delivers. We are able to create electronic surveys quickly, with a wide range of question formats available, and then hand off the administration of the surveys to the users who requested them. Survey administrators can have complete, secure access to results, browsing them in summary or full detail on line, and downloading them in a variety of useful formats for further analysis if desired. I was particularly thankful as I put up some new surveys recently and discovered that SurveyMonkey now provides much shorter URL’s for accessing surveys.
• The Timecruiser integrated suite of products: We licensed and implemented the Campus Cruiser portal and the Cruiser Alert emergency notification and messaging systems this year. I am thoroughly appreciative that we now have a robust Portal tool for the entire college community, and comforted by the knowledge that we have an easy and effective mechanism to message everyone quickly in the event of an emergency or other important notification situation. I am also quite grateful for the SaaS delivery model that eliminates the need for server procurement, implementation, maintenance/management, upgrade oversight, etc. I’m looking forward to the next step with this product suite, the migration from our current LMS/CMS (Blackboard) to the Course Cruiser LMS that is integrated into the Timecruiser suite.
• Google Sites: A was delighted to learn recently that this free application positions students to easily create an ad-free, uncluttered web site where they can host an electronic portfolio of representational academic work, which can facilitate further academic pursuits and their career searches.
• Doodle: This simple, free “polling” tool is a real time saver when trying to offer and coordinate multiple training sessions. In about 10 minutes, I can create multiple offerings of a training session, and send the link to the resulting poll to as many user as I want. Those users can then see and self-select from the available offerings. This has reduced the time required to administer the scheduling of training offerings from hours to minutes!
• Blogger: I am grateful for Blogger because it helped get me started with blogging about education technologies. Of course, Blogger also facilitates blogging for lots students, teachers, and administrators (as well as vast numbers of users outside of the educational field).
• Wetpaint: Wetpaint’s free Wiki’s are utilized in various courses at my college, and having the option to have ads turned off (for educational users) is very much appreciated! A Wetpaint Wiki can be a great, fun introduction to hosting your own web site, but it is also functional enough to serve as a pretty robust web-based community site.
• Microsoft Office: Yup, good old Office made the list (while this isn’t typically used as as online app, there are now online versions available). How many of us would be willing to give up Word or Excel? Up-and-comers like Google Docs offer interesting alternatives, but few of us could go without this gold standard productivity suite. We teach it in our classrooms, students use it regularly to complete assignments, and it plays a daily role in administrative processes.
• Goodsearch: While Google Search is the search engine of choice for the masses, we are grateful for Goodsearch here at our college because it allows organizations to earn some income for charitable purposes. By indicating the charity of your choosing when configuring Goodsearch, searches you conduct can result in small donations to that charity. For us, this helps to grow our scholarship funds for students in need.
• Wordpress: This free, powerful Content Management System is the main tool that allows me to produce a professional looking blog. It positioned me to blog about education technology in a professional manner, and I could hardly be more thankful for it (and for the recently purchased outstanding Thesis theme add-on). This blogging effort has helped me learn so much, which benefits my institution and myself. I have had the opportunity to meet and interact with lots of knowledgable people online through this blog, and Wordpress is an essential element in making that possible. Of course, Wordpress.com also hosts blogs, and like Blogger, hosts many student, teacher, etc., blogs.
• YouTube: YouTube undeniably popularized the use of Internet based video clips, and with the vast potential for this technology in instructional applications, one has to appreciate the impact that YouTube has had.

There are plenty more Internet and instructional technologies I am thankful for, but the above ten products quickly rose to the top of the list as I thought about the many tools we use. Hopefully this listing provides a couple insights for you (or at least reminds you of what you have to be grateful for!).

Speaking of you, and of gratitude, I am so very, very thankful for my subscribers and readers! Your feedback, comments, and suggestions bring so much value to the process. Without you, this blog just wouldn’t exist. I hope you had a great weekend, and I want to wish everyone a healthy and happy upcoming holiday season!

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Tagged as: Course Cruiser, Cruiser Alert, Doodle poll, Goodsearch charitable search, Google sites for eportfolios, portal for education, survey application, Survey Monkey, Timecruiser

Best Websites for Teaching and Learning

Best Websites for Teaching and Learning: "

VoiceThread has been recognized by the American Association of School Librarians (AASL) as one of The Best Websites for Teaching and Learning, a list of 'tools and resources of exceptional value to inquiry-based teaching and learning.' We're very honored to be recognized by this organization and community, and fully support the vision they've set forth in the Standards for the 21st-Century Learner. If you're looking for the language to describe the proper role of technology in education, you can find it within this great document.

posted on July 27th 2009 by Steve

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Technology & Learning

Project Based Learning Checklists

A project based learning method is a comprehensive approach to instruction. Your students participate in projects and practice an interdisciplinary array of skills from math, language arts, fine arts, geography, science, and technology.

"The collaborative nature of the investigation enhances all of these valuable experiences ... as well as promotes a greater appreciation for social responsibility (Scott, 1994)."

Building Motivation
Using Multiple Intelligences

PBL Checklists

To help you start using PBL, we've created age-appropriate, customizable project checklists for written reports, multimedia projects, oral presentations, and science projects. The use of these checklists keeps students on track and allows them to take responsibility for their own learning through peer- and self-evaluation.

PBL Project Checklists in English
PBL Project Checklists en Español

We now have customizable rubrics for multimedia projects, work skills, experiments, oral projects, and many more -- all available at RubiStar!

via pblchecklist.4teachers.org

Posted via web from kakronfeld's posterous

Link: http://kakronfeld.blogspot.com/2009/12/project-based-learning-checklists.html

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Coach Graves Dances!

Coach Graves' students get him to dance. He has been dancing for awhile. Check his video from September 2007.