This week’s Web Site of the Week is http://www.thinkfinity.org/ . A site sponsored by the Verizon Foundation to help students, parents and teachers teach and learn with technology.
“Our goal is to improve student achievement in traditional classroom settings and beyond by providing high-quality content and extensive professional development training.”
The site contains over 55,000 standards based lesson plans and other resources for teachers and after school programs including technology based learning tools. One feature I found especially interesting was FREE TRAINING FOR EDUCATORS.
Also mentioned on the site are the ISTE Standards I have discussed before and new organization to me http://www.21stcenturyskills.org/, a group dedicated to teaching students the technology skills they need for the new century.
There seems to be a lack of information available that helps define what teachers should know about technology, but I keep coming back to the question, if a certain skill set is expected of students, should not teachers also be held to this standard? We really need to start somewhere.
Let me know what you think.
Mike
“Our goal is to improve student achievement in traditional classroom settings and beyond by providing high-quality content and extensive professional development training.”
The site contains over 55,000 standards based lesson plans and other resources for teachers and after school programs including technology based learning tools. One feature I found especially interesting was FREE TRAINING FOR EDUCATORS.
Also mentioned on the site are the ISTE Standards I have discussed before and new organization to me http://www.21stcenturyskills.org/, a group dedicated to teaching students the technology skills they need for the new century.
There seems to be a lack of information available that helps define what teachers should know about technology, but I keep coming back to the question, if a certain skill set is expected of students, should not teachers also be held to this standard? We really need to start somewhere.
Let me know what you think.
Mike
Posts
You're absolutely correct; it is an excellent website. It got me to wondering how many free training sites are available, so I Googled out and found a couple:
ReplyDeletehttp://members.tripod.com/MR_LEGO_JOE/free_online_tutorials.htm
http://www.intelligentedu.com/
The main question in my mind is how many are truly meant to help teachers and how many are using it as a hook for later profits. Verizon is doing it as charity, good publicity and a nice tax write-off. No criticism meant here, I'm thrilled they're being so supportive.
Mike,
ReplyDeleteI thought http://www.thinkfinity.org/ was a good one, too. I shall be visiting it again.
I wish I had seen it a long time ago; like before I committed to another expert project. It would have been fun to make a website that
contained "How-To" articles for technologically challenged College professors. Call it "Kicking and Screaming". Nancy and I have made a slew
of tutorial papers before and can make a slew of them again. For instance, "How to FTP Your Webpage From Home Using FileZilla" would be quite useful.
It would have met all of the requirements for an expert paper. One could have demonstrated technology expertise with the articles, web page
design expertise and Educator expertise. A link could have been posted to the IC3 certification page
(http://www.certiport.com/portal/desktopdefault.aspx?TZ=-5). Perhaps it would generate some interest in this test for Instructors.
Hey, Mike, isn't this your topic?
Nancy,
ReplyDeleteYes my guess is there is no free lunch and everyone one of these "feebies" is up to something. My guess Google has some profit motive behind letting us use their site here for free.
Suzon,
ReplyDeleteWhen I first started this, I had something in mind but I had a great deal of trouble finding any research on the topic of what college instructors should know about technology. I wish I had picked something else, but you live and learn!
Michael,
ReplyDeleteI strongly encourage you to look more into the 21st Century Framework. I'm exploring it for another class and keep finding more value the more I reread it. Also, you might enjoy this resource...
http://etoolkit.org/etoolkit/map