Teachers With Apps

Today's post focuses on another of my fellow "20 to Watch" colleagues.  Jayne Clare is a special education teacher in New York.  Jayne co-founded Teachers With Apps (TWA) with colleague and early childhood educator Anne Rachel.  Their goal is to help educators everywhere select the best and most robust apps for their students.

What makes the Teachers With Apps reviews unique is that they are field-tested with a cross-section of students and teachers in their school.  This means you can be confident the reviews TWA provides are data-based and student reviewed.  I have already recommended this site to all of our iPad teachers and administrators.  They are all grateful to have such outstanding information to base app purchases on.

Check out Teachers With Apps today and see what you think.

Digital Learning Standards

Yesterday I had the opportunity to attend a Digital Learning Summit in Frankfort, KY.  The mission of the Digital Summit is to "Provide evidence that digital and blended learning in Kentucky schools and districts is having an impact on the preparation of all students to graduate college and career ready."

Part of the discussion centered around the proposed KY Standards for Digital Learning.  The intent of the standards is to fulfill the mission statement listed above.  However, the standards really they've developed don't really differ from what good teaching is anyway.  If you really think about it, good teaching is good teaching whether it's online or in a traditional classroom.

Having some time today, I did a quick search for Digital Learning Standards and found several education technology groups such as ISTE and iNACOL already have Digital Learning Standards available, which means we have folks in the state trying to re-create the wheel.  If somebody has already created the wheel, let's make their wheel better instead of trying to design our own wheel.

Oddly enough I also had the opportunity to participate in a Blended Learning webinar today provided by K12 focusing on a school in Colorado Springs, CO.  There were some great points made in that webinar that will be the subject of a future post, but it basically laid out how the district reimagined learning and the space it occurs in.  I'm looking forward to getting the recorded webinar and accompanying presentation to go through it with a fine tooth comb.

I'm a huge supporter of blended learning, and would like to see more of it not only in my district, but also throughout the Commonwealth of Kentucky.  If you've got ideas or plans your school or district has used, please share by responding to this post.

Spring Break 2013: Hiatus

As this post gets published, Spring Break will be starting in the Kenton County School District.  As I usually do, this blog will be on hiatus from April 6 through April 14.  Assuming we don't have major technology issues to recover from after a week off, I'll be posting again on April 15.

Project Explorer: Go Global

Technology and Social Media allows teachers to expand education beyond the four walls of a classroom.  Tools like Twitter, Facebook, and the Internet all allow teachers to bring the world to their students.  Now you can add Project Explorer to the list of tools teachers have available.

Project Explorer, founded by Jenny Buccos in 2003, has a mission "To bring the world into the classroom with free multimedia content and lesson plans that improve students’ global awareness and cross cultural understanding."  Through a combination of corporate, government, and individual sponsors, Project Explorer is able to provide these outstanding learning resources FREE to teachers all over the globe.

Project Explorer offers teachers lesson plans, videos, and educational blogs that cover all subjects and foster cross cultural understanding.  Students can follow the footsteps of Indiana Jones and fly above the desert in a hot air balloon in Jordan, climb ancient temples and swim with sharks in Belize and Costa Rica, and celebrate Carnival (not the cruise line) on a quick trip to Haiti.

The list of awards Project Explorer has earned is numerous.

• ProjectExplorer.org Founder Jenny M. Buccos named 2012 White House Champion of Change.
• 2011 GOLD Parents’ Choice Award for the highest production standards and universal human values.
• 2011 Non-profit Standard of Excellence Award from the Web Marketing Association.
• ProjectExplorer.org Founder Jenny M. Buccos named 2010 Woman of the Year by She Takes On The World.
• 2010 Winner of Best Use of Educational Video from EduBlogs.
• 2010 National Award for Citizen Diplomacy for ProjectExplorer.org’s Jenny M. Buccos. The U.S. Center for Citizen Diplomacy recognized Buccos for her exemplary work as a citizen diplomat.
• 2010 recipient of the EduNet ChoiceAward (Canada).
• 2009 Top Pick Website by Education Week Magazine for innovative approach to tech in classroom instruction.
• 2009 GOLD Parents’ Choice Award for the highest production standards and universal human values.

And to top off this list of impressive awards, Project Explorer founder Jenny Buccos, like me, was name as an Education Technology 20 to Watch by the National School Board Association. She is one of the few non-profit organizations to receive this prestigious award. As an educator, it was an honor and a privilege to meet Jenny, and I look forward to working with her in the future.

As for Project Explorer, I plan on introducing this series to all 18 of our schools, and can't wait to see where Project Explorer takes us next!