pafa.net Rotating Header Image

Schools

Coursera to offer K-12 Teacher Professional Development MOOCs

May 2nd, 2013
by Polly-Alida Farrington.
No comments yet

An interesting move : Coursera Announces Professional Development Courses to Facilitate Lifelong Learning for Teachers

learn

photo credit: opensourceway via photopin cc

“Today we are extremely pleased to announce the launch of a teacher professional development category on Coursera. We believe that helping teachers improve their skills is an important contribution that we can make to the education of students everywhere. We are truly excited about the possibilities that having these courses available for free online, to be used independently or in a blended learning capacity, (more…)

Cool Tools for Schools 2013/14 – Interested?

Apr 14th, 2013
by Polly-Alida Farrington.
1 comment

evaluationI’ve had several requests to run another round of the Cool Tools for Schools project starting in October 2013.  It would be great to get a few more BOCES SLS regions involved as well.

If you’re not familiar with the project, it’s an online learning program based on the original 23 Things  Learning 2.0 program developed by Helene Blowers. Participants read through an online lesson, explore tools and examples, then do a learning activity to gain experience with the tools covered in each lesson.

Goals for the program are:

  • Gain familiarity with a variety of technology tools and explore how they can be used in K12 settings.
  • Opportunities to make connections with other educators and develop collaborations.
  • Increased confidence in exploring technology tools.

The two Cool Tools programs that have just finished running are:

Past Programs:

If you want to hear more about whether the program was valuable to the participants, the SLS Directors of the participating regions will be happy to share their experience with you.

And I’ll be happy to provide you with additional information about fees and how the programs are structured.

 

23 Things and Learning 2.0 in Schools

Apr 12th, 2013
by Polly-Alida Farrington.
Comments are off for this post

This past week I had the pleasure of presenting with Sarah Ludwig and Sara Kelley-Mudie during the Internet@Schools sessions at Computers in Libraries in Washington DC. Our session focused on Learning 2.0 and 23 Things in Schools. My slides are available below and on the conference presentations page, along with lots of great presentations from other sessions.

Bloggers who have shared notes from our session include:

Digital Learning Day – Feb 6, 2013

Jan 3rd, 2013
by Polly-Alida Farrington.
Comments are off for this post

digitallearningday
Digital Learning Day is coming up on Febraury 6, 2013.  Showcase your classroom and school!

Digital Learning Day is a national campaign that celebrates teachers and shines a spotlight on successful instructional practice and effective use of technology in classrooms across the country. The inaugural Digital Learning Day boasted tens of thousands of teachers representing nearly 2 million students.

The second annual Digital Learning Day is gaining momentum with ongoing activities, ideas, and collaboration opportunities leading up to February 6, 2013. Join the wave of education champions who seek to engage students, (more…)

BingItOn

Jan 1st, 2013
by Polly-Alida Farrington.
Comments are off for this post

BingItOn  - Enter a search and BingItOn retrieves a set of results from both Google and Bing, but doesn’t idenetify which set is which. Have students evaluate which set of results is better, identify criteria for good results and learn that using additional search tools has value.  (via: Online. 36.6 (November-December 2012): p13)

Testing ThingLink

Sep 1st, 2011
by Polly-Alida Farrington.
1 comment

Just saw a post about ThingLink on twitter and have to play! @AuntyTech has a whole bunch of ideas about using ThingLink in education.

Ok, I’ll be back in a minute or two after I play with it a bit.

And I’m back. Wow, that is so much fun! It reminds me a bit of doing a clickable imagemap in my early html days. But this is so much easier.

Here’s how it works:

(more…)

← Earlier Posts