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Myths and Opportunities: Technology in the Classroom by Alan November from Brian Mull on Vimeo.


Related posts:Simple Pleasures: Using Technology, Using Google Scholar


Related posts:Simple Pleasures: Using Technology, Using Google Scholar

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Studio 4 Learning Great collection of videos for teachers of all subjects.  Use the videos to help teach a skill or concept to your class, or upload and share your own video.
Teacher Tube A community of teachers sharing all things related to education.  Lots of categories.  Like YouTube--but for teachers.
Global Solutions Great videos and flash presentations to inspire class discussions about topics related to social responsibility.
The Eight Irresistible Principles of Fun--Inspirational presentation.
5 Big Questions -- Inspirational reflections
The Great Work Movie -- Inspirational reflections (groovy).
Ken Robinson's creativity TED Talk -- Sir Ken Robinson makes an entertaining and profoundly moving case for creating an education system that nurtures (rather than undermines) creativity.  (awesome, funny, powerful)
NeoK12 is a site devoted to collecting and organizing videos into categories based on discipline.  A good collection and index.  Categories include (but are not limited to): Physical Science, Life Science, Health, Earth and Space, Social Studies, English, and Human Body.  They describe their site with this subhead: Educational videos and lessons for K-12 kids.
Jill Bolte Taylor's Stroke of Insight -- Jill Bolte Taylor got a research opportunity few brain scientists would wish for: She had a massive stroke, and watched as her brain functions -- motion, speech, self-awareness -- shut down one by one. An astonishing story.  (moving, amazing, incredible)
Mathlew Needleman has created a great resource and blog (and following) at Creating Lifelong Learners: digital literacy, higher level thinking, closing the digital divide.  He writes intelligently about all things teaching (from managing parent conferences to navigating social networks), but does a particularly great job tutoring and managing a community of teachers using video to teach critical thinking skills.  This guy's been busy for quite awhile and has uploaded a lot of valuable stuf

By Yael Grauer

I just finished my first two years of teaching. They were spent in a very challenging urban district that I soon learned was, in short, not a good fit . The challenges were many and rewards were few. And, although I have grown in leaps and bounds as a teacher from my first to second year (which I'm sure my students would attest to), by the end I was left feeling frazzled, destabilized and unsure whether I even wanted to teach.

Enter courage and renewal work.

I'd first heard of educational activist Parker Palmer while still completing a practicum as part of my teacher certification course. My supervising teacher lent me a copy of The Courage to Teach-which I admittedly did not even look through amidst the hustle and bustle of the first year of teaching. Still, I'd find quotes from Palmer here and there which always left me thirsting for more... such as this one:
"Teacher-bashing has become a popular sport. . . . Teachers make an easy target, for they are such a common species and so powerless to strike back. We blame teachers for being unable to cure social ills that no one knows how to treat; we insist that they instantly adopt whatever 'solution' has most recently been concocted by our national panacea machine; and in the process, we demoralize, even paralyze, the very teachers who could help us find our way."
And so I was thrilled to learn that there would be an introductory Courage to Teach retreat right here in Tucson, Arizona. Time spent in retreat--full of self-reflection and solitude (as well as conversations amidst like-minded people) seemed like just what the doctor ordered...and I thought would help me transition form the last two years of teaching and clean the slate a little before starting a new position next August.

We met at a retreat center at Picture Rocks. The desert is stunning, and it was impossible to forget when being thrust in the center of it--beautiful saguaros dotting the landscape, nestled in the mountains. A labyrinth a

Clay Shirky's latest Ted Talk has huge implications for education. Through the use of three modern day examples (a movement to prevent voter suppression, an earthquake, and a political discussion) he argues that the way people send and receive messages (news) has shifted from a model that has historically been largely crafted and controlled by the sender, to now one that is completely uncontrolled and reported (unedited) in real time.

Traditional audiences of media have now also become producers of media.

What that means is that through the use of media tools like Twitter, Facebook, and Blogs, citizens now routinely beat news and government agencies to the punch when it comes to announcing and spreading messages.

Shirky outlines the implications of a new media model that is:

Global
Social
Ubiquitous, and
Cheap

When it's inevitable that the majority of your students are not going to simply sit back and listen to the media, but become active producers of media, wouldn't it be wise to begin a discussion about what this means?  Since the production and distribution of media is no longer controlled, and amateurs are now as powerful as TV networks or newspaper conglomerates, how do we prepare our students to participate in ways that create value?

Watching Shirky will make you realize that shift really does happen. Now the question becomes, how do we, as educators, deal with this?

Using the comment section below, please share with us your thoughts.