Essential Question: What are the key trends in ed tech for 2012?
In this show, Mark and David are joined by Dr. Karen Richardson, executive director of the Virginia Society for Technology in Education. Following on the heals of the December VSTE conference, Karen shares three key trends she has identified for educational technology in the coming year:
- Mobile devices (e.g., iPads, iPods, etc.)
- Bring your own device initiatives
- Social networking policies for schools
Tips of the Week:
Mark - Zite app for iPad and iPhone is a great way to expand your horizons for educational blogs. Starting with a list of feeds from Google Reader or other RSS readers, Zite builds a "personalized magazine" of feeds from a variety of sources. Beyond a simple RSS reader, however, Zite learns over time what you're interested in reading and pulls in posts and articles with similar keywords to the articles already in your feed. Users can further "train" Zite to find interesting articles by clicking a button that will pull in more articles for the particular keywords, sites, or authors that you indicate. Mark found Mindshift from KQED - an excellent blog of substantive and thoughtful articles on technology in education.
Karen - Storify is an interesting web-based service that enables users to create stories based on social media from a variety of sources. The site states, "Storify gives you a view of the world through the eyes of the people on the ground where news is happening. Our users bring together the best text, photos and video from social media to tell stories that help make sense of the world." For more information on Storify, visit the Guided Tour or view this example created by Ed Week on the impact of NCLB.
David - Two great sites for educational animations are RSA Animates, Open University animations (see right side of page playlists). David also came across the Work Skills for 2020 project from the Institute for the future. It appears to be an interesting alternative/complement to the 21st Century Skills framework.