Learning & Leading Through Technology

The Anti-Education Era: Creating Smarter Students through Digital Learning by James Paul Gee explores strategies and tools for today’s parents, educators, and policy makers, including virtual worlds, artificial tutors, and ways to create collective intelligence where everyday people can solve hard problems. By harnessing the power of human creativity with interactional and technological sophistication, Gee writes, we can finally overcome the limitations of our educational system and solve problems in our high-risk global world.

MORE INFO: www.palgrave.com/products/title.aspx?pid=628397

Griffin Technology has released a lightweight portable case for the iPad. Ideal for classrooms, labs, or study groups, the SeeSaw case is designed to transform the iPad into a personal or group tabletop workstation that is steady and stable for viewing, tapping, and typing as well as easy to hold, carry, and use. Users can quickly switch between portrait and landscape orientation, retaining full accessibility to ports, cameras, speakers, and controls. SeeSaw is made of nonporous material for easy cleaning. It is compatible with iPad 2, 3, and 4 and is available in blue or citron.

MORE INFO: store.griffintechnology.com/seesaw-for-ipad-2-3-4th-gen
N-trig has released its second-
generation DuoSense Pen family.

The Smithsonian Center for Education and Museum Studies has launched

Smithsonian Quests, a digital badge program that fosters project-based learning. Students complete a series of online activities and submit their work for review by Smithsonian education experts to earn digital badges. The quests offer a wide variety of activities that include creative writing, photography, oral histories, and graph making. The cross-curricular, standards-aligned program aims to prepare students for college and careers by incorporating knowledge and skill building into the quests. Teachers can also earn digital badges for their work.

MORE INFO: smithsonianquests.org

From Tech Zero to Tech Hero Step inside any school in the Newton-Connover City Schools in Newton, North Carolina, USA, and you’ll see students and teachers using technology innovatively to interact with each other and with content. But it wasn’t always that way. Find out how this district’s professional development plan started empowering its teachers to raise them to a whole new level of tech competency.

Putting TPACK into Practice Looking for practical ways to integrate technology, pedagogy, and content knowledge? The National Technology Leadership Coalition’s soon-to-be-published Practitioner’s Guide to TPACK provides guidance for creating effective technology-infused learning experiences. Learn how to use your instructional planning time more efficiently.

Better Than Google Ever wish there were an easier way to filter through the 4 million resources returned for your last classroom-related web search? The Learning Resource Metadata Initiative’s project manager, Dave Gladney, describes a new education-centered tagging system that will let you sort your searches by subject area, grade level, standard alignment, and more.