ICT Support for Learning: Google Translator Toolkit

Google Translator Toolkit. Tony Ruscoe. GoogleBlogoscoped. Online June 2009. ... new tool … to help translators organize their work and benefit from shared translations, glossaries and translation memories … A machine translation of the Google China Blog explains, "Google's mission is to organize the world's information and make it universally accessible and useful. Translation of information, in our view is the key to access to information." …

ICT Support for Learning:Say Yes to GPS: The government (of Egypt) has lifted the ban on the popular navigation technology

Say Yes to GPS: The government (of Egypt) has lifted the ban on the popular navigation technology. Business Today Egypt. Online June 2009. In a surprise announcement last month, the Egyptian government removed its long-standing ban on the use and import of Global Positioning System (GPS). … The technology, which allows users to determine their latitude, longitude and altitude, had been banned for commercial use in Egypt since 2003. …
(Note from Ginny: Now teachers and students can learn more about geography by finding the coordinates of their schools, homes and communities in Google Earth, and we can locate our client schools on a map in Google Earth.)

ICT Support for Learning: Top 10 Web 2.0 Tools for Young Learners

Top 10 Web 2.0 Tools for Young Learners.   Chris Riedel, T.H.E. Journal, 2/2/2009. Online May 2009. ... "Web 2.0 is about trust,… It's about sharing and collaborating." And, she (Gail Lovey) insisted, it's about putting the power to learn and create in the hands of the students. …  Technology needs to trickle up …  not down. …  

ICT Support for Learning: Map of Future Forces Affecting Education

Map of Future Forces Affecting Education. KnowledgeWorks Foundation and the Institute for the Future (IFTF). Online March 2009.  Created by a range of experts and analysts, the map is a forecast of the future, and each element on the map represents forces that could affect learning in the next decade. Many of these forces can work in tandem, and they could also appear seemingly unconnected. Nothing is definite. We don’t encourage debating with the forecast, but rather encourage you to explore the map, think about what you’ve seen, and use the map and its interactive features for group and online discussion. Think of the map as a catalyst for conversation. … (Note: Perhaps the best place to start is by viewing the Map Demo.)

ICT Support for Learning:Industry Makes Pitch That Smartphones Belong in Classroom

Industry Makes Pitch That Smartphones Belong in Classroom.  Matt Richtel and Brad Stone. NY Times. Online Feb 2009. ... The cellphone industry has a suggestion for improving the math skills of American students: spend more time on cellphones in the classroom. … CTIA, a wireless industry trade group, plans to start making its case for the educational value of cellphones. … Proponents of selling cellphones to schools have said that they are simply making the same kind of pitch that the computer industry has been profitably making to educators since the 1980s. …

ICT Support: Gaming helps students hone 21st-century skills.

Gaming helps students hone 21st-century skills. Laura Devaney. eSchool News. Online April 2008. Environments such as Second Life can both stimulate and educate, experts say. …Online gaming can help students develop many of the skills they'll be required to use upon leaving school, such as critical thinking, problem solving, and creativity… Studies of the brain have pointed to data suggesting that repeated exposure to video games reinforces the ability to create mental maps, inductive discovery such as formulating hypotheses, and the ability to focus on several things at once and respond faster to unexpected stimuli. …

ICT Support: VoiceThreads: Extending the Classroom with Interactive Multimedia Albums

VoiceThreads: Extending the Classroom with Interactive Multimedia Albums. Edutopia.com. Online April 2008. Encourage student participation with accessible and engaging digital discussions. … VoiceThreads might best be described as interactive media albums. …online slide shows of images, documents, or videos that enable viewers to comment on any slide (or at any point in the video) by typing, recording an audio or video comment, or drawing on the image itself. Teachers have been early adopters of the easy-to-learn technology, which has led the company to launch Ed.VoiceThread.com, a secure site just for educators and their students. … more students participate more actively in digital discussions than in the classroom. "You don't have to be the loud one or the popular one. …

ICT Support for Learning: Bringing open resources to textbooks and teaching.

Bringing open resources to textbooks and teaching. Jimmy Wales and Rich Baraniuk. Online April 2008. … We want to infect you with the dream that anyone can become part of a new movement with the potential to change the world of education: A movement that can redefine forever how knowledge is created and used. Imagine a world where textbooks and other learning materials are available to everyone for free over the Web and at low-cost in print. … Late last year in Cape Town, we joined delegates from around the world as we reached a consensus on both the ideals and approaches to Open Education and committed them in the Cape Town Open Education Declaration … To read about the Cape Town Open Education Declaration, a statement of principle and strategy to promote open resources and teaching practices in education, go to: www.capetowndeclaration.org

ICT Support for Learning: 25 Tools: Professional Development Programme.

25 Tools: Professional Development Programme. Centre for Learning & Performance Technologies. Online March 2008. Tools, Community and Help. ... These are the 25 current must-have free tools. Each Tool activity comprises a number of tasks to help you find out more about the technology behind each tool, the tool itself and why it is so popular, how to try out the tool and reflect on its use for your own teaching and learning and for productivity and performance support. Many of the tool activities are inter-related, so you will also be using other tools for different tasks. (Registration required.)...

ICT Support: Enriching Education through Digital Sharing

Enriching Education through Digital Sharing. (A compendium of stories from eSchool news archives) eSchoolNews. Online December 2007. ...Thanks to new technologies, it’s now easier than ever for schools and other organizations to create rich, online repositories of learning “objects” that students, teachers, and other users can draw upon at their own convenience to enrich their education. Teachers across the globe, for example, are taking open digital content items and repurposing them for use in their classrooms; universities are making course content available online to users worldwide; and schools and vendors are creating online, interactive learning communities for educators to advance their knowledge and skills. …

ICT Support for Learning:Computerized tests may better measure reasoning skills.

Computerized tests may better measure reasoning skills. Meris Stansbury. eSchool News. Online October 2007. … Critical problem-solving and information-analysis skills that cannot be easily measured on traditional pencil-and-paper exams may be revived through computerized tests … can be an effective way to measure so-called "21st-century skills"… two computer-based testing scenarios …a search scenario and a simulation scenario … scenarios were engaging, highly interactive, and open-ended so as to capture skills not tapped by multiple-choice tests. … Report: "Problem Solving in Technology-Rich Environments"

ICT Support: NGO-in-a-Box:

NGO-in-a-Box: Open Source software toolkit. Base.org. Online September 2007. The Base Edition of NGO-in-a-box is a collection of essential tools for running a small-to-medium sized NGO. You can use this toolkit to set up and coordinate your office, organise and manage projects, collaborate online and support your campaigns. The Box contains a set of peer-reviewed Free and Open Source Software tools, with associated guides and tutorials, giving you the technical foundations to build upon. … (Downloadable CDs available soon)

ICT Support Initiating and Managing SchoolNets

Initiating and Managing SchoolNets (ICT Lessons Learned Series Volume III). UNESCO. Online August 2007. … overall summary of the lessons learned during the implementation of the UNESCO SchoolNet project, “Strengthening the Use of ICT in Schools and SchoolNet in the ASEAN Context”. … Contents: What is a SchoolNet? Why set up SchoolNets? The UNESCO SchoolNet project. Examples of SchoolNets. What makes a SchoolNet successful and sustainable? Initiating and managing a SchoolNet. Summary of Lessons Learned. Download PDF, 2.4MB

ICT Support for learningHow To: Create a Web Site That's a Learning Community

How To: Create a Web Site That's a Learning Community. Leona Jamison. Edutopia. Online August 2007. The many minds we brought into this process -- different people from different practices within the profession -- made it successful. … district's biggest goal was for its Web site to help foster a professional learning community in which teachers can exchange ideas, support each other, and continually develop their practice. For parents and the community… the site to be a place not just to find their school's address and phone number but to get involved as well. For students … the site needed to help educators teach in the way kids are wired to learn. …

ICT Support Top 10 E-Learning Tools

Top 10 E-Learning Tools. Josh Fischman. Wired Campus. Online August 2007. … Jane Hart, head of the Centre for Learning & Performance Technologies, in Somerset, England, wanted to know. So in July she asked 64 e-learning experts to list their top 10 tools. The most frequently cited item … Firefox Web browser. Next was del.icio.us, the social bookmarking tool. That was followed by Web-based e-mail, specifically Gmail from Google. …

ICT Support Evaluating thin clients from a position of strength.

Evaluating thin clients from a position of strength. Marc Wagner. Chris Dawon’s Education IT blog. ZDNet. Online August 2007. … In many instances, the cost of a thin-client (plus a monitor and keyboard) is only marginally lower than the cost of a mid-range workstation while the cost of a robust mission-critical server may run ten to twenty times the cost of a single mid-range workstation. …considering hardware costs alone, the acquisition costs or a thin-client lab may be quite similar to the costs of a lab full of workstations. …

ICT Support for Learning Turning Programming Into Child's Play.

Turning Programming Into Child's Play. The Chronicle of Higher Education. Online July 2007. Computer programming is not usually taught to 8-year-olds. But a new system developed at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology turns building video games into child's play. The system is called Scratch, named after a method that hip-hop DJ's use to mix music. The software, available free online, is being used by schools and some colleges to teach basic computer-science concepts while avoiding scary programming jargon. Students have used Scratch to create maze-running games, animated stories, and other interactive amusements. Watch a demonstration of Scratch, and see some of the most popular creations.(Ginny notes: I have reported about Scratch before. This short online video from The Chronicle demonstrates it quite well.)

ICT Support for Learning Google Lets Users Overlay Data on Personalized Maps

Google Lets Users Overlay Data on Personalized Maps. Reuters. NYTimes. Online July 2007. … a new feature that lets users create personalized maps which plot the locations of everything from cheap gas locally to the latest earthquakes worldwide. MyMaps … allows consumers to select from more than one hundred mini-applications created by independent software developers. These allow users to overlay data on top of Google's popular online map service. …Visitors to http://maps.google.com … a new tab that contains links to dozens of the mini-applications, which Google calls Maplets. …

ICT Support Get Your Web 2.0 On

Get Your Web 2.0 On: Learn about tools fueling the latest Internet wave and how they might serve schools. Amy Poftak. School CIO. Online June 2007. http://www.schoolcio.com/showArticle.php?articleID=188500340. With links to 7 current tools for 2.0-ing.

ICT SupportFirst low-cost laptops awe Uruguayan children.

First low-cost laptops awe Uruguayan children. IHT/AP , as noted in ASCD’s Smartbrief. Online May 2007. The first low-cost laptops are being issued to poor children in rural Uruguay, Nigeria and Thailand who have never before used computers. "Thanks to this, I'm going to be able to study tons of science," said 8-year-old Joel Nicoletti, who says he'd like someday to be a scientist and was one of 160 Uruguayan students to receive a laptop. …