Web Site Evaluation: UDTechToolkit

A key component of No Child Left Behind is that every child should demonstrate appropriate learning growth yearly. Joyce Valenza and Karen Janowski’s website, UDTechToolkit is an excellent source of information and links supporting such learning for all students.

On over a dozen pages, the website clearly indexes various assistive technologies freely available on the Internet for classroom use. There are pages of links for such tools as text-to-speech, research, literacy and math. The site is wiki-based, a dynamic and interactive format enabling users to add relevant information of their own. It is graphically appealing, with a Glogster interface as the home page. Screencasts, and videos appear on many pages, effectively modeling good design for users with different learning style preferences. The only drawback that I detect with UDTechToolkit is that the Glogster interface may be blocked by some school districts, thus removing one of the most user-friendly aspects.

The authors of the site are clearly authoritative in their fields. Valenza, a prominent librarian, educator and speaker, is the blogger behind Neverending Search. Janowski is an assistive technology consultant and well-known blogger at EdTech Solutions: Teaching Every Student.

UDTechToolkit is a valuable resource for 21st century classrooms, and I highly recommend it. Today’s classrooms must be student-centered, continually meeting the needs of all learners. Assistive technologies such as the ones discussed here are helpful for all students, not only those in special education, so I see this site as a wonderfully rich source of information for 21st century learners.

Fair Use: Best Practices for the 21st Century Classroom

Yesterday, the Center for Social Media (American Univeristy) and the National Association for Media Literacy Education, in collaboration with several other organizations, including National Council of Teachers of English released a new Best Practices document concerning fair use for 21st century education. I haven't had a chance to fully study it yet, but I'm looking forward to reading the document and getting my thoughts together to revisit it all with my faculty.

Below is a video from their site that's worth sharing.

Digital Citizenship

Thinking about our internet safety curriculum...like so many others, I don't like the emphasis on "safety" that this title entails. To me, "internet safety" implies that the internet is so frought with dangers that we must go to great lengths to innoculate our kids! As I believe Nancy Willard's work suggests, our students don't set out to do dangerous things on the internet, and child predators are not victimizing huge masses of children engaged in everyday activities. As mentioned on EdTech Weekly this week (was it John Schinker who said it?) bad stuff happens on the internet to people who engage in dumb (or risky) behavior.

I think our focus needs to be on giving students the tools to act responsibly when they're using any technology. Prevention, training and making wise choices should be at the root of our message. "Internet safety" leaves out the most vital concept of the curriculum: citizenship!

So, in that mindset, I've decided to minimize my use of the term as I work with my students. I'm going to emphasize citizenship. Great message on this historical election day, eh?

Here's a wordle I came up with to use: