education & tech

Collaboration and communication is one of the most important aspects of teaching and education. If you are looking for tools and sites that can be used to communicate and collaborate with other teachers, parents, and students, you can find many quality resources online. Here are 10 free sites and tools to try throughout the school year.

TeachAde - The first social networking site designed specifically for educators, TeachAde is an excellent place for teachers to collaborate, share, and chat online. Users can browse through current resources, upload their own materials, join a group, and communicate in the forums.

We the Teachers - We the Teachers can be used to find and connect with teachers inside and outside of your neighborhood. Members can find teaching resources, share lesson plans, and join groups of teachers with common interests and teaching philosophies.

Applebatch - This teacher community and professional network provides information on jobs, networking events, continuing education. Site visitors can discuss all of these things and more in the Applebatch forums.

TheApple - Billed as the place "where teachers meet and learn," TheApple is essentially a social networking site that also offers career resources. Teachers can use the site to explore professional possibilities and network with other educators.

Tapped In - Geared toward K-16 teachers and support staff, Tapped In provides an online workplace where teachers, librarians, and other education professionals can learn, collaborate, and share over the web.

Edmodo - Edmodo is similar to Twitter but was specifically designed for teachers who want to privately and safely communicate and collaborate with students online. The platform provides file-sharing and storage capabilities in addition to several other handy features.

Engrade - Engrade is a great tool for teachers who want to be able to manage their classroom online. The tool supports private communication between teachers, parents, students, and administrators and allows teachers to post grades, progress reports, assignments, and other materials online.

Mikogo - Mikogo is an all-in-one cross-platform communication tool. It can be used for web conferencing, desktop sharing, and remote support. Mikogo works especially well for teacher training, parent-teacher conferencing, online tutoring, and homework support.

Yugma - Yugma is a free web conferencing tool that works across multiple platforms. The free version of Yugma allows communication with up to 20 attendees.

Vyew - Vyew provides real-time collaboration and communication capabilities. The platform records past interactions and works especially well for webinars, collaborative learning, team meetings, and presentations.

Guest post from education writer Karen Schweitzer. Karen is the About.com Guide to Business School. She also writes about online degree programs for OnlineDegreePrograms.org.

There is not doubt the teaching career as it is now was originated as a slavery profession back in history. Anywhere I have been, the problem for teachers seems to be the same, no value in regards of their the time, effort, sweat, and even tears that goes into daily teaching activities.

Following a considerable number of edublogs and websites dedicated to education, we can assert that very few times, posts are writing in such a way that all teachers got interested in. That is what happened with a hypothesis Larry Ferlazzo set up about how teaching attracts a disproportionately high number of candidates from the lower end of the distribution of academic ability.

Larry dugg deep into reports and documents which supposedly backed statements by Bruce Stewart on "quality of their teaching force". You can read his conclusions and the most important is that such cited statistics presented on Meet the Press "appears to be flat-out wrong."

Then, what does make a good teacher?

I recall Downes saying that he does not believe on reports ticketed as research. We all love to read or present reports without mayor explanation of methodology or lacking any basic statistical requirements to be considered relevant.

As part of nature there will be always the good and the bad. We are here talking on good teachers. Professionals that still survive after being beaten up by every newspaper, politician, and parents.

We need people of the National Council on Teacher Quality to come to struggling schools as observers, not as guests. We need research reporter to spend more time in the classroom. Only then, teacher will accept their false negatives and false positives presented on their paper work. As far as we are concerned and speaking about the quoted article, persons behind these reports have no concept of pedagogical concerns.

David Andrade has also concerns about the report: "They never seem to have real numbers or data, are written by non-educators, and the sample sizes are small. In science, we would call that a very poor experiment with useless data."

In a comment in Ferlazzos' post, Mr. Owen speaking about the subjectivity of tests to evaluate teachers, asserts: "This means that just about anyone, no matter what school they went to or what their scores on the SAT were, can potentially improve and become an excellent teacher." No need to be on Ivy Leagues.

So ultimately what does make a good teacher? Good teachers are innovative, think outside of the box, know the how to learn from failure, connect with people, and are continuous learners, writes commenter Marilyn. Good teachers look to the future, instigate conversations, and are willing to let their students guide them when appropriate.

Until we have this as a paradigm, never mind about statistics on reports. Be a good teacher!

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Learnforever Blog:

Many educationalists, and even some corporate learning and development professionals, talk a lot about pedagogy. From the classical Greek, this literally means leading the child, but it is widely understood, in educational circles, including further and higher education (i.e., education that is not for children) to refer to underlying theory of learning, including understanding how children/people learn, and how to design learning for best effect.

To read more about the other theories, visit Kenneth Fee's blog.

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Jane Hart has made a tremendous effort to compile the suggestions from about 300 learning professionals. There is a slideshare presentation to read it better.

This year's list, writes Jane, "is a great demonstration of how learning professionals are making use of a wide range of both traditional and innovative tools and services both for personal learning and within formal structured learning contexts...Although some well-known tools have moved down or even off the list this year, this doesn't necessarily mean they are no longer of value for learning..."

The 10 first tools out the 100 tools for learning during the 2009 are: Twitter, Delicious, YouTube, Google Reader, Google Docs, Wordpress, SlideShare, Google Search, Audacity and Firefox.

In the internet lists are easy to read. Even when there is not proof of anyone carrying research on Twitter, this widely spread tool tops the list. The group of learning professionals worldwide really know of the power of social media technologies for learning and you must be paying attention.

Is there any other tool you think was left out or that it should be re-categorized?

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Not precisely what I think and feel of selling lesson plans but what Joseph McDonald, a professor at the Steinhardt School of Culture, Education and Human Development at New York University, thinks arise philosophical questions. The article is on the Education Section of the New York Times.

Education is part of the humanities family but it is been long discussed about whether or not, education becomes a member of the liberal arts. Why a lawyer, a psychologist, can sell their services but a teacher cannot. And what troubles me more is that the content rights have to be transferred to districts which are eager to share proceeds. Are professors impeded to do business with their knowledge? No.

Please, allow capable educators to pursue the returns on money and time they invested in college and universities. Don't they pay for learning what they today know? Again, physicians, architects, are all getting their investments back. Why teachers cannot do the same? Help me understand it!

I specially like the discussion Eduaction Note Online has in about this matter. In a post written by Norm, the New York based blog, points out:

I wonder if Professor McDonald has noticed that the ed deformers are trying to turn teaching into a commodity. It's all about competition and merit pay and performance of kids. Dog eat dog. So, why shouldn't teachers take advantage while they can? After all, what is coming is one script for the entire country. Every single teacher will be doing the same exact thing at the same time of the day.

So, Education & Tech will also be buying stuff. And who knows maybe selling it, too.

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