Get Easy Access to Industry-Leading Creativity Tools

Get Easy Access to Industry-Leading Creativity Tools200Adobe has created an easy-to-manage, term-based licensing program that gives schools access to new versions of Adobe Creative Cloud desktop applications. With this new program, schools and academic departments can have the creative tools they need to be more productive, foster creativity in teaching and learning, and help students develop the digital communication skills essential for success in college and beyond.

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Make the Most of Your Mobile Devices

Make the Most of Your Mobile Devices200Learn how a complete assortment of accessories from  Belkin can help you store, charge, and protect your mobile devices for safe and convenient use inside or outside the classroom.

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How to use Sesame Street to promote digital literacy

Sesame Street is a pretty awesome show. Not only do I remember loving the show as a child, but as an adult, I now understand how educational it is and how much effort goes into making it so. From counting with the Count von Count to learning about recycling with Oscar the Grouch, there’s a lot of learning material packed into a show that is fun to watch for kids, Edudemic reports. Now, Sesame Street has launched a new multimedia site aimed at improving literacy for young children, and helping families (and caregivers) learn to make the most out of every opportunity for talking, reading, and writing. They cite an interesting statistic as part of the motivation for this project: ‘By the age of four, a child from a high-income family has been exposed to 35 million more words than a child from a low-income family. Low-income children miss out on over 400 hours of literacy-related activities that high-income children experience.’

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Should coding be the “new foreign language” requirement?

Over the decades, students have been required to take a foreign language in high school for reasons that relate to expanding communication abilities, furthering global awareness, and enhancing perspective-taking, Edutopia reports. Recently, our home state of Texas passed legislation that enables computer science to fulfill the high school foreign language requirement. Coding (defined by BusinessDictionary.com as “the process of developing and implementing various sets of instructions to enable a computer to do a certain task”) is, after all, both a language and a foreign subject to many students — and much more…

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In ‘flipped’ classrooms, a method for mastery

In traditional schooling, time is a constant and understanding is a variable, The New York Times reports. A fifth-grade class will spend a set number of days on prime factorization and then move on to study greatest common factors — whether or not every student is ready. But there is another way to look at schooling — through the lens of a method called “mastery learning,” in which the student’s understanding of a subject is a constant and time is a variable; when each fifth grader masters prime factorization, for instance, he moves on to greatest common factors, each at his own pace. Mastery learning is not a new idea. It was briefly popular in the 1920s, and was revived by Benjamin Bloom in his paper “Learning for Mastery” in 1968. It has shown dramatic success…

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The hottest job skill is…

The Army, NYPD and State Department can’t get enough workers with this job skill, CNN reports. Neither can Fortune 500 companies, hospitals, local courts and schools. What is it? Fluency in a foreign language. Translators and interpreters are expected to be one of the 15 fastest growing occupations in the nation, according to the Department of Labor. Roughly 25,000 jobs are expected to open up for interpreters (who focus on spoken language) and translators (who focus on written language), between 2010 and 2020, the Department of Labor estimates. That represents 42% growth for the field and does not include the military, which is also recruiting ferociously for more people. In the last week alone, roughly 12,000 jobs posted on Indeed.com included the word “bilingual.” Amazon, for example, wants to hire a Brazilian Portuguese translator for its customer service team in Seattle. Apple is hiring technical translators who speak Korean, Mexican Spanish and Chinese…

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Notable November events

November offers a number of education events

november-leavesHere’s a short round-up of November events, observances, and activities.

Tech-Savvy Superintendent Awards

Don’t forget to nominate your superintendent for our Tech-Savvy Superintendent Awards. This annual awards program the best of the best when it comes to superintendents who support education technology.

Learn more about the program, and explore past winners, here.

(Next page: More events and resources for your school)

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How administrators collaborate and connect

Ed-tech administrators offer advice to help others build personal learning networks

administrators-connectedEd-tech leaders gathered for a Connected Educator Month webinar to explore what it means to be a connected administrator; how connected administrators empower teachers, students, and parents; and how a few simple actions can lead to a more connected and positive school culture.

Moderated by Tom Daccord, director of EdTechTeacher, a professional learning organization, panelists included:
Eric Sheninger, principal at New Milford High School in New Jersey
Patrick Larkin, assistant superintendent for learning in the Burlington Public Schools (Mass.)
Carl Hooker, director for instructional technology in the Eanes Independent School District (Texas)

Below are the panelists’ responses to a number of tech-centric questions.

What does it mean to be a connected administrator?

Being a connected administrator means developing a person learning network (PLN) and using colleagues’ experiences to inform school leadership decisions, the panelists said.

(Next page: Valuable answers to important questions)

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