Pilot hopes to draw students to computer programming through music

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Laura Devaney, Managing Editor writes, "Learn how a school pilot is using music to engage students in computer programming and computer science education".
  
Students in Mike Reilly’s computer programming classes could be helping to bust the stereotype of the computer nerd hunched over a keyboard, writing programs that crunch numbers and sort lists.

Photo: eSchool News

They are creating and remixing hip-hop beats as part of a pilot program that could have broader implication for the future of computer science education.

Emily Polanco is one of those changed by the class.

When it started, she said she had no idea how to program and wasn’t really interested. Now she’s decided to pursue a career in technology, specifically 3D animation.

Her tech-savvy parents, Terry Polanco, an IT systems manager at AT&T, and Lisa Polanco, a technology paraprofessional at a Gwinnett County elementary school, have watched Emily grow from a casual computer user, booting up to do homework, reading and social networking.

“Her father and I know that she has only begun to ‘scratch the surface’ of possibilities in technology,” Lisa Polanco said. “Emily is excited about what she’s learning and we are, too. She regularly shows us her work and brings home computer projects on her thumb drive. We continue to be amazed by what she’s learning and impressed with the work she’s doing.”

Read more...

Source: eSchool News

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Powerful Presentations course for half price, plus your Learning at Work Day gift

Photo: Reed Learning

Powerful Presentations - Personal Development
An interactive workshop on presenting persuasively and confidently.
£485 +VAT this week only.

Who is it for?

Nearly everyone will have to deliver a presentation at some point in their working lives, so this course is useful for almost anyone. It will be particularly useful for people that present regularly to clients or colleagues and dread standing up in front of an audience. It will provide valuable best-practice skills and practice in a safe environment for anyone who finds delivering presentations difficult or nerve-wracking.

What is it about?
Presentations are a valuable tool, but they have many pitfalls. Many people find delivering presentations makes them anxious. Even if you're a confident presenter there are lots of things to consider when you want to make the best possible impression.

This course will show you how to overcome your presentation fears and deliver with real impact. You will learn to see the subject from the audience’s perspective and structure content for clarity and memory retention. Practical exercises throughout will help you make real progress and see immediate results whilst small groups enable individual coaching and insightful, supportive feedback. 
Dates and availability

Professional Presentation Skills Course Testimonial  


   

Plus our Learning at Work Day gift 

 
This year Learning at Work Day takes place on 23rd May 2013. 

This year's theme is 'Many Ways to Learn', so to celebrate we're offering you exclusive free access to all our eFresher modules for the entire week. They cover a lot of the most common challenges people face at work ,so give them a go and learn something new this week. 
Get your free eFresher access

Source: Reed Learning and Reed Learning's Channel (YouTube)

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2013 demands social and mobile learning: Free demo

How do you maintain a centralised system when learners require variation? 
Register for a free demo of Saba People Cloud, 30 May, and find out how. 

Transform Your Learning Department with Saba People Cloud 
Thursday, 30 May 2013, 1:00 PM - 1:30 PM (GMT +01:00) 
Dublin, Edinburgh, Lisbon, London 

The world of work is changing with new generations of learners having different expectations. As a result learning departments need to tap into subject-matter experts to supplement their efforts and embrace mobile, social and collaboration technologies to transform the learning experience.

Today, many organisations are trying to address this challenge using disparate systems like an LMS, virtual classroom, enterprise social networking and knowledge management systems - all from different vendors. This is both inefficient and will ultimately fail to deliver on employee expectations. Saba has the answer. The Saba People Cloud is a single, unified, next generation people development platform that does it all.

Join us for a short demo where we will showcase how the Saba People Cloud can help you transform learning at your organisation:

• Support formal learning while you control the adoption social learning concepts at your own pace.
• Transform social and formal learning through fully unified virtual classroom, real-time collaboration, meetings, and chat.
• Provide a completely learner-centric experience where learners can easily find the information and learning they need or have relevant development activities automatically pushed to them.
• Full mobile learning capabilities to deliver virtual classes, e-learning or informal content like videos or documents anytime, anywhere, and on any device.
• Identify and leverage the power of experts throughout your network to deliver content that your learning department does not have the resources to deliver.

We look forward to sharing what a next-generation people development platform looks like and how other organisations are leveraging it today. 
Register Now 

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Free Guide: Blended Learning Today by kineo

Take a closer look at this Free Guide from Kineo, the leading global e-learning services company.

Kineo writes, "It's far from a new term, but it's full of new potential. Blended learning is back - well, it never went away".

Download Blended Learning Today

But what is blended learning today? 
With the emergence of new forms for collaboration, delivery and engagement, how does the new learning architect make sense of the options, and design for results?

In our new guide on blended learning, in conjunction with our partners the Oxford Group, we examine:

• The new methods available
• Real examples of effective blends
• How 70/20/10 principles align to blend architectures
• 10 best practices for to results-driven blend design

Download Blended Learning Today (PDF, 588kb)

Blended Learning – The Hype and the Reality 

Join Kineo and their training partners the Oxford Group for a thought-provoking and stimulating tour of Blended Learning today:

• What are people saying about blended learning today? What’s creating the most buzz at the moment?
• Find out what is really happening out there beyond the hype. How are L&D people actually using blended learning at the moment? Explore the highlights from the recent survey run by The Oxford Group and Kineo.
• What’s it really like to design a blend? Hear from textile giant, Coats, about their experience of designing a blended development program for managers worldwide.

They will be running the webinars on  
Tuesday 2nd July and Wednesday 10th July.

More details coming soon.
Pre-register your interest in attending the webinar. by emailing events@kineo.com.

Source: Kineo

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SOPHIA.org launches free college readiness tools

Tweet me @eSN_Dennis

Dennis Pierce, Editor writes, "This week’s “Site of the Week” highlights free college readiness resources from SOPHIA.org, an online education platform that provides 33,000 free academic tutorials on a variety of subjects". 

Photo: eSchool News

Current Site of the Week

With the cost of higher education skyrocketing and two-thirds of today’s students unprepared academically for college, SOPHIA has launched a new program called “Operation College Success,” offering free tools to help address the issue of college readiness and affordability.

SOPHIA, an online education platform announced the new program with Bill Nye the Science Guy during a May 13 event on Capitol Hill.

With Operation College Success, SOPHIA has expanded its offerings to include free college readiness resources that include…
Read more...

Source: eSchool News 

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5/21 webinar: A How-to Guide for Flipping The Classroom

Attend this free webinar below: 

Just Flip It: From the Front Lines of the Flipped Classroom

Tuesday, May 21, 2013
11:00 a.m. – 12:00 p.m. CDT (convert to your time zone)

It’s easy to picture a traditional classroom – a lecturing professor with rows of students watching, listening and taking notes.
But that age-old model is turning a cartwheel in some of the best classrooms in academia. And chances are someone in your department is already flipping their classroom.

Professor Ralph Welsh of Clemson University started experimenting with this technology-driven pedagogy three years ago, redesigning and refining his courses over time and putting the onus on the student to come to class already having watched the lectures and ready to engage in conversation. 

During that time he’s met and overcome challenges and reset his teaching style to rave reviews from students. Join Ralph as he presents a how-to guide for introducing flipped instruction, and shares lessons learned along the way including:

• How to overcome the biggest challenges of the flipped classroom, including managing student expectations
• How to evolve a curriculum by taking in feedback, evaluating it and re-introducing new methods into the classroom
• Tips on how to educate your colleagues on your new workload and get your department on board with what you’re doing

 Register online today

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Engage all of your K-12 teachers in next year's back-to-school staff development

School Play, an award-winning documentary film, reveals the profound impact of knowing and nurturing students, both at school and at home. 

School Play: A Professional Development Package 72-minute DVD

"A funny, authentic, and often poignant documentary about a production of The Wizard of Oz in a suburban New York City elementary school, this video follows five fifth-graders from auditions through opening night", writes Stenhouse Publishers.

Watching School Play in the company of colleagues, educators are moved to remember that our mission is to educate the whole child for a lifetime of principled, productive participation in the world. The School Play package consists of the seventy-two-minute documentary plus four short video clips keyed to workshops outlined in the 44-page study guide, which provides ready-made materials for administrators and/or teacher-leaders to adopt or adapt as necessary. 

The study guide, written by assistant superintendent Annie Ward, is designed to engage heterogeneous groups of educators as well as to provide role-specific prompts for action-oriented follow-up, and includes agendas for full-day and half-day professional workshops; notes for an opening keynote address that frames the workshop; discussion questions for mixed groups; plans for four action-oriented, topic-specific workshops; and reproducible handouts, articles, and professional research. 

Source: EdWeek Update and Stenhouse Publishers

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Upcoming Webinar: Using your website to boost applications and student satisfaction

Attend this free webinar below:

Using your website to boost applications and student satisfaction  

Date: Wednesday, June 5, 2013
Time: 2:00pm ET / 11:00am PT
Duration: One hour

With ever-increasing competition for prospective students, countless distractions for current students, and sky-rocketing adoption of mobile devices, technology can help set your school apart. Turning your website into a destination that helps you connect with prospective students and retain existing ones can become one of your greatest advantages.  

Join Olivet Nazarene University, Ellucian and Ektron to learn how to: 

• Empower staff and faculty to easily create and update web content, reducing dependency on IT 
• Publish your course catalog on your website while maintaining it in your student management system 
• Easily create and manage pages that are optimized for smartphones, tablets and desktops   
• Deliver targeted content based on visitor location, application status, and other key attributes 

Register Now!

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How teachers use Pinterest in the classroom by Laura Devaney, Managing Editor

@eSN_Laura

Laura Devaney, Managing Editor writes, "Today’s featured story looks at how Pinterest can be a valuable educational resource".

Long a favorite among craft enthusiasts, the popular DIY site Pinterest, in which users “pin” online images to virtual pin boards for later reference, is gaining ground in education. Educators using Pinterest in the classroom have access to professional development resources, lesson plans, curriculum ideas, and more.
 

Photo: eSchool News

Locating online educational resources can put even more demands on teachers’ time, which is often already stretched to the limit. Pinterest lets users organize resources and ideas in one central location, as opposed to bookmarking sites and then visiting those sites multiple times in order to remember what each site contains.

Using Pinterest in the classroom, teachers also can share their own projects and visuals by taking pictures, posting those pictures online in a blog or other platform, and pinning those images to their own Pinterest boards.

Users can search for educational resources and a slew of Pinterest boards and pins will pop up:
 

Ultimate List of Educational Websites

Educational games for Kids

Educational Gross Motor Activities

iPad Apps for Struggling Readers

Virtual Educational Field Trips

18 Fine Motor Activities for Preschoolers

15 Great Educational Apps

Educational Disability Resources

30 Fun Letter Activities for Kids 

 
Source: eSchool News

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A New Way to Share Everything From an iPad

Flowboard is the new way to share your stories, your work, and your life from iPad.

iPad app Flowboard (http://bit.ly/Flowboard_iPad) has launched, giving consumers the tools needed to publish beautiful touch-enabled publications, viewable on web and mobile devices. Flowboard’s storytelling app defines a new standard; it enables users to create side-scrolling experiences - complete with cloud enabled images, text, videos, links and photo galleries, available via a unique, sharable URL. 

Content for the Flowboard presentation can be utilized from your Dropbox, Facebook, Box, Instagram, or a Google Image Search. An upgrade to Skydrive and Google Drive would make it much more beneficial since districts are mainly Google and Microsoft users.
Visit iTunes to buy and download apps

About Flowboard

Flowboard (http://flowboard.com), previously known as Treemo Labs, is a Seattle technology company that has built one of the most robust mobile app publishing platforms. 
For the past seven years, Treemo Labs has been developing and managing apps for some of the biggest brands in the world, including 60 Minutes, Beyonce, 48 Hours, CNET and others.
In 2011 and 2012, it created Appafolio and Appavideo, two products that enabled companies and artists to create custom iPhone and iPad apps. Now, the company is leveraging everything it has learned into making Flowboard the next-generation storytelling platform for the iPad.

Related link
See a sample Flowboard, which is actually a UsersGuide  

Source: Flowboard

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