While this past winter seemed long and interminable, spring has finally come. With only a few months left, we’re now in the home-stretch of the school year. Spring also brings increasing antsiness in our students. Trying out something new or integrating some technology is a great way to keep them interested. Our reading list is full of great selections that will help you find that perfect “something” to keep students focused in class.
The One World Schoolhouse: Education Reimagined
By Salman Khan
In THE ONE WORLD SCHOOLHOUSE, Salman Khan presents his radical vision for the future of education, as well as his own remarkable story, for the first time. In these pages, you will discover, among other things:
* How both students and teachers are being bound by a broken top-down model invented in Prussia two centuries ago. * Why technology will make classrooms more human and teachers more important. * How and why we can afford to pay educators the same as other professionals. * How we can bring creativity and true human interactivity back to learning. * Why we should be very optimistic about the future of learning.
Getting Smart: How Digital Learning is Changing the World
By Tom Vander Ark
In our digital age, students have dramatically new learning needs and must be prepared for the idea economy of the future. In Getting Smart, well-known global education expert Tom Vander Ark examines the facets of educational innovation in the United States and abroad. Vander Ark makes a convincing case for a blend of online and onsite learning, shares inspiring stories of schools and programs that effectively offer “personal digital learning” opportunities, and discusses what we need to do to remake our schools into “smart schools.”
The Connected Educator: Learning and Leading in a Digital Age
By Sheryl Nussbaum-Beach and Lani Ritter Hall
Create a connected learning community through social media and rediscover the power of being a learner first. After uncovering the theories and research behind the significance of learning through collaboration with other educators, the authors show you how to take advantage of technology to improve your own learning and ultimately the learning of your students. This book is a journey into what it means to be a learner first and an educator second. It is a book about you, about your professional learning. It’s also about us—the collective us in education—and how our own learning can transform student learning through a systemic vision of professional development.
Digital Decisions: Choosing the Right Technology Tools for Early Childhood Education
By Fran Simon, Karen N. Nemeth
Feel confident and competent when it comes to choosing and implementing the most appropriate technology tools for your early childhood classroom! Whether you are a technology enthusiast looking for new ideas and guidance about developmentally appropriate practices, or you are new to the idea of using technology with young children, this book is for you. Digital Decisions provides everything you need to make your own technology plan based on your experiences and beliefs, the needs of the children, the context of your curriculum and the resources available to you. This no-nonsense, jargon-free guide will help you evaluate the tools and opportunities technology has to offer and integrate them into your early childhood classroom so you can offer real-life, hands-on, interactive activities to children. A reference every childhood program will want to have, Digital Decisions is brimming with charts, resources, and an array of activities that maximize technology as an interactive learning tool. Each chapter provides supporting guidance to make technology most effective for those working with children who are dual language learners or may have special needs.
The Technology Toolbelt for Teaching
By Susan Manning, Kevin E. Johnson
Instructors are pressured to integrate technology into their traditional or online instruction. This book offers a hands-on resource that shows how to integrate technology into lessons and offers information about common technologies, categorizing by groups, and explains the purposes they serve pedagogically as well as how they can be most effectively used in online or face-to-face classrooms. In addition to examples, each chapter will feature a decision making matrix to help instructors decide on whether or not a tool is really needed based on curriculum objectives or a specific organizational or curricular problem.
![busy](https://www.nwpe.org/components/com_jomcomment/busy.gif) |