Ideas for National Ed-Tech Plan?

What are the stakeholders saying as the U.S. Department of Education prepare and new National Education Technology Plan? E-School news excerpt begins with "Train every pre-service teacher to teach online in teacher-education programs at colleges and universities; invest in the development of open courseware with federal and state funding; encourage the use of technology to create new forms of assessment that better measure student learning gains; provide national standards for school IT support, with recommendations for optimal staffing levels and required skill sets..." Click to read more.

I really do hope someday in the near future every pre-service teacher will be prepped to teach online. The main challenge of offering any online program is adequate staffing of highly qualified educators. Hence the significance of A'o Kumu and its potential impact on transforming online learning for Hawaiian learners in the State of Hawai'i by first building capacity with our educators within the D.O.E. and charter schools.

Want to share your mana'o with leaders working on the national ed-tech plan? Visit their Web site at: http://edtechfuture.org.

100+ Google Tricks for Teachers

Google is definitely becoming the product of choice for educators. With functions targeted specifically for the education industry supplemented with video tutorials and integration ideas for educators for free (for now), why not?! :) Here's a useful link I thought you'd want to bookmark and also share with our A'o Kumu educators.

Teach Hub's 100+ Google Tricks for Teachers: http://www.teachhub.com/news/article/cat/14/item/323

Google Waving

Guess what I did this weekend?! :) I Google Waved. Lucky Brent received an invitation to a Google Wave account and invited me. He has 20 account invitations, so I'm pressuring him to share the good fortune with our DL 'ohana because we'll definitely appreciate it. I didn't have too much time to explore too much at this point, but I did download the Sudoku extension and played that live with Brent.

I also got lucky the following day receving an invitation directly from Google Wave, but not as blessed as Brent. He got 20 invites to send out but I didn't. :( Nonetheless, I'm very happy to have a Google Wave account to test out.

Brent's Google Over Google Wave blog:
http://brents21stcenturyteachingblog.blogspot.com/2009/11/google-over-google-wave.html

Nice Color Themes for Web design, curriculum development, flyers, etc...

These resource links came through my Google Reader from one of my RSS feeds and I thought it would be good to share with our team since we work on instructional design and curriculum development. These links are also on my delicious site if you'd like to copy them over directly from there.

ColourLovers: http://www.colourlovers.com/palettes/top
Color Schemer: http://www.colorschemer.com/

Parents speak up about schools preparing students for 21st century learning

From the Speak Up survey results released recently on parent perspectives on schools preparing students for 21st century learning, it seems that parents agree with their child(ren) that schools aren't preparing students for 21st century learning and believe that using technology is essential for learning. Interestingly, but not suprising, students have different views on technologies integrated in education. Students prefer mobile devices, games, simulations an collaboration tools (wikis, blogs, etc.) while parents prefer online textbooks and interactive whiteboards.

Report is downloadable off of Blackboard's Web site: http://www.blackboard.com/Solutions-by-Market/K-12/Learn-for-K12/Leadership-Views/Education-in-the-21st-Century.aspx

The Journal article: http://thejournal.com/articles/2009/11/02/are-schools-preparing-students-for-21st-century-learning.aspx

"Message in the Waves"

This video was shared by a classmate in my A'o Makua Mālama 'Āina course and I wanted to pass it along for you to view.



Also, before I forget, I wanted to share these diet and nutrition links to start the list of resources we could reference when we are ready to move forward with our next A'o Makua course focusing on diet and nutrition.

1. Hawai'i Foods (provided by UH, CTAHR) - provides nutritional facts for local and other foods such as loco moco, haupia, kalo, and much more.
   http://www.hawaiifoods.hawaii.edu/learn.asp
2. Cool Food Kidz - a kid-friendly website about nutrition, exercise, and general health.
   http://www.coolfoodplanet.org/gb/kidz/