What price 14000 resources for teaching and learning ... try free!

The PBS (public broadcasting service) has a track record of providing some pretty useful resources for teachers. I've used several resources (like the "Growing up online" resources) many times. Now PBS have made over 14000 resources available free of charge for teachers here.

As you can see from the image above the search options are pretty standard, and once your search is done you can see the type of resource (see below)

According to the PBS site ...

"This next-generation digital media service empowers PreK–16 educators to re-imagine classroom learning, transform teaching, and creatively engage students. It brings together the best of public media, produced specifically for educators, from PBS, WGBH, and 55+ public media partners. This flexible service includes high-quality content tied to Common Core and national curriculum standards. The service is freely available to educators as a basic service that can be enhanced with premium solutions for schools and districts-designed for seamless media integration and customization. The basic service offers:

• Unique access to best-in-class resources from PBS producers and partners and technology resources tied to Common Core and national curriculum standards
• A robust content library of thousands of digital core curriculum resources, designed with today's student in mind
• Carefully created, purpose-built media: videos, interactives, audios, lesson plans, multimedia, professional development, and more
• Ability for educators to search, save, share, and review content
• Cross-platform flexibility to display on classroom presentation tools to mobile devices."

and more ...

"There are five types of media resources in the service: Audios, Documents, Images, Interactives, and Videos. Many resources include supplemental materials such as lesson plans, discussion questions, and background essays.
To view a media resource, first click on the media resource title or thumbnail image of a resource from your search results. This will open the resource page identifying additional information about the resource. Click on the large image to play an audio, video, or interactive, or, to enlarge a document or image resource. Videos can be enlarged to full screen by clicking on the four arrow icon to the right of the volume control below the media image.
The service includes individual resources and groups of resources designed to be used with one another. Group resources include a "Group Index" on the right side of the page. To view an individual resource within the group, click the resource within the index. It will appear on the left side of the page."

To me, this looks like it should be part of every school's repertoire of online resources.

New Resource for NZ Teachers

It's been some time now since TVNZ7 first announced they were making a DVD available to schools - and nothing arrived. Until today - when an email arrived announcing that the DVD would soon be here along with the announcement that the TVNZ7 Learning Hub was to go live today.

Here's what the website has to say ...

The TVNZ 7 Learning Hub explained
Welcome to TVNZ 7's Learning Hub, a destination for teachers, parents and students offering quality education resources based on popular TVNZ 7 programmes.

Through partnerships with other organisations we have compiled education resources to suit the New Zealand curriculum. All of the resources link through to our TVNZ OnDemand page where you can view the accompanying episode.

So, what's available? Well, not a lot at the moment - there are a dozen or so episodes of the Ever Wondered TV series - I had a look at one on astronomy (just because I'm interested - sad eh?) and was pleasantly surprised to find a pile of links through to resources and student activities on ScienceLearn . 

One thing I did find was that it was easy to get lost in the standard TVNZ7 website and from there to TVNZOnDemand - and end up watching missed episodes of Coronation Street and others. 

But - all in all - a welcome addition to local content - let's see how it develops over the coming months.

200 Years that Changed the World - Gapminder for Teachers

Anyone reading this blog regularly will know I'm a Hans Rosling fan. His Gapminder website and accompanying desktop version are powerful tools for making sense of world data.

His latest newsletter highlights Gapminder for Teachers.

Two things struck me about the information on the teachers' page - the first was that there is a very cool 3 minute look at the 200 years that changed the world - a look at how the world has changed in terms of per capita income and life expectancy. This video shows just how powerful the software is. You can watch the video here.



The second thing that struck me was that there are now teacher guides for using this data with students.

So, again, if you are a teacher looking for some inspirational material to help get students thinking about some of the important issues facing the planet - you could do a lot worse than head over to Gapminder and use the wonderful tools that Rosling has contributed.

iTunesU as a resource for schools

I guess I've always had a soft spot for Apple - they do make some of the coolest kit around. And so too, their software. Take iTunes for example. Sure - everyone uses it for music and maybe for iPod games, but increasingly it is serving as a resource for all manner of educational material for anyone to consume. A large number of universities have used iTunesU for some time now, but over recent years a growing number of K-12 institutes have added resources that you might find valuable.


According to Apple iTunesU is ..."The world’s smartest download.
Discover iTunes U and never stop learning. Download lectures, discussions, language lessons, audiobooks, podcasts and other opportunities for enlightenment — all from top universities, museums and other cultural institutions around the world. So whether you’re a college student or a student of life, learn for free with iTunesU.


This post just gives you the instructions to find some K-12 content and download it. Have a good look around - there is some good stuff here that you can use tomorrow,

Great Resources for Educators II

Continuing to highlight useful stuff where I find it ... this month 2 sites from NZ that are worth viewing no matter where you are in the world. Derek Wenmoth and Andrew Churches are educators who share good stories and ideas.

Derek Wenmoth's blog is a resource that will get you thinking about what you do and why you do it in your classrooms and schools. Derek is the Director of e-Learning for CORE Education in NZ. He's been a teacher and principal so knows the hard stuff. His interest and ability in questioning practice for the 21st Century is what brings me to his blog regularly. Here's an example of what you'll find with Derek - this is a reflection on a day spent with a group of teachers from a few schools sharing their learning - a great example of the power of web 2.0 stuff for sharing ideas. Having just read Scott McLeod's latest on why we still don't get it right with PD (amongst others), this entry is a little refreshing providing concrete examples of what does seem to work for staff PD.

Just where Andrew gets all his time to both write his blog entries and update his Edorigami wiki site is a mystery. Andrew Churches is just prolific. He talks from the heart in a lot of his blog stuff, but also deals with the practical side of using ICT in class. I've recommended to plenty of people that they read Andrew's stuff - he makes a real positive difference to what we do in this ICT and use in class.

In particular, on Andrew's wiki you'll find a host of resources for integrating ICT in all areas of the curriculum, but Andrew has a passion for connecting higher order thinking to his work, so if you are a Bloom's person, you'll find some great stuff here.

So, thanks Derek and Andrew. Keep up the great work.

Great Resources for Educators I

There are a host of fantastic sites that provide useful information and support for teachers and learners in ICT. (After all, we are all learners these days). These are a couple of the places I look to for information on leading technologies and the impact they might have on education. I'll add others in later posts, because there are so many good sources, and they should be shared.Educause - although its mission is to promote "intelligent use of information technologies" in the higher education environment, it has a couple of projects that are really useful for those of us in the K-12 space.

First is the Horizon Report - 2009 saw the first K-12 Horizon Report, a report looking at 6 technologies likely to impact K-12 classrooms in the next 1 - 5 years. A joint production with the New Media Consortium, the annual Horizon Reports provide great insight for emerging technologies and what they might mean for teaching and learning. Indeed, Julie Lindsay and Vicki Davis have used them extensively for their Flat Classroom projects over the past few years.

The second cool offering from Educause is the "7 Things You Should Know" series. This series began back in 2005 and basically provides a concise 2 page report each month about some new technology. What makes this series a great resource is that they break each technology into simple language and discusses

• what it is
• how it works
• where it is going
• why it matters for teaching and learning

Recent additions include Twitter and Voicethread, but you'll find everything from QR codes to Second Life in a language that everyone can understand.

If you haven't used this site, I highly recommend it.

BECTA - This UK organisation is the government's agency leading the national drive to ensure effective and innovative use of ICT in learning. It has done some excellent work for a long time. It's emerging technologies for learning section draws together research, news, analysis and views around technologies for learning. It has a wide range of research papers and its Tech News section is always up to the minute with news, views and reviews.

Similar to the Educause "7 Things to Know" series, many of Becta's articles have some useful synopsis of just what the technologies are and how they might apply to education. This article on QR codes is an example.