Issue link: http://osercommunicationsgroup.uberflip.com/i/136999
Monday, June 24, 2013 Ed Tech Show Daily HOW VIDEOS INSPIRE MY STUDENTS: A TEACHER'S PERSPECTIVE ON MEDIA IN THE CLASSROOM By Emily Dawson, junior high school teacher, East Peoria, IL; one of 28 teachers chosen by PBS LearningMedia for its Teacher Core. As teachers, we are always looking for ways to ensure our students are not left behind. Responding to an increasingly high-tech world and changing trends in education, I am always seeking out, and frequently pay for, newer resources and relevant professional development on my own. That is to say nothing of the added pressure to continually align my lessons with the ever evolving Common Core and Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS). PBS LearningMedia, a free resource for educators, has helped to answer many of my own classroom needs and has become my go-to digital destination for access to thousands of videos, photos and lesson plans. I can also find games and audio clips to reinforce topics I teach and free professional development relevant to my area. I can easily search, save, and share these high-quality resources with my students and peers. Through PBS LearningMedia, I am able to easily pull digital content from critically acclaimed PBS programs such as NOVA and PBS NEWSHOUR. Additionally, I am able to call upon content from organizations including The National Archives, Smithsonian, NPR and NASA. In turn, my students are able to access these cutting-edge resources that I have saved and shared SOCIAL MEDIA AND EDUCATION Social media has quickly evolved from a personal communication vehicle to a tool for professional sharing and collaboration. However, the lines between the two can often be blurred, and while they can easily be kept separate, many schools and educators remain reluctant to step into the mainstream way of communicating to push and enhance curriculum with tools that students innately respond to. In fact, many social media-type tools have been developed specifically for education purposes such as Edmodo, Moodle, Gaggle, and more. These sites have been designed for curriculum development and sharing, but with safeguards in place so they are only used for education. However, that does not mean that mainstream social media can't be used for the same purpose. With new solutions emerging that create and push curriculum to social media such as AVer's TabCam, it is important to understand how to best separate the two and use them to enhance content effectiveness. For those using traditional social media, let's take a look at how we can begin to separate personal from professional, and some of its etiquettes. Also, keep in mind that the following can cross over many of the social sites like Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, etc. Set up separate personal and professional accounts without overlapping the two. Post content that is relevant to your purpose. Post regularly, but do not over post. Doing so begins to look like spam or junk. Make the time to post, but do not let it interfere with your daily work. DEEP FREEZE REDUCES COMPUTER MAINTENANCE Few operational crises are as frustrating and potentially costly as computing downtime. Malware, registry changes and operator error can all disrupt the capabilities of mission-critical equipment. Regardless of the industry or sector, computer failure can result in major operation setbacks. Faronics Deep Freeze enables users to solve critical PC issues with a simple reboot. Deep Freeze has proven to reduce frustration and free up maintenance time for IT administrators in multi-user environments, especially in the education industry, where publicaccess workstations for students are involved. Deep Freeze can undo malware damage There are many misconceptions about the threats presented by malware. 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While the former can be a simple annoyance, the latter could disrupt the entire functionality of the machine. Identifying and fixing the prob- 21 on my classroom website. Students can extend their learning at home by utilizing the resources I choose as a part of my flipped classroom lessons or to review for tests and quizzes. My students have been able to make connections through the use of the digital media that no textbook, worksheet or static picture could ever create. Students report being able to picture or replay the video clips in their heads while completing assessments, showing a greater level of comprehension and retention. Now that the final version of the NGSS is approaching, many states are planning for adoption of the new standards. Educators are charged with training our students for careers that exist today and those that have yet to be created. I strive to expose my students to as many different careers as possible through a variety of activities and events. Although I host an annual career day, I cannot expose them to the full variety of potential careers that they deserve, but PBS LearningMedia has over 150 different STEM Career profiles available that allow me to expose my students to a much broader range of careers and degree options. From California to Kentucky, teachers are taking advantage of the thousands of digital materials from PBS LearningMedia, and students are benefiting in ways I never imagined possible. As our classrooms become more and more tech-heavy, the content will be even more essential, and students will benefit even more. Educational technology is helping me bring lessons to life to provide a deeper learning experience for students. Find likeminded professionals and institutions to share and collaborate. Participate in dialogue. Allow for feedback, yet closely monitor it. If you decide to stop using your social media site, delete it. There is almost nothing worse in social media than a dormant site that serves no purpose. When constructing your social media site or beginning a social awareness campaign, think of your target audience. Will this be for your students, collaborating with peers, or a combination? What activities are you and they involved in? What type of content will there be to create and share? Give it time to catch on and grow, as there are many new socialites adding content every minute of the day. Since solutions such as TabCam allow educators to easily create rich curriculum content and immediately push it out to a variety of social media outlets, sharing and collaborating is simple and very effective for both your students and peers. Whether using content from others or creating content, remember, this is on the World Wide Web. What you say, good or bad can have an effect on you, your school and others, so keep your content relevant to your audience. In addition, be sure to understand and follow any guidelines that your school or district may already have in place for social media use communication. Lastly, share your knowledge, expertise, and have fun! lem could require a significant amount of time, money and other resources. In the end, an organization may be looking at a full-scale system reboot to bring their system back online. The longer an organization suffers from downtime, the more costly these errors become. Deep Freeze can negate these concerns by resetting an affected computer's configurations to a predetermined state with ease. Managers no longer have to worry about users accidentally deleting files or making adverse changes to the system's registry values. software installed, they can ensure that their equipment will be restored to their optimized settings at the end of each day. 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Schools, libraries and hotels, among others, have countless users logging on to their machines and surfing the internet each day. In these circumstances, members of the public can access malicious websites, download illegal software and affect the stability of operating systems. If these organizations have Deep Freeze More information about PBS LearningMedia is available at www.pbslearningmedia.org or by following PBS LearningMedia on Twitter and Facebook. Or visit booth 10270 at ISTE. For more information, log on to www.averusa.com/education or visit booth 10244 at ISTE. For more information, visit www.faronics.com, call 800-943-6422, or stop by booth 10232 at ISTE