The Siemens Foundation has announced the 20 teachers from throughout the United States who it has selected to participate in the Siemens Teachers as Researchers (STARs) program. The two-week professional development course allows participants work in small groups, in collaboration with scientists from the Oak Ridge National Laboratory, to conduct practical research related to current scientific issues.
- By Scott Aronowitz
- 04/20/10
Cloud computing and gaming are among the six technologies that will have a major positive impact on K-12 education in the next few years, according to researchers. But education also faces some critical challenges in that timeframe, including challenges that may require fundamental changes to the way we educate in the United States.
Adobe has announced the new Creative Suite 5 and, with it, major new versions of each of the core applications in the suite, including Photoshop, Illustrator, Flash, and After Effects. They include a wide variety of improvements, from enhanced image editing capabilities in Photoshop to new rotoscoping tools in After Effects--not to mention iPhone application development right within Flash.
The Virtual High School Global Consortium is migrating its learning management system to the Desire2Learn Learning Environment, affecting about 600 member schools.
As part of the federal government's ongoing effort to improve the nation's K-12 education system, Secretary of Education Arne Duncan has announced 12 new Teacher Quality Partnership grants.
- By Scott Aronowitz
- 04/08/10
What are 21st century skills? Most of us can rattle off a handful of them: creativity, innovation, media literacy, critical thinking, problem solving. Can we teach these skills? Can we even define all of them? If we can teach them, how do we do it? ANd where can we turn for guidance?
- By Scott Aronowitz
- 04/08/10
As we move toward more interactive media, continuous real-time networks and dynamic learning communities, bolder and media-rich exchanges of content, and increased opportunities for self-authoring, the role of the instructor is challenged again. The challenge this time is that facilitation is not enough--the challenge for the future of instruction is that we stand side-by-side with our students and all contribute equally and actively to a learning community.
NASA will stream a new series of professional development Webcasts this month focusing on hands-on learning activities in science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM).
AMD is sponsoring a day-long game design workshop this May for teachers at an annual game conference. The chip maker's foundation is awarding a $100,000 grant to fund the workshop during Games for Change, which is hosted in New York by Parsons The New School for Design and the Games for Learning Institute at New York University.
- By Dian Schaffhauser
- 03/24/10
Purdue University is teaming up with PBS to educate elementary school teachers on how to teach engineering concepts to young students.
- By Dian Schaffhauser
- 03/23/10