T.H.E. SmartClassroom :: July 19, 2007

Viewpoint

Second Life: Do You Need One?

Part 4: The top-7 hurdles for virtual learning

In this final installment of our four-part series on Second Life, Amareal Jewell continues her conversation with Virtual Bacon, an experienced Second Lifer who is the owner and creator of imagiLEARNING island and who works to introduce traditional educators and businesspeople to SL. Here he explains the top-seven hurdles faced by traditional educators as they attempt to grasp some decidedly non-traditional concepts in virtual learning. He also discusses other, general issues with Second Life in education and entertainment....

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Ed Tech News

Rye Neck District Brings Interwrite to All Classrooms

Rye Neck Union Free School District in New York has standardized on Interwrite Learning's technologies for all of its K-12 classrooms. The implementation includes Interwrite Board interactive whiteboards and Interwrite Pad Bluetooth wireless pads in all classrooms, including special education classes....

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Boston School Rolls Out Senior Projects with Free e-Portfolio Tool

Boston Community Leadership Academy (BCLA), a pilot college prep school in Massachusetts, last month began using a free e-portfolio tool to help its senior class present capstone projects in community studies. The projects were part of a final assessment for graduation, requiring students to conduct research in their communities, collect data, and defend their portfolios. This was the first year the school used electronic portfolios for the capstone projects, and, in doing so, the school also became the 1,000th to use the e-portfolio solution from Digication....

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Promethean To Ship Student Response Tool

Education technology developer Promethean said it will ship a new component to its Activclassroom suite in December 2007: Activexpression. Activclassroom is a suite of tools for classroom learning that includes instructional tools, assessment solutions, and various other resources for teachers and students....

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Turning To Release 4th-Generation Response System

Turning Technologies will release a new version of its student response system, TurningPoint. The new version, TurningPoint 2008, along with the company's new ResponseCard XR keypad, will begin shipping later this summer....

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Kaplan Selling SAT Prep on iTunes

Kaplan Test Prep and Admissions, a division of Kaplan (New York), has put three interactive SAT prep programs on Apple's iTunes service....

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Web Notes

SciTalks.com Offers Lecture Video Search Site

In the same vein as YouTube, SciTalks.com (Boston, MA) has launched a searchable online collection of science lecture video files from across the world. Currently 1,000 lectures are online, with new videos being added daily....

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T.H.E. Journal is currently looking for the following types of articles for future issues and for our eNewsletter, T.H.E. SmartClassroom:

  • School Perspectives - discuss a specific topic, trend, or concern about education technology.
  • Case Studies - have you implemented technology and learned a lot from the experience? If so, share your efforts about what worked -- and what didn't.

If you have a potential article, or questions about the above topics, please e-mail [email protected]

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