# data[].attributes.body
Okay, we know this one really isn't just one Podcast. But, this is a list of some incredible podcasts for children and young adults. Pick one or two, listen, and tell us how you could use that podcast in your classroom. Also, google NPR's Wow in the World...it is starting in May. That podcast may be one of your favorites.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
You may have about dozen podcasts you listen to on the regular (or half a dozen until Fantasy Football season comes back), but how many can you listen to with your kids? Here's the short list of free, family-friendly podcasts that you can stream on the morning commute, on a long car trip, or in lieu of you telling a boring story before bed. There's even one that has cereal in the title - and it neither features Sarah Koenig nor breakfast. Although, for all the aspiring podcasters, there's your million dollar idea. Be sure to share that sweet Stamps.com cash.

Story Pirates

It's like Drunk History - but with children. Who aren't drunk. The Story Pirates (not actual pirates) are a bunch of actors, comedians, and improvisers who act out original stories created by kids. Sometimes they hold together - and sometimes it devolves into silly madness. But hey, if it worked for and Monster Trucks, why wouldn't it work for podcasts?
Story Pirates

Saturday Morning Theatre

Grant Baciocco has spent 10 years working on The Radio Adventures of Dr. Floyd (see below). He might as well be the Jim Henson of kids podcasts thanks to his other series, Saturday Morning Theatre. Fashioned in the vein of old-time radio broadcasts, the series gives listeners short imaginative, adventures featuring superhero tales, westerns, and mysteries. With new episodes appearing about 1 to 3 times a month, their catalog runs back to 2013. That a lot of Saturday's covered.
Saturday Morning Theatre

Love putting your kids to bed, but not always enthused about reading bedtime stories? There's a podcast for that. Story Time is just under 20 minutes, where one original bedtime story is narrated by the soothing British tenor of host Rob Griffiths. The podcast updates about twice a week, but each story is made for the series. That means exclusive, baby! Plus, you probably don't have a British accent. That's not an invitation to try.

The Unexplainable Disappearance Of Mars Patel

You grew up on The Goonies, The Explorers, and to lesser extent Stand By Me. And, now that Stranger Things has made these kid-centric adventure stories from the 80s cool again, it's time to throw on Blobfish Radio's new serialized mystery. TUDOMP (as it will one day be acronymed) centers around Mars Patel and his pals who are on a quest to find their missing friends. The series was voted one of the best of 2016, and there's still no word on season 2, but you can catch up with season 1. Here's an obvious spoiler, they definitely don't get stuck in the "upside down" - because nothing is scarier than copyright infringement.

All you need to know is that this is basically Radiolab for kids. In each episode, science is brought to life (figuratively, because nobody has that technology yet) through creative stories. Season 2 blasts off with geologist on how we silly humans actually tried to drill to the Earth's core. Turns out we can't get past the Earth's crust, no matter what Hollywood says.
Tumble

Short & Curly

This unfortunately named podcast teaches kids aged 7 -12 about ethics, but not about the ethical implications of naming your show after slang for pubic hair. Once you're past that, the podcast talks to real school kids on difficult topics, such as 'Is it ok to fight a bully?' and silly topics as ' Should pugs exist?' (Short answer: Yes, of course, they should!) But if your kids ask your opinion, it's your right as a father to say, "Who am I, Immanuel Kant?" (Google it!)
Short & Curly

The Radio Adventures Of Dr. Floyd

There are lots of evil cartoon geniuses that try to take over the world that kids can model themselves after: Dexter, Brain, the creepy kids in Little Einsteins. Add Dr. Floyd to the list. Kids will become obsessed learning how he plans to fend off his nemesis Dr. Steve while learning about history in the process. The series is officially wrapped for good, but there are nearly 10 years worth of fun as either giant downloads or you can relive old episodes with week-to-week updates. Just watch out for early-onset megalomania.
The Radio Adventures Of Dr. Floyd

Spare The Rock Spoil The Child

It's the NPR Get ready for fresh tunes from All Songs Considered of kids radio shows, complete with the soothing intro, interjected commentary, special requests, and familiar tunes (like the Schoolhouse Rock smash single "3 is the Magic Number"). They Might Be Giants, and pretty much no one you ever heard of.
Spare The Rock Spoil The Child

OWTK's Kids Music Monthly

Host Jeff Bogle for the win. The writer and father of 2 has tackled everything from print journalism to photography, to the much more lucrative world of free podcasts. His monthly curated playlists make for hours and hours (or at least minutes upon minutes) of musical distraction. It's everything that Kidz Bop wishes it could be.
OWTK's Kids Music Monthly

The Thrilling Adventure Hour

Technically, this is a stage production starring comedy nerd idols like Paul F. Tompkins and Busy Phillips with guests ranging from Natalie Morales to Jon Hamm and Patton Oswalt. However, since the actors read and sing from scripts on a bare stage, backed by a 6-person orchestra, you miss nothing listening to the podcast. It's actually meant to replicate an old-timey radio show, so the truly optimal listening experience involves your kid pressing their ear against a clunky wooden box while you frantically pace the room positioning a tin foil antenna.

[ Note: Contains some strong language you may find inappropriate for very young kids.]
The Thrilling Adventure Hour

Saturday Morning Cereal Bowl

Here's 2 full hours of kids music that's smart, funny, and more interesting to your trained music snob's ear than the latest Kidz Bop. So no, it doesn't suck, but yes, it's still goofy kids music. Because you can convince yourself your kid will grow up a Radiohead fan, but your kid doesn't want to grow up at all. At the very least, it's worth checking out the names of the bands for a laugh, like Jelly of the Month Club and The Boogers.
Saturday Morning Cereal Bowl

Like a podcast version of Mr. Wizard, Brains On! teaches a different science lesson in every episode Hosted by "kid scientists" with enough excitement and enthusiasm to keep all ages engaged and informed ranging from the origins of language, the history of boogers and farts, why we sneeze to why seas turtles live so damn long. It's aimed at kids, but let's face it, this sort of intel would smarten up some adults too.

The podcast home of the popular audiobook site that posts a new kids' story - classic fairy tales and original poems, myths, and adventures - every week(ish). Previously unknown names like lead storyteller Natasha and original characters Bertie The Frog Prince, Katie The Ordinary Witch, and Astropup will quickly become familiar favorites. Running times can meander beyond 20 minutes, so this podcast uniquely manages to promote both listening skills and sleep.

Stories Podcast

Another great source for stories is the Stories Podcast, which has both an apt and impossible-to-Google name. The fine folks at GoPlayPretend have amassed an impressive collection of G-rated tales. This year already, the team has covered , The Cat Who Caught The Moon , and the origin of the Chinese New Year . At this rate, they might take 2018 off just to recover.

Sesame Street Podcast

Get a weekly dose of your kid's favorite monsters delivered directly to your phone. They teach all the same lessons of friendship, reading, patience, and caring as the classic episodes you know and love, only you can deploy them in the car, at the store, or anywhere else a distraction may be needed. Brought to you by the letter "M," for "Meltdown!"

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
15 Podcasts For Kids That Everyone Can Enjoy On The Commute To School

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
You may have about dozen podcasts you listen to on the regular (or half a dozen until Fantasy Football season comes back), but how many can you listen to with your kids? Here's the short list of free, family-friendly podcasts that you can stream on the morning commute, on a long car trip, or in lieu of you telling a boring story before bed.

# data[].attributes.body
To Boost Higher Order Thinking--Try Curation. Jennifer Gonzalez (Mary S. thinks Padlet is excellent for curation, but suffers from a Pinterest addiction).

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Listen to this post as a podcast:
If no one has ever encouraged, pushed, or insisted that you build more higher-order thinking into your students' learning, it's possible you've been teaching in a cave.

Higher-level thinking has been a core value of educators for decades. We learned about it in college. We hear about it in PD. We're even evaluated on whether we're cultivating it in our classrooms: Charlotte Danielson's Framework for Teaching, a widely used instrument to measure teacher effectiveness, describes a distinguished teacher as one whose "lesson activities require high-level student thinking" (Domain 3, Component 3c).

All that aside, most teachers would say they want their students to be thinking on higher levels, that if our teaching kept students at the lowest level of Bloom's Taxonomy -simply recalling information-we wouldn't be doing a very good job as teachers.

And yet, when it's time to plan the learning experiences that would have our students operating on higher levels, some of us come up short. We may not have a huge arsenal of ready-to-use, high-level tasks to give our students. Instead, we often default to having students identify and define terms, label things, or answer basic recall questions. It's what we know. And we have so much content to cover, many of us might feel that there really isn't time for the higher-level stuff anyway.

If this sounds anything like you, I have a suggestion: Try a curation assignment.

When a museum director curates, she collects artifacts, organizes them into groups, sifts out everything but the most interesting or highest-quality items, and shares those collections with the world. When an editor curates poems for an anthology, he does the same thing.

The process can be applied to all kinds of content: A person could curate a collection of articles, images, videos, audio clips, essays, or a mixture of items that all share some common attribute or theme. When we are presented with a list of the "Top 10" anything or the "Best of" something else, what we're looking at is a curated list. Those playlists we find on Spotify and Pandora? Curation. "Recommended for You" videos on Netflix? Curation. The news? Yep, it's curated. In an age where information is ubiquitous and impossible to consume all at once, we rely on the curation skills of others to help us process it all.

In an educational setting, curation has a ton of potential as an academic task. Sure, we're used to assigning research projects, where students have to gather resources, pull out information, and synthesize that information into a cohesive piece of informational or argumentative writing. This kind of work is challenging and important, and it should remain as a core assignment throughout school, but how often do we make the collection of resources itself a stand-alone assignment?

That's what I'm proposing we do. Curation projects have the potential to put our students to work at three different levels of Bloom's Taxonomy:

Understand, where we exemplify and classify information

Analyze, where we distinguish relevant from irrelevant information and organize it in a way that makes sense

Evaluate, where we judge the quality of an item based on a set of criteria

If we go beyond Bloom's and consider the Framework for 21st Century Learning put out by the Partnership for 21st Century Learning, we'll see that critical thinking is one of the 4C's listed as an essential skill for students in the modern age (along with communication, creativity, and collaboration) and a well-designed curation project requires a ton of critical thinking.

So what would a curation project look like?

Suppose you're teaching U.S. history, and you want students to understand that our constitution is designed to be interpreted by the courts, and that many people interpret it differently. So you create a curation assignment that focuses on the first amendment.

The task: Students must choose ONE of the rights given to us by the first amendment. To illustrate the different ways people interpret that right, students must curate a collection of online articles, images, or videos that represent a range of beliefs about how far that right extends. For each example they include, they must summarize the point of view being presented and include a direct quote where the author or speaker's biases or beliefs can be inferred.

Here is what one submission might look like, created on a platform called eLink (click here to view the whole thing).

Because they are finding examples of a given concept and doing some summarizing, students in this task are working at the Understand level of Bloom's. But they are also identifying where the author or speaker is showing bias or purpose, which is on the Analyze level.

Ranked Collection: Students collect a set of articles, images, videos, or even whole websites based on a set of criteria (the most "literary" song lyrics of the year, or the world's weirdest animal adaptations) and rank them in some kind of order, justifying their rankings with a written explanation or even a student-created scoring system. Each student could be tasked with creating their own collection or the whole class could be given a pre-selected collection to rank. This would be followed by a discussion where students could compare and justify their rankings with those of other students. (Bloom's Level: Evaluate)

Shared Trait Collection: This would house items that have one thing in common. This kind of task would work in so many different subject areas. Students could collect articles where our government's system of checks and balances are illustrated, images of paintings in the impressionist style, videos that play songs whose titles use metaphors. It could even be used as part of a lesson using the concept attainment strategy, where students develop an understanding of a complex idea by studying "yes" and "no" examples of it. By curating their own examples after studying the concept, they will further developing their understanding of it. (Bloom's Level: Understand).

Literature Review: As the first step of a research project, students could collect relevant resources and provide a brief summary of each one, explaining how it contributes to the current understanding of their topic. As high school students prepare for college, having a basic understanding of what a literature review is and the purpose it serves-even if they are only doing it with articles written outside of academia-will help them take on the real thing with confidence when that time comes. (Bloom's Levels: Understand for the summarization, Analyze for the sorting and selecting of relevant material)

Video Playlist: YouTube is bursting at the seams with videos, but how much of it is actually good? Have students take chunks of your content and curate the best videos out there to help other students understand those concepts. In the item's description, have students explain why they chose it and what other students will get out of it. (Bloom's Levels: Understand for summarization, Evaluate for judging the quality of the videos)

Museum Exhibit: Task students with curating a digital "exhibit" around a given theme. The more complex the theme, the more challenging the task. For example, they might be asked to assume the role of a museum owner who hates bees, and wants to create a museum exhibit that teaches visitors all about the dangers of bees. This kind of work would help students understand that even institutions that might not own up to any particular bias, like museums, news agencies, or tv stations, will still be influenced by their own biases in how they curate their material. (Bloom's Level: Understand if it's just a collection of representative elements, Create if they are truly creating a new "whole" with their collection, such as representing a particular point of view with their choices)

Real World Examples: Take any content you're teaching (geometry principles, grammar errors, science or social studies concepts) and have students find images or articles that illustrate that concept in the real world. (Bloom's level: Understand).

Favorites: Have students pull together a personal collection of favorite articles, videos, or other resources for a Genius Hour, advisory, or other more personalized project: A collection of items to cheer you up, stuff to boost your confidence, etc. Although this could easily slide outside the realm of academic work, it would make a nice activity to help students get to know each other at the start of a school year or give them practice with the process of curation before applying it to more content-related topics.

Most of the above activities would not be very academically challenging if students merely had to assemble the collection. Adding a thoughtfully designed written component is what will make students do their best thinking in a curation assignment.

The simplest way to do this is to require a written commentary with each item in the collection. Think about those little signs that accompany every item at a museum: Usually when you walk into an exhibit, you find a sign or display that explains the exhibit as a whole, then smaller individual placards that help visitors understand the significance of each piece in the collection. When students put their own collections together, they should do the same thing.

Be specific about what you'd like to see in these short writing pieces, and include those requirements in your rubric. Then go a step further and create a model of your own, so students have a very clear picture of how the final product should look. Because this is a genre they have probably not done any work in before, they will do much better with this kind of scaffolding. Doing the assignment yourself first-a practice I like to call dogfooding -will also help you identify flaws in the assignment that can be tweaked before you hand it over to students.

It's certainly possible for students to collect resources through non-digital means, by reading books in the library or curating physical artifacts or objects, but doing a curation project digitally allows for media-rich collections that can be found and assembled in a fraction of the time. And if you have students curating in groups, using digital tools will allow them to collaborate from home without having to meet in person.

Here are a few curation tools that would work beautifully for this kind of project:

Elink is the tool featured in the sample project above. Of all the tools suggested here, this one is the simplest. You collect your links, write descriptions, and end up with a single unique web page that you can share with anyone.

Pinterest is probably the most popular curation tool out there. If your students are already using Pinterest, or you're willing to get them started, you could have them create a Pinterest board as a curation assignment.

Symbaloo allows users to create "webmixes," boards of icons that each lead to different URLs. Although it would be possible to create a curated collection with Symbaloo, it doesn't allow for the same amount of writing that some other tools do, so you would need to have students do their writing on a separate document.

Diigo is a good choice for a more text-driven project, like a literature review or a general collection of resources at the beginning stages of a research project, where images aren't necessarily required. Diigo offers lots of space to take notes about every item in a collection, but it doesn't have user-friendly supports for images or other media.

I'm so excited about all the different ways we can use curation in the classroom, and I would love to hear your ideas as well. Please share them in the comments below. If you have links to student samples, share those, too! ♦

Curation is just one of the modules in JumpStart, my new online technology course created especially for educators. I thought carefully about what specific skills teachers need to make the most of classroom tech, chose 9 of them, and designed hands-on projects that will show you exactly how to use them.

If you're ready to take your tech skills from so-so to rock solid, this course will change everything for you.

Learn more about the course here.

There's more where this came from.
Join my mailing list and get weekly tips, tools, and inspiration-in quick, bite-sized packages-all geared toward making your teaching more effective and fun. To thank you, I'll send you a free copy of my e-booklet, 20 Ways to Cut Your Grading Time in Half. I look forward to getting to know you better!

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
To Boost Higher-Order Thinking, Try Curation

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
A digital curation project is a fast way to engage critical thinking in any content area. Here's how it works.

# data[].attributes.body
Tour the World with the NEW Google Earth – GTT016. Be sure to check out all the resources on the page...including the podcast!

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Google Earth is much more powerful than just looking up directions. Matt and Kasey break down the new Google Earth!

Google News and Updates

Featured Content

Google Maps is Google's map program. It offers satellite imagery, street maps, 360° panoramic views of streets (Street View), real-time traffic conditions (Google Traffic), and route planning for traveling by foot, car, bicycle (in beta), or public transportation.

Resources

Assign a Google Voyage as an assignment in Classroom (YouTube)

Google Teacher Tribe Mailbag

Holly Messner (Grade 5 teacher from Kansas City, MO)

Craig Klement - Insert a video into Google slides using the iPad

On The Blogs

Ask questions or share your feedback

Please Connect with Us

Disclosure

This post may contain links to products or services with which we have an affiliate relationship. We may receive commissions or bonuses from your actions on such links

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Tour the World with the NEW Google Earth - GTT016 - Google Teacher Tribe Podcast

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Google Earth is much more powerful than just looking up directions. Matt and Kasey break down the new Google Earth! Google News and Updates Featured Content Google Maps is Google's map program. It offers satellite imagery, street maps, 360° panoramic views of streets (Street View), real-time traffic conditions (Google Traffic), and route planning for traveling by foot, car, bicycle (in beta), or public transportation.

# data[].attributes.body
You know we all want to be innovative, creative, able to leap tall buildings with a single bound...

I Want To Be An Innovative Teaching and Learning Specialist – HoET085

POSTED ON MAY 7, 2017 BY CHRISTOPHER J. NESI

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
ENJOY THE PODCAST? SUPPORT MY SUPPORTERS!

Support for this episode came from:

Feedback, Shoutouts, and Links

Tina Monteleone left a great Apple Podcasts review!
Who better to spend my weekly commute with than Chris Nesi. Chris and his #HouseofEdTech fill my mind with thought provoking ideas, great new edtech tips, and teaching strategies from amazing educators from all over our country. Chris and his commentary NEVER disappoint! Thanks Chris for #keepingitreal ✌️

PodcastPD Podcast with Stacey Lindes, AJ Bianco and I

Tomorrow's Classrooms Today Conference

#EdTech Thought (3:50)

Stay Focused and Not Be Overwhelmed by Tech

Here are some helpful tips to keep in mind the next time you're having trouble keeping your thoughts in order:
1 - Work Within Your Brain's Natural Schedule
2 - Reward Your Mind for Staying Focused
3 - Take Breaks (Real Breaks)
4 - Forget Multitasking
5 - Find Work That Keeps You Genuinely Engaged
6 - Practice Mindfulness
7 - Chew Gum

#EdTech Recommendation (10:57)

iLoveIMG is the simplest way to save time while working with images. iLoveIMG lets you modify images in bulk, fast! Everything you need for compressing, cropping, converting, and resizing is right here. You can even make animated GIFs in just a few clicks.

Featured Content (12:00)

This episode was inspired by George Couros's blog post, "It Is Time to Move Away from the Idea of "Tech Leads"?

Here are the interesting quotes I commented on:

For many people that have "technology" in their title, no matter the role, it means to other people "please come fix things in my classroom that use electricity".

"Another concern is that when "technology" is in the title of a position that is not about IT, it almost forces you to find ways to use technology in a classroom setting, whether good or bad. Go to a conference and someone uses Kahoot in a session, and then suddenly you have Kahoot parties popping up all over your school. Is this leading to deeper learning, or simply using technology more in classrooms for the sake of justifying a position?"

Innovative Teaching and Learning Specialist is more the route we should go when it comes to crossing technology and curriculum. An ITL would assist teachers' integration of technology but more importantly, an ITL would work to improve instruction.

Obviously, I would love to be in this type of position and make an impact on students AND teachers.

So if you know someone who needs a guy like me send them my way!

Purchase George Couros's book,

House of #EdTech VIP (17:10)

JULIE DANIEL DAVIS - Julie is from Chattanooga, TN where she is a wife, mom, tech coordinator, Bama fan.

Julie is the Co-mod of #TnEdChat, team member of #edcampgigcity

2015 Top 50 k-12 IT Blogger

Connect with Julie Daniel Davis:

ASK QUESTIONS, SHARE YOUR FEEDBACK AND CONNECT WITH ME

Comment on the show notes below

Call (732) 903-4869 to leave a voicemail

Vox me: mrnesi

Email feedback@chrisnesi.com (audio files welcome)

PLEASE CONNECT WITH ME

DISCLOSURE

This post may contain links to products or services with which I have an affiliate relationship. I may receive commissions or bonuses from your actions on such links.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
I Want To Be An Innovative Teaching and Learning Specialist - HoET085 - Christopher J. Nesi | House of #EdTech

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Support for this episode came from: Tina Monteleone left a great Apple Podcasts review! Who better to spend my weekly commute with than Chris Nesi. Chris and his #HouseofEdTech fill my mind with thought provoking ideas, great new edtech tips, and teaching strategies from amazing educators from all over our country.

# data[].attributes.body
Our Favorite Google Docs Tips & Tricks – GTT017

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Matt and Kasey share some of their favorite Google Docs tips and tricks! Learn from us and share your own too.

Google News and Updates (6:07)

Featured Content (13:08)

Matt's favorite Docs tips and tricks:

Kasey's favorite Docs tips and tricks:

Resources

Google Teacher Tribe Mailbag (29:20)

On The Blogs (34:00)

Ready for some summer PD? Do you want to travel and help other teachers learn how to use Google Apps in their classroom? Do you want to get your foot in the door as a consultant, trainer, or present at national conferences? Want to make a little extra cash in summer training teachers?

This is the e-course you have been waiting for-the course to help you on your journey to becoming a Google for Education Certified Trainer!

Becoming a Google Certified Trainer was one of the best decisions I ever made, and it transformed my learning and my career! This self-paced, e-course includes EVERYTHING you need to know to pass the Trainer Skills Assessment AND complete the application requirements, including:

30+ Video Lessons (including the archive)

Private Google+ Community

The Ultimate Google Certified Trainer Planner and Checklist

VIP BONUSES!

Tips & Tricks

7 Hours PD Credit (certificate and badge!)

and much more!

Watch the videos on this page to learn more about the process and this course.
(Please note: This course does NOT include preparation for Level 1 and 2. I am working on a new set of courses to support this here.)

Ask questions or share your feedback

Please Connect with Us

Disclosure

This post may contain links to products or services with which we have an affiliate relationship. We may receive commissions or bonuses from your actions on such links

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Our Favorite Google Docs Tips & Tricks - GTT017 - Google Teacher Tribe Podcast

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Matt and Kasey share some of their favorite Google Docs tips and tricks! Learn from us and share your own too. Google News and Updates (6:07) Featured Content (13:08) Matt's favorite Docs tips and tricks: Kasey's favorite Docs tips and tricks: Resources Google Teacher Tribe Mailbag (29:20) On The Blogs (34:00) Ready for some summer PD?

# data[].attributes.body
LEARNING FIRST, TECHNOLOGY SECOND #MOTIVATIONMONDAY1

A conversation with Liz Kolb on episode 81 of the 10-Minute Teacher
by Vicki Davis

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Today Liz Kolb @lkolb talks about how we can put learning first and a very important reason technology should be second. We're also hosting a giveaway of her new book on this show.

Listen Now
Listen on iTunes

What is the role of technology in learning

When technology is a distraction

The 3 E framework Liz teaches

How we can make technology improve learning and not distract from it

A fantastic collaborative idea with parents and students

In today's show, Liz Kolb talks about the role of learning and technology:

I hope you enjoy this episode with Liz Kolb!

Selected Links from this Episode

Enter the giveway

Learning First, Technology Second Book Giveaway Contest

Full Bio As Submitted

Liz Kolb

Liz is a clinical assistant professor in education technologies at The University of Michigan in Ann Arbor, MI. She authored Toys to Tools: Connecting Student Cell Phones to Education (published by ISTE in 2008), Cell Phones in the Classroom: A Practical Guide for the K-12 Educator (published by ISTE in 2011), Help Your Child Learn With Their Cell Phone and Web 2.0 (published by ISTE in 2013), Learning First, Technology Second (published by ISTE in 2017).

In addition, Liz has published numerous articles and book chapters on new technologies and education in prominent publications such as Education Leadership, School Administrator Magazine, Scholastic, Edutopia, ISTE's Edtekhub, and Learning and Leading with Technology. Liz has done consulting work and has been a featured and keynote speaker at conferences all over the United States and Canada.

Liz is currently co-chairing an auxiliary committee for the U.S. Office of Education Technology on sustainable professional development in teacher education. She is a MACUL board member and a member of the COSN advisory board for mobile learning and emerging technologies. She is passionate about engaging students in education and leveraging learning opportunity through digital technologies. Liz is also the creator and coordinator of the Triple E Framework, which is an open-source framework for K-12 teachers and administrators to use to assess the effectiveness of technology in lesson plans. Her blog is at http://cellphonesinlearning.com
Click to download the PDF copy of the transcript [Recording starts 0:00:00] Learning first, technology second. This is episode 81. The Ten-minute Teacher podcast with Vicki Davis. Every week day you'll learn powerful practical ways to be a more remarkable teacher today.
Transcript for this episode

VICKI: Happy Motivational Monday. Liz Kolb @lkolb

is with us today talking about how we can put learning first and technology second. So Liz, this is the title of your book http://amzn.to/2q8Y9KY that has just come out. How do we put leaning first and technology second because there's so many toys and things we can play with out there? Isn't it easy to get distracted?

LIZ: It's very easy to get distracted. And I absolutely am guilty of being distracted by the technology which is why this book came about. Over the last couple of years many teachers and administrators had come to me saying we now have a one-to-one program, we now have a lot of technology in our school through difference funding sources but now we're worried about whether or not the technology is actually effective for the learning. We're using it a lot but we feel as though maybe we're using it because it is shiny and it looks good and it feels good but we're not actually impacting learning in a way that is meaningful.
[00:02:00]
I spent six years looking through the research on what's effective and ineffective when using technology and learning and I found that there are a lot of things that we know about goof effective instructional strategies with learning that we were leaving out when we were integrating technology. So, things like when we look at engagement, no just looking at whether not the student is using a device individually but making sure that they are having some kind of human-to-human contact co-engaging or what we call joint media engagement and working together with the screens.

This framework came about because of much of this research that I looked at and I originally developed this triple E framework http://tripleeframework.com/

which is what the book focuses on for my student teachers. They found it to be incredibly helpful, so then I have kind of decided to put it together into this book. The reason why it's called Learning First, Technology Second is because the framework focuses on the learning goals and the end in mind and thinking about the ways that we leverage technology in order to meet those learning goals rather than focusing on the technology first and the wow of the technology.

VICKI: So what is the triple E framework? Are you able to give us a quick summary because we'll, of course, want to point everybody to the book?

LIZ: Yes. So the E stands for engagement and learning goals, enhancement of learning goals and extension of learning goals. And all three of those were again, informed by the research that engagement does not necessarily mean looking at the device but it actually means what we call high attention as well as high comprehension. So they are not just focusing on the device but they're actually focusing on the learning goals through the device in some way. And then enhancement looks at how we leverage the learning through technology, how we're adding scaffolds in support. So is it differentiating learning? Or are we helping students get to those higher order of thinking skills. What is the value added beyond something we would do with traditional tools? There's no value added, then we should question why we're using it.
[00:04:00]
And then the third level is extension which talks about how technology can reach students in their everyday lives and extend learning to the authentic everyday world and make those connections for students. Kind of situating their learning in what they're seeing in the outside world.

VICKI: So really we don't use technology for technology sake, technology has to actually improve learning, right?

LIZ: That's our hope. I am somebody who the first time I learned PowerPoint I turned all my lectures into PowerPoint thinking that was the magic snake oil that we needed to have students learn. And what I found was that while they were engaged, they weren't actually learning more. My few students were still few students. My students who did well still did well. And so, I realized that there's a lot of ways we use technology because it looks good and it's kind of shiny, but if we want to look beneath the surface we really want to look at how it's actually meeting and helping us get to the learning outcomes that we help our students get to.

VICKI: So, Liz, this is Motivational Monday and I have all of this worry. Like, "oh my goodness." What does work? Can you point us and motivate us, help us to point towards things that actually do work in the classroom?

LIZ: Yea, there's a lot of great things that work with technology. First of all, co-use is very important as I mentioned earlier. Working together on a screen is how students begin to reflect on what they're doing on a screen. So rather than having students all working individually with headphones on and their own iPads in the classroom, pair them up, have them work together. That can make a large difference in their ability to comprehend what they're seeing and doing in the classroom.
[00:06:00]
VICKI: Also the other thing that we want to think about is how are we able to use technology to connect to everyday experiences. So rather than having them isolated in a piece of technology think about how we can use things like Skype http://www.skype.com to connect to other classrooms or something like the Google Expeditions https://edu.google.com/expeditions/ to experience what it might be like in the artic if we can't actually get there. So thinking about how we're using technology to help students experience things that they couldn't experience and work together.

That co-engagement is so key and it's just a small change that you can make. Pair students up or choose a software like Google Docs http://docs.google.com that allow students to work with other people through the tool itself in a synchronous way.

VICKI: So collaboration and working together and co-creation is widely important?

LIZ: Yes, it is. So skills, those higher order critical thinking skills that we continue to talk about - I know many people talk about the C's and making sure that that's actually happening with the technology and it's not so isolated.

VICKI: And Liz, you know, you're speaking my language when you talk co-creation because when we create and we help kids create things that are more than they would have been as individuals that's when the magic happens, isn't it?

LIZ: It is. And it's so amazing because the other things we do in the classroom, we often have students paired up and working together or we're working with the students and helping them work through ideas and build knowledge together. Sometimes we put technology in front of them we forget they still need to do that, they still need to have those conversations.

VICKI: They do. I'm just really excited to hear you talk about co-creation because it's just not something people talk a lot about. I mean, I think people forget the greatest software every invented is the human brain. And when we truly unleash that collaboration and co-creation is when we see things that we couldn't do without technology.

LIZ: Absolutely. And very rarely are the greatest inventions and things we've seen in society individually created. There's always a group of people working together to make that happen. So even if I can give a quick example; in my daughter's classroom they use Google Docs to write their stories and work on editing. And the teacher actually shares with the parents when they're going to be working on it so we can log in at the same time that they're working on it.
[00:08:00]
And the teacher gives us some scaffolds as supports of what we should ask and how we should ask it and what we should be looking for.

So we're having these conversations to help them build their writing and as a parent I'm also learning how to learn them, so we're both learning at the same time.

VICKI: Now, that's a genius teacher. I hope after the show you'll introduce me because you have blown my mind. I mean, I know we have helicopter parents and that's not necessarily a good thing. However, that really is unleashing the power of parenting and partnering with teachers and parents and students, isn't it?

LIZ: Absolutely. And parents want to know how to help their children learn. And many times they just don't know how to do it. So they'll often just plug their child in front of an app or a computer to do it but in reality if the teachers can get them online at the same time and give them some support and how them how to do it the parents are really excited to do that. And I can't tell you how excited my 4 th grader is to see me logged on at the same time. And all of a sudden she's really interested in the different forms of grammar and the detail in her writing. And it has exponentially improved her writing and my ability to see those things as well.

VICKI: My mind is just running and there's so many ideas with what we've discussed. And thinking about co-creating with parents as well as peers is very powerful. So listeners, Remarkable Teachers, we're going to be hosting a giveaway for Learning First, Technology Second so do check the show notes www.coolcatteacher.com/e81 and enter to win and take a look at this book. Liz has done so many great things, she's one of the first people that I read when I really got in to using cell phones in the classroom. She has so many resources for us. But let's really think about Learning First, Technology second. But also when we're learning how we can be co-creating ad collaborating. I'm so excited.
Thank you for listening to the Ten-minute Teacher Podcast. You can download the show notes and see the archive at coolcatteacher.com/podcast. Never stop learning. [End of Audio 0:10:23] Transcription created by tranzify.com. Some additional editing has been done to add grammatical, spelling, and punctuation errors. Every attempt has been made to correct spelling. For permissions, please email [email protected]]
Hello Remarkable Teachers, would you please help me do something? I'm trying to help more people find out about the Ten Minute Teacher Show. To do that, if you just could take some time to go to iTunes or to Stitcher or to leave a review. It really does help. Thank you so much.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Today Liz Kolb @lkolb talks about how we can put learning first and a very important reason technology should be second. We're also hosting a giveaway of her new book on this show. Listen Now Stream by clicking here. Click to download the PDF transcript or scroll down to read the transcript on this page [...]

# data[].attributes.body
Engineering is Elementary Founder Christine Cunningham Speaks on K-12 Engineering Curriculum, Equal Access to STEM Education

Posted on April 13, 2017 by Hannah Nyren

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
In 2003, engineering for elementary education was a radical concept.

But Christine Cunningham, an expert in engineering education, knew that the fundamentals of engineering can be taught at an early age-on the playground, in the classroom, or even at home. As Christine points out, children are always building things up, tearing them down, and building them up again-whether it's block towers, doll beds, or train tracks.

Christine knew that this play and problem solving were just the first steps to building future engineers. So, she founded Engineering is Elementary, a K-12 engineering curriculum and education program headquartered at the Museum of Science in Boston. The program has now reached over 13 million students nationwide, and is the reason Christine was just named as one of three recipients of the 2017 Harold W. McGraw, Jr. Prize in Education this week.

In this interview with Ranjini Govender of Stand for Children Massachusetts, Christine Cunningham tells us about her groundbreaking work at the Museum of Science, and how she created an early engineering curriculum.

Want to learn more about Engineering is Elementary?

Watch the video:

Check out the snap shots:

This slideshow requires JavaScript.
Designing the Classroom of the Future: Interview with Brooke Trivas & David Damon of Perkins + Will What Does the College Experience of the Future Look Like? President Paul LeBlanc of Southern New Hampshire University Weighs In Pathways to Closing the Achievement Gap: Boston Superintendent Tommy Chang Shares Innovations for Student Success Redefining the Classroom: What Does the Future of Education Look Like?

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Engineering is Elementary Founder Christine Cunningham Speaks on K-12 Engineering Curriculum, Equal Access to STEM Education

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
In 2003, engineering for elementary education was a radical concept. But Christine Cunningham, an expert in engineering education, knew that the fundamentals of engineering can be taught at an early age-on the playground, in the classroom, or even at home.

# data[].attributes.body
I combined this into two because this is a lengthy one! 42 minutes. You can listen to it as a podcast, or watch the video. But it will get you charged up to use Google Maps and Google Earth.

What’s New in the world of Google Maps, MyMaps, and Google Earth?

TechEducator Podcast #155
By Jeffrey Bradbury

-

May 24, 2017

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Podcast: Download | Embed

Subscribe: Apple Podcasts | Android | Google Play | Stitcher

In this episode of the TechEducator Podcast, we take a look at the new Google Earth, MyMaps and Google Tour Builder and share our tips for using these tools in our classrooms.

TechEducatorPodcast.com

1. Follow us Live on Video: http://www.TeacherCast.tv

2. Leave a Voice Mail: http://www.TeacherCast.net/voicemail

3. Email: feedback@Teachercast.net

4. Twitter: @TechEdShow

5. Hashtag: #TechEducator

Hosts

1. Jeff Bradbury - TeacherCast.net - @TeacherCast

2. Sam Patterson - MyPaperlessClassroom.com - @SamPatue

3. Jennifer Judkins - TeachingForward.net - @JennJudkins

4. Josh Gauthier @mrgfactoftheday

Apps Mentioned In The Podcast

Thank You For Your Podcast Reviews

Are you enjoying Educational Podcasting Today or other shows on the TeacherCast Network, please share your thoughts with the world by commenting on iTunes today? I enjoy reading and sharing your comments on the podcast each week.

Ask Me Your Podcasting or WordPress Question

Are you interested in starting your own podcast? Do you need help creating an awesome WordPress website? I am available for 1:1 consulting. Please visit my homepage and I will help you launch your personal brand today!

Contact Me

Check Out More TeacherCast Programming

View LIVE Professional Development from TeacherCast

Need a Presenter?

Jeff Bradbury, creator of TeacherCast, and father of the famous @EduTriplets is the Coordinator of Instructional Technology at Westwood Regional School District. Thanks for checking out TeacherCast today. Please take a moment to find me on all of my Social Media channels!

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Google Earth and Google Tour Builder Tutorial

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Podcast: Download | Embed Subscribe: Apple Podcasts | Android | Google Play | Stitcher In this episode of the TechEducator Podcast, we take a look at the new Google Earth, MyMaps and Google Tour Builder and share our tips for using these tools in our classrooms. Follow us Live on

# data[].attributes.body
Technically, this is a vodcast, not a podcast. Why have we included this? Because it shows how we could include our students in creating content, not just consuming it. It is also adorable...and it mentions our favorite word, summer.

Is Summer Break Overrated? On episode #19 of the Servi Jenkins Show, they have Davis and Walker on the show to talk about what is overrated and underrated about summer break.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
On episode #19 of the Servi Jenkins Show, they have Davis and Walker on the show to talk about what is overrated and underrated about summer break. The list for overrated includes: camping (1:09), Disney (1:59), ice cream trucks (3:04), tanning (4:16), and the beach (4:45).

# data[].attributes.body
Step 1: Watch this video. Then, create your Padlet account.
Step 2:  Listen to each of the 10 Podcasts. After listening to each one, post at least two posts on your padlet of either links or ideas from the Podcast.
Step 3: Share your finished Padlet (once you have listened to 10 podcasts) with Kathryn Blades and Mary Simmons. Your Padlet must have at LEAST 20 posts (ideas or links, 2 per podcast). YOU MUST SHARE A PADLET WITH US FOR CREDIT!