CloudHQ is an excellent new tool though that will sync all of your clouds so that you no longer need to search in the rain for those important files. If you are like me and have Dropbox, Evernote and Google Drive accounts then CloudHQ can sync across all of these platforms and more. Visit www.cloudhq.net for more information.
Having your life in the cloud can be great. You can access your information from any device. However what do you do when you have more than one cloud? Quickly a group of clouds can turn into a thunderstorm of confusion.
CloudHQ is an excellent new tool though that will sync all of your clouds so that you no longer need to search in the rain for those important files. If you are like me and have Dropbox, Evernote and Google Drive accounts then CloudHQ can sync across all of these platforms and more. Visit www.cloudhq.net for more information.
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How do we organise ourselves in the modern and ever changing world of the 21st Century? This seems to be the source of wealth for companies designing the next best tool and confusion, frustration, angst for the average Joe. Every time a new tool or device comes along we reorganise our lives in someway. Take moving to Apple devices as an example: when you got your first iDevice everything was different and most of us hated/fought it to begin with. Soon enough though we were converted and loved the ease of everything syncing and the access to a multitude of tools at the touch of a button. A few years later we line up to do it all again with the next best tool/device. Tools and skills that were previously only acquired by experts who had devoted their life to mastering them, are now all located in the palm of your hand. What does any of this have to do with the classroom you may be asking yourself? As someone interested in technology, I am constantly looking for and learning about new tools. I find myself constantly making lists of tools in an attempt to remember them all, hoping that when the perfect opportunity arises I will be able to use the tool successfully. However I have found that as I find and introduce new tools to my class they are quickly embraced. Unfortunately though, the students seem to embrace them almost like a fad and want to use them for everything until the next tool comes along. Constantly consuming. I have tried many times to get students to think more critically about their choices by evaluating the purpose and tools available, and then selecting based on their analysis. However like the rest of us, students can be creatures of habit... selecting tools that they know, like or find easy to use and can I blame them? Needless to say I want to cry every time I see a PowerPoint or Prezi! Okay so that is a slight exaggeration but you get the point. So the real question is how do we set students up for success in a world where tools are coming and going faster than ever? I have been trying for a few years now to focus on teaching my students skills rather than how to use tools but the question has always been 'What skills should I be teaching?'. After all they can usually work out how to use new technology faster than me anyway! The new Australian curriculum has made identifying some important skills easier but there are others that are also important. After a recent conversation with Tom Barrett from NoTosh I have been looking into the idea of Mindsets, Skillsets and Toolsets. This blog post helps to explain the links between the SAMR model and mindsets in technology education. The reason this idea excites me is because it is a way to organise and synthesise tools, skills and ways of thinking. An example: If you focus on the way you need to think, skills required and tools used when finding information for a presentation:
So by focusing on the mindset required for the stage/type of task being undertaken we can then consider the skills required and finally, and where it should be, the tools. Having thought about this idea I immediately tried to work out what were the necessary Mindsets, Skillsets and Toolsets in my classroom. After considering this for some time and not knowing where to start I remembered a set of Thinking Hat posters that I came across earlier in the week. Using these posters and my understanding of the Design Thinking process I began to collate the thoughts, skills and tools in a table that teachers could refer to. Next I turned my attention to how I could share this with my students. I began to think of ideas and then prototype classroom displays. I love interactive classroom displays that can change as our classroom and students change and so the student silhouette and icons were created. Students will be able to change the icons depending on the tasks they are engaging with. I will be adding the teacher and classroom displays to the resources page when completed but please let me know what you think of my prototypes so far. As I would say to my students; please remember when critiquing to be KIND - SPECIFIC - HELPFUL so that I may improve my learning! Charles Leadbeater: Education innovation in the slums #TED
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