Tools and Technologies

How do schools and districts make technology work effectively? Evidence shows that technologies such as one-to-one computing, tablet PCs, and a robust infrastructure can make a real difference. Read the articles below to find out how tools and technologies can make a difference

Digital Learning Environment Blogs

Get the RSS feed

  • Convert any form into an interactive document that people can fill out and return electronically.

  • After you create a PDF document, you can easily edit it. Within Acrobat, you can add, delete, reorder, and renumber pages. You can also edit individual objects within the PDF document. You edit PDF documents by using panels, tools, and menu commands.

  • Windows® 7 makes a teacher’s “technology life” easier. Now, using your PC is more visual and intuitive, so everyday tasks are easier to do.

  • These Web 2.0 portals allow you to view and search for 2.0 tools in one location.

  • Microsoft has lots of free tools to help you engage your students and energize a lesson plan. Learn more and find them online.

  • Read about a learning tool from Microsoft that lets students exploit their Learning Styles potential effectively.

  • The Satellite Observations in Science Education project provides free tools known as Reusable Content Objects. You can use them to put an interactive web page together to teach with.

  • Google Earth 5.0 and the related overlays are great resources for teaching science, social studies, language arts, art and music. It’s easy to learn and use in the classroom as well as on a personal level.

  • Enhancing one’s virtual learning environment with Wiki tools: Without a clear understanding of the transformed classroom, and how everything has a purpose within that classroom, teachers are taken hither and yon, finding fantastic applications, but not fitting them into a comprehensive, understood, learning environment.

  • Teachers have always spent their own money on classroom supplies. With costs rising each year how can teachers add technology and software to the classroom without going broke? One answer is Freeware and/or Open Source software.

  • How schools can redefine data-driven decision making to embrace a culture of education performance management.

  • An information systems consultant who has been working with educational technology and security writes about security breaches, what to do about them, and the urgency to do something now.

  • Teachers across the country also motivate kids through traditional subjects, such as math and reading, by creatively adapting ePortfolios in their classrooms. Here are a few examples.

  • Tablet PCs can offer teachers new solutions for teaching and engage students so they are excited about learning. The key is flexibility and mobility. This eBook provides information and classroom examples that show where Tablets are making a difference.

  • The goal of installing laptop programs is to increase student learning in the classroom. At Downers Grove South High School, HP laptops are getting a lot of mileage these days. Here is the school’s technology coordinator’s advice to anyone who has purchased laptops recently or is thinking of starting a one-to-one program. Follow these eleven tips to get the most learning out of your investment.

  • When you use innovative digital assessment strategies, you also give your students an opportunity to become familiar with and practice the digital communication skills that will prepare them for the 21st century workforce. Use this tutorial to learn how to use Acrobat as your digital assessment tool. (Part 3 of the Adobe® Acrobat® 9 Pro Curriculum Series)

  • Our students have grown up in a video world. It is a medium they are naturally drawn to and comfortable with. In this Age of YouTube can we make learning more engaging and compelling by including video in our classrooms?

  • A blog is a webpage that you can add information to very easily. That's all you’ll get for a definition. This article will show you HOW to create your very own blog – quickly and easily.

  • Portfolios collect a variety of documents and artifacts to communicate accomplishments, works in progress, or academic histories. With the Internet, both students and teachers can offer portfolios electronically, sharing work with peers, colleagues, parents, potential employers—anyone in the world—easily and quickly. Learn how to set up the process in this tutorial. (Part 2 of the Adobe® Acrobat® 9 Pro Curriculum Series)

  • Teachers and students need new literacy skills as more and more of the resources they turn to are web-based. Here are tips on what to help them learn.

Teaching and Learning

Because living and working are so different now from even a decade or two ago and because things will continue to change, today’s students need new skills to survive and thrive in the future.

Learn more.


>>>>>>>>>>>>