Faster than I went scrambling from my flannel shirt when temps here in southern Connecticut dropped precipitously into the 50s at night (it’s still August, dang it!), here are this week’s best articles from Tech & Learning.
- 5 Ways To Avoid AI 'Snake Oil,' According To ISTE Experts - “Anyone who implies that their product will make teachers obsolete is overhyping,” says Joseph South, chief innovation officer at ISTE/ASCD. Or in the words of the esteemed William Drayton Jr: Don’t believe the hype!
- Best Icebreakers for Back to School - Icebreakers can be a fun way to help students (and teachers!) shed their first-day anxieties and get to know one another. And ironically, none of these actually involve actual ice!?
- MagicSchool: How to Use It to Teach - MagicSchool AI is a one-stop suite of AI apps and has become one of the most popular teacher support platforms. Check out our Educator Edtech Review of it for more info.?
- Keeping Student and Teacher Data Safe and Secure - Knowing how to keep information safe and secure is important, but how can that happen with so many advances in technology being made on a regular basis? Hint: Bubble wrap is not the answer.
- Standards-Based Learning and Grading: Your 2024 Game Plan - Favorite comment from this recent T&L webinar -- Eddie Oakley of the Ohio Valley Educational Cooperative in Kentucky, on standards-based learning: “I wrote letters to parents, and said, ‘When you were in school, grades were 70%, 80%, etc.,’ and I asked them to tell me what that meant. And they couldn’t tell me what it meant. Now with standards-based grading, their students can tell them what that means!”?
- How Family Choice Day Became a Flexible Way for Families to Engage in Student Learning - “I think there’s a huge motivation that comes when we give more authority to our learners and their families,” says Dr. Betsy Fowler, Head of Schools at ASU Preparatory Academy in Tempe, Arizona, in regard to her school’s Family Choice Friday.
- What is Clubhouse and How Does It Work? What's New? - Updated for Back to School 2024: Clubhouse is an audio-only platform through which users can publish their talks or have others listen, a bit like a TED conference. So no random silly love songs, right?
Not sure there's anything wrong with that, so here we go again! Enjoy the weekend ahead!
