Technology
Welcome to the technology page. Technology, the Internet, and web resources play an increasingly important part in the classroom for students, teachers, and administrators. Technology changes constantly, so our intent with the following links is to provide information about new resources, important links, and online resources you can use to help you integrate technology into your programs and lessons. These are updated on a regular basis, so check back often!
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Social Media and Learning |
| Academic Tweeting The London School of Economics and Political Science asked readers of their blog and their Twitter followers to submit tips and examples for academic tweeting, to accompany the guide on using Twitter in university research, teaching and impact activities that they launched in late August. Here are some of the best suggestions. |
| AlphaPlus Blog This blog provides a slightly different perspective, pointing tutors to links in its posts, and providing topics in a drop down menu. |
| What would you like in a mobile app? If you could create the ideal mobile app for learning, what would it look like? Speak Up - Project Tomorrow asked this question to students and received over 200,000 responses. T.H.E. editors sifted through the entries and came up with 15 that vividly speak to the power of mobile technologies to transport the learning experience. |
Cool Tools |
| Croak it! A great way for ESL students to practice English. Croak.it allows users of the internet to push and speak on any webpages that uses its API. You can record and then send the voice messages to other social networks. That’s for the web, though. Croak.it can be incorporated in mobile apps too. |
| The Power of Technology CAAL aims to promote understanding, effective policy and resource development, stronger and better funded programs, adult access to services, effective communications, and fresh thinking and analysis. |
| The Spoken Alexandria Project: Podcasts and MP3 Files This free audiobook library offers the humor and wisdom of Benjamin Franklin and Mark Twain for free. Listen to the Gettysburg Address and a classic World War I war poem, Dulce Et Decorum Est. Click on The Spoken Alexandria Project to find many audio files for free. |
| Tech Soup At TechSoup Stock, hundreds of donated computer products are available from partners such as Cisco, Intuit, Adobe, Symantec, Microsoft, and more. |
| Usable Knowledge: A New Website for Educators and Researchers The Usable Knowledge Web site features a diverse set of media - text, video, and audio - to make the leading research of its faculty accessible to educators all over the world. |
| Using Technology as an Educational Tool: Using Clip Art Comics for Writing The goal of this site is to have a place where user created photo novels can be shared and disseminated more widely... |
Self-paced learning and enrichment |
| GCFLearnFree.org This site provides facilitated and self-paced online learning opportunities for both students and teachers. Topics includes subjects such as Internet basics, commonly used software, math and money, everyday living, and career development. |
| OTAN Workshops Wiki This wiki presents materials from many of the OTAN workshops. To find a workshop, just look in the left sidebar of the website. Once you find the correct one, just click the title. |
| OTAN: Outreach and Technical Assistance Network for Adult Educators This California based website provides electronic collaboration and information, and support for instructional technology and distance learning to literacy and adult education providers. Some of the courses may not be available to those outside of California. |
| Self-Guided Free Online Technology Workshops Catalyst provides "How-To" guides and step-by-step instructions for common online tasks, such as document and data management (Word, Access, and Excel), how to use videos, creating graphics, and understanding web publishing. |
| Technology Resources You and Your Students Will Love Training Site This is the training site that is used for the Technology Resources You and Your Students Will Love training. You may refer to this site at any time to refresh your memory on a website that you discovered in our training or you may explore it on your own if you have been unable to attend one of our training's on this topic. |
| Thinkfinity Literacy Network Take free distance learning courses on reading, volunteering, ESOL, family literacy, and program management. Courses are developed by staff from the National Center for Family Literacy and ProLiteracy America. |
Integrating technology into instruction |
| How Technology Can Improve Learner-Centered Teaching Technology for the sake of technology is never good. As the late Steve Jobs said, “Start with the customer experience and work backward to the technology.” If students are our ‘customer’, what experience do we need to create that increases the potential for learning? Here are some ways. |
| Internet 101 This basic but excellent site tells you how the Internet works, where you can get software, and describes search engines. |
| No Place in Class for Digital Illiterates While the digital generation may be "tech-comfy", they are often far from being "tech-savvy". This is where teachers come in; taking advantage of their comfort levels with technologies, we can help them towards a realization of what "connectedness" can do in terms of their knowledge, education and preparedness to enter a workplace where they are studying for jobs that don't yet exist. |
| Teachnology This teacher resource site provides lesson plans, worksheets, teaching tips, games, webquests, and more. |
| Using Technology as an Educational Tool: Using Clip Art Comics for Writing The goal of this site is to have a place where user created photo novels can be shared and disseminated more widely... |
The Literacy Institute @ VCU | Contact Us | © 2012 VALRC. All rights reserved. Updated: 05-21-13
The VALRC, located at Virginia Commonwealth University (VCU School of Education), is funded primarily through the VA Department of Education.