15 Top Learning, Technology & Media Links: Weekly Digest – 16

The second generation of the iPad is here. iPad 2, with its multitude of features and functionalities (a notch higher than its parent), is a boon for tech-hungry classrooms. 3 days away from the official ‘in stores’ date, it is already poised to revolutionize the education industry.

But before you jump on the iPad bandwagon, it is imperative to lay the foundation for effective implementation at your school. Get the entire lowdown right here. For all of you who have worn your ears out listening to all things iPad, the past week, there’s a something on eLearning skills, digital storytelling, TED videos, instructional design , game-based learning and more. Find it all here in our Weekly Digest – a collection of our top 15 links from the week gone by, each accompanied by a quick brief. Need to quench your thirst for the latest in learning, technology and media links further? You can dig into our previous lists here.

1. How the iPad 2 Will Revolutionize Education The iPad 2’s new features facilitate remote learning, exploration, and stylish lectures. Know how it will help revolutionize education.
2. Top 5 eLearning Skills For 2011 Here are the top skills for eLearning now, in 2011. These are skills that will show up on job descriptions where they list job criteria, requirements or experience.
3. A New Source Of Great Talks On Learning This collection of talks is centered on the annual ‘Learning Without Frontiers ‘(LWF) conference in London, UK. Watch some of the heavy weights in the learning industry talk about learning, technology, apps and more.
4. Digital Storytelling Digital stories derive their power by weaving images, music, narrative and voice together, thereby giving deep dimension and vivid color to characters, situations, experiences, and insights. Here are handouts, lesson plans, worksheets, websites, blogs, wikis, forums and nings in digital storytelling that you need for teaching & learning.
5. Working With Subject Matter Experts (SMEs) The key is not just finding an SME, but finding the ‘right’ SME. The better choice isn’t always the most experienced worker, but the newer person who remembers what it was like not to know how to do a task, who remembers having to learn and what that entailed. Here are some tips for working effectively with SMEs, and getting the help you need.
6. The Luxury of Instructional Design In developing an eLearning course, with steep deadlines and resource constraints, we find ourselves in situations where we need to get some ducks in a row – quick, real quick. And these are precisely the situations where Instructional Design takes a back seat. This post revolves around a simple yet important question – ‘Can we afford to forget about instructional design?’
7. 10 Steps To Take Games Based Learning To The Next Level If you carefully choose the right sort of game, it will engage the children in your class. It is what you do with that engaged group of children and how you make a difference to their learning that counts. So here are 10 steps that will help you take game-based learning to the next level.
8. Fixing E-Learning with Participatory Assessment The explosion of eLearning has inflamed nagging tensions over instruction. This presents challenges for educators, schools, and delivery systems. These challenges in turn reveal tremendous potential for new “participatory” theories of learning. Participatory theories assume that the concepts that schools traditionally focus on get all their meaning from the contexts in which they are used. Know how you can use participatory assessments to fix eLearning.
9. What Students Need From Teachers Lest there’s any doubt that educators are a crucial part of learning – with or without tech tools – here’s sixth-grade teacher Heidi Siwak’s recent discovery – Students need their ‘teacher’ after all.
10. Preparing Your School For An iPad Implementation Planning is imperative for any technology initiative – iPad or otherwise. You need to ensure that you clearly understand and communicate how the technology integrates with your overall pedagogical objectives. Here are few considerations and questions you need to consider before implementing iPads in schools.
11. 12 TED Talks Worth Seeing Right Now It’s that time of year again. Time for TED. The big event is happening this week in California and there’s lots of TED speakers from years past that you should check out. From J.J. Abrams to Douglas Adams to Al Gore, here are videos from some really incredible speakers.
12. Read And Write Fun Collaborative Stories With Foldingstory A Folded Story is a story created by a group of people that do not know what the whole story contains. Different people write different sentences only knowing what the person before them wrote. Folding the paper and passing it along when they were done would keep the whole story a secret till the end. Know how you can have fun and learning with folding story.
13. The Way We Live Now: More Kids Can Work a Smart Phone Than Tie Their Shoes A study conducted by AVG found that 19 percent of 2-5 year-olds could play with a smart phone app, but only 9 percent of those same children could tie their shoes. Yikes!
14. The Idea Economy Requires Digital Learning Now Between the two growth sectors, middle class jobs — the ones that created two-car-garage suburban American – are disappearing. Learning is the entry ticket to the idea economy.
15. Is Mobile Affecting When We Read? Readers want to consume content in a comfortable place, on their own time and mobile devices are making it possible for readers to take control once more. So is mobile really affecting ‘when’ we read? Know more.