Eclectic Technology

"Surviving as a teacher isn’t easy. Between the sheer work load, diversity of tasks, brutal pace, and seemingly divergent initiatives pulling you in a thousand directions, education can break even the most noble spirits. But it doesn’t have to be that way. Below are ten tips to keep you ticking when things get tough."

The post also suggests that as teachers we need to find the balance between the needs of our learners and content. For some great suggestions check out this post!

"Silk is a new way to create and consume content. Structuring and visualizing your content is now as easy as writing it!

Create beautiful, structured pages with powerful and easy-to-use tools.

Relate - Add deeper meaning to your content. Tag and link to spin a web of information.

Envision - Visualize your content in amazing ways. Look at your data from a dozen new angles.

Silk enables users to choose the data they want from the mass of information available, and to view and arrange it in ways that make sense to them." Try Silk today.

Simple - Great OER content is out there. Gather that content, stitch it together, and engage learners w/o reinventing the wheel.

Stretchy - Seamlessly integrate content with dozens of popular websites, apps, and social media services.

Sticky - Make ANY web content engaging, interactive and shareable using the same tools your learners use every day.

Earlier this year our group adopted the TPACK model of technology integration.

What is TPACK you ask?

While we’ve witnessed many effective approaches to incorporating iPads successfully in the classroom, we’re struck by the common mistakes many schools are making with iPads, mistakes that are in some cases crippling the success of these initiatives.

The five critical mistakes (and more information is in the post):

* Focusing on content apps.

* Lack of teacher preparation in classroom  management of iPads.

* Treating the iPad as a computer and expecting it to serve as a laptop.

* Treating iPads like multi-user devices.

* Failure to communicate a compelling answer to "Why iPads?"

Lisa Johnson from Techchef4u has put all of her iPad lessons onto Pinterest. This is like finding the the mother load of iPad gold. We have posted before about the work that Lisa does around building great resources and then sharing then with teachers. She is a prolific content creator.

Lisa is also the author of a fantastic ebook Hot Apps 4 Hots which can be found on iTunes and of course she co-comperes the "Appy hours" blogtalk radio show. An absolute task this weekend - check out this resource.