Welcome to K12EduBuzz.com. I am Jean Tower and I appreciate your visit to my blog. I encourage comments and look forward to online conversations with my readers.

Blended Learning Universe

The Highlander Institute and the Christensen Institute are joining forces to host a Blended Learning Universe conference, March 31 to April 1, 2017 in Providence, Rhode Island. These are two organizations that really understand blended learning and are leaders in this space. If you are leading blended learning in your school or district and would […]

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Eat Your Broccoli

As a school leader in education technology, my professional world is often focused on building capacity for educators to use technology well for teaching and learning, and on creating the essential conditions that make it possible for them to put these skills into practice. Some teachers embrace the use of technology readily, they “get it” […]

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Ed Tech Teams Need Project Management Skills

Deployment of technology in schools, as in other sectors, is often a series of projects, and to be successful, projects need to be managed well. What is a “project?” A project is something that has a beginning and an end and a specific scope and focus. A project has someone who manages the project, participants […]

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Try Adobe Spark

I have been enjoying using Canva to create posters, invitations, and other graphical design projects. It is free, unless you want to purchase a template or image that costs money. It is fairly easy to use, but I admit that I did not find it intuitive and fumbled my way through my first few projects. […]

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1999 to Today

I am doing some home office clean-up – throwing out old papers and scanning some things I want to keep. I came across this paragraph I wrote in May of 1999: How do we convince “reluctant adopters” to be more open to using technology? Maybe that’s the wrong question. Maybe we need to ask how […]

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Playlists for Learning

There are tools that make it very easy to create playlists for learning. You may think of music when I say playlist, but it is also a concept of creating set of resources for a lesson or unit. You can use the tools I describe here – BlendSpace and Symbaloo – to share access to […]

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New ISTE Student Standards

ISTE has launched a draft version of the new standards for students. Look them over and provide feedback. Right now they are in draft form and ISTE has a feedback mechansim on the page linked above. They are a departure from past standards. Each standard has clarifying details, but the broad headings are: Empowered Learner […]

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Tools, Tools, Tools

My husband is quite handy around the house and takes on projects big and small. Big – he has gutted rooms and completely redone them – floor, ceiling, lighting, walls – and small – he’ll fix that leaky faucet. His workshop in the basement has grown over the years and he has accumulated the tools […]

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Future Ready Learning NETP16

Today the US Department of Education released the 2016 National Education Technology Plan, Future Ready Learning: Reimagining the Role of Technology in Education. The plan can be found at tech.ed.gov/netp and you can download the complete plan as a pdf or access by section on the web site. As the image above illustrates, the main components of the […]

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Students & Mobile Technology

Pew Research published a brief overview of their report, Teens, Social Media & Technology Overview 2015. As expected, teens spend lots of time online and using social media, with 92% reporting that they go online daily. Most teens use more than one social media site (72%). As an educator, I read these stats and think […]

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