The digital technology and social media landscape changes every day, and many of these changes have a profound effect on students, families and schools. It's nearly impossible for technology specialists to keep up with all of the new developments in the field, and for school leaders who have a lot of other things on their mind, it looks hopeless.
Fortunately, there are some resources that present information about innovations and new technologies in plain, non-technical language. One of the most useful is eSchoolNews, a daily electronic newspaper about technology innovation in schools (http://www.eschoolnews.com/). eSchoolNews showcases both new technologies and innovative uses of more familiar devices, such as smart phones, e-readers, or laptop computers. A recent edition contained great articles on the growing use of iPads to replace textbooks, digital archives for teaching students about the 9-11 anniversary, using technology as part of your incident response and school safety plans, and tackling reading comprehension. eSchoolNews is published daily and is free to educators. It is delivered to your email, so you can either save the edition, forward it to someone who might benefit from seeing it, or simply delete it.
Another site, not devoted exclusively to technology but focused more broadly on innovation, is Edutopia (www.edutopia.org), a free, online resource for educators committed to improving teaching and learning in their schools. The site is subtitled, "What Works in Education," and they are careful to present ideas that come from real practitioners and real schools. On the site today is a section devoted to digital citizenship -- a compendium of resources on cyberbullying, netiquette, and internet safety. Regular features also include videos, group discussions, blogs, classroom resources -- all focused on innovative practices in real world settings.
Both eSchoolNews and Edutopia provide rich resources for educators in a user-friendly manner. A great way to use these excellent tools is to share a feature story with the faculty to start a conversation in your own school about innovations that strengthen teaching and learning. Pretty soon, you'll sound like an expert!
