Re-thinking The Teaching and Learning Skills in The age of Technology

Authored by : Mohamed Kharbach

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Table of Content
About The Author................................................................................................................................3 Re-use of This Book.............................................................................................................................4 Disclaimer and / or Legal Notices ............................................................................4 Introduction................................................................................................................................... .......5 The Three Eras of Education :..........................................................................................................7
1- Apprenticeship Era 2- Universal Schooling Era 3- Life-long Learning Era

The difference Between The Three Eras................................................................... .........13 The 21st Century Skills for Students..................................................................15/33 1- Students Expectations 2- Ways to Cater to Students Needs 3- The 21st century Skills Students Need The 21st century Skills Teachers Need............................................................. 34/40 1- Recommendations for the 21st century Teachers 2- List of Skills Teachers Need to Have

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About The Author

Mohamed ( Med ) Kharbach is a Canadian Certified Teacher working at the Yarmouth Tri-county Regional Schoolboard. He has been teaching for nine years now. He is also a master student in Mount Saint Vincent University, department of education in Halifax. He is working on a thesis about the educational use of emerging technologies in education. Mohamed is also a SEO ( Search Engine Optimizer ) and web designer. He is the editor and owner of two educational blogs. Educational Technology and Mobile Learning is where he writes about web 2.0 revisions and provides tips for both students and teachers on how to better implement technology in their classrooms. Educational Mobile Technology is his second blog where he reviews the best free mobile apps for both iOS and Android. You can contact Med at med@educatorstechnology.com or use the contact form at his blogs.

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Reuse of this ebook

This work is licensed under Creative Commons AttributionNonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.. I do grant you the full permission to print and use the content of this ebook as you see fit provided that you do not charge participants for it. You can also publish it on your blog or website with proper attribution and provided you do not charge visitor access to it.

DISCLAIMER AND/OR LEGAL NOTICES

The author of this work does not accept any liability or responsibility to any person or entity with respect to any loss or damage alleged to have been caused, directly or indirectly, by the information, ideas, opinions or other content in this transcript. While every attempt has been made to verify the information provided here, the author and his referrals cannot assume any responsibility for errors, inaccuracies or omissions.

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Introduction
Ever since the start of this new millennium, 21st century skills has been a catch-phrase racketing around education and business world. It is still gaining momentum and will definitely do so for the coming years. We are leaving behind and entire thousand-year set completely different from the one we are advancing into. No two persons can even differ over the huge change humanity has witnessed in the last decade. National Geography magazine In its last printed version, the Top 100 Amazing Inventions has stated that in the last ten years scientists have unearthed more knowledge and facts than what the entire humanity have achieved since its creation. Yes this is jaw dropping. Science is developing in such a tremendous way that life in 2050 would completely be different from all kinds of lives that Man has ever known.

Technology is looked upon as the primary engine of these transformations. AAs educators our focus will be narrowed down to just education. This latter is where the change is starkly noticed. The advancement of technology has swept away every traditional aspect of education . Twitter, Facebook, Linkedin, YouTube, Blogs, Social Networking, iPhones to mention but some have all had their say in this transformation.

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Digital era, information age, knowledge era are new terms that we start hearing recently because of this digital boom. We live in a digital world where computers, tablets and mobile devices are predominant. If you are under the age of 31 you grew up surrounded by digital media. Our students are digital natives . They dont know anything else, this is their lifestyle. They also know that they are different from digital immigrants who are those people who learned to do technology later in life. There is even a growing digital divide between students and some of their old fashioned teachers who are still resisting the change. This results in an unhealthy learning environment that has severe repercussions on the entire learning and teaching process. This is exactly where this ebook fits in. It tries to help in bridging the gap between teachers and students via providing some tips and ideas that might help teachers and students hone in their differences and work hand in hand in the development of our schooling.

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The Three Eras of Education

In their book Rethinking Education in The Age of Technology Allan Collins and Richard Halverson have elaborately discussed the major transformational eras that education has gone through before it becomes what it is now. To understand todays education I deem it important that you have an idea of what these great authors have written in this regard. The book talks about the American educational system as an example which we can apply to many other educational systems around the globe.

According to Allan and Richard education has gone through three phases : the first one is called Apprenticeship an which lasted until the 19th century, the second one is called Universal Schooling which was prevalent in the 20th century and the last one is called Life Long Learning that is actually taking place.

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1- The Apprenticeship Era

Until the 19th century, education was largely the responsibility of parents. Most people were farmers, and children learned the skills they needed, whether it was reading and counting or plowing and sewing, from their parents or other kin. This was the apprenticeship system, where individual children were taught all they needed to know by those close to them. Where people took up other occupations, such as crafts or midwifery, apprenticeship was the way they learned these occupations. Often, they were apprenticed to a friend or relative of the family, if not to their parents. They learned by observation, imitation, and guided practice. As Lawrence Cremin states, In general the pedagogy of household education was the pedagogy of apprenticeship, that is a relentless round of imitation, explanation, and trial and error.

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2- Universal Schooling In early 19th century New England Horace Mann led a movement toward Universal Schooling that shifted the responsibility of educating children from the family to the state. This movement resulted mainly from a chain of events that included: The invention of the printing press, the Reformation, the American Revolution and the Industrial Revolution. The last of these was the real precipitating event that caused the push for universal schooling among a group of humanitarians concerned with the welfare of children in an industrial society. The school structures and institutions that evolved in the first 100 years of Universal Schooling solved a set of problems facing a growing an urbanizing country in very efficient and effective ways.

Here are the main pieces that constructed the interlocking system of universal schooling and that also solved many of the educational problems faced in the process of creating this system.

Compulsory Attendance: This was the main thrust of the universal schooling. Its goal was to ensure that the populace was educated
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enough to make wise political decisions since the control of the government at that period was turned over to the public. Graded Schools: This was a response to the problems created by the huge increase in students brought on by compulsory attendance. Working with students of the same age reduced the amount of curricular knowledge for teachers and made it easier to control classes. Tests: tests were used to sort students into classes where they have the same ability. They were used to track the progress of students through the system so that they would advance to the next grade based on demonstrating that they had mastered the material covered in the current grade. Textbooks: textbooks were introduced to solve the problem of what students should learn. This was necessary to provide some uniformity in what students were learning in the different schools across the country. Carnegie Units: Carnege units addressed the problem of uniformity across a very diverse country. By specifying what courses should cover, they allow students to move from one school to the other with some coordination in what the students learn. In particular, it allows colleges and universities to determine what students have studied in high school and whether they have been adequately prepared to take on a course of study in college. In a highly mobile society, such as America, the kind of coordination provided by Carnegie units is essential to placing students when they change schools. Comprehensive High Schools: These allowed schools to offer a diversity of courses to suit different kinds of students. They were part of the
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solution to the problem of how to meet the learning needs of a wide variety of students.

The system that evolved from all of the aforementioned features proved to be very effective in educating a highly diverse population. But the society has continued to change, while these features have been locked in place for over 100 years. So the pressures are building for new solutions to the problems of education.

3- Life Long Learning Era With the advance of technology and telecommunications the seeds of a new educational system started to blossom giving birth to what is now called Life-Long Learning. These seeds can be seen in the explosive growth of home schooling, workplace learning, distance education, adult education, learning centres, educational television and videos, computer-based learning software, technical certifications, and Internet Cafes. Many of these seeds will affect the learning of children, but many others will affect people of all ages, as learning becomes a lifelong enterprise. The face of education is changing rapidly and it remains to be seen exactly what form it will take.
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When taken together, the cumulative effect of these innovations is to extend learning throughout life and over many venues. With time, these pieces might come to comprise the fragments of a new system of education in which schools are pushed to the peripheral role in learning that they once occupied in the era of apprenticeship. But for now, these elements have developed independently of one another. They do not in any sense form a coherent system of education. That is where the need for visionaries is most apparent. It will take a new group of energetic visionaries to once again do the kind of work that Horace Mann and his colleagues did, that is to figure out how to build an equitable and coherent system from these emergent technological pieces.

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Difference between the three eras of education

As we moved from the apprenticeship era to the universal schooling, then to the life long learning era, there occurred many changes on a number of different dimensions. Who was responsible for childrens education, what was the purpose and the content of their education, how were they to be taught and assessed, and what did we expect them to learn. There were akso changes in the location of where learning took place, the culture in which learning occurred, and the relationship between teachers and learners.

Here is a brief review of these changes: Responsibility: From parents ( in the apprenticeship era) to the state ( in the universal schooling era) to individuals and parents ( in life long era) Expectations: From social reproduction ( in 1st era) to success for all ( 2nd era) to individual choice ( 3rd era ).

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Content: From practical skills ( 1st era) to disciplinary knowledge ( 2nd era) to learning how to learn ( 3rd era ). Pedagogy: from apprenticeship ( 1st era) to didacticism ( 2nd era ) to interaction ( 3rd era ). Assessment: From observation ( 1st era) to Testing ( 2nd era ) to embedded assessment ( 3 rd era ). Location: From home ( 1st era ) to school ( 2nd era ) to anywhere ( 3rd era ). Culture: From adult culture ( 1st era ) to peer culture ( 2nd era) to mixed-age culture ( 3rd era ). Relationships: From personal bonds ( 1st era) to authority figures ( 2nd era) to Computer-mediated interaction ( 3rd era).

That was in brief what Allan Collins and Richard Halverson have covered in their book Rethinking Education in The Age of Technology , a book which I highly recommend for you to read. There are more interesting facts that they provided and that I could not include here because of the constraints of space.

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The 21st Century Skills for Students

1-Students Expectations Todays students are digitally focused. The average student spends at least 4 hours daily interacting with their digital gadgets. This digital culture which has permeated our kids life has brought about a set of changes to their learning habits some are positive and some are negative. The worst aspect of them all is the short attention span. It is very hard to maintain a students attention for longer time posing the question of contemplative creative thinking. When you look at creativity from this perspective it sheds a lot of light on the debate educational technologies have been having recently over the power of Internet on students brains. Are students getting overwhelmed with an always connected multi tasking lifestyle? Is that going to lead to less sophisticated thought as they move away from the slower, deeper and contemplative state of reading for instance?
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I think it is very important here to remember that the greater driver of scientific innovation and technological inventions has been the historic increase in connectivity, the ability to reach out and exchange ideas with other people, that has been more than anything else the primary engine of creativity and innovation. Yes it is true students are more distracted when using digital media but what is really so miraculous and marvelous is their ability to access a plethora of ways to connect and reach out and find other learners who have that missing piece of information that would complete the idea they are working on. That is the real lesson of where good ideas come from. The chance favours the connected mind.

So to better cater to the needs of such a group of learners we need to know their expectations. And according to a recent study in this regard, Todays students have various expectations such as:

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Freedom to choose and express their personal views and individual identities Customization and Personalization Scrutiny: detailed, behind the scene analysis Integrity and openness in their interactions with others Entertainment and play to be integrated into their work, learning and social life Collaboration and relationships to be a vital part of what they do Speed in communications, getting information, and getting responses to questions and messages Innovation in their lives

Ways to Cater to Students 21st century Needs

Now that we know their expectations, how are we going to personalize their learning and make them perform better while respecting their mind sets? Obviously a one-size-fits-all factory model and one-way broadcast approach to learning does not work well for these students. Trilling and Fadel found five key findings that may help guide and reshape learning to meet our students needs:

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1. Create more authentic learning experiences. Students need more real-world problem solving, internships in real work settings. 2. Allow mental model building, students should be put into situations that incorporate new experiences that change their views over time. 3. Create lessons that have an emotional connection to what is being learned. 4. Create more personalized learning opportunities for students. Differentiate! 5. Embed social learning into lessons. Online communication is an option.

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The 21st century Skills Students Need

After this brief analysis of the expectations and the ways we can cater to our students learning needs, we need to know what the skills most important to their learning are. Of course as education is changing so do the skills we as teachers need to focus on. The skills the 20th century students need to develop during their schooling are different from the ones of the 20th century.

To better prepare students for post school life, teachers need to encourage and help students acquire the following skills:

Passion for the digital I think most of the students have it now but still teachers need to make sure students are aware of the technological challenges of the future. Equipping students with the basic technological skills is the key solution. This includes the understanding and using of :

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Internet Search

Students need to know how to effectively search online using key words and modifiers. This skill will help them not only in their schooling but also in their life in general. Here are some articles I recommend for developing this skill:

Three Effective Ways to Search The Web Google Search tips

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Office Suite Skills

Students need to know how to open a word document, edit and share it, use a spreadsheet, create a form, make a survey, create a presentation and embed it somewhere else. Open Office / Libre Office, Microsoft Word, and Google Docs all can help students develop this skill.

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The Use of Social Media

Social networking sites such as Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, And Stumble Upon are not just for socialising, they can be of great educational help. Students need to know how to benefit from these free services in exchanging ideas and getting to know other students and sharing the knowledge. They can also use them to work on class projects and assignments. Blogs are also another learning element that students can use. There are many free blogging platforms where you can start your free blog: Blogger and Wordpress are great places to start with. Mastering the social networking skill can open up many promising horizons for students in the future.

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Filtering and assessing Web content

Internet is ripe with content covering everything you look for. Students often use it to look for information they need in their school projects. Just typing in the search query and clicking on the first search results is not enough to ensure that the content is trustworthy and has a degree of credibility. Many web sites owners use malicious techniques to trick search engines and get higher page rank. This is a serious issue for our students who do not know anything about this matter. We need to teach them that when they perform a search online and land on a web page that answers their query they have to look first for the author of the article, check his authority in the field he is writing about. They can start with quickly reading his bio if possible, his professional and scholarly background. They also need to check the rank of his web page using very simple tools such as Google Page Rank and Alexa. There are extensions and add-ons that students can install on their browsers to constantly check the rank of web pages. The content from an article that ranks 7 or 8 is more likely to be
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credible than the one from a website that ranks 1 or 2. I personally use both the Alexa and Google page rank checker on my Chrome browser and whenever I am in a website the first thing I do is to look up and see their rankings. Google assigns a page rank to every website online It uses numbers from 1 to 10 with 10 being the highest. Alexa also classifies websites according to their total page views, their backlinks and popularity .It starts from millions to 1 with number 1 being the top.

Typing Skill

Typing which is disregarded by many learners can be a real pain in the back when preparing a classroom project. Learning how to type fast and accurately is a skill much needed even outside school in the market place. We are living in a fast paced world and the quicker you do things the better chances you get. I have some resources for students to develop their typing skills. These are mainly interactive games and exercises that they can use from time to time to master their keyboarding.
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Check out these resources: Free Resources to Develop Typing Skills Test and Improve your Typing

Staying secure and safe online

Students need to learn how to keep their identities and data safe from intruders and hackers. The web is full of scammers and unless we take our precautions we might be a victim of one of them one day. Here are some resources for online safety to check out Free Tools and Resources about Internet Safety Google Good to Know: Everything you Need to Know about Staying Safe Online Google Plus: Safety Guide for Parents and Students

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Back up Data or Plan B

As students use the web to work on projects and assignments from school, it is important that they know how to back up their data for a rainy day. Prevention is better than cure. Here are some resources on backing up data.

Google Takeout Back up your Data Free Resources to Back up your Files

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Respecting Creative Commons and Copy Right

When students create multimedia projects they might be tempted to simply do a Google Images search and use the first images they see. But as educators and teachers, we have a responsibility to teach students to respect copyright holders rights. One of the ways that we can do that is by teaching students how to use Creative Coomons and Copy Right Infringements. Let us take the use of images as an example. Students need to know that images that are shared on the net are pretected by copyright. This means that they can not just take images that someone else has made and use them as their owns. Using someone elses work without permission is called Copyright Infringement. This can get people in trouble. Fortunately enough, some people are reluctant to share their work so that others can re-use. Creative Commons is an organisation that gives out licenses for people to share their work ( like the photos theyve taken or pictures theyve drawn). Students can use these kind of images on their multimedia projects and blog posts as long as they attribute
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the image. Attributing the image means adding a caption under the image to say who made the image and where you got it from. Here are some websites where students can get images with a Creative Commons License: Morgue File Wylio Edupic Graphical Resource The World Images Kiosk Image Base Photo 8 Google Images Yahoo Images Animal Photos

Analytical Thinking and Application

Students need to be able to scan and sift through information and determine what the important information is, and what should be omitted.

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Crtitical Thinking

Students need to be able to think for themselves, learn on their own, understand and access facts and figures and engage and interact positively with a team environment.

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Communication skills

Students need to learn how to maintain a good communicative behaviour. They need to learn how to listen to others when they speak and judiciously judge arguments and facts. Effective communicative skills are necessary for the job market and for life as a whole.

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Responsibility

Students need to learn how to accept to be accountable for their actions and learn to accept change in a fastmoving digital environment in which transformation is inevitable and necessary.

Citing Resources

This is a skill much needed in a world full of plagiarisers, but as educators we need show our students how to grow up respecting others copyrights and properly citing their resources when working on a research or a classroom project. Here are some articles to help you teach this skill
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Taking The Mystery out of Copyright Citation Help Resources

Finding and Using Mobile Educational Apps

The world is going mobile and the majority of our students own a mobile gadget of some sort. Studies have shown that kids spend more than 4 hours interacting with their mobile appliances which is a huge amount of time compared to how much time left for other tasks. As educators, we need make sure to keep our students with the right mobile apps to install on their devices. There are tons of learning materials included in the apps market. These apps offer help in a variety of topics such as learning languages, Math, Physics, Geography, History, Technology, and many more. Most of these apps are also free so why not leverage them to our favour. Here are some links where you can get learning apps

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Socratica Quixey Appsylum

The list of these skills is not conclusive, We might have missed some other skills here but at least the ones mentioned above are the top ones and have the priority over all. Before we move to teachers skills let me share with you this diagram published on theatlantic.com in which students skills are organized according to their importance in the voters eyes.

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The 21st century Skills Teachers need

As is the case with students, Teachers too need to develop some crucial skills to fit in the 21st century educational paradigm. This extensive digitisation of education is driving educational experts and pedagogues to come up with new theories of how to leverage the potential of technology in the classroom and in the course of making this possible, teachers who are the main players in the education equation need to have certain skills to make this transformation smooth .

Let me first share with you two awesome videos on how some teachers are and how they should be. First video : Watch this video to see some unhealthy practices that some teachers still do.( http://youtu.be/w3PhJDxvgJM ) Second Video: Watch this one here to see how the 21st century teachers are like. (http://youtu.be/a7-QIZnCD2Y )
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Here is a set of recommendations for the 21st century teachers to reconsider in order to adequately prepare today's students for their future:

Share and model the use of current internet tools Participate in professional networks Assist students as they build their learning networks Provide sufficient learning opportunities for students to become digitally literate Inspire every child to be quality digital global citizens.

The 21st century teachers are characterized by certain holistic and student centered features , some of them are summarized below . Gratitude and thanks go back to Andrew Churches who has provided this diagram .

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The risk taker:

Teachers should not wait for others to take the initiative , they have to be the lead. Show your students that everything can be learnt through risk and initiative taking and sometimes surrender yourself to your students knowledge . They will definitely love you and trust you even more and guess what ? This trust is the key to better learning and engagement.

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The Collaborator :

The central theme in your work should always be collaboration . Incorporate the collaborative tools web2.0 offers .They are free and highly effective. Ning ,Bebo, Myspace, Secondlife, Msn, blogger and wikispaces are but some few examples, Educational Technology and Mobile Learning and several other edublogs will provide you with the necessary tools to start with.

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The model :

Teachers' job is not just instilling information in students minds though instilling is not a proper term to use, but they are also there to give the exemplary model of how the life long learner should be. Students are very much influenced by their teachers' behaviors therefore the 21st century teachers need to model several characteristics such as : Reflective thinking and practice Tolerance Coexistence Affection, love , tenderness Love of technology and digital information Global awareness

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The leader :

To better understand the notion of leadership there is nothing better than to read an awesome paper created by Thousand and Villasand entitled Managing complex change towards inclusive schooling .

The visionary :

Teachers must be imaginative . They need to foresee the potential of the emerging technologies, look into other areas of the curricula and across disciplines, make links that enhance and value learning in other fields to leverage this knowledge and reinforce their teaching and the learning of their students .

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The learner : Learning is a continuous process , a life long commitment to knowledge , teachers should always seek knowledge everywhere using technology . The world is dynamic and the horizons and landscapes are changing so do the teachers needs and skills.

The communicator :

the 21st century teacher should be fluent in the use of communication and information technologies ,know how to facilitate, stimulate, control, moderate and manage them.

The adaptor : Different as they are the modes of learning , teachers should always make their teaching styles adaptive to : The new curriculum requirements The emerging web2.0 technologies The various age groups and abilities The new dynamic teaching experiences.

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Here are some other free resources for teachers and students: 80 Educational Alternatives to YouTube The Ultimate Guide to Googles Search Features for Teachers and Students Free Kids-safe Websites: Learning Tools for Young Learners The Comprehensive Guide To Googles Free Tools for Educators and Teachers. A List of Free Educational Android and iOS Apps. 21 Educational Infographics Free URL Shortner Tools Free Math Resources: Lesson Plans, Activities and Games. 16 Free Typing Resources. Free Apps for Students with Visual and Hearing Impairment. A List of Free Graphic Organizers for Teachers and Students. Free Online Safety Tools for Teachers and Students

Find more of similar educational presentations at this page For more reviews of educational web tools and technology tips on how to learn and teach using technology I invite you to explore the free resources included in: Educational Technology and Mobile Learning www.educatorstechnology.com Educational Mobile Technology www.freemobiletech.com Thank you.
The 21st century skills Teachers and Student need to have