Are there any other platforms like Zaption that you recommend?
For K12 users, we recommend you look at EDpuzzle or Nearpod. Both allow you to quickly create high-quality interactive content. For Higher Ed, we encourage you to look at HapYak or H5P – an open source interactive media platform. Finally, Vizia offers another simple but effective option for users of any kind.
Zaption is shutting down. Thankfully, educators have alternatives
For those looking to replace Zaption, Vizia is a viable alternative for creating interactive video content.
Attention: sponsored by itslearning (take information with a grain of salt)
The cloud-based learning platform itslearning will host a free tech webinar for K–12 educators and administrators at 1 p.m. EST (10 a.m. PST) Wednesday, July 27. The webinar, available on the itslearning website, will examine best practices in selecting and implementing learning technologies.
Implementation consultant Libby Lawrie will direct the webinar. She’s a former teacher and school administrator, and she frequently presents nationally on instructional technology and virtual education. She’s also a founding member of the International Association for K–12 Online Learning (iNACOL).
The webinar is designed to give education leaders the insight and tools they need to select the right tools for their tech situations. There are many products and choices out there, and Lawrie will provide strategies for choosing the best products and partners, as well as details about the discovery and implementation process. She will share insights and best practices from U.S. districts large and small.
While badging and digital credentialing are gaining acceptance in the business world and, to some extent, higher education, K-12 educators — and even students — are slower to see the value.
That’s when the MacArthur Foundation highlighted the winning projects of its Badges for Lifelong Learning competition at the Digital Media and Learning Conference in Chicago. The competition, co-sponsored by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and the Mozilla Foundation, had attracted nearly 100 competitors a year earlier. The winners shared $2 million worth of development grants.
Evidence of Lifelong Learning
A digital badge or credential is a validation, via technology, that a person has earned an accomplishment, learned a skill or gained command of specific content. Typically, it is an interactive image posted on a web page and connected to a certain body of information that communicates the badge earner’s competency.
Credly is a company that offers off-the-shelf credentialing and badging for organizations, companies and educational institutions. One of its projects, BadgeStack, which has since been renamed BadgeOS, was a winner in the 2013 MacArthur competition. Virtually any individual or organization can use its platform to determine criteria for digital credentials and then award them, often taking advantage of an open-source tool like WordPress. The credential recipient can then use the BadgeOS platform to manage the use of the credential, choosing to display badges on social media profiles or uploading achievements to a digital resume, for instance.
Finkelstein and others see, with the persistently growing interest in competency-based education (CBE), that badging is a way to assess and document competency.
There are obstacles, though, to universal acceptance of digital credentialing. For one, not every community, company or organization sees a badge as something of value.
When a player earns points for his or her success in a game, those points have no value outside of the environment in which the game is played. For points, badges, credentials — however you want to define them — to be perceived as evidence of competency, they have to have portability and be viewed with value outside of their own environment.
A New Great Communication Tool for Teachers and Parents
https://plus.google.com/+Educatorstechnology/posts/1J72fQCDqM7
July 7, 2016 Appletree is a new educational platform that was recently introduced at ISTE 2016. Apple tree is a classroom communication tool that makes it super easy for teachers to communicate with parents and enhance students learning.
The idea is to divide society into two groups. One group is sometimes called the “plutonomy” (a term used by Citibank when they were advising their investors on where to invest their funds), the top sector of wealth, globally but concentrated mostly in places like the United States. The other group, the rest of the population, is a “precariat,” living a precarious existence.
Register for this complimentary webcast on July 19th to learn how your school or district can design a tech curriculum that matches the future needs of your students today.
During this interactive presentation, you’ll hear how Kennewick School District is giving its students a head start with access to modern tech tools they are likely to use in the real world. Find out how the right tech plan can enable innovative teaching and learning at your school.
Join us as Ron Cone, Kennewick School District CIO, shares:
How to design a tech curriculum that matches your students’ future career needs
Tips for selecting the right tech to support that curriculum
Managing the nuts and bolts of deploying and managing that tech
Microsoft also today announced a reseller arrangement with Booz Allen Hamilton, a reseller of software and hardware that specializes in serving government agencies and the defense industry.
The first custom Surface solutions developed by IBM will focus on providing apps for financial services and packaged consumer goods, he says.
From IBM’s perspective, this is just another way for them to sit in the middle and provide the lucrative consulting, reselling and development work that they do best, for a range of devices that are proving very popular in both work and business.
Matt Weinberger