The popular VARK model of learning styles identifies four different types of learners: visual, aural, reading/writing preference and kinesthetic or tactile. Find your learning style by filling out the online VARK Questionnaire.

My VARK scores:

• Visual: 13
• Aural: 2
• Read/Write: 13
• Kinesthetic: 2

Looking at my VARK scores it’s no wonder I enjoy working with PowerPoint and other presentations tools. Visual learners think in pictures and enjoy working with visual aids like diagrams, charts and graphs. Read/write learners are comfortable with words and like working with written, linear directions and communicating through text.

While aural learners easily pick up information presented verbally, without visual aids many other types of learners are easily lost. Read/write learners respond well to the linear nature of typical presentation tools, but even kinesthetic learners can be reached through the innovative use of presentation tools.

By putting activity instructions up on a slide, students are able to easily follow along while performing the activity. Presenting instructions using PowerPoint type of tool ensures that students don’t get too far ahead of their peers on their project. Instructions are doled out a bit at a time, rather than presented all at once in a handout.

Lately, I’ve been exploring ways to use Prezi, a new online presentation tool that allows the user to zoom from one idea to another on a limitless canvass of design space. Here’s a great example of a Prezi that shows a typical teacher’s day:

Prezi is currently free for students and educators, so give it a test drive if you’re tired of the same old slide shows.

Presentation tools can also be a great way for students to provide a gradable piece as the culmination of an individual or group project. Consider, for example, students who are asked to build a model bridge as part of a physics project. The end result of the bridge project could be a paper and series of diagrams describing various features of the model, or a student could present their project visually, using a program like Prezi to zoom in on certain features of the project and discuss the linear process of constructing the model.

How do you use presentation tools in education? Do you think they belong in the classroom, or do they get in the way of learning? Are you a PowerPoint addict?

Well, your smartphone is about to get a whole lot smarter. We’re pleased to introduceISTE Mobile, an iPhone application (and set of mobile pages) that keeps ISTE news, networks, and resources as close as your pocket or purse. ISTE Mobile includes a rich content library featuring ISTE Connects blog posts, a mobile version of the ISTE Community Ning, selected L&L articles, the NETS, ISTE podcasts, and ISTE 2010 news.

One of our favorite aspects of the ISTE application is its ability to give you a voice, including chatting, posting, friending, and tweeting. Share ISTE news and resources with your personal learning network via Twitter and Facebook—just look for the icons on shareable content throughout the application.

We’re proud of ISTE Mobile and its content, but keep in mind this is a beta version. Like many new technology tools, the app is a work in progress, and we want to incorporate the content you’d find most valuable. So have fun downloading and exploring the app, but also be sure to tell us what other ISTE tools and resources you want at your fingertips.

Learn more at www.iste.org/mobile and share your thoughts below in the comments section.

India as you see it on CNN: bustling, crowded, overwhelming. Throw in Mother Theresa, cricket, complex marriages, outsourcing and India’s computer engineers and you have a very complicated nation. Add two generations of highly successful immigrants now creating the new political grouping of “Indian-Americans” and the understandings of modern India become increasingly muddled.

India, the larger part of the Indian subcontinent is one of the BRIC countries of “Brazil, Russia, India, China,” which feature new emerging economies that are altering the economic landscape of northern America and Europe. India hosts a population almost three times larger than the United States of America in about one-third the space, and about 50% of Indians are under 25. This makes India one of the youngest countries in the world.

The primary and secondary school population in India is almost the size of the total population of the United States. India has some of the finest, as well as many of the worst, primary and secondary schools in the world. Educational opportunities range from elite residential schools to village government schools with one teacher. A new surge of private schools that teach in English wrestle with local language schools to set, and often degrade, standards.

In a speech in Calcutta on January 16, 2010, India’s recently re-elected Prime Minister Manmohan Singh said, “Our Government has raised public investment in education steeply. Never before has so much of money been spent on education.”

This speech was part of his government’s commitment to make universal access to education one of the cornerstones for inclusive growth of India.

“I assure you that in the months to come we will pay even greater attention to the development of school education,” he said.

This may be indicative of speedier implementation of the Right To Education Act, which along with the previous amendment to the Constitution in 2002, will make free and compulsory education for children age 6-14 a fundamental right. It also aims to bring about a qualitative change in primary education to ensure schools have adequate teachers and reformed syllabi aimed at all-around development of children.

According to unofficial estimates, implementation of the new Act would require some 12 lakh (1.2 million!) for teachers and a provision of over 1.7 lakh crores rupees by the Centre and the states. (One crore rupees is around $225,000. A lakh is 100,000. Here’s the math: $225,000 x 170,000 = about $38.5 billion. Add in pricing parity, and you can add a zero to that to understand impact. Think what $380 billion in new money for education would mean in the US or Europe.)

I am delighted to learn that the literacy rate in India has gone up significantly in the past few years. Enrolment rates are rising and drop out rates are falling. I wish to see every child in our country become literate over the next decade. I would like to see a sharp increase in enrollment among women in schools, to help young girls fulfill their potential and become equal citizens of our great Republic.

Here are my early thoughts. Perhaps readers would like to add some of their own.

As David Pogue said in the NY Times on January 29 (paraphrase from memory) anyone who makes strong predictions about the future of the iPad without having even touched one is taking a  big risk.

It does seem to me though, that at least the IDEA of the iPad’s potential in education is very present with possibilities.

The first iteration clearly leaves a lot to be desired, but the very fact that the shortcomings are so obvious (no Flash, no multi-tasking, no expansion, no camera, no USB) bodes well for the appearance of at least some of them in pretty short order (and if not by Apple, than by somebody else like Asus, Acer, Lenovo, or even HP).

For right now, I choose to look on the bright side and see the great opportunities for the iPad to make computing a lot more simple and intuitive for a great many more people (and both younger and older ones than the norm today). And yes, of course, the iPad has got to become much more of a platform for creativity and not just a passive viewing/listening device. Otherwise, it’s just an expensive 21st century ViewMaster.

On the general topic of tablet and i-something devices in education, I also wanted to pass along a couple of videos that I find most interesting to view and contemplate:

1. Singapore 2015, produced by that country’s economic development agency in March 2007, I believe: http://www.ida.gov.sg/About%20us/20070903145526.aspx.

Given that it took maybe 6 months or so to produce, it’s fascinating the think that the conceptualization behind this piece is probably three and half years old by now. Some quite prescient thinking here! And I love the design of the tablet computers.

2. What Happens When You Give a Class of 8-Year-Old iPod Touches?
http://www.l4l.co.uk/?p=835 . From a school in Great Britain.

What do you think, dear readers?

The need for further treatment of this subject became apparent given the responses and interest generated by a recent Technology Tip I had written for the December 2009 issue of ISTE’s Learning & Leading with Technology. The Tip discussed a technique to mirror content of educational videos from a website commonly blocked by school web filters, YouTube, to a more school appropriate site that is typically not blocked, TeacherTube. The failure of that Tip to mention the requirement of obtaining permissions prior to reposting the content started a firestorm of controversy among leaders in the edtech community.

Needless to say, I submitted an errata to the publishers to point out that the article should have been prefaced with the wording “After obtaining permissions from the copyright owners,…” since the intent behind the tip was not to grant license for stealing intellectual property, but to share a useful technique for bringing educational content into the classroom that would otherwise be blocked from use by web filters.

The Digital Millennium Copyright Act of 1998 imposes a legal requirement on users of digital media to obtain permissions from owners of the intellectual property before reproducing it in any way, or using the material beyond the scope of personal private use. This mandate is, in effect, the modern equivalent of the prior era’s admonition against unauthorized photocopying of material from copyrighted books and publications. With the advent of mimeographs and photocopiers, school administrators began to implement policies and spread awareness of copyright issues among their staff when using these technologies to reproduce educational materials for use in the classroom. In the 21st Century, school administrators must further advise their staff that protection of intellectual property now extends into the digital realm, covering all online content that is not available under a free public use license.

In recognition of this critical need for educators to adopt and teach copyright sensitivity and Fair Use guidelines, ISTE revised the NETS-T standard to now formally address this area of concern (see NETS-T, Section 4, “Promote and Model Digital Citizenship and Responsibility“). Another obvious question raised by the Tip is “Why do we need to filter online content in schools?” since it places educators in a position of needing to circumvent those mechanisms in order to access educational content for their classrooms hosted on blocked sites. It is a fair question, and one in which there are a variety of responses. Under the Children’s Internet Protection Act (CIPA), the Federal Government imposed a legal requirement for schools and libraries obtaining funding under certain programs, such as E-Rate, to implement measures for protecting students from online content deemed harmful to minors. Internet content filtering software is a very common approach used by most K-12 schools to satisfy this CIPA compliance requirement–but it is not without limitations, nor is it the only approach.

There are a number of schools which have implemented more progressive policies toward accessibility of online content from sites containing a mixture of both educational material and inappropriate content. In lieu of blocking these sites through web filtering, these schools teach appropriate use, provide active monitoring of students’ internet logs, and impose disciplinary consequences for students who misuse the privilege. Although this approach may satisfy CIPA compliance, it is more the exception than the rule in American schools today.

Many schools simply do not have the staffing resources, or monitoring software, to adequately implement this progressive approach for keeping kids safe online. As a result, the vast majority of K-12 schools resort to filtering software, which usually targets the high level domain name of websites, such as “youtube.com“, and does not allow individual pages within that domain to be unblocked. Since web filters typically employ this “all or nothing” approach to filtering by domain name, sites are blocked for both teachers and students alike. Hence the dilemma behind the ISTE Tip to mirror the content on an unblocked site.

An alternate approach worth mentioning is to have your IT Department set up permissions groups in the system to differentiate levels of online access within your school. When configured this way, filters could allow teachers unrestricted access to online content for use in their classrooms, yet still provide the usual content blocking for students under a more restrictive permissions group.

Regardless of which approach your school takes towards addressing this issue, the important points to take away from the discussion are the need to teach students to be good digital citizens when using 21st Century technologies, and for educators to be good role models when using copyrighted digital media in the classroom.

Our final two priorities call for focusing on technology as the foundation of a modern, high-quality K-12 education.

2. Leverage education technology as a gateway for college and career readiness. By effectively engaging learning through technology, teachers can demonstrate the relevance of 21st century education, keeping more children engaged as they pursue a rigorous, interesting and pertinent PK-12 education.

1. Establish technology in education as the backbone of school improvement. To truly improve our schools for the long term and ensure that all students are equipped with the knowledge and skills necessary to achieve in the 21st century, education technology must permeate every corner of the learning process.

Click here for the full list of ISTE’s Top Ten in ’10.

Click here to read Knezek’s full statement.

How do you think Obama’s 2011 budget plans will impact education?

To ensure that technological expertise is considered an integral part of an educator’s skill set, staying on top of technological advances must be one of the criteria on which an educator is judged. To that end, ISTE has named the measurement of skill development as a top priority for 2010:

4. Continuously upgrade educators’ classroom technology skills as a pre-requisite of “highly effective” teaching. As part of our nation’s continued push to ensure every classroom is led by a qualified, highly effective teacher, we must commit that all P-12 educators have the skills to use modern information tools and digital content to support student learning in content areas and for student assessment.

While classroom teachers are often the front lines of education technology integration, without knowledgeable and readily available technology experts in schools the process of teaching with technology is easily stymied. ISTE calls for increased support for educational technology specialist programs:

3. Ensure technology expertise is infused throughout our schools and classrooms. In addition to providing all teachers with digital tools and content we must ensure technology experts are integrated throughout all schools. To support these experts, as well as all educators who integrate technology into the overall curriculum, we must substantially increase our support for the federal Enhancing Education Through Technology (EETT) program.

Click here for the full list of ISTE’s Top Ten in ’10.

ISTE welcomed the Frontline film crew at NECC 2009, so watch for possible clips from the largest education technology conference in the world.

@ISTEConnects will be live Tweeting the event at 9 p.m. PST, but for a sneak peek at the program visit the Digital Nation Learning page and join the conversation.

A pilot would not be asked to take to the air without modern equipment and extensive training in using the latest technologies. Yet many teachers with limited or no formal training are expected to prepare students for a high-tech world using outdated technological resources.

In recognition of these challenges, ISTE plans to focus on the following priorities in 2010:

5. Invest in pre-service education technology. Teacher preparation is one of the most important aspects of a world-class 21st Century system of education and learning.  A federal investment in a new, technology-savvy generation of teachers is critical. To ensure their success in the classroom, pre-service teachers must be prepared to use technology and integrate it into the curricula before their first day as a teacher of record.

6. Leverage technology to scale improvement. School districts that have successfully led school turnaround and improvement efforts recognize that education technology is one of the best ways to accelerate reform, providing the immediate tools to ensure that all teachers and students have access to the latest innovative instructional pathways. If we are serious about school improvement, we must be serious about education technology.

Click here for the full list of ISTE’s Top Ten in ’10.