Dallas Becker has a job for you.
He’s looking for an energetic self starting educational technologist for an American school in Berlin, Germany.
Without asking my opinion, my wife says we'd take that job in a heart-beat, if only I were an educational technologist.
Her grandmother emigrated from the Schleswig-Holstein region of Germany between the two wars. My wife has visited her second-cousins there and they’ve visited us here, and she thinks living in Germany for two years would immerse her in her roots. Undoubtedly.
But I am not an educational technologist, so one of you has to take the job.
Dallas is looking for an EdTech grad, or student, who can teach teachers how use interactive white boards effectively and creatively.
But wait! There's more!
Dallas will want someone who can work effectively with teachers in curriculum development, and introduce new ideas and methods. Yeah, and when something doesn’t work, you’d be the person to fix it.
I first met Dallas six or seven years ago at a conference—in Dallas, as it turns out. He was a school technology coordinator in Texas and wanted a master’s degree. Well, I knew where he could get one and after graduation, he went to work for a university in Cairo. Now, he’s turning to his alma mater to find a technologist for his elementary school.
“The salary doesn't look like much,” he says, “around $43,000, until you realize that you aren't paying any taxes.” He says the first $120k earned out-of-country is tax free in the United States, for the first two years, anyway. He’ll pay you 1500 Euros for air fare and another 500 for shipping—that’s both ways, once for going to Germany and once when departing. Housing is not provided.
About 20 percent of the salary goes for health insurance, retirement, unemployment, etc., part of which can be reclaimed after leaving the country for 2 years, so long as the length of employment was less than five years.
Cool, huh?
Knowledge of German is not necessary because it is an American school, but here is what is necessary:
--Degree in Educational Technology (preferably in the last 5 years)
--Master’s degree in Educational technology a plus, but not required.
--Ed. Tech experience in a school setting is helpful, but not required.
--Experience with Instructional Design.
--Experience with Teacher Training.
--Experience in a school with interactive boards (Promethean a plus)
--Experience with classroom management systems (Moodle a plus)
--Experience with help desk services is helpful.
--Experience with Google Apps or Live@edu is helpful.
--Web mastering/design experience is a definite plus.
--Professional technical skills and certifications are a plus, but not required.
--Must hold a valid teaching certificate in one of the 50 United States.
Send a resume or vitae along with links, portfolios, or samples of your online work to:
Dr. Dallas Becker
Director of Technology
The John F. Kennedy School Berlin
www.jfks.de
dbecker@jfksberlin.org
Tentative hiring schedule is March 15-20. Interviews will be conducted via Skype prior to these dates.
And tell him Jerry sent you.
Wednesday, February 22, 2012
EdTech professor featured on MIT website
EdTech Assistant Professor Yu-Chang Hsu’s course, Mobile Apps Design for Teaching and Learning, uses a web-based tool called App Inventor, which allows non-programmers to design applications for mobile devices.
Hsu (pronounced Shoe) says App Inventor provides pre-programmed digital “blocks.” With training and practice, non-programmers can piece the blocks together to make working apps for mobile devices. Think of App Inventor as a computer version of Lincoln Logs.
Hsu taught the course last fall and wrote an article for the British Journal of Educational Technology. Well, you never know who’s going to read a journal article.
But Hsu knows.
He was contacted by Hal Ableson, an MIT professor and lead developer of—-you guessed it-—App Inventor. He was also contacted by a Google employee representing the CS4HS (Computer Science for High School) team.
Ableson and Google’s CS4HS team recognized Hsu as an early adapter of App Inventor in teacher education and asked him to share his story in a new MIT website that highlights how non-programmers are successfully using App Inventor to create functioning and useful mobile applications for various purposes.
Some people say you can’t teach programming with blocks, those pre-written packages of code that (gasp!) non-programmers can piece together like a picture puzzle. And just as exasperating is the idea that it might be taught online.
So here is Hsu, a professor at a university best known for its blue football field, who’s successfully teaching App Inventor online and, with co-authors Kerry Rice and Lisa Dawley, is telling the academic world how he did it.
Hsu told the MIT website audience that, “Many students in the class commented on the potential of AI for engaging K-16 students in developing logical thinking, problem solving, creativity, and of course--fun and useful apps.”
You can see all of Hsu’s comments at: http://appinventoredu.mit.edu/stories/teaching-mobile-app-design-app-inventor-boise-state-university and if you want to see the comments of other contributors, click on the Stories link at the top.
Hsu (pronounced Shoe) says App Inventor provides pre-programmed digital “blocks.” With training and practice, non-programmers can piece the blocks together to make working apps for mobile devices. Think of App Inventor as a computer version of Lincoln Logs.
Hsu taught the course last fall and wrote an article for the British Journal of Educational Technology. Well, you never know who’s going to read a journal article.
But Hsu knows.
He was contacted by Hal Ableson, an MIT professor and lead developer of—-you guessed it-—App Inventor. He was also contacted by a Google employee representing the CS4HS (Computer Science for High School) team.
Ableson and Google’s CS4HS team recognized Hsu as an early adapter of App Inventor in teacher education and asked him to share his story in a new MIT website that highlights how non-programmers are successfully using App Inventor to create functioning and useful mobile applications for various purposes.
Some people say you can’t teach programming with blocks, those pre-written packages of code that (gasp!) non-programmers can piece together like a picture puzzle. And just as exasperating is the idea that it might be taught online.
So here is Hsu, a professor at a university best known for its blue football field, who’s successfully teaching App Inventor online and, with co-authors Kerry Rice and Lisa Dawley, is telling the academic world how he did it.
Hsu told the MIT website audience that, “Many students in the class commented on the potential of AI for engaging K-16 students in developing logical thinking, problem solving, creativity, and of course--fun and useful apps.”
You can see all of Hsu’s comments at: http://appinventoredu.mit.edu/stories/teaching-mobile-app-design-app-inventor-boise-state-university and if you want to see the comments of other contributors, click on the Stories link at the top.
Wednesday, February 15, 2012
2 great kudos for EdTech
Big news from the dungeons. That’s where EdTech faculty work on educational games and quest-based curricula.
A team of EdTech and Computer Science professors has won the Stage 2 competition in the MacArthur Foundation Digital Media and Learning grant awards.
EdTech team members Lisa Dawley, Chris Haskell, and Andy Hung, along with Computer Science Department Associate Professor Alark Joshi are using Boise State’s 3-D Game Lab to facilitate and validate learning in a high school science curriculum to be created in conjunction with NOAA, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. In fact, Dawley now travels to the California Academy of Sciences in San Francisco to work with Peg Steffen from NOAA to submit the final presentation to judges in the Stage 3 competition. Overall competition winners will be announced on March 1.
Boise State’s 3-D Game Lab, built by Dawley and doctoral student Chris Haskell, is a quest-based learning environment. It’s already an innovative learning platform, but Dawley caught MacArthur judges’ attention when she suggested using the software-as-service platform as a means of measuring and rewarding learning with digital badges.
MacArthur’s “Badges for Lifelong Learning,” in collaboration with the Mozilla Foundation, focuses on badges as a means to inspire learning, confirm accomplishment, or validate the acquisition of knowledge or skills.
The MacArthur grants are part of the HASTAC system---(Humanities, Arts, Science and Technology Advanced Collaboratory, pronounced haystack)---a network of networks, “dedicated to transforming and reforming traditional education with peer-to-peer collaborative techniques inspired by the open web”—which, all in all, is a pretty big deal.
Go to http://www.dmlcompetition.net/Competition/4/badges-stage-2.php to learn more about the MacArthur Digital Badges awards.
BUT WAIT, THERE’S MORE!
That’s not all the news wafting out of the dungeons this week.
Boise State’s 3-D GameLab is mentioned in this year’s Horizon Report for Higher Education as an example of an open-ended, challenge-based learning environment.
The Horizon Report’s 2012 Higher Education Edition is a collaborative effort between the New Media Consortium and the EDUCAUSE Learning Initiative, an EDUCAUSE program. To access the report, go to http://www.nmc.org/publications and create an account.
Okay, let’s put the yardstick on this. Being mentioned in the Horizon Report is the educational technology equivalent to being a first-round draft pick. Does that sound like a big deal? Ohhhh, yeah.
A team of EdTech and Computer Science professors has won the Stage 2 competition in the MacArthur Foundation Digital Media and Learning grant awards.
EdTech team members Lisa Dawley, Chris Haskell, and Andy Hung, along with Computer Science Department Associate Professor Alark Joshi are using Boise State’s 3-D Game Lab to facilitate and validate learning in a high school science curriculum to be created in conjunction with NOAA, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. In fact, Dawley now travels to the California Academy of Sciences in San Francisco to work with Peg Steffen from NOAA to submit the final presentation to judges in the Stage 3 competition. Overall competition winners will be announced on March 1.
Boise State’s 3-D Game Lab, built by Dawley and doctoral student Chris Haskell, is a quest-based learning environment. It’s already an innovative learning platform, but Dawley caught MacArthur judges’ attention when she suggested using the software-as-service platform as a means of measuring and rewarding learning with digital badges.
MacArthur’s “Badges for Lifelong Learning,” in collaboration with the Mozilla Foundation, focuses on badges as a means to inspire learning, confirm accomplishment, or validate the acquisition of knowledge or skills.
The MacArthur grants are part of the HASTAC system---(Humanities, Arts, Science and Technology Advanced Collaboratory, pronounced haystack)---a network of networks, “dedicated to transforming and reforming traditional education with peer-to-peer collaborative techniques inspired by the open web”—which, all in all, is a pretty big deal.
Go to http://www.dmlcompetition.net/Competition/4/badges-stage-2.php to learn more about the MacArthur Digital Badges awards.
BUT WAIT, THERE’S MORE!
That’s not all the news wafting out of the dungeons this week.
Boise State’s 3-D GameLab is mentioned in this year’s Horizon Report for Higher Education as an example of an open-ended, challenge-based learning environment.
The Horizon Report’s 2012 Higher Education Edition is a collaborative effort between the New Media Consortium and the EDUCAUSE Learning Initiative, an EDUCAUSE program. To access the report, go to http://www.nmc.org/publications and create an account.
Okay, let’s put the yardstick on this. Being mentioned in the Horizon Report is the educational technology equivalent to being a first-round draft pick. Does that sound like a big deal? Ohhhh, yeah.
Monday, February 13, 2012
Explore magazine features EdTech—twice
Just published today, Boise State’s research ezine—Explore—mentioned the EdTech Department twice.
Three new doctoral programs—including EdTech’s totally online Ed.D.—have been approved to further the university’s growing research agenda. Other new doc programs include campus-based Ph.D. programs in Materials Science and Engineering and in Biomolecular Sciences.
The big article, though, was a six-page feature on ground-breaking work by EdTech Associate Professor Lisa Dawley and doctoral student Chris Haskell in quest-based learning and virtual world simulations. Haskell, who teaches several sections of EdTech’s undergraduate course and co-teaches the Educational Games and Simulations course with Dr. David Gibson, said, “The point of this is to give students academic freedom to seek out their interests.”
Read the whole article or the whole magazine at http://issuu.com/bsu-explore/docs/explore2012/15 >.
Three new doctoral programs—including EdTech’s totally online Ed.D.—have been approved to further the university’s growing research agenda. Other new doc programs include campus-based Ph.D. programs in Materials Science and Engineering and in Biomolecular Sciences.
The big article, though, was a six-page feature on ground-breaking work by EdTech Associate Professor Lisa Dawley and doctoral student Chris Haskell in quest-based learning and virtual world simulations. Haskell, who teaches several sections of EdTech’s undergraduate course and co-teaches the Educational Games and Simulations course with Dr. David Gibson, said, “The point of this is to give students academic freedom to seek out their interests.”
Read the whole article or the whole magazine at http://issuu.com/bsu-explore/docs/explore2012/15 >.
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