Holt Think: Ed, Creativity, Tech, Administration

‎www.pil-network.com/pd/twt/Overview

nnovative teaching practices, supported by the use of Information Communication Technology (ICT) strongly predict students’ acquisition of 21st century skills (Innovative Teaching and Learning Research 2011). The Microsoft Teaching with Technology curriculum supports educators’ professional development as they seek to integrate ICT into their teaching and learning.

Created to help set a foundation beyond learning to use technology, educators will develop a deeper understanding of how ICT integration can enhance the teaching and learning experience and enable 21st century skill acquisition via six online learning courses:

Free tools for teachers - Partners in Learning Network

Not a big MS fan, but of someone os offering free stuff for teachers, I say , hey, go for it. 

Lots of stuff to click through here. 

Microsoft Windows 8 Has Bad Reviews: Here's Why It Matters - Business Insider

Microsoft Word is cumbersome, inefficient, and obsolete. It’s time for it to die. - Slate Magazine

From the link:  “Nearly two decades and several text-handling paradigms ago, I was an editorial assistant at a weekly newspaper, where a few freelancers still submitted their work on typewritten pages,” Tom Scocca writes for Slate.

“Stories would come in over the fax machine. If the printout was clear enough, and if our giant flatbed scannerwas in the mood, someone would scan the pages in, a text-recognition programwould decipher the letters, and we would comb the resulting electronic file for nonsense and typos,” Scocca writes. “If the scanner wasn’t in the mood, we would prop up the hard copy beside a computer and retype the whole thing. Technology was changing fast, and some people were a few steps slow. You couldn’t blame them, really, but for those of us who were fully in the computer age, those dead-tree sheets meant tedious extra work.”

Scocca writes, “Nowadays, I get the same feeling of dread when I open an email to see aMicrosoft Word document attached. Time and effort are about to be wasted cleaning up someone’s archaic habits. A Word file is the story-fax of the early 21st century: cumbersome, inefficient, and a relic of obsolete assumptions about technology. It’s time to give up on Word.”