There's a lot of buzz on Twitter lately with all the new content and enhanced features we're bringing to our customers, often as a result of their cooperation and suggestions. Here are a few. 

skipvia Skip Via

@ransomtech Atomic Learning is well worth the subscription price for just in time PD.

@KaarenThompson Kaaren Thompson

I just love atomic learning - it's a great product !

 

We've just released these new and updated technology skills series:

KompoZer
KompoZer, formerly known as NVU, is a complete Web authoring system that combines Web file management and easy-to-use WYSIWYG Web page editing. What's more, KompoZer is designed to be extremely easy to use, making it ideal for non-technical computer users who want to create an attractive, professional-looking Web site without needing to know HTML or Web coding.

Google SketchUp 7
Redecorate your living room. Design a new piece of furniture. Model your city for Google Earth. In this tutorial series, you'll quickly learn that there's no limit to what you can create with Google™ SketchUp 7.

iPod touch
iPod touch® is a pocket computer that you can use to listen to music, watch movies, surf the Web, check e-mail and more!

As stated by Apple®: "The iPod touch® has a huge amount of potential in the classroom to revolutionize the way students learn and teachers teach."

iPad
As stated by Apple®: "iPad™ isn’t just the best device of its kind, it’s a whole new kind of device."

iPad is a mobile device that you can use to watch movies, create documents, surf the Web, check e-mail, use as an eReader and more! This series will introduce you to the basic features and functions of iPad.

Washington, D.C. (June 8, 2010) - The Education Division of the Software & Information Industry Association (SIIA) announces the release of its most recent report on the K-12 and postsecondary education technology markets - officially titled the SIIA Trends Report for Education Technology.

Authored by various members of the education industry, the report highlights industry shifts and emerging trends as they relate to five main topics: K-12 learning management systems, postsecondary learning management systems, online learning, state of the states, and mobile computing.

"The purpose of this report was to identify the opportunities, challenges and potential areas for growth in K-12 and higher education institutions with regards to education technology.  We aimed to find where technology has the greatest impact and where it can provide the most prolific benefits moving forward," said Karen Billings, vice president of SIIA's Education Division.

Read the rest of this article

WASHINGTON, June 8, 2010/via PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- Today, the Learning First Alliance, a partnership of 17 national education associations representing over ten million parents, educators and policymakers, released the following statement:

"The Elementary and Secondary Education Act should make effective professional development a top priority. The federal government should support frequent, job-embedded professional development for teachers, principals and other school and district staff. It should offer dedicated funds for comprehensive, sustained and intensive approach to improving staff effectiveness in raising student achievement. The National Staff Development Council's definition of and standards for staff development identify the characteristics of professional development that are most likely to increase achievement."

We’ve recently added a new series/project type to the Types drop down. It is “Social Networking”. When used, search results will include items such as Diigo, Google Docs, and Twitter (to name a few). We hope this assists you in implementing great new resources into your classrooms.
 

We've added two tutorials to this series:

Selecting users in the Choose Users window
Exporting assessment reports

The administrative features of Atomic Learning are easy to use, however you may still have some questions about specific functions within the system. This tutorial series covers the functions available for users with administrative level access.

View the entire series

Gayl Bowser, former coordinator of the Oregon Project of Assistive Technology and co-author of Education Tech Points, is widely known in education circles for her insightful writing and unstoppable enthusiasm. Please join us in welcoming her to the world of blogging!

Just like a garden needs different care from a gardener depending on the time of the year, students and educators need different supports for assistive technology use as they move through the school year.  With each new school season comes change—changes in our students, changes in what they are learning, and changes in our own AT services .  Just as we cannot simply plant a seed and expect to immediately see a plant, we cannot give a student assistive technology and expect to see immediate success. 

Visit IntegrATe

Atomic Learning invites you to join us as we welcome Gayl Bowser for a FREE webinar on creating an Assistive Technology Professional Development plan. Gayl will discuss flexible and practical professional development assessment and planning strategies that include a variety of training approaches including the use of online tutorials.

Thursday, June 10, 2010 12:00 PM - 1:00 PM CDT 

Register here

Please consider applying for the following positions. Send applications to hr@atomiclearning.com.

Higher Education Sales Executive
Reports to:    Director of Domestic Sales
Department: Sales
Location:  Remote Home Office

Job Summary:

Funding for Classroom Technology is in jeopardy!  Join ISTE members and education technology advocates from across the country for a day of blogging and tweeting in support of 21^st century learning.

President Obama’s budget provides no funding for education technology.  The Enhancing Education Through Technology (EETT) program, which was funded at $100 million in 2010, is rolled into a the new program “Effective Teaching and Learning for a Complete Education.”
Without funds specifically set aside to pay for education technology the administration’s messaging about the importance of technology for classroom teaching and learning rings hollow. If education technology is so important, why has the proposed 2011 budget eliminated funding for the only dedicated ed tech funding program?

Although the President has recommended to eliminate funding for EETT, Congress does not have to agree with this recommendation.  ISTE is urging congress to fund education technology at at $500 million for next year. To get this issue on congress’ agenda we need to tell  policymakers that we are not going to take the loss of EETT quietly.

On Wednesday, May 12 we are going to flood the Web with messages in support of funding for education technology. We’ll provide some Twitter messages to get you started, but we’re asking for a major effort from all the ed tech bloggers, tweeters, Facebookers and Ning-regulars out there to write in support of dedicated federal funding for education technology.

Keep watching ISTE Connects for information on how you can help secure $500 million for ed tech in 2011. Together we can make our voices heard!

http://www.isteconnects.org/2010/05/06/join-the-campaign-tweet-and-blog-for-ed-tech-may-12/

Most of those things don't seem very long ago, do they? Are you keeping up?

New and expanded tutorial series
Safari 4
As stated by Apple®: "It’s a browser. It’s a platform. It’s an open invitation to innovate. Safari® continuously redefines the browser, providing the most enjoyable way to experience the Internet."

View 2 free tutorials

Word 2010
Microsoft® Word 2010 offers the best of all worlds: enhanced features to create professional-quality documents, easier ways to work together with people and almost-anywhere access to your files. Use this introductory level tutorial series to watch, listen, and learn the basics of how to create high-quality documents that you can be proud of.

View 2 free tutorials

PixWriter 3
PixWriter™ is a talking picture and word processing program designed for beginning and struggling readers and writers. The program combines print, pictures, and speech allowing users to compose written documents even if knowledge of sound-symbol relationships, spelling, and alphabet skills have not been mastered. Teachers can quickly create a customized word bank that includes symbols for students to use for writing.

View 2 free tutorials

You already have some great assistive technology tools. Many of them have had a huge impact on your students. 
But, are your teachers making the most of them?

Don Johnston teamed up with Atomic Learning to solve this problem. We came up with an exclusive bundle of online trainings—some of which you won’t find anywhere else. Subscribers will get unlimited whole-district access to thousands of online tutorials for all of your top assistive technology software and devices.

Find out more

Atomic Learning is one of the most supportive, satisfying and fun companies a person could work for. Please consider applying for the following position. Send applications to hr@atomiclearning.com.

Job Title: Online Training Content Developer (curriculum emphasis)
Reports to: Content Development Manager
Department: Product/Content
Start Date: June 1, 2010
Location: Your Home Office (within the U.S.)

Job Summary:

Social media addiction. Crackdowns on abuse. Passion for progress. Differing opinions have come to a head this week between those who would retain or recover pre-information-age social qualities and those who believe online social tools are an inevitability to be harnessed and prepared for.

Click here to register for this FREE event

In order for students to have 21st century skills to succeed and compete in today's global workplace, districts first need to develop those skills in their teachers. How do you build a professional development program that creates a solid understanding of the skills and develop the ability to integrate them into the classroom?

Join us as a panel from Lincoln Public Schools shares best practices and collaboration between departments to create a successful training and staff development program to help their teachers – and students – succeed with 21st century learning.

Read about the presenters

Greetings from the higher ed team! Pia Roper from Philadelphia University recently presented a webinar on Philadelphia University's use of Atomic Learning. The webinar provided some great insights on how Atomic Learning can be utilized campus-wide. You may view the archive here.

Some of the key points of Roper's presentation included:

USE
Philadelphia University uses Atomic Learning as an extension of their helpdesk, creating a 24/7 presence for users. Round-the-clock access ensures that support is available during off-hours, and for international users in the distance ed programs. They also use Atomic Learning to train the helpdesk staff, so they are better able to assist users who call in for help.

This came through my inbox late yesterday and seemed too valuable to not share.

Planetfesto.org is an environmental education and action movement created on 2/14/2007. The goal is for individuals worldwide to create a virtual ribbon of 6" pieces--long enough to circle the earth. (nearly 263,000,000 pieces required). Each "piece" of the ribbon is made up of a photograph or drawing representing why the person loves the earth, a brief statement of why they love it, and a pledge of individual action. The ribbon creates an evolving, collaborative manifesto of love and action.

Planetfesto is unusual in environmental movements as it is takes a higher view on the problem--that what is needed is a new era in our relationship with the planet. On the site, there is a quote by Wendell Berry: "What we do not love, we will not save."

Jody Ouradnik has created a video introducing you to the Planetfesto project. It also walks through adding your own ribbon segment.

Projects
Collaborating to Build a Slideshow Presentation – Google Docs Project

Users will be using online tools to collaborate on a presentation. Our example is about climate change and global warming, but the project can be easily adapted for any subject area. Viewers will learn how to work in a shared word processing document to collect information, and then divide up the work for creating an online slide presentation they can share on the Internet.

Creating a Photo Book – Photoshop Elements 8

For this project we will be using multimedia software to create a photo book. We’ll begin by importing digital images into a photo editing application and organizing the photos in an album. We’ll choose a theme for the photo book and create the book pages. Images will be added to the book, resized or cropped, and positioned for best effect on the pages. We’ll add and format text for titles and image descriptions....

I admit that I've been skeptical about the usefulness of the iPad to those of us who like to create content and share information as well as take it in. Sure, it's been billed as a game-changer, but it's also been described as a consumption-only device, not having much ability to store files or spread them around. Many a blog post and Twitter tweet express concern about Apple's tight control over usability and content.

There's a debate ongoing over whether technology in schools should really be invisible. One blogger argues that technology should never be a hurdle to leap before learning, and one says it's critical to understand how technology works to alter our living environments.

April is National Poetry Month. We've just updated one of our Technology Integration Projects which uses Garage Band '09, and it does a nice job of bringing poetry to any classroom:

Take poetry to a new level! Users will use an audio application to produce a podcast of themselves narrating a piece of poetry. They will create a music track to accompany their poem, and also add images they have found to illustrate their poem. They may elect to use an image capture utility on their computer to create their images. Finally, they will export their podcast for an MP3 player.

View the project here

We've released a batch of new Technology Integration Projects and Workshops with our colleges of education customers in mind. They're also useful to K12 educators looking for more advanced content.

Technology Integration Projects
Collaborating to Build a Slideshow Presentation – Google Docs

Creating a Photo Book – Photoshop Elements 8 (PC)

Register now!

Limited by budgetary constraints and without a formal training department, Philadelphia University’s Office of Information Resources (OIR) used online tutorials and assessment tools to train and develop faculty and staff.

Learn how Philadelphia University’s OIR department successfully used Atomic Learning as a development resource to:

HP & Intel's Digital Learning Event Series 2010 - Practical Strategies for Digital Learning Environments

Register today!

InDesign CS4 - Advanced
Adobe^® InDesign^® CS4 offers a sophisticated environment for design and publishing that offers many features. Take your page designing abilities to the next level with this advanced series.

Although funding concerns remain, the National Ed-Tech Plan is a promising start, ed-tech advocates say.

The new National Education Technology Plan, released March 5, sets an ambitious agenda for using technology to transform teaching and learning, ed-tech advocates say–and a call to action that is long overdue.

The plan, called “Transforming American Education: Learning Powered by Technology,” calls for engaging and empowering learning experiences for all students; standards and assessments that measure key 21st-century skills and expertise; a shift to a model of “connected teaching,” in which teams of interconnected educators replace solo classroom practitioners; always-on connectivity that is available to students and teachers both inside and outside of school; and a rethinking of basic assumptions, such as seat time, that limit schools’ ability to innovate.

 Read more at eschoolnews.com