Navta Associates

Frustrated by Facebook’s new terrible photo uploader? Want to share hi-res photos with your Facebook friends? I’ve discovered a new Facebook app called Dojo. Not only can you share hi-res photos, but you can apply filters to them, decorate them with stickers, and make a free-form collage of a bunch of photos. It’s so cool!

It’s not often that an an old classic can be successfully resurrected. The folks at Sesame Street have done a terrific job with the all-new Electric Company. Check out their site, become a fan on Facebook, watch clips on YouTube, and visit the Parents/Educators website.

This is a great resource to help young kids get interested in reading, enjoy!

Yep, that’s me!

I’ve got another word game to recommend: Snatch It
It’s a good game for “mixed” company, meaning word-a-holics (cruciverbalists) and non-wordies (nonverbalists). It’s always difficult for my family to find a game in which the “Queens of Scrabble” can play alongside the plebes, with everyone having fun. Games such as Scrabble, Upwords, and Bananagrams tend to favor those who have an esoteric knowledge of oddly-spelled but valid words.

Speaking of Bananagrams, the Facebook app that allows subscribers to play either solitaire or against others is growing by leaps and bounds. Recently, there was a player who had won their last 25 games. How much fun to just about always have a live person to play against–it’s a great example of how social networking can be tailored to cater exactly to the interests of the user. Novel concept, huh!

Now, is it really that much of a leap to imagine educational content being delivered and customized to those who have expressed a desire and indicated their exact needs?

Kids are becoming more and more tech-savvy. Take one look at the library of projects (over 7,000) created by students who participated in a ThinkQuest competition.

Students today operate in an environment that is on-demand and interactive. Delivery media include a wide variety of tools such as the Internet, video iPods, mobile phones, Wiis, Nintendo DS, MySpace, YouTube, live and reality-based television, etc. Educators can adapt to this language, embedding new technologies and social networking opportunities in their curriculum.

We can see what excites and engages kids in their everyday lives—why not use the same tools in education?

It’s not a matter of making time for technology, it’s a matter of
making technology part of the fabric of your life.

Many times teachers say that they would have to take time away from something else in order to use more technology in their classrooms. If that’s the case, then they are using the wrong technology. The best tools can help us do our work better, faster, more efficiently, more effectively, etc. There is so much great software and hardware available today that with a bit of research it’s possible to find an ideal combination for any given task. A learning curve may be needed, but time spent learning and figuring out the best way to do things is often rewarded many times over by efficiencies gained later on.

Sometimes little adjustments need to be made along the way to keep the efficiency quotient high. Once I started Twittering (I’m NikkiNavta on Twitter), updating my Facebook status seemed redundant. One quick glance around Twitter and I found the setting to automatically update both status lines at the same time, from Twitter.

Consider the scenario of a roomful of teachers listening to a riveting presentation of some topic that will help them in their classroom. Most of the teachers would likely be scribbling away, taking notes furiously while the speaker was talking. Afterwards, the air is electrified with new ideas. The teachers all stand up and walk out of the lecture hall, clutching their notebooks, each individual set of notes all headed in separate directions. Instead, consider what would happen if the lecture notes were made available online by the presenter. The teachers could be more “present” during the live action, without the pressure to capture the notes. Afterwards, when teachers access the lecture notes online (posted in a Web 2.0 environment), they can make comments, share ideas, and all become part of collaborating and expanding on the groundwork that had been laid. There are many e-tools that could be utliized to enhance this scenario even further, but even at a fairly basic level, it provides one compelling reason to embrace technology.

Do you keep a journal? It can be an intensely personal process, and one that seems to be fading as time goes on with the younger generation. Or is it? The traditional diary or journaling book could be simply replaced by blogging, IM’ing, e-mails, Facebook, MySpace, and other ways that kids use to express themselves.

The Club Penguin Times, after all, is more widely read than New York’s Daily News, the Chicago Tribune or the Dallas Morning News.