This “support forum for K-12 ed-tech leaders,” called The Snorkel, greets the viewer with a graphic of a scuba diver swimming through a deep blue sea filled with laptop computers. On the right side of the home page are links to online articles, tools, and a listserv of experts in the ed-tech field. It isn’t very prominently displayed, but at the bottom of the home page is the “Tech Leader’s Toolkit,” a creation within The Snorkel that connects researchers with PDF downloads on general ways to use school technology effectively. In fact, The Snorkel is chock-full of relevant and useful links and tools, such as an “Internet Connection Speedometer” and an anti-spyware guide.
The New Technology Foundation’s Web site, a partnership with the Napa New Technology High School in Napa, Calif., is a useful destination for educators interested in technology’s role in project-based learning. Such education emphasizes collaborative, often technology-driven projects as an alternative to traditional teaching and testing.
Among other features, the Web site provides a drop-down menu for viewing the New Technology Foundation’s network of schools, which is worth visiting to see how those schools are incorporating project-based learning with a technological twist. The network includes 42 high schools in nine states.
The site also includes a lot of background material about project-based learning, so it’s a good place to go if you want to shore up your knowledge about this kind of teaching.
