Newsy
Top 20 Education Influencers to Follow on Twitter in 2012
Distance-Education.org included me on their list of top 20 influencers in education on Twitter. As per their description, "this list of the best in education on Twitter not only includes those Tweeters who provide us with important tidbits about the current state of education, but they also offer their followers a number of tips and tricks, hilarious quips, and hours of entertainment." Their super kind words are below:
Why We Think They're Great
Education, photography, and travel are just a few of the topics that @SpecialKRB covers everyday. Offering her followers a number of really great tips, @SpecialKRB is the ideal influences to follow for anyone who loves mixing creativity and education.
NYCIST President 2010 - 2011, NYC
New York Consortium of Independent School Technologists.
As President, I was responsible for planning topics/locations for monthly meetings attended by technologists, innovators, and media specialists from all over the city. As per our tag line, "Knowledge is in the group."
THE Journal's "Learning Tools"
Article from 11/03/11 by Jennifer Netherby.
The Pen That's Smarter Than the Pen: You've heard of smartphones - now smartpens are taking a familiar classroom tool into the digital age.
Blumberg says that the advantage of Livescribe for students is that they can draw symbols while describing the process they're going through, an important metacognitive process in learning math. And for teachers, they can see students' metacognition in play.
Kids can write down how they're solving problems with sketching, with formulas, and talk through it at the same time,” she says. Then the teacher can determine how fluid the child's understanding is.
Article from 10/13/11 by Kashmir Hill, Forbes Staff.
How to Teach Kids 'Digital Literacy'? Build A Private Social Network Playground For Them.
“Drama happens. But my goal is: If you’re going to make a mistake, make it here, before it’s public and permanent,” says Blumberg.“We teach them that everything they do online is permanent and traceable: where you go, what you do, the computer you’re using, your IP address,” she continues. “We want them to understand that data is constantly being collected about them.”
Scholastic's "Best in Tech Today"
Posted on October 3, 2011, edited by Ken Royal.
Exploring The Sketchpad App: Karen Blumberg
I have been a huge fan of The Geometer's Sketchpad for years (since I was introduced to it in 1994!), and I believe it is one of the best educational tools out there. Therefore, I was incredibly excited when I learned about the release of Sketchpad Explorer. I will be supporting the 5th grade team as they incorporate the Sketchpad Explorer app and the Dynamic Number Project into their math curriculum this year. We're looking to fully engage the students and encourage them to hypothesize, investigate, understand, and share mathematical principles.
Education Update Online's "Leaders in Technology in the classroom"
Article from September 2011 by
Leaders in Technology in the classroom: The School at Columbia University
New Media at The School
One of the seminars, “Collaboration with New Media in the 21st Century Classroom” highlighted the ways in which a school or even a single teacher can incorporate new computer tools to enhance the classroom experience for their students. Instructor Karen Blumberg, a technology coordinator at the school, led the seminar and sought to provide attendees with a slew of examples on how this technology is implemented, touching on topics as diverse as student created movies, to how to enhance student collaboration on various projects, to smart and safe Internet practices.
The Philadelphia Inquirer's EdCamp article
Article on May 30, 2011 by Adrienne Lu, Inquirer Staff Writer.
Teachers give a gold star to a free-for-all education camp
Karen Blumberg, a technology integrator at the School at Columbia University, has been teaching for 15 years. "I learned more at EdCamp than I did at grad school," Blumberg said. "It was exactly the information I needed to know." Blumberg said she learned, for instance, a lot about how to use iPads effectively in a classroom. Blumberg was so excited about the possibilities of EdCamp that after attending the Philadelphia conference last year, she organized another event in New York City.
Sine of the Times - Key Curriculum Press's Blog
Blog post January 21, 2011.
Eat Your vegetables! Do your Math!
Take, for example, this lesson described by New York City educator Karen Blumberg. The sixth-grade students Karen worked with first studied reflections of figures in the coordinate plane, then moved on to rotations. For a culminating project, they created tessellations using dynamic geometry software. But wait, there’s more—after creating tessellations on the computer, the students then built physical models of them. So the students first applied their knowledge of shapes and transformation to construct dynamic tessellations using software, then got the tangible experience of working with a physical model.
Edublog Award for Best Individual Tweeter 2010
I was shortlisted on the nominations for Best individual tweeter 2010. I am grateful to Lucy Gray (@elemenous) for nominating me. It is an honor just to be on the list. Besides, somebody had to be the underdog. I ended up being the 2nd runner up behind Shelly Terrell and Deborah Stewart!
The Teach Tech Award 2010, Columbia University, NYC
Independent Reading Site
Marisa Guastaferro and I were finalists and won a $500 prize for our Independent Reading Site created with Google Sites. It's a simple GoogleSite that allows students and faculty to create reviews for books they read; Reviews can be in the form of text, video, slideshow, comic strip, and other forms. There is a search feature that enables you to search by title, author, genre, user, etc. Also, students are organized alphabetically by the year they graduate high school, so once they are entered into the site, there is no need for further restructuring.
