Join US! Library Media Specialists, Ed-Technologists, any educator interested in 21st Century Skills
Contents contributed and discussions participated by Dennis OConnor
Super searchers go to school ... - Google Books - 14 views
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Interview and chapter from Dr. David Barr, founder of the 21st Century Information Fluency Project. This Google book article from Joyce Valenza & Reva Basch's book Super Searchers Go to school reaveal some of David's thinking about the knowledge, skills and dispositions for successful searching.
Anyone who knows David Barr recognizes his amazing understanding of 21st century information systems. This is a gem. Don't miss it.
Information Fluency - ISTE 2010 Conference Ning - 24 views
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Get an early Start on ISTE 2010 in Denver!
YouTube - MIT OpenCourseWare Staff Pick - October 2009 - 9 views
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MIT OpenCourseWare staff member talks about SP.722D-Lab: Development, Design and Dissemination, Spring 2005
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"MIT OpenCourseWare staff member talks about SP.722D-Lab: Development, Design and Dissemination, Spring 2005 "
E-Learning Graduate Certificate Program: Finding E-Learning Jobs - 8 views
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Online teaching was the perfect part-time job for me. E-learning and online teaching replaced coaching and after school clubs as a way to supplement my income. I loved it! I was working with great teachers from around the world and learning new things everyday. I also realized I was opening a door to a new career. Eventually, after 25 years in a traditional classroom, I decided to take early retirement, and pursue my passion for online teaching and learning full time.
6-Traits Resources: Modeling Writing with 6-Traits + Podcast Sharing - 27 views
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I love to get email from graduates of my online 6-traits class. I get a glimpse of their classrooms and the fun and excitement of teaching writing with the six traits. Here's news from Karen's 5th grade class!
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I've done 3 traits so far this term and have never received such overall great writing from a class. The three or four that really shine have become 17 and 18. I am truly impressed with the improvement and excitement about their writing (and honestly - I'd put a lot of energy into my writing program BEFORE 6 Traits!).
The Keyword Blog: Kermit the Frog Search Challenge (Information Literacy Games) - 16 views
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Information Literacy Games: Finding Kermit
This blog post features a great video of Kermit the frog singing It Ain't Easy Being Green. It follows up with an explanation of a search game that can be used with the whole class in a lab or on an individual workstation. It's part of a free series of online information literacy / information fluency games available from 21cif.com.
Finding Kermit was the inspiration for one of the first Internet Search Challenges created by Dr. Carl Heine. The task is to track down a picture of Kermit ready for graduation in the least amount of time. The search game is embedded on the page so you can try it without going to the main site.
Many teachers use this as a whole class lab activity. Put up a search challenge and then it's off the races! Most of these games were developed for middle and high school students. Adults find them challenging as well.
Illinois Educator Free Online Professional Development (Moodle Based) - 9 views
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Are you a middle or high school math or science teacher? If so, check out these new and innovative online professional development courses from the University of Illinois and the Illinois Math and Science Academy. Courses are available free of charge for Fall 2009.
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Are you a middle or high school math or science teacher? If so, check out these new and innovative online professional development courses from the University of Illinois and the Illinois Math and Science Academy. Courses are available free of charge for Fall 2009.
Information Fluency: Online Class: Investigate and Evaluate Digital Materials - 0 views
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On Demand Classes help you meet the needs of your students.
- You know the need for 21st Century Information Fluency Skills has never been higher
- You also know you’re understaffed and overbooked
Start the new school year with a customized online training experience that will teach your students critical reading skills as they learn to search and evaluate Internet resources. Our multimedia enhanced, interactive course is suited for students from middle school through adult.
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We combine performance evaluation with a series mastery quizzes to lock in the essential concepts delivered by the tutorials. As an educator you'll have access to performance evaluation and mastery quiz data. You'll have an online record of each student's performance that can be downloaded for data analysis.
Internet Search Challenge: More information, a smaller fraction - 0 views
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The paradoxical thing about information and searching is that the more of it there is, the less of it we will see. The results we retrieve will be a smaller and smaller sample of what's actually available. And I don't see how this trend can be reversed.
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When I ask workshop participants if they've ever gone to the end of the list retrieved, I've never encountered anyone who has. Most searchers stop after the first page; the number who look at two pages is much smaller. For the 8 people in 100 who go beyond the third page, they have access to 0.1% of the information theoretically available. For the majority who never look beyond page one, that number falls to 0.025%.
Intel Teach Elements: Project-Based Approaches - 0 views
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This is a self-paced class in project based learning produced by Intel. Free, high quality content with masterful design.
Job Opportunities - Ed.S. Degree in Career and Technical Education - UW Stout, Wisconsin's ... - 0 views
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This is a powerhouse connection to Jobs in Wisconsin's Technical College system. Provided by the University of Wisconsin-Stout Ed.S Degree program. On the open web and available to any one.
The E-Learning and Online Teaching Graduate Certificate at UW-Stout is accepted as a concentration for the Ed.S program
John Quincy Adams, Twitterer? - NYTimes.com - 0 views
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They may be two centuries old, but, written with staccato-like brevity, entries from one of Adams’s diaries resemble tweets sufficiently that they began appearing Wednesday on Twitter.
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The diary, which Adams maintained until April 1836, is a rarity among the many he kept, in that the description for each day is no more than one line long. Historians believe he used the descriptions as references to longer entries in other journals.
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Word spread, and the society decided to tweet the entries. They average 110 to 120 characters, below the 140-character limit imposed by Twitter, and there is nary an LOL or BFF among them.
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Clever use of social networking tech. The initial take on twitter was that it just broadcast mindless sort personal observations. This use turns that idea around. Interesting way to teach a bit of history. What if we started tweeting Basho & Issa, the great Japanese haiku poets? Hmmm sounds like a fun lit project doesn't it?
The Differentiator - 4 views
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Step by step wizard that guides you through bloom's taxonomy. Useful for creating objectives and thinking through projects (online and face to face). Consider this a brainstorming tool that will help you break out of the box and differentiate your lessons.
Shock threat to shut Skype - 0 views
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eBay says it may have to shut down Skype due to a licensing dispute with the founders of the internet telephony service.
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eBay has since been licensing the technology from the founders’ new company, Joltid, but the pair recently decided to revoke the licensing agreement.
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In a quarterly report filed with the US Securities and Exchange Commission, eBay said in no uncertain terms that if it lost the right to use the software it would most likely have to shut Skype down.
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I use Skype and enjoy the free functionality. It's far from perfect, but has a place in my e-learning toolkit. (I've also used Jah-Jah to call my daughter in Thailand and was very pleased with this alternate take on internet telephony.)
Like all things tech, Skype could go. As this article shows, the big hitting billionaires who run the show are in dispute. If i have to switch, so be it! Will Google Voice move into this space? Who knows? Wait and see as the future unrolls on a daily basis
Why The FCC Wants To Smash Open The iPhone - washingtonpost.com - 0 views
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Right about now, Apple probably wishes it had never rejected Google Voice and related apps from the iPhone. Or maybe it was AT&T who rejected the apps. Nobody really knows. But the FCC launched an investigation last night to find out, sending letters to all three companies (Apple, AT&T, and Google) asking them to explain exactly what happened.
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The FCC investigation is not just about the arbitrary rejection of a single app. It is the FCC's way of putting a stake in the ground for making the wireless networks controlled by cell phone carriers as open as the Internet.
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On the wired Internet, we can connect any type of PC or other computing device and use any applications we want on those devices. On the wireless Internet controlled by cellular carriers like AT&T, we can only use the phones they allow on their networks and can only use the applications they approve.
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Opening the iPhone would make educational apps much easier to publish. Apple's monopoly means e-text-book readers and classroom use of hand held computers (which is what the iPhone and iPod reall are) have to pay a toll to Apple.
Right now, Apple's approval system is cloaked in mystery. Developers have no way to market their products without 'official' approval. Opening up the iPhone and by extension opening up wireless networks around the country will drive down high prices and bring connectivity to more inexpensive computing devices.
I hope this FCC investigation is the domino that kicks open the door to the clouds of connectivity that are already out there!
An Apple tablet could pit iTunes against Amazon - CNN.com - 1 views
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What can Apple do better with e-books? For textbooks or anthologies, Apple can give iTunes users the ability to download individual chapters, priced between a few cents to a few bucks each.
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It would be similar to how you can currently download individual song tracks from an album. It might even have the same earthshaking potential to transform an entire industry by refocusing it on the content people actually want instead of the bundles that publishers want them to buy.
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College students would love this: Teachers rarely assign an entire textbook, so they would save hundreds of dollars by downloading only a few chapters of each textbook.
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What can Apple do better with e-books? For textbooks or anthologies, Apple can give iTunes users the ability to download individual chapters, priced between a few cents to a few bucks each.
Views: Lessons of a Summer Teaching Online - Inside Higher Ed - 0 views
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As I faithfully attended the monthly training meetings for Just in Time Technology (ex: how to use Skype) and for Course Design (ex: what is the conversion of 14 weeks pacing into a 30 day class), it began to dawn on me that I had underestimated the time and preparation required for my online course.
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Reducing the amount of content does not mean reducing rigor for students or work for me. Like many others who have never taught online, I had entered this experience thinking that online courses were a little bit “fluffy.” I have a newfound respect for my fellow online professors.
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Although I am a relative novice in the teaching arena, I appreciated the chance to revive my teaching mojo. I was forced to be creative about how to present course material and ensure that my students had a solid understanding of the information. I also realized I needed to revise my opinion of online teaching and those who participate in it. I now know that online courses are not a pale and lifeless version of traditional courses or worse, a “pay for an A” scam in which everyone teaches him/herself and everyone gets a good grade. Online courses can be distinctive and worthwhile ways of teaching in their own right.
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Reviewed by Nancy Chapko:
n her article, Lessons of a Summer Teaching Online, Dr. Amy Overman describes how she revived her "teaching mojo" as a novice online instructor. An assistant professor of psychology at Elon University in North Carolina, Dr. Overman describes her personal experience as a first-time online instructor. Written for instructors who may have doubts about online teaching and learning as she did, her account is both thoughtful and humorous. Dr. Overman describes her decision to teach an online class and her preparation for the experience. She relates her somewhat unexpected positive experience facilitating the class. She offers comparisons between her face-to-face and online teaching experiences and draws some insightful conclusions. Among them is the realization that reducing the amount of content does not reduce the rigor of the course and online classes take a lot of time, but they're worth it. Whether you're a committed veteran of online teaching, or you are at the initial stage of considering its merits, you will find Dr. Overman's article perceptive and thought-provoking. As she states, "… online courses are not a pale and lifeless version of traditional courses."
Appellate Court Overturns Blackboard Patent; Blackboard To Press On -- - 0 views
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Appellate Court Overturns Blackboard Patent; Blackboard To Press On
- 07/27/09
[Updated 3:22 p.m. with comments from John Baker of Desire2Learn.]
Blackboard's patent on learning management system technologies has been overturned by the United States Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit. The court ruled Monday in favor of Desire2Learn and invalidated some claims in patent No. 6,988,138, also known as the "Alcorn patent" or the "138 patent." But the saga will continue.
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Today's decision invalidated claims 36 through 38 of the Alcorn patent and upheld a lower court's invalidation of claims 1 through 35--all of the claims for which Blackboard had been suing Desire2Learn in this particular case
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But Blackboard is continuing its litigation against Desire2learn on other intellectual property issues involving patents that the company has been granted since the Alcorn patent.
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Blackboard vs. D2L
Electronic Literature - 0 views
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This is a beta-launch. I would like to work directly with some high school/college classes to refine the exercises. Please contact me at deenalarsen AT yahoo.com.
Thanks.
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Electronic literature uses links, images, sound, navigation, as well as text to convey meaning. Electronic literature is ergodic, and thus it is up to the reader to piece together the materials as the reader goes through the work. Elit 101explains how these elements work to convey meaning and provides examples and exercises for each element.
Dennis OConnor
keyword search: wiredinstructor
James is using Wordpress to create a website/blog presentation. He's happy to have teachers or students drop in and respond to the personal blogs his students have created.
If you're looking for a chance at an international student exchange blog connection, give it a look. (Heck, give it a look if you're just curious.)
The kids love to get comments from folks around the world so don't forget to be interactive!
~ Dennis O'Connor