Group items tagged

"Ask a question, make a hypothesis, and observe what happens in this Sesame Street interactive science experiment! Help renowned scientists, Cookie Monster and Emma, investigate what sinks in water and what floats in water! Experiment with a rubber band ball, a lime and lemon, Ernie's rubber duckie, and a coconut. Start the experiment here! Will Bert's underpants sink or float? Go to http://www.sesamestreet.org/sinkorfloat for the full interactive experiment and find out."

Check out this really neat use of hot spots in YouTube movies to make interactive movies

"Since I started this Experiment to use Evernote in every aspect of my classroom, I wasn't really sure what I was going to discover. I was sure there would be some way that Evernote was not going to meet my needs and I would be forced to add another tool to my chest while I continue the experiment for the school year. One way I was weary of was lesson planning. I have used the the traditional planner book for years and it has always been very good to me. I could easily flip back and see what I what I did the year before as I planned the upcoming school year. I'm not a big fan of trying to fix things that are not broken, but I figured I needed to give it a try in the name of the Experiment. Needless to say, I was not disappointed."

"Two quotes about schooling particularly resonate with me. The first is from John Dewey's Experience and Education (1938): "What avail is it to win prescribed amounts of information about geography and history, to win the ability to read and write, if in the process the individual loses his own soul?" (p. 49). If the experience of "doing school" destroys children's spirit to learn, their sense of wonder, their curiosity about the world, and their willingness to care for the human condition, have we succeeded as educators, no matter how well our students do on standardized tests? The second quote comes from John Goodlad's A Place Called School (1984). After finding an "extraordinary sameness" in our schools, Goodlad wrote, "Boredom is a disease of epidemic proportions. … Why are our schools not places of joy?" (p. 242). Now, a generation later, if you were to ask students for a list of adjectives that describe school, I doubt that joyful would make the list. The hearts and minds of children and young adults are wide open to the wonders of learning and the fascinating complexities of life. But school still manages to turn that into a joyless experience."

"Gamification - the use of game play mechanics for non-game applications - promises much: an engaging, dynamic, memorable and rewarding learning experience. But it can be very difficult to know where to start. Most of us know and enjoy games, but how do those experiences relate to the elearning course that you're working on right now? I'm a developer at Saffron with a background in games and app design, and so to help, I've compiled a list of my top five gamified elements that can help to improve 'traditional' elearning."

"ECAR has surveyed undergraduate students annually since 2004 about technology in higher education. In 2012, ECAR collaborated with 195 institutions to collect responses from more than 100,000 students about their technology experiences. The findings are distilled into the broad thematic message for institutions and educators to balance strategic innovation with solid delivery of basic institutional services and pedagogical practices and to know students well enough to understand which innovations they value the most."

"The idea of students sitting in front of PCs learning how to use Word is as dead as the proverbial dead parrot. It is already an antiquated model of learning - like chalk or fountain pens with ink-wells; it has a whiff of the twentieth century about it, rather than preparing our students for the future. Whilst the DfE dithers about what they should do with technology (Mr Gove clearly wants to reboot the chalk and talk bygone age), schools are left with a rapidly changing world, where budgets are at a premium and ICT often stretches what budgets now allow. All the while, students are learning on their iPads, Android tablets and smart phones, writing more in texts and tweets daily than in their collective writing experience during the school week. We aren't harnessing this expertise, never mind guiding it to a place of higher learning!"

"Google Tools offer a perfect solution for supporting PBL and CBL in the classroom.  These teaching and learning frameworks focus on a student-driven experience where collaboration is a key component."

EduClipper is the latest in a string of Pinterest clones, true (See below), but Bellow's experience in education - in the classroom and with professional development - should give him a leg up in creating a tool that'll work in classrooms and that'll work for teachers. EduClipper lets you build clipboards into which you can post links, images, videos and documents and upload files to share with others. These clipboards can be private or public - that's a key dfferentiator between eduClipper and its competitors- clipped for one's self and/or shared to Twitter, Facebook, Tumblr, Pinterest, Evernote, and Edmodo or via email.

This fascinating curated space from the UK provides a range of content around the topic of creativity. You can "Tailor your experience and have local creative partners, and content recommended by similar users, brought to the top. You can also recommend content and shape the Portal for others."

Fresh from the oven and piping hot, SpicyNodes is limited only by your imagination. Entice visitors to explore and savor the experience of visiting your web site, add visualizations to your blog, create a mindmap or organizational chart, or encourage students to delve deeper.

Education today thus faces several critical gaps: * Between the world that young people experience outside the classroom and the world within * Between the skills that students learn in school and those they will need later in life * Between those who have access to high-quality education and tools and those who do not It is increasingly an accepted truth that education systems must evolve to meet the needs of the students and societies they serve, changing their mission from knowledge transmission to preparation for future learning

"The Google Docs collection provides a streamlined, collaborative solution to writing papers, organizing presentations and putting together spreadsheets and reports. But besides the basic features, there are lots of little tricks and hacks you can use to make your Google Docs experience even more productive. Here are 100 great tips for using the documents, presentations and spreadsheets in Google Docs."

"Web-based tools continue to proliferate, giving teachers more to add to their arsenal, but it can be hard to determine which resources are worth spending time exploring. At the International Society of  Technology in Education (ISTE) conference this year, Adam Bellow, founder of EduClipper, and Steve Dembo, Online Community Manager for Discovery Education offered a quick run through of some favorite apps. The two educators are early adopters of ed-tech classroom strategies and have a lot of experience with tech integration."

"Web-based tools continue to proliferate, giving teachers more to add to their arsenal, but it can be hard to determine which resources are worth spending time exploring. At the International Society of  Technology in Education (ISTE) conference this year, Adam Bellow, founder of EduClipper, and Steve Dembo, Online Community Manager for Discovery Education offered a quick run through of some favorite apps. The two educators are early adopters of ed-tech classroom strategies and have a lot of experience with tech integration."

"When I first began blogging with my students some years ago, it did not occur to me that digital portfolios were possible with young children. I saw their blogs as a place for them to write. Period. But as they continued to write regularly and I watched their collection of blog posts expand, I saw the potential to showcase the tremendous growth in writing that students experience from the beginning to the end of grade one."

"Today while I was editing a shared document one of my colleagues sent me over Google Drive , it dawned on me to compile a list of some interesting extensions I am using on my Google Drive. Using these apps will make your Google Drive experience way better than you have ever imagined. They will also increase your productivity and overall workflow. Needlesss to say that these extensions are only for Chrome browser."

"Here's what she found: hiding from big data is so inconvenient and expensive that even Vertesi doesn't recommend it as a lifestyle choice. (She presented her findings at the Theorizing the Web conference in New York last week.) So what does that mean for companies who say users can just "opt out" if they aren't happy with (so-called) privacy policies? Can you be a person on the internet without sacrificing all your data to the Google Powers That Be? I talked to Vertesi about her experiment, its implications, and why hiding from big data can make you look like a criminal"

"Older teachers, who tend to have more experience in the classroom, are more likely to say they feel ready to make use of the reams of data available through digital learning tools, according to a new survey. Younger teachers rate themselves as less ready. More broadly, teachers of all ages report feeling inadequately prepared to use technology to enhance teaching and learning, according to a survey from the Software and Information Industry Association that was released Tuesday at the conference."

"I have written extensively on what makes a good blogpost and why it is so powerful. From personal experience blogging is one of the most beneficial professional development activities I have ever engaged with. I learn more from blogging than I do from almost any other activity I participate in. Here are 7 good reasons why teachers should blog:"

"In classrooms all around the globe, educators are introducing new and exciting technological tools to engage their students in learning. Many educators are successful when integrating these technologies, but unfortunately many are not for a variety of reasons. In my opinion, and from my experience in classrooms around the world, these are the biggest mistakes that educators make when integrating technology into the classroom:"