Group items tagged

"Regardless of whether you think every infant needs an iPad, I think we can all agree that technology has changed education for the better. Today's learners now enjoy easier, more efficient access to information; opportunities for extended and mobile learning; the ability to give and receive immediate feedback; and greater motivation to learn and engage. We now have programs and platforms that can transform learners into globally active citizens, opening up countless avenues for communication and impact. Thousands of educational apps have been designed to enhance interest and participation. Course management systems and learning analytics have streamlined the education process and allowed for quality online delivery. But if we had to pick the top ten, most influential ways technology has transformed education, what would the list look like? The following things have been identified by educational researchers and teachers alike as the most powerful uses of technology for learning. Take a look. 1. Critical Thinking In Meaningful Learning With Technology, David H. Jonassen and his co-authors argue that students do not learn from teachers or from technologies. Rather, students learn from thinking-thinking about what they are doing or what they did, thinking about what they believe, thinking about what others have done and believe, thinking about the thinking processes they use-just thinking and reasoning. Thinking mediates learning. Learning results from thinking. So what kinds of thinking are fostered when learning with technologies? Analogical If you distill cognitive psychology into a single principle, it would be to use analogies to convey and understand new ideas. That is, understanding a new idea is best accomplished by comparing and contrasting it to an idea that is already understood. In an analogy, the properties or attributes of one idea (the analogue) are mapped or transferred to another (the source or target). Single analogies are also known as sy

"A new research project by the Open University explores the much-debated concept of "the digital native". The university does this by making full use of the rich resource which is its own highly diverse student body."

"The Faculty of Kinesiology, the Sport Injury Prevention Research Centre and the Integrated Concussion Research Program at the University of Calgary now hosts a massive open online course (MOOC) on concussion. A MOOC is a free, non-credited course open to everyone. The course aims to demystify concussion, clarify the role of those involved in the prevention and management of concussion, and support participants to implement a concussion management protocol adapted to their specific sport, school or community environment. The course aims to educate health professionals, parents, coaches, teachers, school adminstrators and sport leaders. Offered in collaboration with the Université Laval, the course is available in English and French."

"With the rise of Massive Open Online Courses (MOOC), students from anywhere with an Internet connection, can access free courses facilitated by some of the top educators and experts in every subject area. From mathematics, to computer science, to philosophy, to business design, MOOCs give learners unprecedented access to some of the most valuable knowledge, from some of the most prestigious universities, for free. Though most of the courses do not offer actual credit towards a degree, some MOOCs are beginning to offer certificates, additional credit options, and other enhanced learning services for nominal fees. Students have also been able to submit course work done through MOOCs to their own universities and be granted credit or research units. Additionally, students may use completed courses as a way to build their qualifications by highlighting their work on resumes, cover letters, and social media."

The Open Learning Initiative offers free high-quality courses created by Carnegie Mellon University.

"50 Excellent Open Courses on Teaching With Technology"

U of Minnesota creates open-access textbook collection with faculty reviews.

"I have found an app called Record of Reading. It is a great app…not just because it was created by my alma mater, Clemson University…but because it is an electronic means of assessing reading behaviors. You don't need a calculator as it has embedded formulas for accuracy and self corrections. The app even records the child reading while the teacher simultaneously takes the record. When replaying the record, the oral reading and the record are synced. The record can be saved or emailed. There is also a user manual if needed. You are able to type or write directly in the app and it doesn't have to be opened in a PDF annotator. Best of all, it is FREE!."

"A few years ago Open University published a ten part video series on the history of the English language. Last week TED-Ed published a lesson titled Where Did English Come From? The TED-Ed lesson focuses on the evolution of language and similarities to other languages. "

"NJIT Continuing Professional Education announces ONLINE iPhone/iPad Software Application Development training class. NJIT is one of the first universities to offer training about iPhone and then about iPad app development. This non-credit iPhone & iPad Application Development course adultlearner.njit.edu/admissions/prospective/iphone_online.php is open to the general public and is available 100% online. Participants in this class receive a login to the NJIT Apple Developer Program portal and receive full access to all of the NJIT Apple resources without paying the additional $99 Apple Developer Registration fee required of private developers. The Apple resources include documentation, development software and video tutorials. This portal now supports both the Mac OS X Lion and Snow Leopard Development environments."

"July 16, 2014 While searching for some resources on a paper and writing on  the 21st century learning skills I came across this skills checklist created by the university of Toledo. This checklist is meant to help students build powerful resumes outlining all the skills they master. I spent some time going through the components of this sheet and found it really sharing with you here.  You can use this sheet with your students as an explanatory guide of some of the important skills ( I said some because some other important skills particularly those related to digital citizenship and digital literacy are missing) they need to work. Below is a round-up of the 9 most important skills which I selected from the entire list. You can acccess this list from this link. 1- Research skills Know how to find and collect relevant background information Be able to analyze data, summarize findings and write a report 2- Critical Thinking skills Be able to review different points of view or ideas and make objective judgments Investigate all the possible solutions to a problem, weighing the pros and cons 3- Organizational skills Be able to organize information, people or thins in a systematic way Be able to establish priorities and meet deadlines 4- Problem-solving skills Be able to clarify the nature of a problem Be able to evaluate alternatives, propose viable solutions and determine the outcome of the various options 5- Creative thinking skills Be able to generate new ideas, invent new things, create new images or designs Find new solutions to problems Be able to use wit and humour effectively 6- Analytical/ logical thinking skills Be able to draw specific conclusions from a set of general observations of from a set of specific facts Be able to synthesize information and ideas 7- Public speaking skills Be able to make formal presentations Present ideas, positions and problems in an interesting way 8- Oral communication skills Be able to present information and ideas clearly a

"Stand Up To Cancer (SU2C), a program of the Entertainment Industry Foundation, and PBS LearningMedia, a media-on-demand service designed for K-12 classrooms, announced the opening of applications for the inaugural year of The Emperor Science Award program. The Emperor Science Award program is an initiative designed to encourage high school students to explore careers in science, specifically cancer research and care, through a unique mentoring opportunity. The education initiative was first announced in spring 2015 by SU2C co-founder Katie Couric at Columbia University in connection with a new three-part film on the history of cancer that recently aired on PBS (it can be streamed online here)."

"This past Friday, my wife (@sfryer) and I facilitated a full-day, hands-on workshop about ways to use iPads in the classroom with students to "show what they know with media." 164 teachers participated in the workshop, which was held in two adjacent ballrooms of the Alumni Center at Kansas State University. The event, iCamp iPad Day, was hosted by the College of Education at Kansas State (@ksucollegeofed) and organized by Cyndi Danner Kuhn (@cyndidannerkuhn). The workshop included many elements of iPad Media Camp (@iPadMediaCamp), a 3 day workshop I've offered in the summertime the past four years. During the planning stages for "iCamp iPad Day," Shelly and I discussed the different sharing options we wanted to model for participants and encourage them to use. We decided to use the term "INSIDE SHARING" for the private sharing we'd do during the workshop using SeeSaw. We decided to use the term "OUTSIDE SHARING" for public sharing on Twitter using our #iCampKSU hashtag and other open websites. In this post, I'll explain why both inside and outside digital sharing are important, and how we can use these terms with students, teachers, parents and others to advocate for SHARING AS A MORAL IMPERATIVE (hat tip to Dean Shareski @shareski)."

As is required of all women in their 30s, I am in a book club. At the first meeting of this group, one poor unsuspecting woman mentioned that she had listened to that month's selection instead of reading it. That, the rest of the group decided together, is definitely cheating. Never mind that no one could exactly articulate how or why it was cheating; it just felt like it was, and others would agree. She never substituted the audiobook for the print version again (or, if she did, she never again admitted it). This question - whether or not listening to an audiobook is "cheating" - is one University of Virginia psychologist Daniel Willingham gets fairly often, especially ever since he published a book, in 2015, on the science of reading. (That one was about teaching children to read; he's got another book out next spring about adults and reading.) He is very tired of this question, and so, recently, he wrote a blog post addressing it. (His opening line: "I've been asked this question a lot and I hate it.") If, he argues, you take the question from the perspective of cognitive psychology - that is, the mental processes involved - there is no real difference between listening to a book and reading it. So, according to that understanding of the question: No, audiobooks are not cheating.

"The University of Florida's Digital Collections offers a huge library of digitized children's books. Thanks to Open Culture I discovered this collection this afternoon and immediately started to browse through it. The books that you will find in the collection consist of works that are in the public domain. You can search for books according to topic, language, publisher, genre, and publication date. All of the children's books in the collection can be read online. Reading the books online could be a bit difficult for some as there is a border with menus surrounding each page of the books. To avoid that, you can print all of the books for free. The printed version does not display anything but the book as it was scanned."

"The Open University offers a free course on design and innovation. The course includes a set of six short videos that provide a broad overview of the history and development of modern design. That playlist, beginning with the video on the influence of arts and crafts on design, is embedded below. "

"Five years ago, universities like MIT and Stanford first opened up free online courses to the public. Today, more than 700 schools around the world have created thousands of free online courses. Here are 250 Ivy League courses you can take online right now for free 250 MOOCs from Brown, Columbia, Cornell, Dartmouth, Harvard, Penn, Princeton, and Yale. medium.freecodecamp.com I've compiled this list of over 438 such free online courses that you can start this month. For this, I leveraged Class Central's database of over 7,000 courses. I've also included each course's average rating"