Group items tagged

"Book Creator for the iPad by Red Jumper Studio is an app that allows users to create ebooks on your iPad with ease. It provides features that allow anyone to easily create ebooks from users with epub experience to students who are just starting out using mobile device to create a story. The simple interface allows the user to add text and photos with ease. Book Creator also provides the option to add background music as well as audio hotspots to add speech to support the text. It also allows user to add video clips. Books created in Book Creator are easily shared with friends via email, dropbox, or even save to iTunes. "

"The concept of literacy is notoriously elusive and hard to define. Aside from the shallow and intellectually-impaired  definition that sums up  literacy in  reading and writing printed text, any serious and profound investigation of literacy does, by implication, entail an analysis of the new ways of learning and meaning-making afforded by digitality. New digital media have provided learners with novel and revolutionary ways of producing, discussing, sharing and interacting with text. These ways, to say the least about them, are multimodally complex and call for an integrated set of skills that go beyond the mere ability to code and decode meaning. In this sense, to be literate in such a multimodal environment requires understanding and using a wide range of interconnected literacies. We are no longer talking about a single literacy as was the case since the invention of writing some 6000 year ago, we are, instead,  in front of multiple new emerging  and interdependent literacies. Today's students are asked to have a working knowledge of these literacies in order to be able to thrive in a globalized knowledge economy. Katchy Schrock has this wonderful resource where she features some awesome mini-posters defining the key literacies making up today's Literacy (with capital letter) landscape.  These visuals are ideal for classroom inclusion. I invite you to check them out and share with your colleagues."

"In part one of this series, I shared how I use freely available video in my reading and literacy methods course to help my preservice teachers understand close reading instruction at a level that could not be attained through reading and discussion alone. In part two, I shared my curated collection of videos for general Common Core info, as well as videos to teach the close reading, text complexity and informational texts standards. "

"Twitter and Remind 101 are two of the most popular free services available to text parents. But how do you know which one is best for you? "

"Kathleen Cushman, author of Fires in the Mind (and Edcamper!), has done countless studies on motivation and engagement. In many ways, her findings echo Daniel Pink's work in his text, Drive. Kathleen has just released a FREE eBOOK called The Motivation Equation. In the brief text, she describes design methodology that will help ignite students' passions. It's definitely worth a look!"

"Before we dig in, let's start with a quick multiple-choice quiz: Font : Text :: A. Hat : Head B. Coffee : Tea C. Voice : Speech The answer is C. The font you choose to display text is every bit as important as the voice you use to speak if you want a reader to not only understand what they are reading, but also remember it as well. The primary purpose of type is not really to be readable, but to convey information that is to be remembered. Surprisingly, readability might not always lead to the best information retention. "

"Sketchnoting, in its purist form, is creating a personal visual story as one is listening to a speaker or reading a text. I also believe the interactive notebook, which includes the process of taking "regular" notes" while listening to a speaker and later creating a sketchnote of the text notes, would also be considered sketchnoting. This page will provide links, ideas, tips,and research evidence dealing with the power of sketchnoting. If you are looking for a book on the topic, the seminal work is this book by Mike Rohde. "

"Reading well requires much more than just decoding textual input, it is rather a process of making meaning of text using a wide range of critical and intellectual skills and drawing on different cues . Close reading is one example of a theory that explicates the intricacies surrounding effective reading. In close reading, readers need to consider a set of criteria for a better comprehension of the text. Some of the these criteria include: Language, Narrative, Syntax, and Context."

"I've shared some ways that word clouds can be used in the classroom, and here's another activity that works for all ages and subject areas. Find a website that you are planning on sharing with students. This could be an informational text on a science topic or simply a current events article. Copy and paste the website URL into the online tool Tagxedo. This website will create a word cloud using text from that website."

"Google Books is one of the wonderful research tools I use when searching for books. Google Books provides some important features for conducting accurate book searches and allows users to do a lot of things with the books they find. They can for instance search for key words and phrases from within the book, clip a portion of the text and share it, and download the book in different formats : PDF, EPUB, and in plain text. These and several other features render Google Books a great search platform that our students can draw on to help them with their research projects. Here is a visual guide I created to help you learn more about the different things you can with Google Books. Check out the presentation version of this visual at the end of this post."

"One of the essential features of Google Image, but overlooked by most students, is to search for images using images instead of text. This is especially important when searching for information around a certain image. For instance, in a field trip with class to the local zoo, students came a cross a little bug that they did not know. To learn more about this bug they can use their smart phones to take a picture of it and upload it to Google Image. If the first page of search results did not turn out accurate results they can add some text to the image ( like for example its colour, how many legs it has...etc)."

"When adopting technology in the classroom, one of the key concerns for teachers and administrators is classroom management. I am often asked if there is a way to "lock down an iPad screen" or "ensure students cannot go to inappropriate websites" (e.g. Social Media). In other words, how do we keep students on task and ensure that they are not distracted by the novelty of gadgets or communicating with friends via texting or social media? Often, teachers will take up devices (such as mobile phones) to avoid the issue of students texting or checking Facebook on their phones (eliminating access to a powerful, pocket computer in the process)."

"When we use literature circles, small groups of student gather for an in-depth discussion of a literary work. To ensure that students have a clear sense of direction and remain focused, each group member is given a specific task. For example, one student may be the designated artist; s/he is responsible for using some form of art to explore a main idea, a theme, or significant scene from the text. Another group member, the wordsmith, might be responsible for documenting important, unusual, or difficult words from the reading. Regardless of each student's role, each group must collaborate as they read, discuss and critically engage with texts."

"Synopsis is a completely free iPad app for students that lets users create notes by highlighting different sections of a PDF document.  Kids can then modify the notes they have created by adding their own text. Synopsis gives kids the power to summarize any text so they won't need to go back to a PDF document to study material.  Each individual note can be converted to its own flashcard there is no need to buy flashcards or type and create your own."

"In the Social Studies and English Language Arts classroom students can benefit from visuals and interactive text to help making meaning of the past.  The Berlin Wall HD is a free iPad app that presents informational text, primary source documents and interactive maps on the screen.  Students can tap, zoom and explore this period in history."

"The simple truth is that turning students on to nonfiction reading - proving that articles from sources like Popular Science and Gizmodo and National Geographic can be JUST as amazing as The Hunger Games or The Lightning Thief or The Lunar Chronicles - is probably the MOST important contribution that I can make to the academic and intellectual growth of my students. Being exposed to high interest articles from a wide range of fields - space science, biology, chemistry, earth science - might just introduce kids to personal passions and future professions.  Seeing science in action turns what could be just another boring subject in school into an interesting career worth pursuing.  Just as importantly, exposing kids to high interest nonfiction text on a regular basis will build their comfort level with a genre that will increasingly define the reading that they do as middle schoolers, high schoolers and adults. So I'm trying something new this year:  I'm going to use Remind - a free service that allows teachers to send out text and/or email updates to parents and students - to share two or three interesting science current events every week."