Group items tagged

"I still miss that beautiful visual presentation, but you can still use Google News to search contemporaneous news. Contemporaneous news offers students unfiltered, personal connection to the past and forces them to wrestle with issues of bias and historical perspective. Contemporaneous news focuses a media literacy lens on how news is/was reported. How many different ways is the same story reported? How does the story evolve over the course of days, weeks, years? How do stories reported at the time differ from the way a story is reported with the benefit of hindsight or without the homongenization of textbook coverage? We can engage learners in considering why a story is placed where it is placed in a newspaper, why a particular headline was crafted, how our language has shifted, and why search terms may be time-contextual. (For instance, why searches for World War I, African Americans, the Holocaust, might not be effective in contemporaneous sources.)"

"For students who dread writing class, a blank page can look a lot like a ten-foot monolith; an imposing, empty slate towering over their homework list. Visual storytelling is one way to break students out of writer's block, and storyboarding apps are a pre-packaged strategy you can use to bring images to the narrative. Whether your students are afraid of writing or you're simply looking for a way to break up a brainstorming session, these 10 storyboarding apps for iOS and Android devices can help inspire-and organize-students of any age. The best part might be the flexibility of these apps. While they can be used for strict storyboarding in the creation of fiction, they can also be used for other tasks, including documenting project-based learning, sharing assignments, or capturing research notes."

"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."

"The Elements in Action takes a visual look at the periodic table, bringing the metals and gasses to life with engaging videos. It's an interesting look at the elements from BAFTA award winner Max Whitby and Theodore Gray, author of the popular book and app The Elements. The content is top-notch, taken from footage originally available only at museums."

"Thinking about using Twitter with your students ? The visual below is one of the best guide I have come across online. The graphic is created by Langwitches and provides a cognitive incentive for those reluctant teachers out there to start using social media with their students and particularly Twitter."

I think this kind of tool can be really beneficial for creating flipped learning or video orientated learning as the speaker can guide learners to various learning resources on the web. They can also embed visual support for language learners such as text and images and even write over the video as though it were a whiteboard.

"Here is an awesome graphic on 7 degrees of connectedness created by Sylvia. The content of this graphic clicks in with what I have said about the importance of being a connected educator in an earlier post. Creating and being part of learning networks is a requisite for any professional development in the 21st century. You just can not change it. Either you climb aboard the bandwagon or become outdated."

"To help teachers learn more about ADHD, here are two awesome infographics I want you to have a look at. "

"During one of my workshops last year in Boston, Brad Ovenell-Carter (@braddo) put his visual notetaking skills to action. I took his lovely summary drawing and used ThingLink to add layers of information and elaboration."

"Of all the things I have read about the 21st century skills required for students success in today's info rich society, the visual below from edutopia captures the essence of these skills and touches on critical areas students need to work on to meet these skills.These skills are grouped in three main categories: learning, creating and collaborating:"

"Modio is a new and free iPad app that anyone can use to design model robots for 3D printing. The app features a large collection of robot parts that you snap together to design your 3D robot model. You can mix and match parts to heart's content. Modio provides a visualization screen that will reveal the dimensions of your model before you print it. Included with those dimensions is an estimate of the time it will take to print the model."

"A new study, published in Psychological Science, found that children in highly decorated classrooms are more distracted and make smaller learning gains compared to a minimally decorated classroom. Children's visual environments can affect how much they learn, researchers explain. Therefore, it's important to maintain focused attention in the classroom since young children usually spend the entire day in that environment."

"Evernote is a great tool for capturing and organizing your notes. Evernote supports all types of notes including, text, image, video and audio notes. To better tap into the full potential of Evernote, you need to use the Evernote Web clipper. This is an extension that , once installed on your browser, will allow you to bookmark and save anything you come across online  to your Evernote notebook. From within this notebook, you can then organize your notes using tags and keywords or edit and add to them."

"Here is a wonderful little visual I came across through Edudemic which outlines the 8 skills students need in order to live up to the expectations of the future job market. These skills which are highlighted in the recent report "The Learning Curve"  by Pearson are a big departure from the conventional literacy skills : Reading, Writing, and Arithmetic.That being said, the report also underscored the fact that for kids (in developing countries) to get a grasp of the 21st century skills, they need to first master the basic literacy skills. Developing countries must teach basic skills more effectively before they start to consider the wider skills agenda. There is little point in investing in pedagogies and technologies to foster 21st century skills, when the basics of numeracy and literacy aren't in place."

"Thursday I'm sharing two presentations at iPadPalooza in Austin, Texas. Here are the titles, descriptions, and slides for these breakout sessions. Both are hands-on workshops, however, so most of the time we'll be exploring and playing with the apps Hopscotch and Brushes!"

"Today while I was browsing through my Twitter feeds I came across this fabulous Bloom's Taxonomy wheel of apps shared by Anthony. If you still recall, some previous versions of this wheel have already been featured here in Bloom's Taxonomy for Teachers section . As you can see, the wheel outlines a wide variety of verbs and activities related to each thinking level of Blooms taxonomy coupled with iPad apps that go with it. These apps are supposed to help teachers and students better cultivate these different thinking levels in their use of iPad apps. And because the the visual is not hyperlinked, I went ahead and provided the links for each of these apps in the lists below. Enjoy"

"Kids have always made in my library. We encouraged digital and visual and dramatic and rhetorical creativity before, during, and after school.  But for a while, I've questioned the value of using already heavily used real estate to randomly carve out space for a 3D printer, electronics stations and sewing machines. I had my doubts about the makerspace movement in school libraries. A couple of weeks ago I had the opportunity to chat with Amos Blanton, project manager of the Scratch online community, and a member of the Lifelong Kindergarten Group at MIT Media Lab.  On his profile Amos notes:  I design and sustain creative learning environments for people with agency. Amos makes the case for makerspaces as powerful, authentic, relevant learning experiences, and for when and why library may be the very right space to create a makerspace."

"MyMind is a good iPad app for creating and organizing text, audio, and visual notes. MyMind allows you to type notes or write them free-hand. To each note you can add pictures, audio files, and video files. Your audio files can be recorded within the app. All notes are organized into notebooks that your create and name."

"Google has several officially released apps that teachers (and anyone else) can use on their iPads. All of these apps are available for free download from the iTunes app store. Recently,  Shake Up Learning published this wonderful infographic where she featured some useful Google apps for iPad. As is the case with all the visuals she shares, this graphic sums up the most essential Google apps every teacher should be aware of. These apps are arranged into 7 main categories:"