Group items tagged

"I recently wrote a post about "Creating and Collecting Digital Work". When my son brought home this really charming and heart-warming hand drawn "about me" book, I instantly wanted him to tell me about each picture. His descriptions were so amusing and charming, I felt inspired and compelled to create a digital artifact of his work… with my iPad."

"Dig-It! Games, an independent developer of educational, interactive games founded by a former archaeologist and middle school teacher, has launched Can U Dig It!, its latest free game app for the iPhone, iPad, and iPod Touch that turns kids into archaeologists as they dig for ancient artifacts using logic and a little luck. The puzzle app virtually transports players 11 and older to excavation sites in Central America to carefully collect more than 40 historically accurate artifacts."

"At the secondary level, core computer science (CS) concepts and practices are taught in courses typically within the information technology (IT) career cluster under the umbrella of career and technical education (CTE). However, CS concepts and practices are also increasingly being incorporated into academics and also electives (and are influenced by art and design). No matter the discipline, creating computational artifacts is one of the core CS practices students should consistently experience to become better problem-solvers. Computational artifacts may include images, videos, presentations, audio files and computer programs. Precise and consistent practice in computer programming (CP) will help students construct cross-curricular knowledge in tandem with both academic and CS concepts and practices. As CP is the process of writing a program from start to finish, students receive exposure in the amalgamation of practices 3-6 found in the K-12 Computer Science Framework. So, how can we successfully engage students in CP? Here's how we can do so in four major steps."

"Few artifacts of formal learning are as iconic as the letter grade. What can I do to get an A? She's a C student. He's always gotten As and Bs in all of his classes. Then we turn the letters into numbers-letter grades become averages of letter grades, which, when calculated, determined whether or not a learner qualifies to play sports, get into college, or thinks of him or herself as "smart.""

"As first graders are learning about the butterfly life cycle, we wanted to stay away from usual activities such as coloring in a pre-printed coloring page. INSTEAD of such an activity (created by others) and a quiz about recalling the different stages of the life cycle as assessment, we decided to have students built on their knowledge and fluency of creating a collage and CREATING a visual of their learning. The digital visual was to become an artifact for their student portfolio."

"In my classroom, each of my grade one and grade two students has their own blog. These blogs also serve as digital portfolios. Throughout the school year, the children post artifacts of their learning from all subject areas, including writing samples, podcasts of reading fluency,photos of artwork, explanations of mathematics concepts and videos that summarize their learning in science, health and social studies. (Note: The videos linked to in this blog post work best when played through Google Chrome.)"

"Few trends in K-12 ed tech are as hot-or as under-researched-as "Maker" education. The term generally refers to using a wide variety of hands-on activities (such as building, computer programming, and sewing) to support academic learning and the development of a mindset that values playfulness and experimentation, growth and iteration, and collaboration and community.  Typically, "Making" involves attempting to solve a particular problem, creating a physical or digital artifact, and sharing that product with a larger audience. Often, such work is guided by the notion that process is more important than results. The Maker Movement has its roots outside of school, in institutions such as science museums and in the informal activities that everyday people have taken part in for generations. It began exploding about a decade ago, thanks in large part to the enthusiastic audience of Make magazine and the popularity of public events such as Maker Faires (the most well-known of which was hosted by President Barack Obama at the White House in 2014.) The rise of cheap digital tools, including microcontroller platforms such as Arduino and rapid-prototyping tools such as 3-D printers, has in recent years lent the movement a decidedly techie flavor. Efforts to bring Making and "Maker spaces" into K-12 schools are still "nascent," said Erica Halverson, an associate professor of curriculum and instruction at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and a leading researcher into Maker education. But that's changing fast."

"Learn to more effectively use iPads to improve instruction and productivity! This course is a blended learning program where participants learn through video tutorials, webinars, readings, and projects. Those enrolled will attend one face-to-face session and submit artifacts of their learning to a digital portfolio blog. The skills taught in this series have been designed to support the ISTE National Educational Technology Standards for Teachers (NETS-T). "

"My students create many different artifacts, but the most meaningful are those in which my students show their learning and their thinking in ways that are far beyond what a worksheet could do. When they make a video or screencast of what they have learned, I can hear and see their thinking. I can also hear confidence or hesitation, self-corrections or errors in perception. Consider these math examples produced by my students."

"I spend a great deal of time looking up stuff. Whether that stuff is blog posts to get a pulse on what is happening in the edusphere or researching new tools to share with teachers, I come across a wide variety of resources that I need to save, catalog and be able to come back to later. Curation is a large part of my day. Wait. What is curation anyway? Think about it in terms of a museum curator. Their job is to tell a story with artifacts. They scour the globe looking for just the right piece to help convey a message. We have to do the same with the resources we gather. For educators and students, curation is a 3-part process. Gathering Resources Organizing Resources Sharing Resources"

"SeeSaw, a powerful and popular iPad app for creating digital portfolios, is now available as a Chrome web app and as an Android app. The new apps allow students to create and add content to digital portfolios. Through SeeSaw students can add artifacts to their portfolios by taking pictures of their work (in the case of a worksheet or other physical item), by writing about what they've learned, or by uploading a short video about things they have learned. The SeeSaw apps students can add voice comments to their pictures to clarify what their pictures document. Students can create folders withing their accounts to organize content from multiple subject areas."

"The premise is simple: start with a quick tour of the facility and very brief show-and-tell of the tools (less than 30 minutes!), follow with a group brainstorming session around project ideas (less than 30 minutes!), then form groups to jump into projects. Even before lunch on the first day, groups were already sketching and tinkering with Hummingbird Robotics kits, MaKeyMaKeys, cardboard and MakeDo's, and more. For two days, I jumped in to help groups, learned new tools myself (LittleBits!), fetched tools and supplies as needed (copper tape! wire strippers!), recommended resources and suppliers (Sparkfun! DigiKey!), and acted as cheerleader for teachers pushing themselves to learn incredible new skills and create amazing artifacts of their learning. The final projects blew ALL of us coaches away! The absolute best part, from my perspective, is that every single project was immediately applicable back in the participant's classroom. Most of them are generally applicable in any learning environment! Serious high school science content, literature and history, elementary grades, even social/emotional learning… This was absolutely the most excellent collection of practical and academically-oriented maker projects I've seen!"

Enjoy an interactive learning experience as you see thousands of hand-selected and relevant links to pictures, artifacts, manuscripts, documents and other primary sources, IN CONTEXT, within each story. The first eight chapters of every story are available to all.

"In celebration of Media Awareness Week (November 2-6, 2009) we are encouraging students, teachers, and the general public to create videos, digital stories, text, images or any digital media that showcases the different ways they are Media Literate. To get things started, we have created a video that is hosted here on our YouTube Channel (also located at http://drop.io/medialiteracyvideo). Watch the video and then we encourage you to create your own short digital representation of media literacy. Anyone can then upload their video responses or link to any digital artifact you create here in the comments to this video. Celebrating and Sharing: Teachers and students are encouraged to take part in this exposition of student media literacy, we encourage you to promote your activities with local media outlets and draw attention to the critical importance of developing media literacy in the digital age. We hope you choose to participate in this exciting event with your students. You may attend the Media Literacy evening in person on Monday, November 2, 2009, from 7:00 - 8:30 PM CST at the St. James-Assiniboia School Division's Professional Staff Development Centre (PSDC) - 150 Moray Street (access off of Portage Avenue) or via our uStream channel (http://www.ustream.tv/lwict) where everything will be archived. If you have any questions regarding any aspect of this event, leave us a comment here. Category: Education Tags: lstu manace literacy medialiteracy mediaawarenessweek media education lwict "

"Project-based learning is a matter of identifying needs and opportunities (using an app like flipboard), gathering potential resources (using an app like pinterest), collecting notes and artifacts (with an app like Evernote), concept-mapping potential scale or angles for the project (using an app like simplemind), assigning roles (with an appp like Trello), scheduling deadlines (with apps like Google Calendar), and sharing it all (with apps like OneDrive or Google Drive). With that in mind, below are 30 of the best apps for getting this kind of work done in the classroom, with an emphasis on group project-based learning apps for both Android and iPad (and even a few for plain old browsers)."

"It's so important to include primary sources in your English Language Arts and content area instruction.  Whether you're doing a close reading of a text or drawing conclusions from a photograph there are lots of ways that students can interact with artifacts.  Here are a few great online resources and apps for primary source documents:"

"To document and share these 103 apps I chose to include on my STEM iPad cart this year, I created screenshots of each iPad folder and uploaded them to a Flickr album. I also created a linked List.ly list of the apps, which I've embedded below. The creative apps I've included, which support creating and sharing multimedia artifacts for digital portfolios, are also included within my "Mapping Media" digital literacy framework. For additional app lists, check out the "App Recommendations for Mobile Devices" list complied by EdTechTeacher. Hat tip to Beth Holland (@brholland) for sharing that link earlier today."

"Makerspaces are too often defined by things -- hardware, software, other technologies -- which can engender a shopping-list mentality among people interested in creating such a learning environment. A true makerspace is defined not by what's in it but rather by what comes out of it: projects, experiences, artifacts, and learning. The tools are just a means to an end. With that proviso, here are the 20 most important tools being used in our space right now."