Group items tagged

"Please take the following survey and share your thoughts, then pass the link on to your colleagues and friends. I'm writing a new column for the Appealing Apps for Educators series in Appolicious and I'd love to get gather the opinions of educators and students on their favorite apps that they've used this year. These apps do not have to be new to the education market this year. Vote for one app per category only; apps can be listed in multiple categories. You also are not required to submit an app in every category. K12 classes may want to consider discussing the following categories, and making one group entry. NOTE: This is not a survey for app developers to promote their own work. Do not take this survey if you are not a K12 student, a K12 class or educator."

"Ever want your students to slow down and notice details when they read - whether they're perusing a book, a poem, a map or a political cartoon? Young people often want to hurry up and make meaning via a quick skim or a cursory glance when a text can demand patience and focus. Closely reading any text, whether written or visual, requires that students proceed more slowly and methodically, noticing details, making connections and asking questions. This takes practice. But it certainly helps when students want to read the text. We've selected 10 photos from The Times that we've used previously in our weekly "What's Going On in This Picture?" and that have already successfully caught students' and teachers' attention. These are some of our most popular images - ones that may make viewers say "huh?" on first glance, but that spark enough curiosity to make them want to dig deeper. (Please Note: You can quickly learn the backstory about any of these photos by clicking the link in each caption that takes you to the original post, then scrolling down to find the "reveal.") Below, we offer ideas from students and teachers who have engaged with these images for ways to use them, or images like them, to teach close reading and visual thinking skills."

"Dual Browsing is about ease of use. It is not essential or even necessary - it is just convenient. It is convenient for comparing the quality or price of two items. It is great for researching on one side and taking notes on the other. This is an excellent tool for student research tasks full stop. Dual Browsing is one way of multitasking on your iPad that works easily and well. Take a look at this collection of dual browser to find one that is right for you. "

"When you look at the very best work happening in iPad classrooms, you'll see students creating media, showcasing their understanding, collaborating with peers, and communicating with broad audiences. The pockets of excellence are ever-present and inspiring. On the whole, however, tablets are most often used to reproduce existing practices-to distribute resources and enable students to take notes. Past generations of school leaders might have been forgiven for permitting these patterns of technology adoption, but today we have the benefit of history to look back on. We know that without a change in our technology integration strategies, there's no reason to expect that a new device will magically create new teaching practices in schools. To make the most of the investment in tablet computers, school leaders need to do three things. First, they need to work with their communities to articulate a clear vision for how new technology will improve instruction. Second, they need to help educators imagine how new technologies can support those visions. Finally, they need to support teachers and students on a developmental journey that will take them from using tablets for consumption to using them for curation, creation, and connection."

"Having a digital classroom means a few different things: 1. You have less stacks of paper 2. It is (generally) easier to keep track of student work 3. "The dog ate my homework" isn't a viable excuse anymore 4. Note taking needs to take a new form 5. You need another method of sharing work that doesn't involve handing papers from one person to another Clearly, number 5 on this list is the one that will cause you the most thought these days, unless your dog is into eating computers - and then you have a bigger problem on your hands. Lots of things need to be shared. Students need to hand in their work, teachers need to offer feedback on said work, students need to share their collaborative work, and teachers need to share classroom information and tools of all variety. Luckily, there are tons of different tools out there that can enable you to share nearly any type of file (from .doc/.docx and .ppt to .mov, .mp3/4 , .zip and more!). There's a lot of info out there on different cloud storage services - which are a great way to share files - but many of these are business focused and not as classroom friendly. We've put together a short list of some of our favorite methods of file sharing so that you, your colleagues, and your students can spend more time on the good stuff and less time trying to figure out how to get the information to one another."

"This summer, I was introduced to sketchnoting and challenged to incorporate  the concept of sketchnoting as a means of note taking.  Sketchnoting is the process of creating a personal visual story while listening, reading, or recording an experience as it happens or on a later date. Sketchnoting brings in a variety of cognitive processes, increasing the connection between speaker and listener due to the engagement needed to listen intently while synthesizing the spoken word into drawings and short narratives.  I decided to to take the challenge seriously."

"The best writing apps for iPad, like any concept of 'best,' is subjective and further based on need and circumstance. Are you a poet drafting when inspiration strikes? A student taking notes and writing essays? A novelist that usually uses a desktop, but needs their new iPad Pro to do work on the go? While the idea of writing more than a few hundred words on an iPad may seem crazy, using the iPad as a powerful portable writing tool allows you to take advantage of inspiration whenever and wherever it strikes. And with iPad screens now approaching 13″ and capable of supporting USB connections to enable standalone keyboards, it's easier and more comfortable than ever to draft a masterpiece while away from your desk with the help of an app, an iPad, and a good idea."

"Over the years, many of us have personally experienced the growth of technology in today's classrooms. Instead of taking notes, students are now occupied by surfing the Internet, scrolling through Facebook, and messaging their friends on their smart phones, tablets, and laptops. Instead of focusing on the instruction, teachers are constantly required to interrupt class in order to remind those students again and again, that class time is for learning, not texting. However, as today's students are using more technological devices, it is imperative that teachers have access to the resources to keep pace with the growing tech culture. The use of smart phones, tablets, and other tech items in the classroom do not necessarily have to have a negative impact on student achievement. On the contrary, the increasing accessibility and growth of technology presents teachers with the unique opportunity to take advantage of those once distracting gadgets, and use them to facilitate academic achievement in new and innovative ways. In this capacity, teachers do not need to be constantly fighting for student attention, but can freely accept it, by introducing a new educational environment that will automatically encourage student participation. Below are some resources that teachers may find useful when attempting to implement technology into their classrooms, separated by 5 common areas that are increasingly important for teachers, and for an effective learning environment-Organization, Project Based Learning, Class Management, Presentations, and Assessment. "

"I was painfully bored during my K-12 education. I looked forward to college anticipating that it would be different - more engaging, more interesting, more innovative. I was wrong. My undergraduate education, except for a few bright spots, was just an extension of my K-12 education including more grill and drill with sages on the stages (literally since I went to such a large university); taking notes and taking lots of multiple choice tests. During my freshman year, I thought that if I had one wish, it would be to change the educational system (which has stayed with me ever since). One of those bright spots was being asked to read Carl Rogers, Freedom to Learn, which was published 1969 in an upper level Educational Psychology course. The big aha for me was that school systems should be focused on helping learners develop the skills for how to learn not what to learn, one that was sorely lacking in most of my K-graduate-level education and a concept and goal that as an educator I've held onto ever since."

"I've spent a lot of years talking with and listening to some very smart people, and one thing I've noticed is that the people who are legitimate experts in their fields rarely spout off facts like they are the final word. Their assertions don't back you into a corner or embarrass you into silence. Their delivery is often quieter. More nuanced. The smartest people in the world are least likely to have singular, one-note answers to difficult questions. They're more likely to respond with "It depends," and then, if you're willing to stick around and listen, share ideas that take a little more time to develop. And I want to take a moment to elevate that, because I believe that if we spend more time practicing this kind of thinking, if we honor the true elegance of that gray area, we'll all be a lot better off."

"Today while I was lounging in Victoria Park, I took my iPad and started thumbing around through the apps I have. I was really surprised to find out that I have many apps installed but only some are being used on a regular basis. So it dawned on me to compile a list of some "must have" apps that teachers should have access to. All of these apps are great for organizational tasks such as : task management, bookmarking, note-taking...and media storage. "

"Last month our middle school tech class went to Lansing to attend the MACUL ATT Student Showcase. While there, I asked the students to use an iPad to somehow create a project to document what happened on the trip. I gave them a list of suggested apps, but left it open for students to make their own creative choices about the project. Several students used the wonderful Book Creator app to create epub books about the trip. Here are links to two of the books that can be directly downloaded into iBooks on your iPad, iPod, or iPhone. (Note, it will take several minutes for the books to download, then select to open in iBooks.)"

"EasyBib, an information literacy platform that provides citation, note taking, and research tools have created this helpful infographic on plagiarism. "Plagiarism, source attribution and critical thinking are among some of the real problems that our educators and students face. We put together this infographic to shed light on the matter, to underscore why librarians are needed more than ever, and to show what EasyBib is doing about it.""

"Originally released in early 2012, Apple's education-themed ebook creation tool took bold steps as the first WYSIWYG program to export an ebook just as its author envisioned it. As I noted in my review of that software, however, the first version of iBooks Author was very much a 1.0 product, with strange omissions and odd workflows for users who didn't want to build textbooks. Ten months later, an updated version-iBooks Author 2.0 (Mac App Store)-brings simplified tools, new templates, portrait-only options, and a better publishing workflow to the table. Naturally, I couldn't resist taking the updated program for a spin."

"How do you learn best? For me, it depends on what I am learning. Sometimes I need to take notes, other times I need to think out loud. Some things are easier to learn with another person while with other things, I need to be alone. My guess is most of us have different styles for learning depending on what it is we are working on."

"Last Sunday, I received a note via the contact form on my blog that was a first for me in many ways. It was the first time I had ever been contacted by a parent via my blog, the first time I could not put a comment out of my mind until I had addressed it, and the first time I ever thought about the impact a school's 1:1 take-home technology initiative could have on a family."

"Teachers in Littleton, Colorado - like teachers in many places - are increasingly asking students to read and write online. Free tools like Google Docs have made it easy for students to work on the same piece of writing at home and at school, and have allowed teachers to explore collaborative writing assignments and synchronous editing with students. There are also many digital tools that can support students as they learn how to read deeply, take well-cited notes, and navigate the writing process. While many teachers are finding efficiency in allowing students to write and submit assignments online, not all students or teachers want to use the exact same set of tools. That's why Littleton's Instructional Technology Specialist, Dana Levesque, started compiling resources on a site that both teachers and students can access to find the tools that fit their needs."