Group items tagged

"Apps and web apps are only as purposeful as the products and projects that they are used to create. After spending copious amounts of time publishing "Hot Apps 4 HOTS" to iBooks, I felt I should allocate some time to focus on web apps and how they too can be used to support higher order thinking skills."

Do you love reading but don't get enough time due to your busy schedule and work? If you cannot read, you can listen to news and your favorite blogs on your PC, Android, iPhone and iPad using a service known as Vocalyse.

"Why Morning Routines Are Creativity Killers"

"We're in the middle of that dreary time of year, when the excitement of the new term has faded away but the Easter holidays are still too far off to contemplate. The days are cold and grey and settling back into the school routine for another year can feel a bit too much like hard work. So there's no better time to inspire your students with the multitude of connections to inspirational stars past and present that are helpfully provided by the internet's obsession with famous quotes!"

"Y'all know we love TED talks. Short, watchable snippets of useful information, thought provoking questions, personal stories, inspiration, and learning. While I always take something away from every TED talk that I watch, some stick with me more than others. That said, most don't come with a specific list of takeaways meant to help you with your everyday life. This talk, from David Pogue, offers 10 time saving tech tips. Most are for technologies that we use every day. They're simple, easy-to-do, they'll save you time, and make you feel like a suave tech person who can (seemingly) make their technology do whatever they need it to do with little effort. The video is embedded below, but we've typed out the handy list for you to reference later."

"The "All-Time" Best Web 2.0 Applications For Education"

"Thinking is troublesome. For one, it is an intimate act splicing time and space. It is done right here, but it spans moments in the pasts and reaches out uncertainly towards moments in the future. Put another way, you think in a singular, precise space about plural, imprecise times."

"iTunes and App Store users have long been able to gift apps, movies, and music, and thanks to a recent iBooks Store change, we can all give the gift of literature too, and complete the whole transaction right in our hand from iOS. Perhaps best of all, you can schedule the gift arrival to be on a specific date, and the gifted book arrives neatly in their email inbox right on time, which means that even total slacker holiday shoppers like me will be able to get something for everyone in time for Christmas. "

"Rounding up the best and favorite elementary school apps is not an easy task, the market is saturated and there are so many standouts that cover the gamut of grade levels. Obviously, one of the first considerations we focus on when writing a review is, of course, the learning potential of an app. Another important aspect is the shelf life - how long will the app be useful and stand up to the test of time? We want this to be a lasting resource for teachers and parents, the solid go-to list that will serve you well for quite some time. *Notice at the bottom of the page we starred some super apps that cross than more than one content area. We have put together a great list but if you know of an app we may have missed, please let us know about it in the comment section below. (Coming soon: Apps for Special Needs & Book Apps)"

"There is a NEED and URGENCY of updating curriculum and instructional repertoire to give the critical literacies of our century justice. Upgrading and amplifying traditionally taught activities, lessons, units or entire classroom learning environments takes time and practice. Just as in any sport, if you want to get better at it, you have to put in the time and practice. The same holds true with upgrading and amplifying. Most educators are "not in shape" and not in the routine of upgrading their curriculum to embed emerging critical literacies and amplifying their own and their students' work."

"When we try to lead, teach, instruct, or explain, we usually spend most of our time talking about HOW to do something. We don't spend nearly enough time talking about the WHY. This is the cheapest persuasive tool you have: explaining WHY."

"Until several years ago, I had a hard time confronting my subordinates with direct, straight-up critical feedback. I didn't want the awkwardness I thought would come from telling someone he wasn't doing his job correctly. However, I grew out of this feeling over time and found constructive, professional ways to provide critical feedback. "

"We often hear people comment about how intuitive it is to use an iPad. While that is certainly true for many people, it's not true for all people. Joanne Villis has put together a nice little guide for first-time iPad users. Her guide starts with explanations of all of the buttons on an iPad and finishes with three ways to get content off of your iPad. Joanne published the guide on Slideshare and you find it there, on her blog, or as embedded below."

"Math Champ Challenge is the latest iPad app from INKids Education. Math Champ Challenge is designed for students in grades four through seven to practice their math skills in timed and un-timed challenges. "

"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.)"

"Reading is one of the major foundations of any student's studies. In any subject - including math - understanding how to read and being able to comprehend words on a page is a make or break in academics and in life more generally. Some kids take to reading naturally, and you'll find them with their nose in a book at any given time and nearly every time you turn around. Others don't take to it quite as naturally, though they'll eventually get into it, and others feel the same about reading as they feel about going to the dentist."

"Every year I try to have various community building activities for the kids to do on those first few days of school. And while I detest ice breakers, in 5th grade, we do like the occasional get to know me activity. Though the years I have used various scavenger hunts, time capsules, and bingo games to get to know them a bit better, to get them to know each other, and also for me to keep until the end of the year. Then when summer beckons and we cannot believe that the year is over, I pull out the forgotten letters, the time capsules, the about me's, and we reminisce and we laugh and we shake our heads at the answers we gave so long ago. "

"School is a time in a students life where they are learning as much about how to be students and operate successfully in a school as they are about how to read, write, and think. But oftentimes, the demand for pure academic instruction and practice can fly in the face for a student's need-at any age-to play, build, interact, explore, and construct their own learning experience. Issues like these can make mobile technology like tablets a boon to learning, as they can allow individual access to the right app-and the right content, creative opportunity, game, or learning simulation-at the right time. It is the collision of the need for interaction, personalization, creativity, and constant feedback that can make video games powerful tools for learning-and the following 38 games, curated by Sam Gliksman-and excellent place to start. "

"If there is one thing teachers lack, it's time. And while using technology to automate learning has been frowned upon by many, using it to automate time-consuming processes or aggregate data automatically is among the many seamless fits technology can make into any classroom. Which is where the following collections of apps and tools comes in."

Favourite part of my Grade 9 ICT class according to my students