Group items tagged

"ArkGIS is a customizable map developed by the World Wildlife Fund for the purpose of visualizing historical data about sea ice, marine life, and oil and gas exploration in the Arctic. To create custom visualizations of data layers on the ArkGIS map simply select a data category then select data layers to display. For example, I chose the "marine mammals" category then selected the "beluga whales" and "walrus" to view their distributions."

"For years Jenny Eather's A Maths Dictionary for Kids has been a favorite resource of mine and many other teachers for years. Maths Charts by Jenny Eather is the iPad companion to the website. Math Charts by Jenny Eather provides simple and clear definitions of math terms. Each definition includes a diagram to illustrate the term's definition. You can print any and all of the visuals included in the app."

"Last year I taught third-grade math in a whole new way. Combining elements from the wildly popular sandbox game Minecraft, I had students thinking visually and creatively about mathematical models and theories that went way beyond a typical third-grade curriculum, transforming math class into what I like to call Mathcraft. Why Minecraft? I could say I am using Minecraft for a number of reasons, like how I find Minecraft enhances metacognition by increasing students' memory storage capacity. The game itself creates a relatable enjoyable experience that can be internalized and shared in a community of learners. The limitations on the working memory are minimized because the gameplay itself is an extension of our visual sketchpad. Working with students they always say, "I can see it," and when they see it they share it."

"July 16, 2014 While searching for some resources on a paper and writing on  the 21st century learning skills I came across this skills checklist created by the university of Toledo. This checklist is meant to help students build powerful resumes outlining all the skills they master. I spent some time going through the components of this sheet and found it really sharing with you here.  You can use this sheet with your students as an explanatory guide of some of the important skills ( I said some because some other important skills particularly those related to digital citizenship and digital literacy are missing) they need to work. Below is a round-up of the 9 most important skills which I selected from the entire list. You can acccess this list from this link. 1- Research skills Know how to find and collect relevant background information Be able to analyze data, summarize findings and write a report 2- Critical Thinking skills Be able to review different points of view or ideas and make objective judgments Investigate all the possible solutions to a problem, weighing the pros and cons 3- Organizational skills Be able to organize information, people or thins in a systematic way Be able to establish priorities and meet deadlines 4- Problem-solving skills Be able to clarify the nature of a problem Be able to evaluate alternatives, propose viable solutions and determine the outcome of the various options 5- Creative thinking skills Be able to generate new ideas, invent new things, create new images or designs Find new solutions to problems Be able to use wit and humour effectively 6- Analytical/ logical thinking skills Be able to draw specific conclusions from a set of general observations of from a set of specific facts Be able to synthesize information and ideas 7- Public speaking skills Be able to make formal presentations Present ideas, positions and problems in an interesting way 8- Oral communication skills Be able to present information and ideas clearly a

"Check out the visual writing idea for the first week of school. This set comes with both a curriculum and a set of visual ideas (as .png). Simply click on the icon above and it should download. Click on the .zip file (most likely in your Download folder of your computer) and everything should work. The resource is Creative Commons, meaning you can print, display or distribute it as you wish.  "

""Managing iPad YouTube in Schools" is a visual guide created by iPadWells from iPad4Schools. In this guide iPadWells walks teachers through the process they use in their school to create, share and teach using videos. YouTube is the principal video hosting used in this guide. That being said, it does not mean that the guide is not relevant for your teaching situation even if YuTube is banned in your school. You can still benefit from the tips and ideas provided by iPadWells on how to create enhanced videos using a wide variety of apps and share them with students who can access them at home."

"Creating tutorials and explanatory guides is best done through the help of screenshots. These are pictures we take of our screens to share with others or include in a visual demonstration of how, for example, a process works. As teachers and educators we often find ourselves in need of such visual annotations and cues to enhance our students comprehensibility. There are several web tools that we can use to create screenshots and we have already reviewed some of them in past publications here. Today, we are introducing you to what we consider to be the best 4 web tools for creating screenshots. Besides being free, these tools are very simple to use and are also student friendly. They will allow you to  capture your screen, crop and annotate your pictures using  arrows, colours, shapes, text and many more. "

"Every teacher knows that visual aids are a good way to facilitate the learning process and grab students' attention for a long time. Educators use different posters, videos, slideshows to explain a new topic, provide more details or even test students. Presentations take a prominent part in the visual aids collection. Their main benefit is that teachers can combine various types of content in one presentation: text, images, video clips, music. Saved in a video format, presentations can be easily shown in class, uploaded to YouTube, embedded into a school website, or shared on any other educational resource."

"The new Canva for Education site features eighteen lesson plans written by Vicki Davis, Steven Anderson, Terri Eichholz, and Paul Hamilton. The lesson plans include things like Paul's making historical infographics in which students summarize and visually represent the connections between historical events and their causes. For the elementary school crowd Terri has a lesson called Initial Selfies in which students learn to isolate and pronounce the initial, medial vowel, and final sounds. One of Steven's lesson plans calls for students to build graphics about percentages. And to take advantage of students' familiarity with Facebook, Vicki has built a lesson plan in which students build historical figure fan pages."

"Do you love to write? Do you have any idea about how with the act of writing affects your brain? Well this visual is perfect for you then! According to this visual, you can really boost your brainpower by understanding the frontal lobe and the parietal lobe. The frontal lobe is the part of the brain that is associated with speaking and writing. This area is also responsible for movement, reasoning, planning, and problem-solving. Meanwhile, the parietal lobe is also important for writing. This is the part of the brain that interprets words and language. Some medical patients with damage to this part of their brain often have trouble spelling and writing by hand."

"Today I am sharing with you a resourceful page that contains some interesting visual guides on teaching with iPad. This page is created by iPad 4 Schools and features various posters on educational iPad apps, tips, and tutorials on how to make the best of iPad in your instruction. I have shared some of these posters in this blog in the past but when I checked back today I found that iPad Wells have added many new beautiful visuals. All of these posters are available in PDF format which you can download and print to use with students in class. I invite you to check the collection there and share with us what you think of it. "

" It was visual literacy in action this week at The Kellett School in Hong Kong as a variety of elementary classes explored logo design for packaging. These young learners needed to craft a distinctive design, using a considered colour palette and a combination of shapes, in Assembly app on their iPads. While there are a whole variety of tools that can be used for this kind of task, one of the powerful tools in this app is actually one that is missing - text! With no words 'to do the talking', the principles of art and design took centre stage during the production of this purely visual piece of communication. "

"A driving strategy that serves students-whether pursuing self-knowledge or academic content-is questioning. Questioning is useful as an assessment strategy, catalyst for inquiry, or "getting unstuck" tool. It can drive entire unit of instruction as an essential question. In other words, questions transcend content, floating somewhere between the students and their context. Questions are more important than the answers they seem designed to elicit. The answer is residual-requires the student to package their content to please the question-maker, which moves the center of gravity from the student's belly to the educator's marking pen. In that light, I was interested when I found the visual above. It's okay to say "I don't know." Teach your students how to develop questions (because) it helps conquer their own confusion. Rebeca Zuniga was inspired to create the above visual by the wonderful Heather Wolpert-Gawron (from the equally wonderful edutopia, and also her own site, tweenteacher). The whole graphic is wonderful, but it's that I don't know that really resonated with me. Traditionally, this phrase is seen as a hole rather than a hill. I don't know means I'm missing information that I'm supposed to have."

"A few days ago we shared with you a new Google feature that allows you to easily fact check online content. Today, we are sharing with you 10 good tips that will enable you to critically assess the veracity and credibility of online content (e.g. news stories).  These are guidelines Facebook Help Centre provided for it users to help them spot fake news. However, these tips can also apply to any other type of content. Students can use them to evaluate digital content and enhance their critical reading comprehension.  We have embedded these tips into the visual below so you can print and share with your students in class. You can also download a PDF copy from this page. Enjoy."

"According to a recent Forbes article, data storytelling, which involves weaving data and visualizations into a compelling narrative, has become a sought-after skill in the job market. Today's variety of online tools and resources offer an opportunity to prepare our students to interpret their research in new and creative ways and to effectively communicate data-driven insights."

"In today's post we are sharing with you one of our popular visuals in 2017. It features a collection of some good educational websites to use  in the teaching and learning of STEAM content. We have particularly highlighted the platforms we have reviewed in the past and which have received positive feedback from our readers. We invite you to check it out and share with us  if there are any other suggestions to add to the list. This visual is also available for free download in PDF format."

"At TeachThought, nothing interests us more than students, as human beings. What they know, might know, should know, and do with what they know. A driving strategy that serves students-whether pursuing self-knowledge or academic content-is questioning. Questioning is useful as an assessment strategy, catalyst for inquiry, or "getting unstuck" tool. It can drive entire unit of instruction as an essential question. In other words, questions transcend content, floating somewhere between the students and their context. Questions are more important than the answers they seem designed to elicit. The answer is residual-requires the student to package their content to please the question-maker, which moves the center of gravity from the student's belly to the educator's marking pen. In that light, I was interested when I found the visual above. It's okay to say "I don't know." Teach your students how to develop questions (because) it helps conquer their own confusion. Rebeca Zuniga was inspired to create the above visual by the wonderful Heather Wolpert-Gawron (from the equally wonderful edutopia, and also her own site, tweenteacher). The whole graphic is wonderful, but it's that I don't know that really resonated with me. Traditionally, this phrase is seen as a hole rather than a hill. I don't know means I'm missing information that I'm supposed to have."

"Helping children visualize math is critical to their success in the subject. I recently observed a 5th grade class starting a lesson on area and perimeter. I turned to a girl who was in my class four years earlier and reminded her that she knew the topic. "Yes I do!" she said excitedly. "The perimeter is where you sit along the outside of the rug in morning meeting, and area is the inside of the rug, where the squares are. That's from 1st grade," she said confidently, circling her fingers in the air to represent her thinking. Visual cues, like this one I use with my six- and seven-year-old students, stick and show that envisioning math helps children learn in lasting ways. We teachers can do more to give students internal ways to see the structure of mathematics-to understand types of units and what it means to move between them, and to pull apart and combine numbers. But math instruction is changing. At my school, in the early grades, we encourage children to use their fingers, something that feels so natural to them, to better understand numbers and the numbering system. We might talk about how a "high five" involves using a whole hand, which is really a unit made up of five fingers; while a thumbs-up involves just one segment of that five-part unit. We then go on to using things like beads on a string and, later, place-value disks, which are like poker chips, to help children see and work with numbers, units, and place value."

"Available as a web-based tool or an iPad application, Padlet allows teachers and students to create virtual bulletin boards where collaboration, reflection, publishing and sharing of information can occur. As a synchronous learning environment, Padlet supports interaction, sharing, and collaboration in real-time or as an asynchronous learning environment allowing students to learn at their own pace and time. When using Padlet, users can display information in a wide variety of file types, including: links to Google Docs, display images of student work, text, audio reflections, and videos from the camera roll or YouTube. Padlet's formats  allow for a more customized experience for users. A mind-mapping format called Canvas provides the opportunity to move sticky notes to facilitate the creation of mind maps. Users  create visual connections among concepts, facts, and thoughts while providing a way to organize and synthesize information. Recently, I've begun to use Canvas as my "go to" mind-mapping tool. The Canvas format enables teachers and students to work collaboratively across devices and settings while helping learners to see relationships between concepts.  Canvas gives students a way to visually represent their thinking while providing teachers insight into a student's understanding of a specific concept or idea."