Group items tagged

"One of the conversations was going back to the idea of Twitter and does it actually promote literacy.  Thinking about, jumping onto Twitter years ago has led to many amazing opportunities for me, but I also think that it has led to tremendous growth in my own learning over time.  Since I first started connecting with others through the medium, I have written over 88,000 tweets, written over 1,100 blog posts, and one book.  I am a firm believer that if you want to become better at writing, the best way to do it is to write more. Without connecting on Twitter, I truly believe that I would not have written in the other mediums.  I have started blogs before, but never made it past a few posts.  As for a book?  I doubt that was something I would have ever done without Twitter.  I am not the only one; so many educators that have connected through the medium have written and published their own books.  I have seen people criticize that so many educators are writing books now, and I think, "Wow! So many educators are writing books now!"  Educators sharing their wisdom with different audiences all over the world is a pretty powerful thing."

"I have written a lot about all that being a connected educator has done for me. I have written a lot about how I would not trade it for anything and that I hope others will choose to become connected as well. I have written about how being a connected educator has enabled me to have connected students, which has radically changed the way I teach. And yet, I have not talked about the downfall of being connected much. Not like this, not in this way. Yet, I think in honor of Connected Educator month, (which is a strange month anyway because aren't we always connected?), I think it is time to discuss the downfalls. Those things that I deal with from being a connected educator, because after all, if I am going to encourage others to be connected, I think I need to be honest about all that it entails."

"I'm sure that many educators are now feeling more empowered and eager than ever to code in their classrooms.  While participating in the Hour of Code, teachers likely witnessed students fully engaged in learning the basics of coding while being challenged to think through well-written online tutorials and apps.  What they observed was students using coding as a context for developing their Computational Thinking skills. Many wonderful articles have been written about what Computational Thinking is and research has shown it to be a "powerful cognitive skill that can have a positive impact on other areas of children's intellectual growth" (Horn, Crouser, & Bers, 2013).  If we really value Computational Thinking as individual educators and as a province, however, we need to capitalize on this momentum in order to provide our students with greater access and opportunities.  Now that the Hour of Code has given you a glimpse of coding's potential, it's time to explore and learn along side students while continuing your journey…"

"Cosmic Cubs Storymaker is an iPad app that elementary school students can use to create short stories about space. Cosmic Storymaker provides a book layout to which students can add page backgrounds, clip art characters, and speech bubbles. Students drag pre-written words and sentences to each speech bubble on the pages they create. All of the pre-written text is related to space. Completed stories are saved in the app."

"Apple has just released an exciting collection on iBooks called One Best Thing. Each of these books was written by an Apple Distinguished Educator about one thing they do well using-you guessed it-Apple products. The useful thing about this collection is that not only are the Multi-Touch books written about the ways educators are transforming their classroom, but each of the 102 books (today I counted 83 available so far) are offered free. I am thrilled to be one of these authors."

"Although some schools are going one-to-one iPads, there is a growing trend of teachers purchasing their own iPad and bringing them into the classroom. This is a different proposition. Where I have written about how an iPad can support teacher's professional and personal learning, I have not written about how iPads can be used to support learning within the classroom. I therefore put out a call for thoughts and ideas on Twitter: If u only had ONE iPad in a room, what would u do with it? Looking for links/ideas - Aaron Davis (@mrkrndvs) June 2, 2015"

NaturalReader is a Text to Speech software with natural sounding voices. This easy to use software can convert any written text such as MS Word, Webpage, PDF files, and Emails into spoken words. NaturalReader can also convert any written text into audio files such as MP3 or WAV for your CD player or iPod.

Interesting blog post advocating for the use of analysing images in support of literacy skills.

Bookboon provides online textbooks for students in PDF format. The free ebooks can be downloaded without registration. Our books are legal and written exclusively for Bookboon. They are financed by a few in-book ads.

"Evaluating a student's understanding of a topic is like taking a measurement. However, it requires measuring something that is difficult to see. It's not like I can stick a ruler into a student's brain to determine the size of their physics stuff. Now, most teachers use indirect means, usually a multiple-choice test or an exam in which students work through a problem. These are poor measures of student understanding. Someone could simply guess, or flub the answer through a silly mistake. So how can I accurately assess a student's understanding of physics? Until someone invents a way of reading a student's mind, I must do something else. I use a combination of written tests and video assessments."

This method is suitable for experts in their field or those who have coped with a difficult life situation, or maybe they just know how to write stories. Sometimes a book is written by bloggers with a large audience. There are two ways to publish a manuscript: through a publisher or on your own.

This method is suitable for experts in their field or those who have coped with a difficult life situation, or maybe they just know how to write stories. Sometimes a book is written by bloggers with a large audience. There are two ways to publish a manuscript: through a publisher or on your own.

"Chad Criswell, author of the MusicEdMagic blog, as well as the contributing author/tech editor for several music education magazines, including Teaching Music, has written an excellent column on apps for Music Education which appears in the October 2012 edition of the magazine. It is going to be a great starting point-with 23 listed apps-for music educators getting into the iPad for the first time."

"Since being released in 2009, Wolfram Alpha has become very popular over the years. Based on the computational platform Mathematica, written by British scientist Stephen Wolfram in 1988, WolframAlpha is capable of interpreting and answering basic questions such as, "How old was FDR in 1942?" and "What is the distance between the north pole and the south pole?""

"Social Media Video 2013: Social Media Revolution 4 was written by international best selling author and keynote speaker Erik Qualman. It's part of a series of social media videos that are the most watched in the world"

"As intuitive as the iPad's user interface is, there are still some occasions on which students and teachers might get stuck. That's when a free iBook like The Student Guide to iPads & iOS 6 is good to have. The Student Guide to iPads & iOS 6, written by Jac de Haan, covers all of the basics that students and teachers need to know in order to use their iPads in school. "

"As intuitive as the iPad's user interface is, there are still some occasions on which students and teachers might get stuck. That's when a free iBook like The Student Guide to iPads & iOS 6 is good to have. The Student Guide to iPads & iOS 6, written by Jac de Haan, covers all of the basics that students and teachers need to know in order to use their iPads in school. "

"Three young digitally-savvy women at the Digital Data Strategist Program at Hyper Island Stockholm have written a book about HTML coding…for children. Are toddlers too young to learn how to build a website? These women don't think so! Cody the Coder in My First Website takes a toddler through a magical world where he has to create his home (his website), and as you read through, one can't be help become more familiar with the HTML code snippets necessary to build your first website."

"As we approach the end of the school year, I have been looking back at some of the topics I have written about this year. One of the most popular topics (which I wrote about back in September) was homework. "

"The process of combining more primitive pieces of information to create something more meaningful is a crucial aspect both of learning and of consciousness and is one of the defining features of human experience. Once we have reached adulthood, we have decades of intensive learning behind us, where the discovery of thousands of useful combinations of features, as well as combinations of combinations and so on, has collectively generated an amazingly rich, hierarchical model of the world. Inside us is also written a multitude of mini strategies about how to direct our attention in order to maximize further learning. We can allow our attention to roam anywhere around us and glean interesting new clues about any facet of our local environment, to compare and potentially add to our extensive internal model."

"Children's books are an excellent means of 'travel'. With some good writing and an active imagination, you can go quite a lot of places without getting up off the couch. But did you know that many of the fabulous children's books out there were inspired by and written about real places? From Harry Potter to Beatrix Potter, authors have been drawing their inspiration from real life for a long time. Check out the handy infographic below (photo credit) to learn about traveling as well as a bit more about the real life places behind some of the most popular children's books of all time."