Group items matching

in title, tags, annotations or url

"In the past, coding was a pretty niche affair, those of us with our Acorns, Spectrums and Commodore 64s experimenting with lines and lines of code. I remember as an 8 year old, spending ages typing out lines of code on my beige Acorn Electron to draw….a line on the screen. To add insult to injury there was no way to save it unless I wanted to erase my tape of "Ice Ice Baby" and replace it with my code. Needless to say because we were put into the deep end in those days, like millions of others I was put off a bit by coding and just played computer games instead. Fast forward to the iPad era and coding is coming back in a big way. Some very talented developers with a love for coding have produced some spectacular apps, turning the iPad into a coding studio in your hand. There are some great iPad apps which take the pain out of coding for the layman and can teach your children (and you) some excellent skills."

"One of the first reasons behind me buying iPad was to be able to access and read my PDFs anytime anywhere I want without having to always depend on my Mac for that. However, my experience with reading PDFs on iPad has taught me many things and over the time I came to discover a wide range of great apps to use on my PDFs. These are particularly apps which you can use to annotate, highlight, add notes, record, and comment on the content of your PDFs. I have compiled these apps in the list below and want you to have a look."

"There are times when taking a note in a written format is not a practical option. You might for instance be attending a lecture or a conference or you might simply prefer to listen to your recorded notes instead of reading them, in these cases apps such as the ones below are what you will use for audio note taking. While keeping the basic note taking features, all of these apps are fantastic for recording notes and adding audio to your notes. I invite you to check out the selection I have below and share with us what you thin about it."

"Interactive visuals are great learning and teaching materials to use with your students in the classroom. From explaining difficult processes to visual brainstorming, interactive graphics are a good way to consolidate students learning and promote their comprehension. Below are three of the web tools I would recommend for creating interactive visuals, I know there are several other titles to add to this list but the ones below are, in my view, more student-friendly and simpler to use."

"We've heard the importance of failure and experimentation in learning. In this excellent interview on Science Friday, inventor James Dyson speaks about his direct experience with failures and schools' need to accommodate it. "My life and my day are full of failures," he says. "Failures are interesting.""

"The Japanese Science and Technology Center offers nine outstanding science lessons. The list of lessons and activities covers topics in physics, biology, psychology, geography, and space science. The general format of each virtual lesson is to present a manageable chunk of information followed by activities in which students try to use that information. I hesitate to generalize the activities as games because not all of them are games and those that are games are not "drill" games. Each lesson has multiple parts (some have 20+ parts) and multiple activities."

"Computer Science can sound pretty daunting, particularly if you don't know a lot about the subject, and it is often thought of as the preserve of 'geeks' or particularly intelligent students. The idea that it is particularly difficult can put off students who might actually have a real natural ability for the subject, which is a great shame, so finding accessible tools to help them explore and get to know the subject from an early age is a great way to avoid it becoming something feared! And with everything becoming ever more internet orientated, it has never been more useful to provide students with some simple computer science skills from a young age, which will stand them in excellent stead for the future."

"Did you know that March is Women's History Month? Yes, I know that there is a month or day for celebrating just about everything out there, a number of these designations offer excellent teaching and learning opportunities. While it may fit better into some curricula better than others, the women that are highlighted by the NWHP (National Women's History Project) do come from different personal backgrounds, time periods, and professions."

"One of the tested ways to unleash kids creativity and enhance their power of imagination is through drawing. This has become even way easier and practical using the different web tools and mobile apps available out there for free. I have already featured several of these tools and apps in previous posts here in Educational Technology and Mobile Learning. Today, however, I want to share with you some new wonderful iPad apps for getting kids to draw. Check them out below:"

"It's getting harder and harder to update this article-and that's a good thing for everyone but me, because it means that today's Windows Web browser choices are fast, secure, compliant with new Web standards. The products most people are likely to have heard of-Google Chrome, Microsoft Internet Explorer, and Mozilla Firefox also sport trim, clear interfaces. But each browser has its own appeal and unique features. Microsoft Internet Explorer excels at graphics hardware acceleration, as you'll see in the benchmark results in the reviews linked below. It's also the only 64-bit program of the lot, and the only one that includes powerful Tracking Protection against site code that tracks your browsing activity. "

"We often get asked by teachers how they can share the books they have made using Book Creator for iPad or any other iBooks with people who don't own an Apple device. A common example might be to share the work of their students with parents, or on the school's blog. Although there are a few workarounds for sharing iBooks, this article explores an excellent way to convert iBooks into video format, which can easily be shared across a number of platforms."

Asked to assess their students' performance on nine specific writing skills, teachers tended to rate their students "good" or "fair" as opposed to "excellent" or "very good." Students received the best ratings on their ability to "effectively organize and structure writing assignments" and their ability to "understand and consider multiple viewpoints on a particular topic or issue." Teachers gave students the lowest ratings when it comes to "navigating issues of fair use and copyright in composition" and "reading and digesting long or complicated texts."

What makes an effective teacher? It's difficult to tell, but when you've had one, you know. Some states are trying very hard to measure "good" teaching, but how can we do this? It's been argued that it's hard to pinpoint just what good teaching is. Margaret Danielson is an expert on this subject and the creator of a popular rubric which explores excellence in the classroom.

"Here is a wonderful step by step guide on how teachers can use Google Drive iPad app to create, distribute, submit, grade and return assignments. The guide starts with setting up a Gmail for students and moves on to how students can create and share a folder with their teacher.It also provides examples on how teachers can create a class folder with a variety of subfolders. the next part covers how teachers can create and submit assignments using apps like iWork which allows students to open Google Drive and upload their assignments. Next is a section on how teachers can collect, grade and return students assignments."

"Looks like this mobile learning thing might actually take off, eh? Just as we recently looked specifically at math apps for elementary school students, now we give some love to elementary students (and teachers) who have tablets and want to separate the digital wheat from the digital chaff. The following listly collection from sometimes-TeachThought contributor Sam Gliksman is an excellent starting point for elementary teachers looking for elementary apps for elementary students in the most elementary way possible: a collection of 38 possibilities, all embedded in your favorite blog whose name is a compound word. As usual, Gliksman's experience with iPads in education yields a wonderfully diverse collection of apps, from games to digital media software to math and literacy apps."