Facebook®, wikis, blogs and a host of other technology-based tools are transforming the ways that citizens interact with others and with government. Indeed, technology is transforming our democracy. How do we begin to understand this transformation and to find ways for colleges and universities to use these tools to prepare informed, engaged citizens.
Consumer Reports, a longtime trusted name in product ratings and reviews, has today released its annual "State of the Net" report, which finds that over half (52%) of social network users post risky information online. Among the transgressions: using weak passwords, listing full birth dates, ignoring privacy settings and making mention of when you're away from home, to name a few.
CW Search is a search engine dedicated to increasing access to the information found in the best free university courses online.
Several universities publish their course materials for free online, under the OpenCourseWare (OCW) initiative, as described on the OpenCourseWare Consortium website. OCW Search is an independent search engine that indexes all these courses so you can find these courses faster.
The Socialbrite team is here to help people in any sector get up to speed on the social Web and find the right strategy and tactics to help your organization or cause.
We want to put the right social tools and strategies in your hands to bring about positive change, whether you're a nonprofit, an NGO, a social cause organization, an educator or a media maker. We were featured in Mashable's 4 Social Good Trends of 2009.
Social media may have started out as a fun way to connect with friends, but it has evolved to become a powerful tool for education and business. Sites such as Facebook and Twitter and tools such as Skype are connecting students to learning opportunities in new and exciting ways. Whether you teach an elementary class, a traditional college class, or at an online university, you will find inspirational ways to incorporate social media in your classroom with this list.
Think-Pair-Share is a strategy designed to provide students with "food for thought" on a given topics enabling them to formulate individual ideas and share these ideas with another student. It is a learning strategy developed by Lyman and associates to encourage student classroom participation.
What is Think, Pair, Share?
Think-Pair-Share is a strategy designed to provide students with "food for thought" on a given topics enabling them to formulate individual ideas and share these ideas with another student. It is a learning strategy developed by Lyman and associates to encourage student classroom participation. Rather than using a basic recitation method in which a teacher poses a question and one student offers a response, Think-Pair-Share encourages a high degree of pupil response and can help keep students on task.
What is its purpose?
* Providing "think time" increases quality of student responses.
* Students become actively involved in thinking about the concepts presented in the lesson.
* Research tells us that we need time to mentally "chew over" new ideas in order to store them in memory. When teachers present too much information all at once, much of that information is lost. If we give students time to "think-pair-share" throughout the lesson, more of the critical information is retained.
* When students talk over new ideas, they are forced to make sense of those new ideas in terms of their prior knowledge. Their misunderstandings about the topic are often revealed (and resolved) during this discussion stage.
* Students are more willing to participate since they don't feel the peer pressure involved in responding in front of the whole class.
* Think-Pair-Share is easy to use on the spur of the moment.
* Easy to use in large classes.
How can I do it?
* With students seated in teams of 4, have them number them from 1 to 4.
* Announce a discussion topic or problem to solve. (Example: Which room in our school is larg
A key reason some ideas are so successful, conventional wisdom has held, is that a few highly influential people espouse them. In his book The Tipping Point, Malcolm Gladwell wrote that what he calls "social epidemics" are "driven by the efforts of a handful of exceptional people." Those exceptional people tend to be experts on a subject who love to talk. Such people can convince dozens of others of their opinions. An excellent sales strategy, then, would be to find those few critical people, persuade them of the value of your product, and leave it to them to convince others.
It's a compelling idea, but does it really work? Social network theorists Duncan J. Watts of Columbia University and Peter Sheridan Dodds of the University of Vermont in Burlington decided to put the notion to a test. What they found is a disappointment for "viral marketers" who specialize in selling products by influencing influential people.
If you are a complete novice and have no short-term plan to learn how to code, it may still be worth your time to find out about what it takes to gather data by scraping web sites -- so you know what you're asking for if you end up hiring someone to do the technical work for you.
How to get data from a PDF, for example
WHEN colleges and universities finally decide to make full use of the Internet, most professors will lose their jobs. Seems to be saying the only thing preventing his job loss is the fact that universities don't have the time/money to invest in online courses. Why do I find his attitude so despicable?
Like any good spreadsheet program, Google Spreadsheets supports a wide array of built-in functions.There are old standbys like SUM and AVERAGE. Mathematical, financial or statistical functions to help you crunch numbers. Even functions that manipulate dates and text. Enter them manually, or use the formulas tab to find the functions you need.
Putting Educational Innovations Into Practice
Find peer reviewed online teaching and learning materials. Share advice and expertise about education with expert colleagues. Be recognized for your contributions to quality education.
Welcome To TripGeo
Create A New Directions Map Now
* Simple interface to quickly create your map.
* Animate your journey using Google Street View.
* Customize the map's appearance.
* Simple drag and drop route waypoint editing.
* Simple interface to quickly create your map.
* Animate your journey using Google Street View.
* Customize the map's appearance.
* Simple drag and drop route waypoint editing.
* Embed your map into a website or blog.
* Provide an exciting way for visitors to find and view directions to your business location.
According to Horvath, there's a rise in the number of homeless people he meets who are on social media platforms, namely Twitter and Facebook. Horvath sees this largely as a positive aspect to their lives, as he senses that the people he meets feel less alone.
E-books are becoming an increasingly popular medium for displaying information. And if you find yourself frequenting these new electronic books, you may have noticed that it becomes quite dull after a while. I, for one, miss the tangible page flip of a novel or a good instructional guide.
That's why Codebox's web app - that's called PDF to Flash Page Flipper (or Flip) - appealed to me. It's an app that can replicate the more interesting animations found on my iPad or a similar tablet and put them onto my laptop. In fact, it's almost better, allowing you to turn any old PDF file into a superior flash-based and flippable book. The conversion process is fairly easy, with a lot of customization options that really don't need to be messed around with. All in all, it is a pretty slick app, at the right price….$0.
Improved Ability to Understand Nuance: Students indicated that they were better able to understand the instructor's intent. Students also indicated that instructor encouragement and emphasis were clearer.Increased Involvement: Students felt less isolated in the online environment and were more motivated to participate when hearing their instructor's voice.Increased Content Retention: Students reported that they retained audio feedback better than text feedback. Interestingly, they also reported that they retained the course content to which the feedback was related better than with text feedback. These self-reported findings were supported by the fact that students incorporated into their final projects three times as much audio feedback as text feedback.Increased Instructor Caring:
Binder of QR resources: This is a QR or Quick Response Code. Simply, put it is a 3D barcode. It's a much more sophisticated version of the barcode on your bag of Lays Potato Chips. QR Codes are popping up everywhere and are gaining in popularity in education. So, I have been taking some time and doing a little digging about QR codes and trying to find some resources so you can get started using them...
BrowseAloud reads web pages aloud for people who find it difficult to read online. Reading large amounts of text on screen can be difficult for those with literacy and visual impairments.
Price but not sure how much
structured way to review someone's paper Find instances of, eg, thesis staement in paper and paste it into paragraph. Then comment on its adequacy. Great exercise but doesn't look like in-class material.