Group items tagged

This fall, I am requiring the students in my seminar to have a Twitter account. Students will post items on a regular basis, using the hashtag #BIO361. We also will devote some time on a regular basis to discussing items or responses from Twitter. Our first post probably will be on the first day of classes - Tuesday, August 24, 2010. For this project to work most effectively, we need a critical mass of people outside of our class to participate. If you, your students, friends, or colleagues would like to join us, please do. We will appreciate any new comments, retweets, or responses. I'm looking forward to an engaging discussion throughout the semester.

Jaron Lanier's article in the NY times. --- Adding to an already rich life, my father decided in middle age to become an elementary-school teacher in a working-class neighborhood in New Mexico. To this day, people who run grocery stores and work on construction sites, and who are now in late middle age themselves, come out when I'm visiting to tell me how Mr. Lanier changed their lives. Go up to any adult with a good life, no matter what his or her station, and ask if a teacher made a difference, and you'll always see a face light up. The human element, a magical connection, is at the heart of successful education, and you can't bottle it.

education built on the industrical model and based on elightenment view of people and learning that no longer applies.

In The Social Network, a computer-programming prodigy goes to Harvard and creates a technology company in his sophomore dorm. Six year later, the company is worth billions and touches one out of every 14 people on earth.

it is misleading to suggests that all, or even most, aspects of providing an education should, or could, be placed into the hands of [teachers] Historically, it has been impractical to break up the roles of the teacher. You need a certain scale even to have a separate person assigned as a librarian or an audio-visual coordinator. You need a much greater scale, not to mention much better coordination, to have separate people assigned as lecturers, coaches, theorizers and evaluators. Yet relatively few of these roles need to be performed in person, and most of them scale pretty well. This means that with improved information and communications technologies we can begin to rethink how we've organized labor in education. This is in fact what is happening online, at least, outside the circles of formal education

Tabblo is a community of people passionate about rich content-creation tools for turning their photos and words into shareable online stories. sample at http://www.tabblo.com/studio/stories/view/281512/

The Horizon Report points out that behind these emerging technologies/practices are four trends: The abundance of information available online today is challenging traditional notions of what it means to be educators from keepers of information to coaches and sense-makers.People expect to work and study anywhere and anytime.Technologies are increasingly cloud-based. (For more on cloud-computing, click here.)The work of students is increasingly collaborative and multidisciplinar

dScribe, short for "digital and distributed scribes," is a participatory and collaborative model for creating open content. It brings together enrolled students, staff, faculty, and self-motivated learners to work together toward the common goal of creating content that is openly licensed and available to people throughout the world. It was first developed by students and faculty at the University of Michigan to leverage the interest and talent of students in working with faculty and staff to transform educational material into open educational resources (OER). The dScribe model encourages students, faculty, staff, and other interested individuals such as alumni and community members to get involved in not only creating open content, but also generating awareness about the benefits of creating and sharing educational content with a global learning community.

Social learning is not just the technology of social media, although it makes use of it. It is not merely the ability to express yourself in a group of opt-in friends. Social learning combines social media tools with a shift in the corporate culture, a shift that encourages ongoing knowledge transfer and connects people in ways that make learning a joy.

I'd like see how many views my links are receiving. Is that possible? Yes, it is! Here is how:

"InstantAtlas™ enables information analysts and research professionals to create highly-interactive web solutions that combine statistics and map data to improve data visualization, enhance communication, and engage people in more informed decision making."

whole page chat; from Alex Couros; works with up to 16 people. Not sure why it's better than plain chat except there is no logon required

Say it in seconds while on the phone or chatting online. Upload photos, take screenshots, and draw live with as many people as you like.

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.

The many uses of Google Earth and Google Maps never ceases to impress me. But a lot of people hear the words Google Earth or Google Maps and only think about locating places and not all of the other things that can be done with these great tools. Google's site for UK schools has some great lesson plans for using Google Earth and Google Maps with primary school and secondary school students. (The equivalent in the US is elementary school and middle school).

Visualizing Cultures was launched at MIT in 2002 to explore the potential of the Web for developing innovative image-driven scholarship and learning. The VC mission is to use new technology and hitherto largely inaccessible visual materials to reconstruct the past as people of the time visualized the world (or imagined it to be). Topical units to date focus on Japan in the modern world and early-modern China. The thrust of these explorations extends beyond Asia per se, however, to address "culture" in much broader ways-cultures of modernization, war and peace, consumerism, images of "Self" and "Others," and so on. Images of every sort are introduced and examined here-in partnership with contributing institutions and collections, and with the collaboration of experts devoted to transcending the printed word and hard-bound text.

"You've read the news-everyone wants to be green now. But do you really know how your personal choices are adding up? What about the choices of your fellow citizens? How well are people around the globe adopting behaviors that can make the world a more environmentally sustainable place? How have they changed over the past year?"

some ways to use Bubbl.us with some directions on saving in various formats. Collaboration is key. Multiple people can work on the same map.

recently attended a conference session featuring Keith Sawyer. In addition to being a jazz pianist (a musical collaborator), Sawyer is an expert on the effectiveness of group efforts. His presentation focused on what has been and potentially can be accomplished through collaboration, but he hinted that just getting people into groups is not the answer.

Many teachers go to school each day, teach their students and leave. If they're struggling with how to teach a lesson that will engage their students, they might ask for advice from the teacher down the hall, but a lot of times, they struggle alone.  That's not the case for educators who have built a network of people who share resources, advice and techniques, whether they call it a personal learning network or something else. Here's why educators should start a personal learning network, or PLN.