Cactus Canyon

2. MIT Blossoms BLOSSOMS video lessons are enriching students’ learning experiences in high school classrooms for students across the globe. This amazing video library contains over 50 math and science lessons, all freely available to teachers as streaming video and Internet downloads and as DVDs and videotapes

The lessons intersperse video instruction with planned exercises that engage students in problem solving and critical thinking, helping students build the kind of gut knowledge that comes from hands-on experience. By guiding students through activities from beginning to end, BLOSSOMS lessons give students a sense of accomplishment and excitement. You can even check these lessons out by standards.

3. Curriki  This is the community of K12 open resources. Currently Curriki has 6.5 million users and contains over 40,000 K12 free learning resources

4. NROCK The National Repository of Online Courses (NROC) is a growing library of high-quality online course content for students and faculty in higher education, high school and Advanced Placement

5. HippoCampus This amazing resource claims to be teaching with the power of media. HippoCampus is a project of the Monterey Institute for Technology and Education (MITE)

6. WikiBooks Welcome to a collection of open-content textbooks collection that anyone can edit. The Wikibooks collection currently contains 2,443 books with 40,980 pages.

7. CK12 Interactive Book I bring this amazing resource up because it is a a relatively new initiative. The community at CK12 Flexbooks and Wolfram Alpha have combined efforts to bring you this awesome Interactive Algebra Book. 

8. Flexbooks I did include this in the last post but wanted to make sure it was added to the list. So… what is a FlexBook?  They may be best described as customizable, standards-aligned, free digital textbooks for K-12 education. FlexBooks are customizable textbooks that teachers can use online,via  flash drives, CD’s, or as printed books.

Wikijunior books are produced by a worldwide community of writers, teachers, students, and young people all working together

You may also wish to explore Wikijunior, a project  to produce age-appropriate non-fiction books for children from birth to age 12

 Wikibooks is for textbooks, annotated texts, instructional guides, and manuals

As a general rule only instructional books are suitable for inclusion

3. Stu­dents “Divide and Con­quer” the Work­load

Divi­sion of labor should be explicit

Crit­i­cal ques­tions are: What needs to be writ­ten? Can that be divided into chunks? What needs to be pur­chased? Who wants to go where? When? What needs to be researched/read? Can that be divided? Can the project be divided into sec­tions so that each stu­dent is respon­si­ble for one of those sec­tions? Posters can be divided into sec­tions — Who will be respon­si­ble for which sec­tions? Pre­sen­ta­tions are divided into slides — Who will be respon­si­ble for which slides? iMovie sec­tions can be pro­duced on sep­a­rate com­put­ers and assem­bled in the end — Who will be respon­si­ble for which sec­tion? Prezis work like Pre­sen­ta­tions - Who will be respon­si­ble for each part?

4. Stu­dents Plan a Time­line Time man­age­ment is one of those crit­i­cal skills that is miss­ing from the writ­ten cur­ricu­lum. The key is back­ward planning.

5. Group mem­bers work as Indi­vid­u­als After stu­dents have decided on con­tent, defended a for­mat for pre­sen­ta­tion, and “divided-to-conquer” the work, they can be mean­ing­fully engaged in their own mini-projects. Each work ses­sions should have a work goal. M

6. Indi­vid­u­als Com­ment on Part­ners’ Pieces Dur­ing the revi­sion and assem­bly stages, some trouble-shooting may be necessary.

7. Groups Reflect on Their Work Finally, the group needs to come together and com­ment on the “fit” of all the parts.

8. Allow Groups to see other Groups’ Work Some stu­dents are risk-averse. They want to work on project for­mats they know. But when they see oth­ers’ work, they have a frame­work they can use when con­sid­er­ing for­mats for other projects.

9. Use Projects to Inform Report Card Com­ments Those who chose to make Prezis don’t know this, but I jot­ted down a quick report card com­ment about self-motivated learn­ing.

10. Cel­e­brate! Stu­dents should cel­e­brate work well done.

The practice of taking a picture is familiar to most young people, but here we explore the potential for expression, communication, and visual thinking.

Sample curricula have also been created to illustrate the Adobe Youth Voices Essentials philosophy in practice. Provided in print, video, photography, and animation, the work is grounded in real-world examples that embody the vision of Adobe Youth Voices—“create with purpose.”

Tasks should be spe­cific. I’m gonna work on my project is not spe­cific enough. At the end of class, Post-its become “exit slips”.

Lap­top screens are “fisted” or “put at half mast”. 

Fin­gers indi­cate the amount of time stu­dents need to com­plete a shorter task.

Cir­cu­late the room, con­fer­enc­ing with students.

Rather than ban­ning chat, teach stu­dents how to use it for collaboration.

Don’t be afraid to have tough con­ver­sa­tions with indi­vid­ual students.

Many of the sug­ges­tions above apply to project-based learn­ing envi­ron­ments both with and with­out com­put­ers. The trick in a 1:1 envi­ron­ment is to main­tain focus on learn­ing and com­mu­ni­ca­tion. Then let tech­nol­ogy nat­u­rally enhance those outcomes.

No no: Don't leave your audience in the dark.

No no: Don't point with your finger.

No no: Don't waste instructional time fumbling with projector set up

No no: Don't assume your audience can see what you can see

No no: Don't be a sage on the stage

No no: Don't use your projector as a blackboard or replacement

No no: Don't waste money on an interactive whiteboard without some smart reasons