Group items tagged

Literature is compulsory at this secondary school in Malaysia.

"I was recently in a third grade classroom and was struck by the presence of rules that were posted for how to have a conversation. The poster said, "Each person must contribute to the discussion but take turns talking. Ask each other, 'Would you like to add to my idea?' or 'Can you tell us what you are thinking?' Ask questions so that you understand each other's ideas. Say, 'Can you tell me more about that?' or 'Can you say that in another way?'" "Having visited many middle and high schools, I think these same rules could -- and probably should -- be posted there as well. " How important the rules of conversation are! We all too often expect our students to "get into groups and discuss," but how often are these productive conversations? These tips/strategies are well worth practicing at the beginning of every year/semester, and not just with young learners. These tips are also a nice practice for EFL/ESL students as they prepare to speak with native speakers.

"There are ten tasks and they can be done in any order, except for the tenth one which should be last. Please feel free to use and share these tasks and by all means leave any comments or suggestions for improvement. I will also be hosting a teacher development week using and discussing these tasks and the related tools from 7th to 15th December 2009 on the SEETA Moodle site: http://www.seeta.eu/ so by all means come along for that if you want to share ideas and learn a bit more together." These ten tasks are a nice resource for teacher trainers, or if you are a teacher and want your students to try out one or more of the tools (not all of which are really Web 2.0 tools, BTW). I've used most of these before, but it is a pleasure to use them on the IMac Intel-based with very high speed Internet. If you hit this site before December 2009, do join the SEETA discussion at their Moodle.

A good discussion of what PBL is and how to implement it. "I see a lot of claims about PBL that are just not true. What bothers me about these claims is not that they are wrong but that these misconceptions lead to further problems when implementing PBL. I'd like to take some time to dispel some of these misunderstandings in hopes that they clear up other issues teachers may have with PBL."

This blog describes some tools for live conference speakers to help make presentations more interactive: "here are a few tools that, thanks to the increasing availability of wireless connectivity at conference centres these days, might help to turn your passive listeners into a bunch of multitasking audience collaborators." These tools include TodaysMeet, for backchannel communications, live polling at Urtak, and Sync.in which will allow collaborative note-taking. Using all these tools will make a live presentation seem much more like an audio-video conference in WiZiQ or Elluminate.

A 2006 special issue on "Innovation in Distance Learning Technologies in Developing Countries": The high population density, limited resources and infrastructure in the developing world make distance education an appealing alternative to deliver education to the vast number of people. Several distance learning technologies are being used in the world and number of technological advancements are being researched in the developed world. Due to the limited resources these technological advancements are not filtered into the developing countries. However, there have been many innovations in distance learning technologies carried out in the developing countries. Most of these innovations focus on getting the maximum benefit from the existing resources. This special issue on "Innovation in Distance Learning Technologies in Developing Countries" covers some of these innovations carried out in different parts of the developing world. --EHS

"This is a listing of 82 sites that legally offer free textbooks and written course material. "There is a separate page with links to free audio and video courses Free Audio & Video Courses Online "To the best of my knowledge all of the websites listed here offer only content that they are legally entitled to transfer to you. If you find a site listed here that you know illegally offers copyrighted material, please contact me through the site with a link to the infringing content. Mr6n8 "To the best of my knowledge every website listed here, and its downloads, are safe. By the rules of this site, no website that has a red or an orange rating at Web of Trust (WOT) is allowed in the listings. I also use LinkExtend, a browser addon that offers the ratings from six other website rating products, to verify the sites here are clean. I have never encountered any issue while visiting these sites. Additionally, I have downloaded something from every site that offers a download and have never encountered an issue. If you should ever encounter malware on any of these sites, please contact me through the site and provide the link to the offending content. Mr6n8" The lists will take some time to go through: 783 sites are included, with minimal descriptions. Variety of subjects. T/H to psmiley in Group diigo in Education This list is not comprehensive and if you know of any other sites please post in the comments below or at our forums. A comprehensive alphabetical listing of free books for reading or listening can be found on these pages:"

"History is so often seen as boring and meaningless to students who can't grasp why they need to learn about events and people from the past. These two music videos from Soomo Publishing have high production value and utilize current pop music songs with a historical twist on the lyrics. The first one is about the Declaration of Independence and uses One Republic's Too Late to Apologize. The focus of the second video is women's suffrage and it uses Lady Gaga's Bad Romance to tell this important story." Maybe these could be a model for student-created videos.

"While we've witnessed many effective approaches to incorporating iPads successfully in the classroom, we're struck by the common mistakes many schools are making with iPads, mistakes that are in some cases crippling the success of these initiatives. We're sharing these common challenges with you, so your school doesn't have to make them." Common sense, but good common sense.

"Description: A breathtaking array of 'learn to code' Apple, Android and Windows phone apps. Learn C++, Python C#, HTML, SQL, JavaScript, Java, CSS, php and Swift via the site or apps. These are 'must try' tools for anyone starting out with coding. The site even has a 'Code Playground' to experiment with your code." I haven't had a chance to try out any of these, but this should be an interesting starting point to get students coding.

"This list of five things that you may not know about QR codes contains some simple ideas that definitely pack a punch. These tips include strategies for differentiating instruction, distributing materials, and keeping families up to date on classroom activities. If you've tried one of these QR tips or have another to add to the list, the comments section of this post is the perfect place to share!"

Good tips, oriented to Apple users, for creating special effects on your G-Slides presentations. Students will find even more creative ways to use these tools.

"Communicating with and engaging your school community (parents, students, and donors) is essential is growing a great school. Facebook is a tool that school principals, admissions directors, and development teams should use to build this engagement. Here are four great reasons to use Facebook as a central tool for your school's engagement strategy" These 4 are ease of use, accessibility, ubiquity, and ease of management. Most of these reasons are the same as for blogs, but Fb seems the hot one today, and it is pretty easy to use. One important feature is that you can now put all your schools accounts in one place, and you and/or your students can protect page access. This should salve the worries about Internet safety. One problem may remain: Fb does get shut down in various countries for a variety of political reasons. Caveat user!

"This list is not meant to be exhaustive (obviously), or even authoritative (but rather, subjective). This is the 21st century, after all. Months after this post is published 2-3 of these tools could be outdated, and if this turns up in the Google search results of a query in 2018, they may seem downright laughable, but here and now, this is a fairly accurate litmus test of what the kinds of tools the average 21st century teacher can be expected to use and master." The list also includes very specific notations on WHY a teacher should be able to use these tools. Most useful.

Infographics are all the rage. I think they used to be called graphs or illustrations, but they have the flair of lots more visuality -- colors, icons, photos, animation, and interactivity are all part of these applications. R. Byrne's describes them all and has links to some of these tools, plus a few extras.

This is a round-up of ways to add interactive elements to your own videos. These can enhance videos for flipped lessons. One of these tools is YouTube itself, which has built-in annotation tools. Mad Video lets you insert interactive tags to websites, images, or other video directly into YouTube videos. WireWax lets you insert a different audio track into the original video, while Blubbr creates video-based quizzes. Have fun!

"The Council of the Great City Schools' parent roadmaps in English language arts/literacy provide guidance to parents about what their children will be learning and how they can support that learning in grades K-8. These parent roadmaps for each grade level also provide three-year snapshots showing how selected standards progress from year to year so that students will be college and career ready upon their graduation from high school." These roadmaps should be very useful for teachers as well as parents. Also available at the site in Spanish. Roadmaps are for math and language arts, K-12.

"Editing an image is very popular these days due to the innovation of graphic software programs that will allow us to create computer arts from scratch. However, we could also enhance, add some cool effects and customize the look of our images easily without having the need of these soft wares through the online photo editors. An online photo editor tool allows us to edit and manipulate a photo in the Web Browser. This is more advantageous compared to the softwares for editing an image as this could not consume much of the memory of your desktop and the processing is done faster by the server. With just a few clicks, we could now be able to customize our own photos, create funny photos from our pictures or even feature ourselves in a magazine cover like that of a celebrity."

Among these free video editors is YouTube Remixer. Any of these would work for content-based projects if your school has sufficient bandwidth.

"The purpose of this site is to take an extensive list of websites that are considered high quality, reliable, and valuable and organize them in a way that even "non-techy" teachers can utilize them. It took around 10 years to collect these resources, but new ones are found every day. All of these websites have been recommended by other teachers and educational organizations and qualify as "the best". You'll find support for all core curriculum areas. In addition, you will find lesson plans, multimedia, and primary sources to enhance your students' learning environment." by Nadine Norris, a tech specialist for elementary schools near Chicago, IL. Has a wide variety of explanatory pages: tools to use with core content areas, project-based units, rethinking Powerpoint and classroom presentations, a blog highlighting social media, and advice about using digital literacy skills and research skills on the Internet.