Group items tagged

"Well, it's official, you can now officially cite social media sources in MLA and APA formats. Although this might not seem like a big deal, it is an important step in acknowledging social media as an important source of information for scholarly work. Of course, it warrants a discussion with students about when to cite tweets. For example, citing a person's opinion in a paper is important, but citing a person's tweet as a factual basis for an argument doesn't hold up nearly as well!" You can copy, download, and share this information, which is laid out in a graphic.

"To start using Presentation.io upload a PPT or PDF to your free Presentation.io account. Presentation.io then gives you a URL to distribute to your audience. When the members of your audience open that URL they will be able to see and follow along with your presentation. When you're done with your presentation just click "stop presenting" and the synchronization stops. To use your phone as a remote just start your presentation and Presentation.io will send you a text with a link to make your phone a remote. Simply upload your presentation, click "Settings" and then "Use mobile phone as controller." "The free version of Presentation.io keeps your presentation on file for four hours before it expires. " This sounds like a great app to use at conferences. Other links in this blog mention Presefy, which also lets an audience follow your slides remotely.

"FormLimiter is a script that you can install in the Google Spreadsheet in which you are collecting responses from a Google Form. The script allows you to limit the number of responses to a form, limit the number of characters in a response, and set a time at which the form will automatically stop accepting responses. " This solves the problem of setting a cut-off time for quizzes. Includes a step-by-step illustrated tutorial.

LInks and insights from a talk at the iPadpalooza Conference 2015, Austin, TX: "Giving students websites increases motivation, reflection, and ownership of learning A blog is a type of website that includes an RSS feed (subscription) and comments (feedback loop) An ePortfolio is a structured blog or website that includes scaffolding for organizing student work Publishing on the web is not only 'the law', it builds digital citizenship and provides an authentic audience for students There are tons of web publishing tools available. WordPress powers 25% of the entire web for a reason. Many schools and districts are providing WordPress blog and website networks to every teacher and student. No two implementations are the same. Make it your own. But know there are tons of resources available."

""A glog is like a poster, only better. A glog is an online poster that allows students to add images, video files, sound files, text, and hyperlinks. Glogs address multiple learning styles and easily incorporate student research and educational content into a web publication. They are free, use no ink, and are fun!"Jan McGeeWhy Glog? - How about Glogster EDUfor a starter?! Glogster developers, much like VoiceThread, have made a commitment to provide teachers and their students with a tool for 21st century teaching and learning."

This site is going EFL/ESL in a big way, using video: "We recently found out that 22frames.com is becoming a popular site for learning English as a second language (ESL). It turns out that watching captioned videos provides a way to not only learn formal English but also idioms and other cultural concepts. To find videos, you can browse through categories or make caption-only video searches on your interests. Even more, we have been devoting significant time and resources to developing ESL-specific features that are motivated by our users' feedback." "Recently, we found out that many of our users are using the site to supplement their English learning (see: http://www.22frames.com/esl.aspx ). They also began to pitch ideas we could implement to make the site even more useful for this activity. With so many requests, we decided to seriously consider these ideas and devote significant time and resources into realizing them. Now, we are turning our site into a substantial and FREE English learning resource. We are aware of a couple sites out there that are also focused on using captioned videos for English learning, so we've been focusing on the unique user-motivated features. Therefore, my goal here is to let you know about our free resource and that we are opening the door to requests for anyone who might desire features that have not been implemented elsewhere. Perhaps, you can share this with your colleagues/readers/etc as it will help us better gauge which features to prioritize and to increase the rate with which we will release new features. Please note that we are really serious about considering whatever feedback we get. I'm also pleased to announce our first feature, which we expect will help in learning/teaching popular English idioms. Idioms are a big deal in learning English, and it is clear that watching them used in real situations will increase the rate with which they are learned. We therefore processed a large group of YouTube videos in o

"Virtual Impersonation "Creating social media posts and profiles for people (real/fictional), places, plants, and animals has proven to be an engaging and thought-provoking experience for students. From creating FaceBook pages for endangered species to Tweets from Abe Lincoln, virtual impersonation can be a powerful tool for learning. I recently shared a great Google Slides Instagram post template. A coworker was looking for something a bit more interactive that would allow for multiple posts, so I built a multi-slide profile/gallery template. "The Instagram template is available for Keynote, Google Slides, or PowerPoint. Students just replace the profile text (name, job/title, description, location), then begin replacing picture placeholders with images of their choosing. Each small image placeholder is hyperlinked to a separate slide for that image's post." Impersonating an historical figure or book character, et al., is a great way to really get into the content. T/H to Nick LaFave

"Visual Writing Prompts is a great source for engaging writing prompts. You can browse their collection of writing prompts by genre, grade, or subject area. The prompts are written directly on each image. "While it's a great source of writing prompts already, it is a site in-progress. They are in the process of adding additional information to each prompt. The prompts that have already been completed include a prompt explanation, an explanation of any relevant vocabulary and language, and a convenient one-click download button." I always used a set of images, culled over years of browsing magazines and newpapers, as writing prompts for various types of writing. This site has the prompts built-in, which can be an advantage for the busy teacher, or a disadvantage if you don't want to find something that precisely fits your assignment goals. You can also have students create their own portfolio of images and prompts to share with other writers. T/H to Nick LaFave.

"Relevant real-world content Each lesson is based in authentic content-the world-class news and information on CNN-and organized in sections that match the needs and interests of learners. This makes the learning experience personalized and relevant. No nonsensical sentences or made-up stories. New lessons every day Today's news becomes today's lessons on en.news, with new lessons published on a daily basis. That's like giving the world a new English textbook every day. For free. Unlimited learning for free Learning a language is a lifelong journey and on en.news, learners can return as often as they want to take as many lessons as they want. There's no "end of a book" or "end of a course" which means the learning never ends. Part of a daily routine en.news combines the habit of consuming news, checking sports scores and staying on top of the world of entertainment with the utility of learning English."

"The Digital 5 A Day provides a simple framework that reflects the concerns of parents/ carers as well as children's behaviours and needs. It can also act as a base for family agreements about internet and digital device use throughout both the holidays and term time." Includes a fun video by a jr-high student about ways he fulfilled the Digital 5 A Day plan personally. Cute kid.

"The idea of "portfolio" implies that the sum of the parts is greater than its individual parts, that there is some benefit to seeing the whole work longitudinally or from start to finish. A portfolio, here, is a collection of written work, related or not, presented as well as it can be, by a student for the purposes of showing, well, the best that the student can do at a given time. Traditional portfolios were glossy notebooks full of typed papers, some with cover pages, that people would thumb through at our end-of-term exhibits; they would then often go home with the student, to be buried at the bottom of some drawer somewhere, having very little practical influence in terms of what the papers said, or in terms of their influence on the presumed audience of English speakers in the community."

This is a tutorial on how to get started at Learni.st, which lets you aggregate neat things you find on the Web. You can add it to your Facebook timeline (or not), Tweet it, and use images and video, while adding a few paragraphs on how to use the "learning" you added. As with a blog, others can comment on your contributions. Like WallWisher or Pinterist, items are collected bulletin board style. This tool might be useful for professional development, and for students as a means to collect Web items for a project. If being an archivist is an important part of the new Web, this might be a helpful visual tool.

"HOW TO USE MAKEBELIEFSCOMIX.COM TO TEACH ESOL "Comic strips provide a perfect vehicle for learning and practicing the English language. Each strip's three or four panels provides a finite, accessible world in which funny, interesting looking characters go about their lives. And students with limited reading or speaking skills are not as overwhelmed in dealing with the size of a comic strip as they may be with a book of many pages." A good addition to a nice comic strip starter/creator.

Third-graders built a Lego-Space. The various steps to creating the budget, presenting a proposal, etc., are outlined in detail in this article. A practical example as an intro to the Maker concept. "The impact the students have had within the school is real. They identified a need for a makerspace and took the steps to make it a reality. The countless lessons learned throughout the process and the life experiences the students gained are certain be ones the kids will never forget."

This is a tool recommended by a Webhead for creating an eportfolio. Sign up is free and there is a special section for educators. Like many new online tools, this may eventually become not-free bu in the meantime it looks like a good place to collect and display student work. Allows for all types of media and you can organize in a variety of ways. Media can be uploaded from your computer or from various social media you use. A little slow and clunky, but usable.

A nice way to enhance project-based learning, and PicMark lets you share on several common social websites such as Google+, Twitter, and Fb. "PicMark is a simple tool that allows you to brand your pictures with a custom frame before you post them online. Adding a mark is as simple as uploading your picture to their site, choosing a frame, and sharing it to Facebook, Twitter, or Pinterest. The site allows you to further enhance your frames by choosing colors, styles, and typing messages on the frame. If you'd like, you can even design your own custom frame to use anytime. PicMark is great for teachers to share class pictures on their class web page or with students in projects. PicMark is free to join and it makes sharing pictures just a little bit more fun."

"...professional iPad interactive whiteboard and screencast recorder with sophisticated tools for hand-drawn graphics and remote desktop control." "You can create your own slides with the variety of tools available. More importantly, you can capture the screen shot and make notations directly on it." "Doceri is certainly a whiteboard app - and a great one. But it also allows you to control and use your pc apps remotely. So your presentation can consist of a pc app and then switch to a whiteboard display, all from your iPad." This seems like a great app for creating presentations while also controlling a smartboard and your computer from your iPad.

"Knowmia Teach is a new free lesson planning and recording tool for teachers. It helps you create short video lessons on any subject and publish them on Knowmia.com so your students and the public can find them. Knowmia Teach makes it easy to bring in visual aids from multiple sources, organize them in steps (like slides in a presentation) and use your own voice and fingers to bring your lesson to life. You can design each step in the lesson, record illustrations as you draw them, and create sophisticated animation sequences with a simple stroke of a finger. We also give you the ability to describe your lesson in a way that makes it simple for any student who is interested in the subject to find your video. " This seems to be a hany app that allows you to design and record and draw with one app. Available at the iTunes store. So far iPad only, but their site at knowmia.com also gives tips for creating lessons using other tools and storing them at their website.

Points out the advantages of using a tablet device for content-creation. It's fast, mobile, and economical: "We've had computers in schools for years, but in reality many (most?) classroom teachers don't and never did have their students making podcasts, movies, eBooks and websites. Doing so seems too time consuming and for many non-technical teachers the learning curve appears disproportionate to the benefits realised. "But producing comparable creative content on an iPad is relatively quick, simple, yields impressive results with minimal fuss, and the learning curve is … well, there almost isn't one! There is no need to connect an external microphone (the built-in one is better than that in any laptop), no need to adjust recording levels, no need to use a pop-filter. No need to import media from a recording device to the editing device (becasue they are one and the same), and it's unnecessary to allow 10 minutes at the end of a class, to save, unplug devices, shut down and stow the laptops. Instead, when the bell sounds, students simply flip their iPad cases closed and walk to the next class!"

Type in a few words to find a song and the lyrics, often with a link to a YouTube video of the singer. Might be very good for a student project: have them find a song they like, learn the lyrics, perform for the class (use the YouTube video for the backup band). Beware: students might find some raunchy rap tunes, hence more appropriate for mature students