Group items tagged

"Freelancers, small business owners, college students and family members have found that the Internet has made it easier to work from home, collaborate on group projects, and share important files and links. This list of web tools is ideal for anyone working on a group project, whether you're looking for task management support, scheduling and calendar organization, or just a place to collect all your materials and brainstorms." These tools may be of more use to teachers than students, and you will need to try them out individually, although there are short snips of information about each one.

"Rankin uses a weekly hashtag to organize comments, questions and feedback posted by students to Twitter during class. Some of the students have downloaded Tweetdeck to their computers, others post by SMS or by writing questions on a piece of paper. Rankin then projects a giant image of live Tweets in the front of the class for discussion and suggests that students refer back to the messages later when studying. The Professor's results so far have been mixed but it is clear that more students are participating in classroom discussions than they used to. A video about Rankin's classroom experiment follows."

"Shawnee High School Language Arts Literacy teacher Kristin Giles came to the ETTC recently to seek out websites to support her research paper unit. Here are some of the places she visited on the World Wide Web:" A list of links to info/advice/help with research skills. Nice way for a teacher to get herself prepped for teaching the research paper.

This is an interesting discussion about what community is and how it can/can't be used in teaching, by Nancy White: "We are navigating a tumultuous and very interesting transition of how we think about learning. We are stepping beyond the boundaries of "course," questioning the continuum of formal and informal learning - all in a time when technology is fundamentally changing what it means to "be together." From this context, the idea of using the social structure of "community" for learning has come center stage. Community has shown to be valuable in some contexts. But should it be the structure? Is structuring our educational frameworks around community central, or does it deserve a different place along the continuum of individual-community-networked learning. When is community the sweet spot? When is it the trap? " This is an IOC 2010 keynote speech, downloadable as MP3.

"TheInterviewr is a new mashup that makes it super, super simple to record telephone interviews online using your existing telephone. It is a dream come true and for now at least - it's free. The system uses APIs from Twilio and Box.net to let users schedule interviews with contacts, enter notes for the interviews and upload associated files to a central place. Then, when it comes time to do the interview, both parties are sent an SMS to remind them it's about to begin. The person performing the interview clicks a button on TheInterviewr website and both peoples' phones are called automatically. Have a conversation, refer to your notes and documents, then click the same button to end the call. A recording will be available to listen back to immediately. It's like magic." Looks like a good way to get real-life listening/speaking practice.

"In this podcast, George argues that traditional courses, where students rely on the educator to structure their learning experience, rob the learner of an enormous part of the learning experience. So, he makes the case for social learning networks and he explains how educational institutions and corporate enterprises can embrace social media & social networks as part of the big shift towards informal and on-demand learning. "

Listen to speakers from all over the world while reading a phonemic transcript of what they say. Looks as if it were developed for researchers, but it might be very useful for advanced learners who are studying pronunciation and accent reduction. Wouldn't be appropriate for beginning learners.

An August 2007 report indicating social networking is popular with 96% of students (tweens and teens or US grades 6-12).\n--Elizabeth\n

"Student reflection is a key ingredient in project-based learning, and for good reason. As John Dewey reminded us nearly a century ago, "We do not learn from experience . . . we learn from reflecting on experience.""

"There is great need - and increasing willingness - to understand the world as children with autism experience it." EllenNotbohm published a books on this topic, and synposizes the best parts in this blog article. The tips are also good for "normal" children who may misbehave in class for reasons they don't understand themselves.

"If you're like me you probably have accounts on more than one cloud storage service. I have accounts on Box, Google Drive, Dropbox, and SugarSync that I use regularly. MultCloud is a service that allows me to tie them all together in one place. MultCloud does more than just provide a single log-in for all of the cloud services that I use. It also allows me to move files between services with a simple drag-and-drop." T/H R Byrne, though I don't have that many cloud servers, this might make sense if you are reaching the free limits in your account(s).

An educator explains how he uses Twitter to inspire authentic conversations within his class and across the Twitterverse:: "Within days he found students tweeting at each other multiple times an evening, mentioning and "favoriting" their peers' thoughts, and providing ample material for classroom discussion. His students were being "more careful and reading more closely," Bronke noted. Conducting conversations online allowed him to track their comprehension as well. Because most of his students used Twitter for recreational purposes, they could also utilize their experiences in English class and include their class hashtags as they responded to tweets from One Direction and Tim Tebow. And as an added bonus: Bronke used his already-established education-oriented Twitter handle. This meant that the student comments he retweeted were often retweeted and "favorited" by teachers and scholars who wanted to support their ideas. These students learned that their voice mattered even outside of the classroom setting, and that engaging in real dialogue could be fun and worthwhile."

Themeefy allows students to create their own content sites and display them in a magazine-like format. Less cluttered-looking than ScoopIt or PaperLi. Thanks to C. Arena for this site.

"The Myth of 'Learning Styles' "A popular theory that some people learn better visually or aurally keeps getting debunked." Despite all the research to the contrary, teachers (and students) continue to believe in 'learning styles.' Let's take a step back, read the actual studies, and look at ways to make students better learners all around.

Has links to Sawhill's Arabic project and info about partner exchanges through Skype.

This article suggests that if you can't beat 'em, join 'em: get your students to use smart devices for collaboration, communication, creation, and curation. Many smart ideas.

Pixabay was recently updated to make it easier than ever to find quality public domain images. Now when you visit the search page on Pixabay you can filter your search according to image type (photo, drawing, vector), image orientation (landscape or portrait), and image category (subject matter). Still, it's a time-consuming process. T/H to R.Byrne