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Free PowerPoint templates to make your own animated slides. "There are many transitions that you can also make in your own PowerPoint presentation but starting with an animated PowerPoint template lets you avoid spending so much time creating the animated templates from scratch." In PowerPoint 2007 and 2010 there are many already defined animated effects that you can use. For example, you may choose to use cool animations for PowerPoint like Cover effects, Blinds effect, Shape Diamond effect, Wheel effect and even more. Usually you start with your PowerPoint presentation file with no effects. Once you start building your slides you can add new effects to the slide transitions. When playing the presentation then your audience will see a transition between the slides."

"As various means of computer mediated communication (CMC) have been incorporated within language classrooms over the past two decades, it has become important to critically understand whether, to which extent, and under what contextual factors, a particular type of CMC is more effective than other modes of communication. This study examined the magnitude of the effect of text-based synchronous computer-mediated communication (SCMC) on second language acquisition (SLA). By searching the studies published between 1990 and 2012, this meta-analysis explored 10 experimental and quasi-experimental journal articles and doctoral dissertations and reports their overall effect on SLA, and the contextual factors that influence the between-study variation. A small but positive overall effect (m = .33) indicates that text-based SCMC could make a larger difference on SLA than other means of communication. Findings further suggested that intermediate learners may benefit more from SCMC tasks if they are grouped into pairs or small groups and participate in SCMC interactions on a weekly basis. In terms of suggestions for future research, authors should provide more description about the SCMC task in order to confirm or disconfirm the factors that are associated with effectiveness of second language (L2) learning in technology-mediated language learning contexts."

"The Taxonomy of Effective Teaching Practices, described in the book Teach Like a Champion, is a collection of instructional techniques gleaned from years of observations of outstanding teachers in some of the highest-performing urban classrooms in the country. Developed by Uncommon Schools Managing Director Doug Lemov and Uncommon teachers, this set of specific and concrete actions, paired with a library of over 700 video clips of highly-effective teachers in action, has provided teachers nationwide with actionable tools to drive greater student achievement and a shared language to discuss and support teacher effectiveness." This particular page has a set of videos demonstrating the small, but crucial techniques that make a good, effective teacher int he classroom.

An excellent outline of teaching models for courses offered in an online environment. "The online learning environment allows educators and students to exchange ideas and information, work together on projects, around the clock, from anywhere in the world, using multiple communication modes. Given the advantages and resources of this rich learning environment, how can multiple instructional strategies best be utilized for online learning? Just as in the traditional classroom, instructional strategies are most effective when employed specifically to meet particular learning goals and objectives. Effective course design can begin with asking and answering the key question: what are the major learning goals and objectives for this course? "

" The Railroad Journey and the Industrial Revolution isn't about the building of railroads. In the video John Green covers how rail travel led to changes in where people lived, where they vacationed, and how they interacted with each other. A short lesson on the origin of Greenwich Mean Time is included too. "To bring the lesson into a current context, Green also does a nice job of making comparisons between the effects of the development of railroads and the effects of the development of the Internet." T/H R. Byrne

"What if classroom learning was a little more active? Would university instruction be more effective if students spent some of their class time on active forms of learning like activities, discussions, or group work, instead of spending all of their class time listening? "A new study in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences addressed this question by conducting the largest and most comprehensive review of the effect of active learning on STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics) education. Their answer is a resounding yes. According to Scott Freeman, one of the authors of the new study, "The impact of these data should be like the Surgeon General's report on "Smoking and Health" in 1964-they should put to rest any debate about whether active learning is more effective than lecturing."" This is great news for teachers of EFL/ESL also.

"No reliable research has ever demonstrated that instruction designated as appropriate for any "tested" learning style is effective because it matches that style. The research is missing several important control validations. For example, there are no statistically valid studies comparing the response of a mixed-learning-style control group with the results of a learning-style-matched group. To qualify as "effective," there must be support of claims that superior outcomes are the direct result of teaching to individual learning styles and not a general result to the instruction. There is no evidence that "visual learners" have better outcomes to instruction designed for "visual learners" than do mixed-style learners taught using the same instruction. Without comparison groups, the before and after results could simply mean that the particular instruction is the most effective method for teaching that specific content to all students (Pashler, et al)." Excellent blog debunking some of the neuromyths that instruction is guided by, particularly in the public school system of the U.S.

"How can schools and districts provide the type of professional development that will promote teachers' effective use of technology in the classroom? How can this professional development inspire teachers to use technology to create new learning opportunities that will have a positive impact on student achievement? Two requirements help ensure the success of professional development for effective technology use. First, the professional development should be an integral part of the school technology plan or overall school-improvement plan. Second, the professional development should contain all the necessary components that research has found to be important. " This blog article goes into some detail on how to create a professional development plan.

This lesson explores imagery in a translation of Beowulf, but could be applied to any poem or literary narrative (including scientific readings). The teacher walks us through two lessons that have middle-school kids (7th grade/ 12 yrs old) use their own words to create mental pictures. This could be very effect for ESL students if vocabulary aids were also provided on the board. Helps with reading and effective writing.

This software helps learners develop their basic paragraph writing skills. Students learn how to write an effective paragraph -- developed by reason, detail, sequence, example, and cause and effect. The full version of the software provides 15 interactive writing activities on a variety of topics. Choosing from a menu of topics, students are guided to generate ideas, write a topic sentence, body of a paragraph, and a conclusion. Each interactive activity includes the following steps: pre-writing, writing, organizing, revising, rewriting, and publishing. The software is a great tool for assessment and self-assessment, for individual practice, and may be especially useful in classes where a teacher is not able to provide personal attention to individual student. -- From Lena Shvidko The focus on process in writing is important, from pre-writing to developing an idea. Would probably be appropriate for both young and adult learners.

Bloom's Taxonomy is a nice way to organize Twitter uses. The chart has 22 ways "to effectively integrate Twitter into courses, lessons, projects, etc."

Take the notion that children have specific learning styles, that some are "visual learners" and others are auditory; some are "left-brain" students, others "right-brain." . . . . "The contrast between the enormous popularity of the learning-styles approach within education and the lack of credible evidence for its utility is, in our opinion, striking and disturbing," the researchers concluded. Forcing the brain to make multiple associations with the same material may, in effect, give that information more neural scaffolding. "What we think is happening here is that, when the outside context is varied, the information is enriched, and this slows down forgetting," Testing helps memory: The harder it is to remember something, the harder it is to later forget. This effect, which researchers call "desirable difficulty," is evident in daily life.

Distance Consulting group -- this is a definitions page. "One of the best-known examples of a CoP was formed by the copy machine repair technicians at Xerox Corporation. Through networking and sharing their experiences, particularly the problems they encountered and the solutions they devised, a core group of these technicians proved extremely effective in improving the efficiency and effectiveness of efforts to diagnose and repair Xerox customers' copy machines. The impact on customer satisfaction and the business value to Xerox was invaluable. Yet, for the most part, this was a voluntary, informal gathering and sharing of expertise, not a "corporate program" (however, once the company realized the value of the knowledge being created by this CoP, steps were taken to support and enhance the efforts of the group)."

You may use the sound effects on this web site free of charge in your video, film, audio and multimedia productions (but do not re-sell them or post on a web site for download).

"Resource Repository www.CALL4ALL.us is here to help you communicate more effectively between any two languages or cultures in the world. CALL and computer-mediated communication curriculum exchange page CALL4ALL Language Products Page - effective software for Language Learning CALL-IS Software Summary Best Online Collaboration Tools: MindMap by Robin Good A-Z Directory of ~3,000 Online Learning Tools!" Quite an interesting compendium, but without much organization except the alpha-sort.

A nice review of the free online and DVD-based game to learn English. Trace Effects takes the student through adventures all around the U.S. using vocabulary to learn things about his new friends and achieve certain tasks that are typically American -- women's roles in society, saving the environment, community work, science and innovation, etc. The toolkit includes a massive number of teaching suggestions, teacher resources, games, a graphic novel, etc.

"Mote works through a Chrome extension that makes it easy for teachers to leave students voice-recorded feedback in Google Docs, Slides, Sheets, and Classroom. Students don't need the Mote extension or even an account to listen to recorded feedback. It's a real time-saver and a great way to provide effective feedback. " While Nick is right that voice annotation may be a good way to explain you thoughts on student writing, I think that MS Word has a voice annotation feature. And the written notes to students are still important if for nothing else than a reminder as the student re-writes. Mote requires uploading a document to Google Docs first, though that is no big deal. Worth a try, and Nick explains clearly how to run through the whole process.

"Wink is a Tutorial and Presentation creation software, primarily aimed at creating tutorials on how to use software (like a tutor for MS-Word/Excel etc). Using Wink you can capture screenshots, add explanations boxes, buttons, titles etc and generate a highly effective tutorial for your users. Here is a sample Flash tutorial created by Wink "