Group items tagged

Tips by R. Stannard on how to use G-Docs with your students. Includes how to create a Doc in your personal G-Drive. Students do not need a Google account to access your selected documents. For example, students can discuss a question with a table indicating which group students belong to. Students write their answers/discussion within the cell of the table. Once the doc is created, one student can access a computer to put in all the ideas generated by the group, using a shareable link. Google provides an area to shorten the link so it can be written on the board. [Remember, all students could type in the Doc simultaneously, and chat in the margin of a G-Doc.]

Collect, curate, and publish content about your favorite topics in a group. Content can be text, images, video, and audio streams (podcasting), with no cutting or pasting. Mix up content, organizing as you wish, and you can do it with a group, then publishing a magazine of what you found. You can share your work on blogs and other social accounts.

Thinking about texts, and using "pinwheel discussion" in groups to discuss several books together and how they relate to each other. Students "impersonate" authors and there is a "provocateur" in each group to pose significant questions. Nice teaching plan that could be adopted for several different levels/ages. This particular lesson is for grades 9-12 (ages 14-18), and is keyed to Common Core standards. Could be used with historical characters also.

"Image Based Speaking Activity for IWB This is a quick image based speaking activity that any teacher with an IWB or just a data projector in their classroom can do." Nik Peachey's quick lesson plan could be done with your own photographic slide show--or have students in groups make slideshows for other groups to use in describing and discussing.

"The CALL Interest Section of Teachers of English to Speakers of Other Languages, Inc. (TESOL) offers language teachers world-wide the opportunity to participate in the Electronic Village Online (EVO), a professional development project and virtual extension of the TESOL 2011 Convention in New Orleans, LA, USA. The intended audience for this project includes both TESOL convention-goers and those who can participate only virtually. Interest Sections, Affiliates, E-groups, and other member groups of TESOL in particular are invited to sponsor sessions related to the convention. "

SimplyBox is a great way to add some Web 2.0 to your research. This would be esp. useful with group orjects where students can then look at what each other group member has found. Use SimplyBox for Education, and get the free app (also has district or school-wide standardization for a fee). The teacher couldstart the ball rolling, and have students join in, boxing their own sites and info. Esp. good for visual learners. This age has three good help videos: Overview, Sharing, and Twittering with SimplyBox. Fairly easy to use, once you get used to it.

"The aim of the social network is to build a community of learners and educators for the purpose of connecting and engaging people of all cultures in collaborative lifelong learning. We suggest you edit your profile, add your picture, invite friends and/or start (in any language) your own groups, events, discussions, photos. videos, blog posts, and have fun. In addition, you are cordially invited to present, moderate, and participate in the professional development workshops including Moodle for Teachers (M4T) at Integrating Technology for Active Lifelong Learning (IT4ALL)." Recommended by Nellie Deutsch, this site allows you to create your own groups, blogs, calendar, etc. This might be a good place to get a class of students or a whole school connected.

This is an interesting video, both pedagogically, for teaching EST, and for instructors using small groups--and it's based on research by a professor of physics at Harvard. Go watch.

Yahoo Group for leaders of the Learning with Computers online community. We help others learn about topics in using computers, distance and blended learning, lesson planning, pedagogies for EFL/ESL, etc.

"This group began in 2002 as an event convened under the auspices of TESOL EVOnline (Electronic Village) but has carried on as a community of practice or a distributed learning network ever since. Participants meet informally throughout the year and regularly each Sunday noon GMT at http://www.tappedin.org to help each other learn about forming and maintaining robust online communities through hands-on practice with synchronous and non-synchronous text and multimedia CMC (computer mediated communication) tools."

"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."

"ClassDojo allows you to create your own standards to record in your class rosters. For high school students you could set standards for participation in classroom discussion be creating a standard like like "use of evidence in argument" or "thoughtful consideration and reply to opposing viewpoints." If your students are working in groups you could create standards like "efficient delegation of tasks" or "makes effort to include all group members."" Seems like a good way to create rubrics for creative topics. T/H R. Byrne

"Sometimes, it is just necessary to stand in front a group of children and speak to them. It's not the strongest tool in a teacher's box of tricks, but speaking to groups of pupils is hinged with one notable problem - keeping their attention - especially if you are trying to get key points across to help their learning. However, these ideas - adapted from spring.org.uk, can easily be amended for classroom situations, and are worth exploration in ensuring attention is kept by the majority of pupils:" These are some simple, but effective ideas to keep the motivation going.

"Our research showed that lots of great tools being are used across the world in school libraries. Instead of reinventing the wheel, we decided to take some of those ideas and focus on the tools that we thought could have the biggest impact. Take a look at Facebook groups such as The School Librarian's Workshop, Future Ready Librarian and Int'l School Library Connection. All are closed groups, but can be joined on request and are full of school library staff willing to share advice and support. There is also a lot of information shared on Twitter, so if you have not headed there yet it is time to go and do some lurking. "We chose to focus on four online tools: Google Hangouts/Skype, Padlet, Flipgrid and BreakoutEdu. Although we are still using the physical Breakout boxes, we have the opportunity to move to the digital version if we need to."

"Social bookmarking is a way to save, store, group, and share Internet bookmarks online. It allows you to have access to your favorite bookmarks on any computer with Internet access, so even if you are away from home, or work, you can still find and use the sites you value most. Social bookmarking sites also give you the option of joining a group of like minded people, following, or being followed by, individuals who collect similar types of bookmarks to your own. Examples of such sites include Digg, StumbleUpon, Delicious, and the focus of this article, Diigo."

"Students classed as less able are being hindered by being grouped into ability-based sets, according to new research published today in the Cambridge Journal of Education." This is something I have always suspected -- good to see some research out there. Project-based learning (with careful supervision and formative assessments along the way) is a much better idea. While the study is based on secondary students, I think it applies equally across all grade levels.

"Wikis are an exceptionally useful tool for getting students more involved in curriculum. They're often appealing and fun for students to use, while at the same time ideal for encouraging participation, collaboration, and interaction. Read on to see how you can put wikis to work in your classroom." Suggestions include Resource Creation, e.g., for presentations, math problems, glossary, study guides; Student Participation, e.g., for exam review, portfolios, peer editing; Group Projects, e.g., organizing ideas, tracking progjects, showing participation; Student Interaction, e.g., for collecting data, discussion of a book, creating and authoring a group story; for the Classroom, e.g., creating a FAQ, a calendar, sharing class news; Community, e.g., writing a local history or nature guide, a place for parents to see their children's work; and generally as a hub or Website, or to track progress.

"In the site, you will find a variety of review games, classroom management software, and other miscellaneous tools for educators." Students and/or teachers can make and share learning games on this, site, for example, a customized Jeopardy review of vocabulary or a board game where players must answer questions about a reading to advance. Also contains teacher tools such as a seating chart maker, a group maker to randomly assign students to groups, etc. And also lots of links to population counters, hangman, random fact generator, etc.

"Google Slides is a great collaborative tool that creates slides rather like PowerPoint but online. I have used this tool extensively for groups to create slides at home but also in the class. I often use one set of slides and give one slide to each group of students to work on. In this video I suggest a few useful tips of how to work with this excellent teacher tech tool. It is a quick 5 minute introduction to working with Google Slides. I also recommend you watch the 5 minute videos on working with Google Docs. Google Docs is also good for collabaration and works in a similar way. "

The teacher poses an open-ended question based on actual historical documents that demonstrate opposing or differing views. Philosophical Chairs has students discuss the opposing texts. Each student expresses and opinion and then others "take sides" by physically moving to join the group where the idea they favor has been expressed. At least three students must express an opinion in the group before movement is allowed. The teacher puts notes on each opinion on the board as students speak. Combines reading with listening and speaking; preparation for a writing assignment