Group items tagged

Review of Digital Dante Website. "Great works continue to draw new specialists into the field and serve to bring the history of a language, its people, and their culture to life. Literary works serve as examples of the power and beauty of language at its best. Helping to make such texts more accessible to learners, the Web can make use of hypertext and multimedia to provide context that is so often lacking for those without the general background knowledge that a good reader is assumed to possess. "

"Creating infographics is a skill much needed in the 21st century classroom. They can serve a wide variety of learning objectives and they are not really hard to make. They are very useful in the sense that they can be used for illustrative purposes. For instance, teachers can use graphs, diagrams , and colorful templates to present information in such a way that catches students attention."

"I was reminded that good coaching is not about dynamic coaches serving as heroic educators, but rather stems from the simple habits of connecting teachers to resources and asking them reflective questions." Excellent tips for helping teachers become better educators. Very specific, with helpful personal anecdotes.

"8 ways to use Learnist, a Pinterest-like education sit By Lindsey Smith Learnist bears a striking similarity to Pinterest by way of Wikipedia, and the busy knowledge-sharing site is bursting at the seams with content. "Want to know how to write objectively, use Photoshop, or experiment with the "flipped classroom"? Now you can with Learnist boards. Experts create pages or "boards," which serve as informative or instructional layouts where external sources are used to support any given topic. "Education Dive compiled a list of 8 ways that education-focused Learnist boards present trends, tips, and resources to help you learn and eventually share what you know:" This is an informative list that shows how to use a technology in ways that can expand the mind to other applications/format. Good links!

"Here are the top five iPad apps that can serve as PowerPoint alternatives." If you are a Mac addict, there are some juicy apps here. And most will work on iMac as well as iPhone and iPad.

"Bill Gates, a Harvard dropout who became the richest man in the world, believes that foundations can step in where markets fail. Higher education should cost less, produce more graduates, and better serve low-income students, the Gates thinking goes. Colleges cannot count on more public money to fix their problems. Instead, better data and openness are part of the solution, to do things like measure the "value" added by each institution. So is technology: Among the foundation's investments are projects to test how massive open online courses, or MOOCs, could change introductory and remedial classes." Thought-provoking: what is the real purpose of education? Does Gates' vision focus too much on completing a degree, rather than the educational experience?

How do you get kids - or for that matter, adults - to work collaboratively in groups? These games can also serve as ice-breakers when you start a new class.

R. Byrne: "One of the problems I run into when trying to find documents, videos, or folders that I have saved in my Google Drive folder is trying to find them again quickly without having to dig through the myriad of my created folders. I also want the ability to quickly share with my students folders that have documents or videos without having to send them a link to each one. With these concerns in mind, I felt that combining one of the best visual web resources (Symbaloo) with one of the best storage resources (Google Drive) was the best way to go. " The article shows how G-Drive and Symbaloo can be used together, with an instructional video. It also offers tips on using the two tools for student research projects. Organization of the tiles in the Symbaloo webmix, and the folders in G-Drive is promoted -- a good lesson for anyone whose desktop and files/folders are cluttery. Symbaloo might also serve as a mind-map for a research project, collecting related sites together, and/or tagged by color. I use Symbaloo as my Firefox desktop -- all the sites I want to find fast are there, not just the ones I have used most recently, which is what Firefox offers when a blank tab/window is opened. Symbaloo also means that when you switch from device to device the same set of tiles is viewable. Run out of room? You can organize tabs with different sets of tiles.

"Between 2006 and 2008, while teaching "Ethics for Teachers" to EFL teacher trainees at "Profesorado del Liceo Cultural Británico" (Buenos Aires - Argentina ), and certainly encouraged by the inspiring discussions that were taking place at TESOL EVO workshops, I had the chance to explore the integration of student blogs into the course. Class members were invited to start their own blogs (which I then linked and followed by means of a Feevy students in turn chose to embed into their blog templates) and weekly post their reflections on assigned readings. Since the topics discussed took in sharing values and personal experiences, this seemed a perfect occasion for fostering individual expression. Serving other aims of the course - the development of interculturalism and appreciation of diversity - the weekly assignment also involved posting a comment on at least an entry made by a partner."

"If homework is to serve as formative data, then it needs to be instructionally sensitive for both student and teacher alike. Ideally, then, what happened with homework the night before should inform a classroom teacher's instruction immediately the next day. Rather than simply correcting right/wrong answers and then collecting the homework papers to be recorded somewhere, teachers must consider meaningful and interactive ways to create engaging, learning conversations and generate quality, supportive information for the next lesson following the completion of homework." Sound pedagogical advice.

Publication of the IEEE Computer Socity Learning Technology Task Force The Learning Technology aims to report the activities of Learning Technology Task Force including various announcements, work in progress, projects, participation opportunities, additions/modifications to the website and so on. In short, it would serve as a channel to keep everyone aware of Task Force's activities. The quarterly publication is disseminated in two ways: content list by email and in HTML and PDF form on its website. --EHS