Group items matching

in title, tags, annotations or url

Tops sins include too much text with no markers, audio-only sessions (where students can't read and re-check), no to-do list (so students can't tell what's happening), no weekly markers to indicate how they are doing in the course, and over-dependence on Powerpoint presentations (where info is visual, but fleeting).

Webinars to improve your search skills, many focused on education and designed to help teachers make their students' searches more successful.

The Future of Learning: can it be a school in the cloud. This 22+ min. talk is inspiring for those who love technology and futurist thinking. He aks for help in designing the "School in the Cloud, a learning lab in India, where children can explore and learn from each other -- using resources and mentoring from the cloud." Are we still creating for a machine that no longer exists?

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."

A list of 49 free books. Not organized, so it will take some time to comb through, but there are some gems, such as great tools for e-learning, and "Don't get Trapped by Your E-learning Tools." A mix of tools and pedagogy. Direct links to those books that are published online, as is the case with most.

Very detailed description of how to create little presentations or posters using Flickr photos, videos, et al. Use Popplet for student projects, brainstorming, creative designs. Also allows you to add captions/text and draw on images you use.

"The Open Educational Resources Research Hub (OER Research Hub) provides a focus for research, designed to give answers to the overall question 'What is the impact of OER on learning and teaching practices?' and identify the particular influence of openness. We do this by working in collaboration with projects across four education sectors (K12, college, higher education and informal) extending a network of research with shared methods and shared results. By the end of this research we will have evidence for what works and when, but also established methods and instruments for broader engagement in researching the impact of openness on learning."

"Knowmia Teach http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/teach/id527216211?mt=8 Free; Designed specifically for teachers; Integrates directly into Knowmia.com (publish a lesson with the push of a single button); Organize lessons with steps/slides; Draw using shapes, multiple pens (with your finger), text tools, laser pointer and much more; Animate graphic elements on the screen by using two fingers (moving, scaling and rotating them); Integrate videos as part of a lesson (coming soon); The only iPad tool to allow face recording while capturing a lesson (coming soon); Imports images, drawings, and Adobe Acrobat files (coming soon); Integrates with Dropbox, Google Drive, Box.net and Gmail for transferring files (coming soon)" $2.99 Great tool for the iPad; see more info at the iTunes store.

Explanatory video and description of how students use slideshows/presentations to "go deep": "a very simple tool, with a low 'barrier' to entry (e.g., easy to train students to use), and with a very significant outcome for students - a rich, well, designed presentation with deep written information. Kids will find it 'cool' to have the computer 'speak' their words, so that's a nice hook too."

"Tynker is a new computing platform designed specifically to teach children computational learning and programming skills in a fun and imaginative way. Tynker is inspired by Scratch from MIT. It is a completely browser-based implementation written using Open Web standards such as Javascript, HTML5, CSS3 and does not use Flash. "Tynker's language extensions, built-in physics engine, character editors and other tools make it fun and easy for kids to unleash their creativity. Schools love Tynker because it offers them an easy to use cloud-hosted system for delivering a customized Computer Science course across multiple grades with a ready to use curriculum, classroom management and more. Tynker is the platform of choice at many leading schools - see what educators are saying." This looks like an interesting, creative way to unleash students' curiosity. I'm assuming it's for younger kids, but older students may enjoy it too.

How do we educate our children to meet the needs of the new economies of the 21st century, and retain local cultures while recognizing globalization? The current system of public education was conceived and designed for the 19th century period of industrialization with the social and economic imperatives of the Enlightenment: academic vs non-academic views of the mind. The result is kids being medicated to sit still in school while besieged with the information overload of the digital age. How do we allow divergent thinking and creativity?

"What does this emerging landscape of educational delivery models look like? I have categorized the models not just in terms of modality-ranging from face-to-face to fully online-but also in terms of the method of course design (see Figure 1). These two dimensions allow a richer understanding of the new landscape of educational delivery models. Within this landscape, the following primary models have emerged: ad hoc online courses and programs, fully online programs, School-as-a-Service, educational partnerships, competency-based education, blended/hybrid courses and the flipped classroom, and MOOCs (see Figure 2)." This article has excellent graphis and visuals to help explain his categories.

Sounds like a good place for many different kinds of content- and project-based learning. "Free Map Tools is an online resource that allows you to utilize maps in really cool and interesting ways. With this site you can find the distance between two points, by land and air. You are able to calculate the area of a region on a map. It allows you to determine how far you can travel while walking, riding a bike, or driving a car for a designated amount of travel time. It will even tell you where you would end up if you tunneled through the earth. Free Map Tools is a very cool website that has applications for social studies, science , and math teachers."

""Most early-childhood classrooms in the United States," writes Paul Tough in his new book How Children Succeed, "are designed to develop in children a set of pre-academic skills, mostly related to deciphering text and manipulating numbers." Nevertheless, research conducted in the last few years suggests that stuffing this kind of information into a child's head is not the most important task in those early years. "What matters, instead, is whether we are able to help her develop a very different set of qualities, a list that includes persistence, self-control, curiosity, conscientiousness, grit, and self-confidence." How Children Succeed describes the new discoveries and reports on the ways innovative educators are developing techniques to help children develop these traits. The interview lasts about 30 minutes. "

"Around this time last year I shared a neat Google Spreadsheets script called Flippity. Flippity was originally designed to help you create flashcards through Google Spreadsheets. This morning Steve Fortna informed me that you can now use Flippity to create Jeopardy-style gameboards through Google Spreadsheets. In the video embedded I demonstrate how to use Flippity to create a Jeopardy-style gameboard." T/H to R. Byrne

This list of Webinar's appears to be free, but you must sign in with your email, telephone, organization, etc. Most Webinar's run about an hour. Numerous topics - designing mobile learning, using powerpoint, media editing tools, etc.

"The idea here is to create a simple menu at the top of your Moodle course page that allows your learners to click and have only the relevant unit or cluster appear on the page. Essentially, this removes the 'scroll of death' issue if you find your learners are having to wade down through dozens of units to find something."

"I'm trying to capture rethinking about education or formal learning. I'm tired of anything that allows folks to think knowledge dump and test is going to lead to meaningful change. I'm also trying to 'think out loud' for myself. And start getting more concrete about learning experience design." This thoughtful blog is accompanied by a very useful graphic display of how content, activities, evaluation, etc. feed into each other.

"Various and sundry postings about educational design and instructional technology (EDIT) that involve introducing pre-service teachers to the uses of technology tools for teaching and learning." A good resource for teachers, Jacqui Cyrus's blog has lots of tools described, with some thoughts on using them. Also links to articles on educational technology

Ignatia suggests using a private wiki because of text-to-speech options, and secure social media-driven learning locations, such as a movie archive on Facebook. Subtitle options may be difficult with, e.g., YouTube, if you have an accent, but it can be done with an audio recorder (though it is labor intensive). This might be a good blog to follow further.