CALL_IS_VSL

A nice, short reminder of how and why we use technology.

Tony Bates, author of Teaching in a Digital Age, updates Wenger further, publishing his comments on communities of practice in a digital age. This post includes links to his book so far, and theories behind CoPs, as well as a definition.

This chat room tool might be useful for your classes, or as a backchannel if several teachers are working on a presentation together. The interface can be mounted on your own website, ensuring that students don't wander off. You can easily save a transcript of the chat, and it lets students join from home or other classrooms. T/H to H. Dilatush who let us in EVO know about it.

This is a reasonable article on getting prepared for a MOOC or flipped class -- or any class, for that matter. Steps include setting goals, knowing your LMS and the authoring system involved (especially important with an interface like Coursera). The eLearning Industry (Insturctional Design & eLearning Professionals' Group) is also linked on this page.

"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.

This page allows you to view the presentation and to interact with the presenter. Main message: make the flipped classroom active and interactive, with some tips on how to do that.

A very short video on setting up an interactive grouping using laptops. Four corners allows students to face each other, have conversation, and still be able to get up and out of their chairs easily. The Teaching Channel videos include study questions and related video links.

Interesting thoughts, by M. S. Roth of the Washington Post, on the relationship between money spent and excellence in teaching. Is great teaching "natural" or a learned behaviors. The discovery of effective strategies to use in classrooms needs to be shared and built upon.

This is a cute program that will generate topic after topic to write about. This might be a neat way to get students writing.

"Classcraft, the first online educational role-playing game that teachers and students play together for free, recently announced the launch of a fully-updated version of their product for the new academic year. This revised version boasts new features such as free iOS apps for iPhone and iPad, interactive forums, student analytics and customisable characters, all of which will be useful for both teachers and students. Also included are French, Chinese, Dutch, German, and Spanish translations, which has made the game even more accessible to classrooms worldwide. To date, more than 30,000 students in 50 countries around the world are playing the game. "In order to keep students engaged, the Quebec-based team of education professionals are keen to inject the mechanisms of popular social games into learning. Playing in teams, students can become mages, warriors and healers, each with unique powers. The more a student excels, the more they gain points and real powers, like the ability to take notes into an exam. Teams can lose points by disrupting the classroom or submitting homework late; consequences can include detention and and less time to finish assignments."

This is a nice demonstration of scaffolding, note-taking, and discussion for young adult / adult learners.

Common Core and using questions and scaffolding support for an academic discussion. The Teaching Channel demonstrations also including supporting questions for teachers. Students run their own discussion.

This video for teachers includes thoughtful questions. Shows how younger learners can handle academic discussions successfully.

Another superb teacher-training video from R. Stannard on using Goggle Forms to create questionnaires, surveys, and quizzes.

N. Hockly's blog gives a nice description of a mobile lesson plan using a QR reader. This lesson boosted student energy and enthusiasm and built on language the students generated themselves. Some "newness" effect was no doubt present, but it's a nice start for beginning learners.

A smartphone based lesson y N. Hockly. Students take photos of a topic offered by their coursebook, then work on generating the vocabulary to talk about the topic before looking at the lessons in the textbook.

More QR code mobile phone activity from N. Hockly. This treasure hunt could be used by students for Orientation to the campus/school. Directions indicate how to adapt for beginner students or intermediate students.

"Upload an image from your computer and choose how many sheets wide you would like your poster to be once printed. "Once you're happy with your selection, you can download the PDF file containing your newly created images and print each one massively blown up, resulting in a huge pixel poster to stick on your wall ..." A very useful tool for display of your students' work, or to make a giant jigsaw puzzle.

" 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

These lessons include Scholastic's Interactive Weather Maker, showing how humidity and temperature levels relate to rain and snow storms; Bytesize Science on the chemistry of snowflake making; and why the full moon gives more light in winter. Video explanations are embedded in R. Byrne's site.