CALL_IS_VSL

Detailed lesson ideas for using this popular online building game.

"In this intriguing TEDx talk, author of Screen Time: How Electronic Media Affects Your Young Child and Director of the New America Foundation's Early Education Initiative, Lisa Guernsey, discusses the research she has been involved with, as well as some the practical outcomes of her work exploring learning and screen media."

"With the Cicret Bracelet, you can make your skin your new touchscreen. Read your mails, play your favorite games, answer your calls, check the weather, find your way…Do whatever you want on your arm." Looks like a great tool, and you can even use it in the bathtub.

"Yet surprisingly few studies of this format have produced supporting evidence for learning styles; far more evidence (such as this study) runs counter to the myth. What often happens is that both groups perform better when taught by one particular style. This makes sense because although each of us is unique, usually the most effective way for us to learn is based not on our individual preferences but on the nature of the material we're being taught - just try learning French grammar pictorially, or learning geometry purely verbally."

"During genius hour students of all levels are empowered to explore their own passions. Discover how to transform your classroom into a place where students want to come in and learn." This sounds like a great idea for any level of students -- how often do we find out what our students real passions are?

These all look like interesting ways to create portfolios, and include mobile devices as well. T/H R. Byrne

A database of 14,000+ worksheets for use in the ESL classroom. Many of these will be useful for your classes, K-12 and adult.

"PresentationTube is a free service that teachers can add narration to their PowerPoint presentations. In addition to adding narration to your slides, PresentationTube can be used to add whiteboard drawings, webcam images, and webpages to your presentations. Completed presentations are displayed with a slide in the center of the screen and the slide navigator to the right. The slide navigator allows you to skip forward or backward in presentations with the narration in sync." Seems to be rather more sophisticated than PowerPoint alone, and might be very useful for ESL students since they can control the slide they see. T/H to R. Byrne.

This is an incredibly useful set of tools from R. Byrne. Each of the map/story makers has slightly different features, but they seem to offer great options for students to create their own digital stories. I can envision doing a genetics or migrations story, or plotting out the movements in a novel, for example.

"Google Earth and Google Maps has always been a natural fit in social studies classrooms. But Google Earth and Maps can also be powerful tools in other content areas. The resources below represent some of my favorite resources for introducing Google Earth and Maps in areas outside of social studies." A great list of uses for a variety of subjects. And a link to how to get Google Earth Pro for free. T/H R. Byrne

"Applications for Education I encourage you to read Larry Ferlazzo's post about how he is using Clyp.it with his ELL students. In that post he explains how his students are using Clyp.it to post audio comments on a classroom blog. " T/H R. Byrne

"Vicki Davis looks at EasyBib, Mindmeister, track-changes, table of content, thesaurus, template gallery, texthelp study skills and highlighting tools, workflows, Uber conference calls, consistency checker, gliffy diagrams, twitter curator, Kaizena, document merge, and open clip art." Also tells how to get the Add-Ons and use them. T/H to H. DeWaard on Diigo in Education

Stoodle allows the teacher (or students) a way to create a collaborative whiteboard space. R Byrne's video shows how to use the tool. He also suggests ways students could use Stoodle for peer editing and tutoring sessions, including freehand drawing.

"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.

These tools help you ensure on the fly that students understand what you are teaching.

"Use Moovly to take your lessons, tutorials or presentations to the next level and increase student creativity and involvement. Combine visuals, sounds, voice and video in clear explanations or engaging stories. Have your students prove their multimedia skills and apply these to any educational topic." I think this includes making those clever drawings that are speeded up in animation. The tool would be good for student-student instructional videos or for your own flipped classes.

"Here, four ways to offer feedback that really makes a difference, drawn from research in psychology and cognitive science:" These include: 1.Supply information about what the learner is doing, rather than praise or criticism. 2. Take care in how feedback is presented so it doesn't reduce motivation. Have learners be involved in analyzing their own performance. 3. Orient feedback to goals. 4. use feedback to develop metacognitive skills.

Turn online vidoes into interactive learning with embedded questions. Free accounts and a video demo.

R. Stannard's teacher training video on this screen capture tool. MP4 videos can then be sved to YouTube.a

R. Stannard shares an article from his presentation at the 120th ASEE Conference in Atlanta, June 2013.