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"What are the best apps for teachers? We asked TED-Ed Innovative Educators and the TED-Ed community. Below, 25 awesome apps recommended for teachers, by teachers."

Telling and listening to stories is an ancient tradition that can benefit foreign language learners of all ages, languages, and levels of proficiency. Stories contain linguistic, paralinguistic, discourse, and cultural features that provide the comprehensible input and output that students need to develop their conversational skills. Instructors and students can select and tell stories that they enjoy and that interest their listeners. Some interactive story telling activities are presented, categorized as: Change the Story, Group Picture Story, Jigsaw Story, My Story, Oral Reading, Picture Stories, Psycho Story, Rumor, Shuffled Comics, Story Hour, Strip Story, and Tell Us a Story. Contains 33 references. (Author/LB)

6 principles for working with ed tech, examples and collections of tools

Brief overview of good ed tech blogs.

Thank you for this list. I just started following a couple of these through Feedly, glad to see that they are in the "top ten" :)

I started using Storybird last year, and I love it. It is great to teach fantasy writing and to reinforce the elements of fiction. Using the sample stories for ESL students sounds like a great idea!

Articles on Ed Tech

Discussion on how technology is being used and why we're still struggling to give more control of learning to students. A good read!

"A 2014 paper by researchers at Michigan State University, in East Lansing, provides a tangible example: Teachers and students in the small-scale study were found to be making extensive use of the online word-processing tool Google Docs. The application's power to support collaborative writing and in-depth feedback, however, was not being realized. Teachers were not encouraging group-writing assignments and their feedback focused overwhelmingly on issues such as spelling and grammar, rather than content and organization." This really gets to the heart of the idea of combining education and technology: the technology has to serve the goal and it doesn't sound like the teachers' goals were the same as the stated goals of the assignment. So obviously Google Docs is a fantastic tool, but it has to be utilized appropriately for it to be effective.

I must say I have sat through many workshops in my tenure at my university that included the modification of some practices and even included, to my frustration, the basic structure of a lesson from stating outcomes to assessment. The problem with our particular situation is that usually it is directed to a "one-size-fits-all" use of a given technology that may not apply to many disciplines. I have found them somewhat useful for upper-level courses at times, but the language classes often pose the need for a kind of collaboration and interpersonal technology that isn't presented. Hence my desire to take this course. Another difficulty is the overwhelming number of technological applications presented--I can't tell you how many--and the students really become overwhelmed, since they often have to learn new technologies in almost many courses. Some work and some don't, and since they are the guinea pigs and there are no guarantees that everything will work as planned, and given the astounding changes in tech, the newness never seems to end, neither for the student nor the teacher. So focusing on just 1 or 2 to begin with seems like the only way to deal with it. Finally, I think that, at least in our university, the huge courses found often in the sciences reflect the slowness to adopt meaningful change. Many in these disciplines have simply used the tech to deliver more lectures on topics students must memorize, perhaps adding clickers for comprehension checks. There seems to be a great disconnect between what happens in the classroom and the amazing advances in tech they have made for their hands-on work--labs, collaborative work, etc.

I have been following Shapiro for a little over a year now. I first became interested in him because as a former video-game player I was always interested in game based learning. Jordan covers the gamification of learning but also how ed-tech is changing the culture of learning in the U.S. and around the world.

Three basic tips - what other tips do you have for teaching online?

Focuses on a variety of issues related to teaching in higher education, including technology.

The changing face of the MOOC - they will stay free for all, and charge if you want a certificate (not for credit yet).

I was in this class - wanting to see how things were handled along with what the content was - it was really a mess!  I'll be interested to see what changes they make if they offer it again.

The why and how of using digital stories in language ed

Digital storytelling is so awesome! I got a chance to create a digital story through the Minnesota Writing Project Invitational Summer Institute and it was an awesome experience. I'd highly recommend looking into your local branch of the National Writing Project to see what resources or professional development are available.

Definitely one of my passions as a teacher- helping students get to the point where they can tell their own stories.

This report provides national estimates about distance education courses in public school districts. The estimates presented in this report are based on a district survey about distance education courses offered by the district or by any of the schools in the district during the 2009-10 school year.

The debate about teaching languages online continues - with Rosetta Stone at the center of this article.  With a teacher, without a teacher, with RS or without, the key is still how it is taught and that can differ widely from class to class!

I totally agree with you. I think that RS is a good tool to use in place of a textbook, but it doesn't change the fact that you need more than a textbook to learn something with great quality. Conversation is key and having someone there to converse with is what helps and increases the learning. If you don't use it, you loose it fast.

Tutorial Padlet for YouTube video