Group items tagged

  “Friending” the students raised some privacy concerns for me and for my students. Suddenly, we could see the everyday things that we were posting to Facebook. According to a survey conducted by Tammy Swenson Lepper, students are uncomfortable with authority figures making judgments about them based on their “private” Facebook communications, regardless of the pubic availability of this information (183-184)

Facebook and Twitter are easier to manage on mobile devices and are familiar interfaces.

advanced features, such as group video calls, require users to pay a fee and upgrade to a premium account to get the service. Calling fees vary depending on the countries the user calls and the amount of time spent on calls. Subscribing to a premium account, which will allow users to use services such as group video chats, currently costs US$59.88 for 12 months. US$4.99 per month is not very expensive.

Limitations Although Skype and Skype in the classroom provide an intriguing option for language teaching and learning, there are some limitations as well. First, there are minimum download/upload speeds required for using Skype. For example, video calling and screen sharing require 128kbps/128kbps as the minimum download/upload speed; group video calling requires 4Mbps/128kbps as the minimum download/upload speed. Therefore, Skype users need to check whether their Internet connection meets such requirements to avoid video and audio lag during Skype lessons.

Second, Skype and Skype in the classroom promote authentic learning. According to Lombardi (2007), authentic learning emphasizes “real-world, complex problems and their solutions, using role-playing exercises, problem-based activities, case studies, and participation in a virtual community of practice” (p.2). Thus, authentic learning happens as learners participate in real-world relevant tasks that require their judgment to distinguish information, patience to participate, ability to adapt themselves to unfamiliar contexts, and flexibility to work with people from different cultures. In this view, Skype and Skype in the classroom allow language teachers and learners to participate in a context of authentic learning.

The ACTIONS model, proposed by Bates (1995), is a practical guide for educators and policymakers to select and evaluate the use of technologies for teaching and learning. The ACTIONS model involves the following criteria: Access: How accessible is a particular technology for learners? Costs: What is the cost structure of a particular technology? Teaching and learning: How does a particular technology support teaching and learning? Interactivity and user-friendliness: How does a particular technology facilitate interaction among learners? How easy is a particular technology to use? Organizational issues: Are any class organizational changes needed? Novelty: How new is this particular technology? Speed: How quickly can courses be taught and learned via this particular technology?

What’s more important is that I can provide feedback without drawing dark red lines across their writing, an experience that can be discouraging to many writers (including myself). Instead, we use Comments, Editing, or Suggesting to provide less invasive feedback; we can also share audio feedback right in the document using Kaizena, a Google Doc add-on. Students can receive immediate feedback multiple times throughout the writing process--and I don’t have worry about dragging stacks of paper home!

Multisensory experience triggers simultaneous associations.

Pictures, sounds, and words together with a contextual experience of a place can create memorable learning experiences more efficiently than plain images or written words alone that are not associated with anything real

Seeing a new word written under a picture and hearing how it is pronounced, helps us understand and remember what we are looking at.

Virtual tours expand our fields of perception from physical to digital.

We can remember and learn on a virtual field trip the same way as we learn on a physical field trip.

Interactive videos, audio posters, narrated screenshots, and virtual tours can be effective tools for online education that help educators and learners work together using not only text-based communication, but also voice, video, and images.

A great way for giving assignments or sharing projects is adding voice instructions to various areas of a photo, poster or a screenshot.

Equipment: The good news is, you only need your phone or laptop, so there is no need to invest in additional hardware unless you want to

Setup: A video lesson can be very similar to your lesson in the classroom.

Recording: Find a place with natural light where you feel comfortable, and start recording. The audience is your students so picture them in front of you, and address them as you would in the class. You may even mention some of them by name to keep their attention!

Duration: Our recommendation is you look at the lesson as a whole and divide it into parts, max 10-15 minutes and ideally 6 minutes each.

Examples and best practices for creating remote learning materials for students

1. Explain visuals with text labels

2. Explain abstract concepts with detailed descriptions

3. Explain assignments using your voice

4. Art history: Introduce a masterpiece

5. Literature: Interpret a masterpiece

6. Read to your students

7. Learn vocabulary in new places

8. Narrate your own virtual lesson

9. Create a virtual field trip with assignment

10. Ask students to narrate a virtual audio tour

Supporting student-centered learning with interactive visual media

Project-based learning, inquiry-based learning, and problem-based learning are constructivist approaches to education that develop the learners skills for research, problem-solving and collaboration. The process is based on authentic questions and problems identified by students, and finding information and explanation models to research and solve them.

An important aspect of student-centered learning is documenting the various phases and aspects of the learning process.

The following examples will show how students can use mixed media for completing various kinds of creative assignments and sharing them with their teacher and fellow students.

In the following, we summarize 10 easy project ideas for remote learning that encourage students to 1) make handwritten, visual and pictorial notes, collages and artwork, and 2) enhance and explain their work using digital audio/text notes, photos and video. Each of the examples provide a mix of learning opportunities combining traditional student work in the classroom with digital storytelling at home. The projects can be shared to a learning management system or collaboration platform such as Canvas, Schoology, Google Education or Microsoft Teams.

1. Make an interactive greeting card

2. Create an interactive book report

3. Make a vocabulary poster in a foreign language

4. Introduce yourself

5. Create an interactive herbarium

6. Make your own comic strips

7. Create an interactive timeline

8. Explain details of a painting

9. Create an interactive map

10. Build a diorama

Hotspots, what are they and how do they work? The purpose of the clickable hotspots is to give the viewer further information and resources on the topic they are learning about. Teachers and students can add various types of content in the hotspots, such as text, additional closeup images, video, sound, links and embedded web content such as maps or forms. These resources can serve any of the following functions: Building perspective by linking to related materials Improving comprehension of the topic by highlighting key concepts and vocabulary Zooming into details in a scene Creating a feedback loop by including a call to action

Examples and best practices for creating remote learning materials for students

Examples and best practices for creating remote learning materials for students

Examples and best practices for creating remote learning materials for students

Best practices for developing students' creativity and digital storytelling skills at home

School teachers

School teachers

Remake – Want to reuse a Padlet in multiple classes or across multiple years?

Customization – Padlet gives you lots of options in the settings area.  You can customize the appearance, change the URL to make it easier to access, turn comments on/off, turn reactions (stars, upvotes, likes, grades) on/off, require approval for posts, filter profanity. 

Real-time Collaboration – If you choose to allow collaboration, you and your collaborators (students! teachers! parents!) can collaborate in realtime. 

2. Second, I didn’t know that Padlet had a Timeline option!After Matt’s tweet, I discovered that a Timeline option was added by Padlet in December 2019

One comment I often get from students is that they wish they had more frequent, but lower stakes oral assessments. A platform like Extempore begins to make this possible