Group items tagged

Though some were supportive of the idea of using microblogging in classes, many wrote some variation on what this reader posted: "[This] means you never have to learn to open your mouth. Surely more Twitter is exactly the opposite of what kids desperately need to turn into functioning adults."

Twitter, the popular microblogging site that allows users to post 140-character "tweets," both intrigues and irritates faculty, according to a Faculty Focus survey. Some embrace it as a clever way to teach concision and get students writing, thinking, and connecting with the course material and one another.

Very interesting postings, many of them with appealing pictures or other visuals. The topics seem to span a broad area within the area of learning with technology. This is Garett, by the way.

Hi Garrett, I was following his blog, too: Niks' Learning Technology Blog (via Feedly). He reviews and demos a lot of great tools. One thing I had a problem with is that nothing seems to be dated. One of is blogs had a bunch of great tools on it and I found links that were useful. Then, other links in the same blog were broken or, even for me, seemed way out of date (hasn't everyone already heard of Firefox?).

One of my friends started up one of these Scoop.it "newsletters" and I get messages weekly from it - automated. I wonder if she even knows it's still running...?

If you don't watch this blog, you should! He has a lot of interesting posts - not all are on tech, but many are.

Why she prefers Noteable PDF to an LMS post, Word, or Google Doc

Blog post from Transparent Language

This is a listing of ways to use social media in the classroom.  

I like what srafuller says about not expecting students to be like we were when we were students. I struggle with that in all the classes I teach, not just the foreign language. I work to be conscious of reaching students "where they are" every day. Not only that, but we need to be conscious (at least older teachers like me) of not teaching the way we were taught!

I really like this article! Simple, to-the-point, useful suggestions for several on-line applications. I tried out Duolingo but was chagrined to find out they don't offer Russian (Ukrainian and Esperanto but not Russian?!). I could, however, study English from Russian, which has several activities (especially translation) that my students can use. Thanks for posting this article!

Nice blog post about different ways for teachers to share resources and develop a PLN (personal learning network) through social-networking.

Nice blog post that describes different ways for teachers to share resources and develop a PLN (personal learning network)

I don't know much about this, but Pablo was looking for somewhere you could post a video and then have students do audio replies to the video. This does that in a sort of blog-like format. YouTube can do video replies.

This blog post is about the preparation for a presentation, but there are links to the presentation, and another one someone else did, as well as other resources - a course for parents to do with their children, etc.

a blog post about the usefulness of Twitter for educators

Very compelling reasons for educators to get on Twitter for sure.

Directions for using Posterous - lots of possibilities where you can have students post things by attaching and sending to an email, and it collects them all so all can see/hear.

I found this by chance just exploring around. If you check the SUPPORT section on the VoiceThread site, you will find a list of publications. They posted a collection of abstracts with links of scholarly articles written about using VoiceThread for language learning, K-12, higher education and professional development. I just skimmed through the lists, and some of the articles are accessible, while some are behind a password.

Shared in Alyssa's post for Week 7

"Over the past academic year, my students and I have been experimenting with the use of a number of web based applications (often known as Web 2.0 tools). My aim has been to enhance our schemes of work by providing our students with new and exciting learning opportunities. In my opinion, using technology effectively has clear benefits for both teaching and learning and can help to improve motivation by engaging pupils in activities which, perhaps, step out of their ordinary school experience and which show them that it is possible to teach and learn about a subject using tools similar to those they use daily outside school. In other words, we have tried to use the types of tools with which they are often already familiar. I have written about each of these individual tools in separate posts, but I thought it would be useful to list the ten most used internet applications on one post. As ever, I aim to provide, not only a list of the web applications we have used, but also examples of practice which you may wish to follow or, indeed, improve upon. Therefore, each of the entries below has links leading to lesson plans which have incorporated the tools as well as working examples of students' work where appropriate. Without further ado, and in alphabetical order, my ten tried and tested internet tools for teachers are:"

from a FL teacher in England - who tries and tests a number of tech tools. Here are his 10 favorite web 2.0 apps.

For K-12 teachers (maybe even post sec?) - a nicely done website that deals with pressures teens face with cyber bullies, sexting, cyber stalking and much more

You might want to follow this "challenge" as a sideline to the class!  Let's see what sorts of things they work through.

A blog post by Chuck Tryon that describes a video annotation tool. He also mentions a text annotation tool by the same company (SocialBook).