Group items tagged

"Mark up, fill out, and collaborate on PDFs, Word documents, PowerPoint slides, and web pages... for free! "

Last week, Chrissy and I were invited to give our presentation from ASB Unplugged, Hardware is Not Enough: The Teacher-Facilitator Partnership, to our Headmaster, Dr. Bill Gerritz, and Deputy Headmaster, Andy Davies. Bill and Andy had heard a brief overview when we reported back about the conference

T hey're free, they're customizable, and they meet state standards. Those are the three biggest selling points of CK12 Flexbooks, digital educational content for K-12 schools. FlexBooks are developed through a combination of author donations, licensing partnerships, university collaborations, and incentives for community-based authorship, and teachers can customize them to their hearts' content.

Customizable, standards-aligned, free digital textbooks for K-12. CK-12 Foundation is a non-profit organization with a mission to reduce the cost of textbook materials for the K-12 market both in the U.S. and worldwide. Using an open-content, web-based collaborative model termed the "FlexBook," CK-12 intends to pioneer the generation and distribution of high quality educational content that will serve both as core text as well as provide an adaptive environment for learning through the FlexBook Platform™.

"Promote participatory and collaborative learning within a safe online portal"

What Is Social Bookmarking: Social bookmarking is a form of bookmark sharing that allows you to bookmark websites on the Internet using a service instead of using the browser's bookmarking feature. This service also makes it easy to share bookmarks. The sharing and collaboration feature explains the use of the word "social" in this term. Social bookmarking uses a form of tagging that allows users to tag sites they want to bookmark with a keyword, similar to how Twitter hashtags work.

What Is Social Bookmarking: Social bookmarking is a form of bookmark sharing that allows you to bookmark websites on the Internet using a service instead of using the browser's bookmarking feature. This service also makes it easy to share bookmarks. The sharing and collaboration feature explains the use of the word "social" in this term. Social bookmarking uses a form of tagging that allows users to tag sites they want to bookmark with a keyword, similar to how Twitter hashtags work.

Command of the written word is a vital 21st-century skill, even if we are using keys, buttons, and tablets instead of pens and pencils. In fact, in our digital world, communication is now more instantaneous than ever. How do we prepare our students to meet the challenge? Blogging can offer opportunities for students to develop their communications skills through meaningful writing experiences. Such projects not only motivate students to write, but motivate them to write well. Furthermore, student-blogging projects can be designed to address the Common Core State Standards for writing. For example, see anchor standard six, which calls upon students to use technology to "produce and publish writing and to interact and collaborate with others." Score!

A great way to take collaborative notes

In an environment where global economy, global collaboration, and global 'knowledge' are  the aspiration of many countries, the understanding of the complexities of plagiarism becomes  a global requirement that needs to be addressed by all educators and learners. This paper  considers a simple definition of plagiarism, and then briefly considers reasons why students  plagiarise. At Unitec NZ, Te Puna Ako: The Centre for Teaching and Learning Innovation  (TPA:CTLI) is working closely with faculty, managers, student support services and library  personnel to introduce strategies and tools that can be integrated into programmes and  curricula whilst remaining flexible enough to be tailored for specific learners. The authors  therefore provide an overview of one of the tools available to check student work for  plagiarism - Turnitin - and describe the academic Professional Development (PD)  approaches that have been put in place to share existing expertise, as well as help staff at  Unitec NZ to use the tool in pedagogically informed ways, which also assist students in its  use. Evaluation and results are considered, before concluding with some recommendations. It  goes on to theorise how blended programmes that fully integrate academic literacy skills and  conventions might be used to positively scaffold students in the avoidance of plagiarism.  Conference participants will be asked to comment on and discuss their institutions' approach  to supporting the avoidance of plagiarism (including the utilisation of PDS and other  deterrents), describe their own personal experiences, and relate the strategies they employ in  their teaching practice and assessment design to help their learners avoid plagiarism. It is  planned to record the session so that the audience's narratives can be shared with other  practitioners.

online video creation and sharing

TED-Ed's commitment to creating lessons worth sharing is an extension of TED's mission of spreading great ideas. Within the growing TED-Ed video library, you will find carefully curated educational videos, many of which represent collaborations between talented educators and animators nominated through the TED-Ed platform. This platform also allows users to take any useful educational video, not just TED's, and easily create a customized lesson around the video. Users can distribute the lessons, publicly or privately, and track their impact on the world, a class, or an individual student.

The iSchool Initiative is a student-led, non-profit organization that is dedicated to revolutionizing our education system through innovative technology. Our mission is to inspire and educate students on how to become life long digital learners in the information age. We accomplish this by raising awareness for the technological needs of the classroom, providing collaborative research on the use of technology in the classroom, and guiding schools in the implementation of this technology.

The Technology Integration Matrix (TIM) illustrates how teachers can use technology to enhance learning for K-12 students. The TIM incorporates five interdependent characteristics of meaningful learning environments: active, constructive, goal directed (i.e., reflective), authentic, and collaborative (Jonassen, Howland, Moore, & Marra, 2003). The TIM associates five levels of technology integration (i.e., entry, adoption, adaptation, infusion, and transformation) with each of the five characteristics of meaningful learning environments. Together, the five levels of technology integration and the five characteristics of meaningful learning environments create a matrix of 25 cells as illustrated below. INCLUDES: Videso examples from actual classrooms.

Pi™ Computer Tables- Classroom Collaboration for LCD Systems and Laptops! Built on the geometry of circles, not rectangles, Pi™ Computer Tables nest together in organic arrangements found in nature. This unlocks infinite possibilities for team computing groups.

The "Top 25" Websites foster the qualities of innovation, creativity, active participation, and collaboration. They are free, Web-based sites that are user friendly and encourage a community of learners to explore and discover.

Sticky note tool that has some very nice organization and collaboration tools. Well worth a look.

I love this one Virginia!

Since MIT's Lifelong Kindergarten group released Scratch in 2007, kids ages 8 to 13 have built more than 2.2 million animations, games, music, videos and stories using the kid-friendly programming language. Scratch allows kids to snap together graphical blocks of instructions, like Lego bricks, to control sprites-the movable objects that perform actions. Sprites can dance, sing, run and talk. Now, with a grant from the National Foundation of Science, Lifelong Kindergarten is collaborating with Tufts University's DevTech Research Group to make Scratch Jr, a new version aimed at kids in preschool to second grade. The expected launch date is summer 2012.

Great for creating digital stories or flipped classroom content.  Easily integrate YouTube video, wikipedia information, instagram photos, and google docs.  Share and collaborate with others.  Buncee Bits mobile app is also available.  How will you buncee?

"Top 10 Sites for Creating Digital Music 1. Myna - Far and away my favorite online music editor. This is very similar to Garageband and a nice alternative for those who do not have the Apple application. 2. Soundation - Very easy to use, with a drag/drop interface for creating excellent-sounding music. 3. Jam Studio - Fun site that lets users select a "key" to play in and a theme to match. 4. Loop Labs - Nice time- line editor; learning curve is a bit higher than most sites. 5. Your Spins - Great site for mixing prerecorded music and sharing with others. 6. Indaba - Unique site where users can create collaborative music pieces to make one final product. 7. Creating Music - Very user friendly website shows kids how to create digital music. 8. Contrapunctus Variations - Wonderful site for creating orchestral music by selecting an instrument and clicking on a time line. 9. iNudge - Fun site for kids, who can make music by drawing shapes. 10. Glitchscape - Create sound by drawing vector shaped rectangles. "

Fom the Tech and Learning blog

"n Project Based Learning (PBL), students go through an extended process of inquiry in response to a complex question, problem, or challenge. While allowing for some degree of student "voice and choice," rigorous projects are carefully planned, managed, and assessed to help students learn key academic content, practice 21st Century Skills (such as collaboration, communication & critical thinking), and..."

"Hotseat, a social networking-powered mobile Web application, creates a collaborative classroom, allowing students to provide near real-time feedback during class and enabling professors to adjust the course content and improve the learning experience. Students can post messages to Hotseat using their Facebook or Twitter accounts, sending text messages, or logging in to the Hotseat Web site."