Group items tagged

One of my favorite ways to use the commenting feature in Google Documents is to host online discussions around a shared article. Doing this isn't a radical departure from having a classroom discussion about an article that you've printed and distributed to your students, but there are some advantages to hosting your discussion in Google Documents. The first advantage is that your students can participate in the discussion from anywhere at any time they are connected to the Internet.

As I have done a lot of work with school administrators on why they should be using social media and some practical ways to use it within their schools, I wanted to compile some articles together that will help schools/organizations move forward. They will be listed under two categories; the why and the how. The articles are listed below:

Thoughtful article on the challenges in delivering vital 21st century skills to students.

Great personal piece about letting your passion for a job come to you rather the elusive "follow your passion" advice. This article promo.

"Many assumptions and misconceptions around the flipped class concept are circulating in educational and popular media. This article will address, and hopefully put to rest, some of the confusion and draw a conclusion on why flipped learning is a sound educational technique."

In a recent webinar, more than 90% of school leaders responded that they were leading an innovative school as a result of the implementation of technology. At the end of the webinar, when polled again, only one leader claimed to be leading an innovative school. The complete reversal was due to a presentation of the Six Questions that you will read about in this article.   This list of questions was developed to help educators be clear about the unique added value of a digital learning environment.

If you want your school to grow, the school and its community needs to take charge of that growth. Every pathfinder school operating at the 'Networked' or 'Digital Normalisation' stage of the school evolutionary stages continuum discussed in the first article of this series had taken charge of its own evolution. While a few have had some astute support from their education authority, the majority embarked on their evolutionary quest 15 to 20 years ago, and throughout their journey, have recognised the importance of being proactive.

I've been thinking a lot lately about how much time I spend on the Internet, and worrying that it's too much.

Any time we talk about Evernote, a good number of you say the same thing: you've tried it time and time again, but you could never really "get into it." I was in the same camp, but after reading the other side's experiences in this article and its comments, I decided to give it another shot. If you're like I was and haven't yet experienced the greatness of Evernote, here are some things you should try.

The Evernote Web Clipper allows you to save anything you see on the web quickly and easily straight into your Evernote account. You can clip a full page, single article or just the URL and save it to a designated Notebook and add tags. Your web clips then become searchable within your Evernote account. Doing this allows me to have all of my information at the tip of my fingers, right when I need it and across my multiple devices.

"Fourteen years after writing Teaching Zack to Think, there is still no Internet skill more critical than Web literacy. However, simply teaching students to be able to search for and validate information is not enough. The ever-growing amount of information on the Web and the immediate access to experts and peers from around the world create great opportunities for thoughtfully organizing and expanding upon learning. Alan November and Brian Mull have recently written an article titled Why More Schools Aren't Teaching Web Literacy-and How They Can Start, which now appears on the eSchool News site and discusses a three-part framework for making sure students are Internet savvy."

In this podcast, Alan interviews Silvia Tolisano, 21st Century Learning Specialist, along with other administrators, teachers and students at Martin J. Gottlieb School. Here, students are being encouraged to take more of a leadership role in their learning as they take part in a variety of jobs inspired by Alan November's article, Students as Contributors"

"After two articles in the irish papers (links below) where I was asked about how I use twitter in my classroom, I decided to detail what exactly I do, so that it's a little clearer. Before I begin though we have to talk about fear. There's so much fear about the educational value of twitter from teachers, managers, parents and students that some might be worried about entering that lion's den. My answer to these fears is simple: the internet is where kids are, schools have to go there. It was video for an earlier generation and tv before that. It was probably radio once and I'm sure some Greeks were worried about writing things down rather than learning them by heart. Students will always be ahead of us, so why not meet them there, rather than dismiss them as fad-followers or time-wasters?"

A reminder on the power of motivation over IQ in learning and success. Plenty of research underpins the power of motivation in education, learning & success. Engagement, relevance, social connection & having a stake in outcomes (gamification) are just some of the factors that increase motivation & therefore learning. Grit, curiosity ,character ........

Plenty of articles on why you should strongly consider updating to two factor authentication

I was re-reading the Horizon Report the other day when it occurred to me that it could be easily summarised. This has helped me consolidate the main elements of the article in my own mind. It is always interesting to reflect on where your school or region is at in this whole process. I hope this is helpful for you too. Please feel free to use and share.

Good example of how to use Ipad for class workflow

Hey Mark Thanks for the article. It is very informative. Mike