Group items tagged

"Whyville is a virtual world geared for teen and pre-teen girls and boys. Whyville's millions of registered "citizens" come from all over to learn, create, and have fun together. Whyville is their world. Whyville has places to go, things to do, and of course, people to see. Whyville has its own newspaper, its own Senators, its own beach, museum, City Hall and town square, its own suburbia, and even its own economy - citizens earn "clams" by playing educational games. And much, much, much more!"

"LoudLit.org is committed to delivering public domain literature paired with high quality audio performances...Putting the text and audio together, readers can learn spelling, punctuation and paragraph structure by listening and reading masterpieces of the written word. Read and listen via your web browser or on your mp3 player. Regardless of how you enjoy the audiobooks (audio books), they are free."

Teachers are tapping into technology and digital media for learning. Watch How Google Saved a School and discuss the hype and the hopes for improving education through technology. More and more educators are tapping into the power of digital media and technology for teaching and learning. The variety of information resources available online is simply staggering. Explore how teachers and students are using the power of social media to promote students' active engagement, critical thinking and literacy skills. New Forms of Learning. It doesn't need to happen in school. Because it's visual, interactive and social, learning can happen anywhere with digital media as people collaborate and share about a wide range of topics and issues that matter to them. Technology and School Improvement. Technology may transform schools by promoting student engagement and creativity. But critics fear that too much focus on technology takes attention away from what's really needed to improve schools: capable, well-trained teachers; student-centered learning methods; and smaller class sizes. Hope, Hype and Reality. Are today's learners really different from previous generations? Compelling images of students using digital technology are impressive, but the research evidence on the impact of technology on learning is more mixed. And it's sometimes hard to separate the scholarship from the marketing hype, given the deep investment of technology companies in promoting the idea of technology's transformative potential.

"HippoCampus is a project of the Monterey Institute for Technology and Education (MITE). The goal of HippoCampus is to provide high-quality, multimedia content on general education subjects to high school and college students free of charge. HippoCampus was designed as part of Open Education Resources (OER), a worldwide effort to improve access to quality education for everyone. HippoCampus content has been developed by some of the finest colleges and universities in the world..."

Part 2 of 100 Web Tools to enhance collaboration

The Amazing Web 2.0 Projects book by Terry Freedman and others

This is a simple bookmarklet that allows you to print websites better by removing elements, graphics and applying better print style to the page. There is a quick video demo to explain how.

Animation virtual studio. "A virtual animation studio partnering with animators from around the world to create, high quality 3d, 2d and flash cartoon animations. Aniboom cultivates animated content by leveraging the web providing online animation opportunities such as animated competitions and free online animation software."

WolframAlpha's new Educators site.

Organized by grade levels and subjects

"UpToTen has been building prize-winning early-learning games and activities since 1999. Your child will love the reassuring, friendly world that our unique games inhabit. S/he will have enormous fun whilst building independence on the computer." "UpToTen.com is completely independent and is still owned and run by the company's founders. We do all the illustrations, animations, design, music and dialogues ourselves, and lovingly bring them together to make positively reinforcing games in a warm and welcoming play-area. "

Apps are organized by corresponding content areas.

A directory of educational games, interactives, and activities vetted by veteran teachers to ensure that they meet educational guidelines and standards. Although the directory is advertisement free, the sites linked from it are usually not.

"Mouse Mischief integrates into Microsoft PowerPoint 2010 and Microsoft Office PowerPoint 2007, letting you insert questions, polls, and drawing activity slides into your lessons. Students can actively participate in these lessons by using their own mice to click, circle, cross out, or draw answers on the screen. " Nice looking free add on. Downloaded, some templates to get started, but now I need some more mice to test it out.

Google Sidewiki allows you to contribute helpful information next to any webpage!   · Publish helpful information about any web page right in your browser  · Read insights in context from Sidewiki entries added by others  · Share Sidewiki entries through Blogger, Facebook, Twitter and Google profiles

Free online technologies are changing adult education by offering the ability to use free online tools to support collaboration and completing class work. The list is long in regards to the number of online programs which support adult students in their quest for learning in adult education. The sheer number of these online software programs continues to grow almost daily. A review of several of these programs has narrowed the list down to a few which are beneficial to adult students, because they ease their work load and collaboration efforts with fellow classmates.

Is this the direction textbooks will take in the near future? The content is important and is the center of this idea. It's also slightly portable (downloadable, accessible on up t o3 computers, and able to print 30%). This site makes annotations possible and more importantly sharable! The content is supported by learning communities! I like this idea; you even have the possibility of sharing beyond your classroom walls. 

Examples of how social media can be used for 5 types of learning: IOL - Intra-Organisational Learning - how social media can be used to  keep the employees up to date and up to speed on strategic and other internal initiatives and activities FSL - Formal Structured Learning - how educators (teachers, trainers, learning designers) as well as students can use social media within formal education and training GDL - Group Directed Learning - how groups of individuals - teams, projects, study groups etc - can use social media to work and learn together (Note: a "group" could be as small as two people, so coaching and mentoring falls into this category) PDL - Personal Directed Learning - how individuals can use social media to organise and manage their own personal or professional learning ASL - Accidental & Serendipitous Learning - how individuals, by using social media, can learn without consciously realising it (aka incidental or random learning)