Various keyboarding sites for students of all ages. Typing Web: Typing Tutor is better for older students. Dance Mat typing is one of the most fun sites for younger students.
"This online program will assist you with learning and improving your typing speed!" - check out this program for your class/school. Free and inexpensive paid versions.
"This online program will assist you with learning and improving your typing speed!" - check out this program for your class/school. Free and inexpensive paid versions.
For me, commenting is no different from any other type of writing, driven by the same goals and motivations. Writing is, first and foremost, about audience, purpose, and context. This means, of course, that commenting is about the potential for more explicit/direct engagement in ways that other more formal writing opportunities are not. This means, to me, that the writing (the commenting) requires both a more direct and a more nuanced consideration of audience, purpose, and context.
Read more about commenting and interacting with others in blogging and other online conversations.
Snaggy is a web-based tool for drawing on, annotating, and sharing screen captures. To draw or write on your screen capture just paste your screen capture image into Snaggy. Snaggy offers tools for highlighting a section of your screen capture, typing on it, and drawing free-hand on your image. You can also use Snaggy to crop your image. When you're ready to share your screen capture, Snaggy assigns is a custom url that you can Tweet, email, or post anywhere you like. Snaggy lets you save your edited screen captures to your computer too.
Socrative is a student response system that leverages the use of smartphones, laptops and tablets by having students respond to questions in various quiz and game formats. Almost instantaneously, student responses are populated and can be viewed by the entire class. No matter what format you use, Socrative is a fun and easy way for students to receive immediate feedback and for teachers to collect marks.
Here is a nice tutorial: http://youtu.be/EIn0FUzyDuE
Here are some examples created by an English teacher you may want to import and try out:
SOC-256509 - Poetic Devices
SOC-256496 - Types of Poems
SOC-90777 - Short Story Terms #1
SOC-93415 - Short Story Terms #2
SOC-93503 - Short Story Terms #3
"The world is full of noise and those that are the loudest are the ones we tend to follow but what about the quiet ones?
Author Susan Cain shines a spotlight on introverts and reveals how over time our society has come to look to extroverts as leaders. Not suggesting that one is better than the other, Susan argues that the world needs an equal space between introverts and extroverts; that an innovative, creative world wouldn't be the same without the two coming together."
How can we help students and teachers take advantage of this intersection of introverts and extroverts? How can we effect leadership with these two personality types?
If you use primary source documents in your classroom, the Library of Congress Teacher's Page is a site you should check out. A part of the Teacher's Page is the primary source center. The primary source center walks teachers through the process of locating documents on the Library of Congress' site. The primary source center also provides guides for using various types of primary sources including political cartoons, photographs, and oral histories. Check it out!
Amazon provides 5 GB of free online storage (about 1000 songs; 2000 photos) - all file types. The great part about Amazon Cloud Drive is that you can stream your music - and from your Android phone. Unlimited access from any computerOther plans available - 20GB for $20/yr (4000 songs; 8,000 photos)
"At the end of the day, the questions we ask ourselves determine the type of people we become." As we look to guide students and mentor/encourage other professionals, we have to get honest with ourselves and do some personal reflection. These questions challenged me to rethink some things for sure.
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That rethinking revolves around a fundamental question: When we have an easy connection to the people and resources we need to learn whatever and whenever we want, what fundamental changes need to happen in schools to provide students with the skills and experiences they need to do this type of learning well?
How can we shift curriculum and pedagogy to more effectively help students form and answer their own questions, develop patience with uncertainty and ambiguity, appreciate and learn from failure, and develop the ability to go deeply into the subjects about which they have a passion to learn?
Everyone follows a rubric that covers such areas as standards, learning outcomes, artifact explanation, blog posts, learning activities, work ethic, and research. Personalized learning like this requires students to reflect deeply on their effort and assess their work and progress, a fundamental part of developing the skills and dispositions to continue learning after the class ends.
In other words, the truly personal, self-directed learning that we can now pursue in online networks and communities differs substantially from the "personalized" opportunities that some schools are opening up to students. Although it might be an important first step in putting students on a path to a more self-directed, passionate, relevant learning life, it may not bring about the true transformation that many see as the potential of this moment.
However, it may be the place we need to start with students who haven't had the opportunity to learn the skills to handle personal learning structures, including the self-discipline required to sustain their pursuit of learning.
personal learning means making our own choices about what we wish to play or learn with, whom we wish to learn with or from, where we want to do this learning, when we prefer to learn or play, and how we want to learn.
Despite the promise of personalizing learning and some teachers' best efforts to give their students more agency in the education process, many educators wonder whether the concept goes far enough in preparing students for the wide array of learning opportunities outside the classroom.
The goal is about eliminating obstacles to the exercise of this right—whether the obstacle is the structure and scheduling of the school day, the narrow divisions of subject, the arbitrary separation of learners by age, or others—rather than supplying or rearranging resources. (p. 6)
Anytime Anywhere Learning Foundation
In this era of access, personalizing learning means allowing students to choose their own paths through the curriculum. For schools and teachers, it means connecting our expectations to students' passions and interests as learners.
Will Richardson explores this idea: "By pairing personalized learning and technology, a teacher can help students learn what they need to learn through the topics that interest them most." How does "personal learning" fit into the structures we have in school learning environments?