Innovative technology and marketing strategies might be able to nudge students toward better decisions without limiting their freedom to choose. For example, it would be much easier for students to identify and compare relevant courses if academic catalogs were less like phone books and more like, say, Netflix.
Then students could interactively search and browse on dimensions like course subject, timing, difficulty, prerequisites, major requirements or instructor ratings. Over time, students could be offered personalized suggestions based on their previous choices. New students could even be offered the equivalent of a prix fixe menu, offering a limited selection of prepackaged pathways while still allowing students to choose à la carte.
designed to help you find and watch documentary films online. You can browse through 1700+ films on Free Documentary TV or enter search terms to find a film of interest to you. The majority of the films are served through the YouTube player so you can watch them on Free Documentary TV or on YouTube.
Applications for Education
If you're looking for a good documentary film to use in your classroom, give Free Documentary TV a try. If you do find a film that you like and it's hosted on YouTube, I recommend using View Pure to display it in your classroom without showing the "related content" and advertisements that appear on YouTube.
Using images from Wylio embeds the photographer's atribution beneath the photo. Most photos I've browsed come from flickr. Embed code is free, downloads cost $ monthly.
"Dakota Exile" 55:59 min
http://www.mnvideovault.org/index.php?id=8009&select_index=0&popup=yes
Beginning in 1862, the federal and state government began to drive the Dakota people from MN. The story of their exile is told through the words of Dakota elders and tribal historians.
"In a brave new world of learning, OER content is made free to use or share, and in some cases, to change and share again, made possible through licensing, so that both teachers and learners can share what they know.
Browse and search OER Commons to find curriculum, and tag, rate, and review it for others."
Feed readers
are probably the most important digital tool for today's learner because they
make sifting through the amazing amount of content added to the Internet
easy. Also known as aggregators, feed readers are free tools that can
automatically check nearly any website for new content dozens of times a
day---saving ridiculous amounts of time and customizing learning experiences for
anyone.
Imagine
never having to go hunting for new information from your favorite sources
again. Learning goes from a frustrating search through thousands of
marginal links written by questionable characters to quickly browsing the
thoughts of writers that you trust, respect and enjoy.
Feed readers can
quickly and easily support blogging in the classroom, allowing teachers to
provide students with ready access to age-appropriate sites of interest that are
connected to the curriculum. By collecting sites in advance and organizing
them with a feed reader, teachers can make accessing information manageable for
their students.
Here are several
examples of feed readers in action:
Used specifically as
a part of one classroom project, this feed list contains information related to
global warming that students can use as a starting point for individual
research.
While there are literally dozens of different feed reader
programs to choose from (Bloglines andGoogle Reader are two
biggies), Pageflakes is a favorite of
many educators because it has a visual layout that is easy to read and
interesting to look at. It is also free and web-based. That
means that users can check accounts from any computer with an Internet
connection. Finally, Pageflakes makes it quick and easy to add new
websites to a growing feed list—and to get rid of any websites that users are no
longer interested in.
What's even
better: Pageflakes has been developinga teacher version of their tooljust for us that includes an online grade tracker,
a task list and a built in writing tutor. As Pageflakes works to perfect
its teacher product, this might become one of the first kid-friendly feed
readers on the market. Teacher Pageflakes users can actually blog and create a
discussion forum directly in their feed reader---making an all-in-one digital
home for students.
For more
information about the teacher version of Pageflakes, check out this
review:
ou toggle over to check your phone during even the smallest pause in real life. You feel those phantom vibrations even when no one is texting you. You have trouble concentrating for long periods.
This is a connection for me to the technology and devices article we read today and did a quotation mingle around during our Disciplinary Literacy Institute. No kidding that we get a shot of dopamine or 'high' when our phone goes ding, or it vibrates.
Online life is so delicious
You live in a state of perpetual anticipation because the next social encounter is just a second way.
xpert online gamers have a great capacity for short-term memory, to process multiple objects simultaneously, to switch flexibly between tasks and to quickly process rapidly presented information.
Research at the University of Oslo and elsewhere suggests that people read a printed page differently than they read off a screen. They are more linear, more intentional, less likely to multitask or browse for keywords.
Group items tagged 
Checklist to use before embarking on a blogging project with students