Four Corners and Anticipation Guides:Both of these techniques “activate schema” by asking students to react in some way to a series of controversial statements about a topic they are about to study. In Four Corners, students move around the room to show their degree of agreement or disagreement with various statements — about, for instance, the health risks of tanning, or the purpose of college, or dystopian teen literature. An anticipation guide does the same thing, though generally students simply react in writing to a list of statements on a handout. In this warm-up to a lesson on some of the controversies currently raging over school reform, students can use the statements we provide in either of these ways.
Gallery Walks:A rich way to build background on a topic at the beginning of a unit (or showcase learning at the end), Gallery Walks for this purpose are usually teacher-created collections of images, articles, maps, quotations, graphs and other written and visual texts that can immerse students in information about a broad subject. Students circulate through the gallery, reading, writing and talking about what they see.
Making Text-to-Text/Text-to-Self/Text-to-World connectionsCharting Debatable IssuesListing Facts/Questions/ResponsesIdentifying Cause and EffectSupporting Opinions With FactsTracking The Five W’s and an HIdentifying Multiple Points of ViewIdentifying a Problem and SolutionComparing With a Venn Diagram
The One-Pager:Almost any student can find a “way in” with this strategy, which involves reacting to a text by creating one page that shows an illustration, question and quote that sum up some key aspect of what a student learned.
“Popcorn Reads”:Invite students to choose significant words, phrases or whole sentences from a text or texts to read aloud in random fashion, without explanation. Though this may sound pointless until you try it, it is an excellent way for students to “hear” some of the high points or themes of a text emerge, and has the added benefit of being an activity any reader can participate in easily.
Illustrations:Have students create illustrations for texts they’re reading, either in the margins as they go along, or after they’ve finished. The point of the exercise is not, of course, to create beautiful drawings, but to help them understand and retain the information they learn.
Update | Feb. 2012: We'll be exploring the new Common Core State Standards, and how teaching with The Times can address them, through a series of blog posts. You can find them all here, tagged "the NYT and the CCSS."
Sci2ools is a free online suite of productivity tools that are very useful for your daily use such as, Convert scanned documents into editable text - OCR, Convert Latex equations to high resolution images to embed in documents, Convert web page to printer friendly PDF, Convert web page to high resolution image or wallpaper, Split and Merge PDF, Extract Images from PDF as JPEG, Convert PDF to Thumbnails, Text, or Postscript, Repair Corrupted PDF if possible, Convert Office Documents to PDF, Image Converter, Converts Latex Documents to RTF, and much more.
During the last
six or so years I have created a number of 'how-to' documents and presentations
for a variety of web based and related technologies. They are available from the
various workshop web pages however I thought it might prove helpful to link to
all the documents from a single page. Some of my workshop participants have referred to
these documents as 'cheat sheets'.
~ www.larkin.net.au
~
| Welcome | About Me | Technology | History | Galleries |
Music | Blog
|
Presentation and workshop documents
During the last
six or so
years I have created a number of 'how-to' documents and presentations
for a
variety of web based and related technologies. They are available from
the
various workshop web pages however I
thought it might prove helpful to link to
all the
documents
from a single page. Some of my workshop participants have referred to
these
documents as 'cheat sheets'.
Web
2.0Read~Write Web Overview Information
sharing
Si os dedicáis de forma habitual a subrayar los fragmentos más importantes de documentos en PDF, Sumnotes os será de gran utilidad. Permite exportar el texto subrayado en formato Word, plano o Evernote
published by EDUCAUSE, 2012 - asks "How can we reach more learners, more effectively, and with greater impact?" also....
* How will your institution negotiate the new geography of learning?
* In a world where information is always accessible, how will teaching and learning change?
* What will constitute an institution of higher education in the future?
* How do we ready our institutions, our students, and ourselves for what higher education can-and must-become?
'Game Changers: Education and Information Technologies explores the tools and processes that can improve the quality, flexibility, and scalability of postsecondary education. The book takes a hard look at the education landscape today and asks what that landscape might look like tomorrow. It asks important questions and pushes us to open our minds about how technology will shape the universe of possibility for tomorrow's students'
Edited by Diane G. Oblinger
For a full report, see the work done by Apollo Research Institute (formerly the University of Phoenix Research Institute) looking at the Skills Needed by 2020. A summery of the report and detailed findings about each of the skills are also available.
Shape of Jobs to Come: Possible New Careers Emerging from Advances in Science and Technology (2010 – 2030) full study from FastFuture is also very insightful (summary of study).
However, e-readers must be significantly improved to have the same value in a teaching environment as traditional paper texts, participants said.
but they also said the ability to highlight directly on traditional text, to take notes and flip pages for ease in navigation suffers in the e-reader.
With hopes of assisting industry with the refinement of e-readers, and providing useful information to other academic institutions considering the devices, information and data from the one-time pilot have been compiled on an Office of Information Technology (OIT) website.
About 65 percent of the participants in the pilot said they would not buy another e-reader now if theirs was broken. Almost all the participants said they were interested in following the technology to its next stages, because they think a device that works well in academia would be worth having.
"I found the device difficult to use and not conducive to academic purposes," he said, and added, "But I can see how it can be used for pleasure reading."
What they liked best about the devices was:
the battery life, the wireless connection and the portability of the e-reader;
the fact that all the course reading was on one device;
the ability to search for content; and
the legibility of the screen, including the fact it could be read in full sunlight.
The top five suggestions students had for improving e-readers were:
improving the ability to highlight and annotate PDF files;
improving the annotation tools;
providing a folder structure to keep similar readings together;
improving the highlighting function; and
improving the navigation within and between documents on the reader (including having more than one document open at the same time for comparison).
"The Kindle would be better for an academic setting if the PDF format worked more effectively,"
"There would be a greater benefit realized if the devices could develop a better way to deliver the ubiquitous PDF document, which is used by many journals and libraries to deliver documents, and is the common format in which dissertations and theses are published and read by faculty," Temos said. "Some students said they spent a considerable amount of time printing PDF documents during the semester, and hardly ever referred back to them once the semester was over. I don't expect that is unusual."
Sismic map of Iberic Peninsula, related to Lorca's yesterday Earthquake
Mapa Sismologico de la Peninsula Iberica, recurso para el aula para tratar el Terremoto de Lorca
New report from Center on Education and the Workforce, Georgetown University, September 2012, by Anthony P. Carnevale, Tamara Jayasundera, Andrew R. Hanson -
Daniela Fairchild of the Thomas B. Fordham Institute writes in The Education Gadfly Weekly:
"At 31 percent, the United States currently ranks second among OECD nations-behind Norway-for the percentage of its workforce with a four-year college education. That's the good news. The bad news is that we rank sixteenth for the percentage of our workforce with a sub-baccalaureate education (think: postsecondary and industry-based certificates, associate's degrees). Yet a swath of jobs in America calls for just that sort of preparation, which often begins in high school. Dubbed "middle jobs" in this report by the Center on Education and the Workforce, these employment opportunities pay at least $35,000 a year and are divided among white- and blue-collar work. Yet they are largely ignored in our era of "college for all." In two parts, this report delineates five major categories of career and technical education (CTE), then lists specific occupations that require this type of education. It's full of facts and figures and an excellent resource for those looking to expand rigorous CTE in the U.S. Most importantly, it presents this imperative: Collect data on students who emerge from these programs. By tracking their job placements and wage earnings, we can begin to rate CTE programs, shutter those that are ineffective, and scale up those that are successful. If CTE is ever to gain traction in the U.S.-and shed the stigma of being low-level voc-tech education for kids who can't quite make it academically-this will be a necessary first step."
by
Stevina Evuleocha, Steve Ugbah
California State University
Abstract
The quest for an ideal medium to deliver business content to Gen Y learners has led instructors
to consider the Internet, since digital content that exists in databases can be manipulated by a
range of programming services (Shim et al., 2006). Shim et al., have also asserted that web
development has been hampered by bandwidth and difficulties of "back end integration,"
consequently, impacting the presentational aspects of data and user interfaces (Yang & Tang,
2005). Innovations in computer and software technologies appear to have ameliorated the
technical difficulties, resulting in the emergence of new media such as podcasting, webcasting,
videostreaming, blogging, and Synchronized Multimedia Integration Language (SMIL)
technologies (Shim, 2002). These new media streams can be integrated into traditional lectures,
thus enhancing the educational environment (McLaughlin, 2006), particularly for Gen Y
learners. This paper discusses the efficacy of podcasting in business education, reviews the
characteristics of Generation Y (Gen Y) learners, discusses learning styles and theories that
support mobile learning, reviews learning styles of Gen Y learners, and discusses whether
adaptations are necessary to address the updated needs of this new generation of learners in the
business communication context.
This website is an excellent resource for finding dietary and physical guideline information. The new Dietary Guidelines were just relesed a few months ago.
Teaching Wikipedia in 5 Easy Steps:
*Use it as background information
*Use it for technology terms
*Use it for current pop cultural literacy
*Use it for the Keywords
*Use it for the REFERENCES at the bottom of the page!
4 ways to use Wikipedia (hint: never cite it)
Teachers: Please stop prohibiting the use of Wikipedia
20 Little Known Ways to Use Wikipedia
Study: Wikipedia as accurate as Encyclopedia Britannica
Schiff, Stacy. “Know it all: Can Wikipedia conquer expertise?” The New Yorker, February 26, 2006
And:
Yes students, there’s a world beyond Wikipedia
**Several years ago, Nature magazine did a comparison of material available on Wikipedia and Brittanica and concluded that Brittanica was somewhat, but not overwhelmingly, more accurate than Wikipedia. Brittanica lodged a complaint, and here, you can see what it complained about as well as Nature’s response.
Nature compared articles from both organizations on various topics and sent them to experts to review. Per article, the averages were: 2.92 mistakes per article for Britannica and 3.86 for Wikipedia.
-0-
Follow The Answer Sheet every day by bookmarking http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/answer-sheet. And for admissions advice, college news and links to campus papers, please check out our
Higher Education
page. Bookmark it!
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By Valerie Strauss
|
05:00 AM ET, 09/07/2011
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http://platform.twitter.com/widgets/tweet_button.html#_=1315504289567&count=horizontal&counturl=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.washingtonpost.com%2Fblogs%2Fanswer-sheet%2Fpost%2F
Excellent perspective on "The 'W' Word" - use it wisely for what it is - high school and college kids shouldn't be citing any general knowledge encyclopedias for serious research - but that doesn't mean there aren't some excellent uses for it.
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:
Dec 1, 2010
The newest release of iCyte’s groundbreaking research management service lets you save and annotate PDFs (even from your local drive), create, name, search and sort your Cytes more easily, and even backup your projects offline! For a free online training session, contact training@icyte.com.
Listen to work documents, homework, PowerPoint presentations, emails, RSS feeds, blogs and novels while you relax, commute or exercise. Proofread, learn a new language, multi-task, and use YAKiToMe! for entertainment. YAKiToMe! speaks multiple languages (English, Spanish, French, German, ...) with both male and female voices using the world's best text to speech (TTS) synthesis technologies.
A useful time saving resource which makes spoken mp3 files from Word documents, text files, PDFs, RSS feeds, webpages and more. Lots of different languages can be converted.
http://ictmagic.wikispaces.com/ICT+&+Web+Tools
Update | Feb. 2012: We'll be exploring the new Common Core State Standards, and how teaching with The Times can address them, through a series of blog posts. You can find them all here, tagged "the NYT and the CCSS."
A good list of reading strategies for informational text from the New York Times.
