Group items tagged

SMILE - Social Media in Learning & Education - A short update on my involvement in this project from European Schoolnet supported by a Digital Citizenship Research Grant from Facebook.

More of a "what is" than a "how to" but this post offers several links to more information all of which is geared towards language educators and learners. 

Lists of learning tasks matched with apps and Bloom's - Math, reading, storytelling, writing, language arts, social studies, and science.

Framework for Teaching, Learning and Assessment CCSO has announced it will not be seeking a multi-state collaboration on developing this into core content standards

issue of history of racism, American exceptionalism

Songs based on science, social studies, and math concepts.

Does Edmodo's Digital Citizen Starter Kit handle the challenge of educating kids to be good digital citizens? The answer is "Yes!" according to Bianca Hewes, a high school English teacher in Sydney, Australia who's also been doing awesome things with Edmodo since 2009 (including connecting 30 of her students with registered Edmodo teachers in the US, South America and England to mentor their individual writing projects). "Edmodo is a social network with training wheels," says Bianca. "By introducing it at a young age, teachers are able to develop the habits of the mind that are essential for students to be good digital citizens. Students learn to use appropriate language, to speak kindly and with compassion, to be supportive rather than critical, and to ask thoughtful questions."

Young students use Facebook in the classroom What do you think?

Poor idea. First of all, it models disrespect for terms of service: One item on Facebook's terms of service page says "You will not use Facebook if you are under 13." Second, we know from a growing body of psychological and neuroscience research that once people (esp young people) have developed friends networks, that they spend hours and hours of their time at home doing facebook, at the expense of real-time face-to-face socializing, exercise, and homework. The quality of work they do goes down dramatically when they switch back and forth from Facebook to their homework (the Facebooking activity impairs their ability to remember what they were doing before they switched). This can also contribute to sleep deprivation, which itself results in a whole host of poor health/cognitive problems. A better alternative: teaching kids alternative exciting ways of social networking and working collaboratively online that don't have the massive distraction factor of Facebook: teach them how to make flip videos and post them on drop box; teach them how to make wikis; use a Ning social network; teach them how to use Google Docs, forms, etc. Teach them how to use Diigo! Even teaching them how to twitter is a wiser idea. . . just.

Digital magazine from Stanford University highlights interesting and challenging stories of innovation. Could be a great kick-starter for project-based learning or to engage kids in innovative and critical thinking.