Bloggers spend significant time pushing their own thinking—and having their thinking pushed by others. They respond to comments and link to other writers, connecting to and creating interesting ideas. Some develop curriculum and instructional materials together. Others review resources and debate the merits of the individual tools of teaching. Philosophical conversations about what works in schools are common as teachers talk about everything from homework and grading practices to school and district policies that affect teaching and learning. Blogs become a forum for public articulation—and public articulation is essential for educators interested in refining and revising their thinking about teaching and learning.
That's when I introduce them to RSS (Really Simple Syndication) feed readers.
To learn more, check out Educator FAQ & Getting Started Guide.
Spread the word! Tell your friends to join you in the Diigo education community.
email a colleague! post to twitter!
You can create student accounts for an entire class with just a few clicks (and student email addresses are optional for account creation)
Students of the same class are automatically set up as a Diigo group so they can start using all the benefits that a Diigo group provides, such as group bookmarks and annotations, and group forums.
Privacy settings of student accounts are pre-set so that only teachers and classmates can communicate with them.
Ads presented to student account users are limited to education-related sponsors.
Learn More »
Diigo's "group forums" are threaded, allowing users to start new strands or to reply to strands started by others.
powerful learning depends on the quality of the conversation that develops around the content being studied together.
This handout--including a description of each role and a group sign-up sheet---can be used with student social bookmarking efforts:
Handout_SocialBookmarkingRoles.pdf
Captain Cannonball should find four or five key points in a shared reading to highlight and craft initial questions for other readers to consider
hallenging the thinking of peers in the conversation. Directly responding to comments made by others, the Provocateur works to remind everyone that there are two sides to every story.
for connections. Middle Men
question statements made and conclusions drawn throughout a shared reading.
dentify important "takeaways" that a group can learn from
Fred,
What an incredible resource. It has changed my thinking about collaborative annotation technologies. Thank you!
-tbf
Todd Finley
http://bit.ly/Hfs8N
The driving force behind the Web 2.0 revolution is a spirit of intellectual philanthropy and collective intelligence that is made possible by new technologies for communication, collaboration and information management. One of the best examples of collective intelligence in action are the wide range of social bookmarking applications that have been embraced in recent years.
While we all agree that the five-year-old unnarrated PowerPoint is a dangerous and ineffective piece of content in an online course, we would also all agree that we can’t redo each narrated piece of content each semester. How do we strike a balance between creating content that is fresh (more on that in a moment) and being able to reuse content that is valuable?
Addressing issues in reusing online course content
For teachers it makes them participate in the content, revisit the content they created in the past, and make it delivered in a “present” time for the students. For students it tells them that the teacher “was just here,” and that this stuff is happening now. It makes the content seem more relevant, and helps build a sense of community in the course.
By creating content that has elements of real time associated with it, instructors can generate a sense of presence and freshness that are often missing in online courses.
A sense of time is created in discussion boards because they have only that
week to complete the work and there is an understanding that the conversations
happen in time. But often asynchronous discussions have wide gaps of time
between student interactions. One way to bring time closer to the students is to
allow them to subscribe to forum threads they are involved in. You can do this
in most LMS solutions. Students get an email alerting them to activity in the
thread they are active in and it brings them closer “in real time” to the events
happening in the class. While this can be overwhelming in larger courses, in a
class of 20 or 30 students it usually does not amount to an unreasonable amount
of email notifications.
One of the most effective ways to bring timeliness to an online course is do
a quick recap of previous week, as well as provide a preview of what is expected
for the current week. Using screen capture software to go through the course and
set expectations is a great way to not only share a bit of yourself with
students, but it is a pre-emptive way to answer questions students commonly
ask.
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:
Ten practical suggestions for regular-education teachers as they plan instruction with their special-education, Title I, or English language specialist co-teachers
An interesting on filtering GAFE with objectionable content (based on word lists) and examples of word lists/policies. Some of the features discussed not available are now available in GAFE Admin. Setup (Email blocks, quarantines, etc.) Here is a video by Google Guru showing the setup. http://goo.gl/ejC3Eq
"Vyew allows you to meet and share content in real-time or anytime. Upload images, files, documents and videos into a room. Users can access and contribute at anytime.
Why use Vyew?
It's easy - no installations.
It's compatible - PC, Mac, Linux, powerpoints, documents, images, videos, mp3's, flash files.
It's FREE! - Our free version is free forever. Unlimited use with up to 10 people. What's the catch? It's ad supported.
Conferencing features - whiteboarding, video conferencing, screen sharing, Voice-over-IP.
Collaboration features - continuous rooms are always saved and always-on. Contextual discussion forums, voice-notes, track and log activity.
Take A Tour
Sign Up Free
Log In
Join a Meeting
Learn More:
FAQs
Product Pricing
Product Comparison Chart
Complete Feature List
Enterprise Appliance
What people are saying
I've used other prohibitively expensive online meeting software and this beats their pants off in ease of use/price/features.
-Joel, Vyew Customer
Recent News/Articles
New changes to Vyew (Aug 1, 2011)
New changes to Vyew (May 10, 2011)
Crafting a Clear Message (online presentations)
Vyew featured in Google Chrome's Web Store
Better (Online) Presentations in 5 Steps
Vyew 4 - Open to the Public
Vyew 4.0 Interface Overview
"
A great site for collaborating online. Work on documents together in real time, video chat and share your screen with others are just a few features that make this a great site for tutoring, meetings and webinars.
http://ictmagic.wikispaces.com/ICT+&+Web+Tools
COURSE OBJECTIVES:
This is a graded internship that allows you to integrate your own coursework with a hands-on service learning experience.
The central objective of this course is to provide students with community experiences and reflection opportunities that
examine community needs, the importance of civic engagement, and social justice issues affecting ethnic minorities and
marginalized populations in contemporary American society. Students dedicate 70 hours at a pre-approved site
(including Title I K-12 schools, youth programs, health services, social services, environmental programs, government
agencies, etc.) directly serving a population in need or supporting activities that contribute to the greater good of our
community. A weekly seminar, course readings, discussions, and reflection assignments facilitate critical thinking and a
deeper understanding of cultural diversity, citizenship, and how to contribute to positive social change in our community.
The course is also designed to provide "real-world" experiences that exercise academic skills and knowledge applicable to
each student‟s program of study and career exploration.
STUDENT LEARNING OBJECTIVES:
Student will be introduced to essential skills associated with their baccalaureate studies to actively serve the local
community. While completing this in-depth study of cultural diversity, citizenship and social justice issues facing our
community, students will gain an understanding of the value of Social Embeddedness and the importance of incorporating
civic engagement into their collegiate careers, as they strive to become civically engaged students. Students will be
introduced to inequalities, discrimination, and other community issues facing ethnic minorities and marginalized
populations, as well as the correlation with greater societal issues.
INTERNSHIP RESPONSIBILITIES:
Service hours - 70 hours of community outreach (spread throughout the semester in which you are enrolled in
the course)
This explains, in real terms, why I've had so much struggle with online reading! Very interesting article.
Because of these preferences—and because getting away from multipurpose screens improves concentration—people consistently say that when they really want to dive into a text, they read it on paper
This is backed up by a recent article: Faris, Michael J., and Stuart A. Selber. "E-Book Issues In Composition: A Partial Assessment And Perspective For Teachers." Composition Forum 24.(2011): ERIC. Web. 31 Mar. 2013.
Surveys and consumer reports also suggest that the sensory experiences typically associated with reading—especially tactile experiences—matter to people more than one might assume.
When reading a paper book, one can feel the paper and ink and smooth or fold a page with one's fingers; the pages make a distinctive sound when turned; and underlining or highlighting a sentence with ink permanently alters the paper's chemistry.
discernible size, shape and weight.
Although many old and recent studies conclude that people understand what they read on paper more thoroughly than what they read on screens, the differences are often small. Some experiments, however, suggest that researchers should look not just at immediate reading comprehension, but also at long-term memory.
When taking the quiz, volunteers who had read study material on a monitor relied much more on remembering than on knowing, whereas students who read on paper depended equally on remembering and knowing.
E-ink is easy on the eyes because it reflects ambient light just like a paper book, but computer screens, smartphones and tablets like the iPad shine light directly into people's faces.
the American Optometric Association officially recognizes computer vision syndrome.
People who took the test on a computer scored lower and reported higher levels of stress and tiredness than people who completed it on paper.
Although people in both groups performed equally well on the READ test, those who had to scroll through the continuous text did not do as well on the attention and working-memory tests.
Subconsciously, many people may think of reading on a computer or tablet as a less serious affair than reading on paper. Based on a detailed 2005 survey of 113 people in northern California, Ziming Liu of San Jose State University concluded that people reading on screens take a lot of shortcuts—they spend more time browsing, scanning and hunting for keywords compared with people reading on paper, and are more likely to read a document once, and only once.
When reading on screens, people seem less inclined to engage in what psychologists call metacognitive learning regulation—strategies such as setting specific goals, rereading difficult sections and checking how much one has understood along the way
Perhaps she and her peers will grow up without the subtle bias against screens that seems to lurk in the minds of older generations.
They think of using an e-book, not owning an e-book,"
Participants in her studies say that when they really like an electronic book, they go out and get the paper version.
When it comes to intensively reading long pieces of plain text, paper and ink may still have the advantage. But text is not the only way to read.
In this forum, seven experts discuss the questions, Why do bestselling young adult novels seem darker in theme now than in past years? What’s behind this dystopian trend, and why is there so much demand for it?
Connecting “The Giver” to Other Dystopian Literature
New York Times discussion of why young adults read dystopian stories such as "The Giver." The Author talks about the book and a panel of 8 experts discuss dystopian literature. Exercises are provided that students can use when studying such stories and novels.
"Moving from one school to another is a seminal moment in the lives of young people. Ensuring a smooth start can change how a pupil sees school, their education and their future. Preparing adquently for a new school, or even a new school year is vitial… and that is just the teachers!"
Please ask your teacher to mentor you all on how to post here. This is not a classroom board, it is a public, world-wide forum for serious researchers. Please do not litter it.
Checklist to use before embarking on a blogging project with students
