Group items tagged

Facebook is moving back to its roots in education with this morning's big announcement of custom groups for schools called, not surprisingly Groups for Schools. While I'm dubious about how, if, and why individual teachers may want to use the service… it'll be great for entire schools who don't have the budget or resources to build their very own online community. So here's the deal: Facebook will let you have an area of the site where anyone with your school's or district's .edu email address can get in and participate. It's basically the same model that Mark Zuckerberg used to launch the site many moons ago.

Let's CC is not a search engine, but rather offers quick and easy access to search services provided by other independent organizations from one single page just like search.creativecommons.org. CC Korea has no control over the results that are returned and makes no warranties whatsoever regarding the results. If you are in doubt you should contact the copyright holder directly, or try to contact the site where you found the contents. Let's CC uses APIs provided by Fiickr, Jamendo, ccMixter, Youtube and Slideshare, so you can find CC-licensed images, sounds, videos and docs at once with just one click. You can also save your favorite works and add tags to them. They are stored in My Favorites folder, so you can see them anytime you want. On My Favorites page, you can manage previously marked as favorite contents and add tags to them. Moreover, Let's CC contents that have been marked as favorite will appear at the top of the search results so that users will be able to find more relevant contents easily.

Ocean Tracks is an Australian website on which students can view the tracks of marine animals in an online 3D environment. The "tracks" part of Ocean Tracks shows you where in the world tagged animals are swimming or have swum. Ocean Tracks uses the Unity browser plug-in to provide animations of the underwater views of tracked animals. You can see what bluefin tuna, swordfish, sharks, and many other fish see in 3D.

"What follows is an explanation of the Flipped Classroom Model, a model where the video lectures and vodcasts fall within a larger framework of learning activities. (Note: I am titling it the Flipped Classroom Model to get folks' attention given the Flipped Classroom popularity right now.  It really is a cycle of learning model.)  It provides a sequence of learning activities based on the learning theories and instructional models of Experiential Learning Cycles - http://reviewing.co.uk/research/learning.cycles.htm and Bernice McCarthy's 4MAT Cycle of Instruction- http://www.aboutlearning.com/what-is-4mat/what-is-4mat.

YOUSRC is much more than just a programming language. It is also a site where apps written in ELC can be shared with others. All source code (the human readable code that people program in) is freely available so you can see how people did things and learn from their skills.

Edmodo is one of the startups whose name pops up a lot when you talk about "edtech." Founded in 2007, the company is almost old school, yet, in spite of the influx of new education-focused startups, Edmodo continues to press forward. This is largely due to due to its appeal as a social learning platform for K-12 education - one that has earned it the "Facebook for the classroom" moniker - meaning that Edmodo enables teachers to share to share content, manage projects, assignments and notifications, distribute quizzes and events - both among students and colleagues. But the real key, and where it departs from being synonymous with an "educational Facebook," is that all this collaboration and classroom management takes place within a network that it completely private and secure.

Treasure Explorer is a rich educational website where students and teachers contribute socially and engage with Australian history. Treasure Explorer contributes to the National Library's important role of disseminating Australia's cultural heritage, for all Australians. It is an invaluable and creative networking tool for teachers, families and students to share and celebrate knowledge, passion and ideas about Australia. Treasure Explorer also provides an online resource to find out more about the objects, archives and stories represented in the National Library of Australia's Treasures Gallery in Canberra. Treasure Explorer was launched in October 2011. Development of this website was made possible by the generous funding of the Harold Mitchell Foundation.

There is a revolution upon us in the Maker community. Use of computer-controlled construction methods, such as CNC machines, laser cutters, and 3D printers is on the rise and the cost to build these machines from scratch or from a kit continues to come down towards the point where your average household will soon be able to readily download and print objects the same way we download and print off a document. A major jump in this trend comes from the creator of the Solidoodle.

The Internet is becoming our main source of memory instead of our own brains, a study has concluded. In the age of Google, our minds are adapting so that we are experts at knowing where to find information even though we don't recall what it is. The researchers found that when we want to know something we use the Internet as an 'external memory' just as computers use an external hard drive. Nowadays we are so reliant on our smart phones and laptops that we go into 'withdrawal when we can't find out something immediately'. And such is our dependence that having our Internet connection severed is growing 'more and more like losing a friend'.

Nice to know where we stand in the world

Do you dream of a world where you have your choice of laptop, smartphone or tablet at work; all of which connect seamlessly one to another, and are constantly updated? Sitting at your desk, feeling the red mist descend as your ancient XP desktop computer tries and fails to open your inbox, this might seem like an impossible dream. But for some people that day is already here. Continue reading the main story Special Report: The Technology of Business Road warriors struggle to get connected India's richest shrine goes green Can shipping go green? Mall v internet: Mid East goes online Authors going it alone and online Indian internet seeks the masses But there could be a catch.

Many of our staff have access to iPads and are keen to use these as part of their teaching. Some are exploring the use of Google Docs, some are exploring the Ultranet and some are exploring other options. The question of privacy and security of information was raised with regards to access to information that is stored within 'the cloud'. This lead to me completing a bit of an investigation of DEECD and Victorian Government policies on where we stand with regards to storing information online using Google Docs, Evernote and other web based applications.

Every once and a while something comes along that causes me to wonder: Why isn't everyone using this (or something like it)? I look around college classrooms and libraries I find people using the usual suspects of programs:  MS Word and Pages.  I use Pages too, but it's only really good for the final composition of a paper, and it's a terrible research and note taking tool (it's a word processor, not a note taking tool). I've come to the point where nearly all my studies are done with Evernote.  I know there are are a ton of other programs out there (like Zotero, Scrivener, OneNote etc...) and this is not to say that those aren't good programs (I use Zotero with Amazon.com to make bibliographies super easy - but Zotero's note taking tool feels tacked on), but I just happen to use Evernote, heavily.  If you're a student and you are not using something like Evernote, you are probably missing out on being more productive and doing better work.

"Zopler is a social network where writers, authors and students can easily collaborate on writing stories together as a group."

Decision: To use the Notebook, The Tablet or my iPhone. I think to myself. How do other people view Twitter? Where are they? Who are they and how often to they check Twitter and for how long. I guess this line of thought is why I became a Geographer. Then I thought to myself. I have all the resources I need in my hand to answer these questions. It's nearly lunchtime so I'll post a 24 hours survey, tweet a few invites to participate and tomorrow lunch I can check the results. So I did. Below are the results and some discussion from #WhoTweets. I would like to acknowledge all those who responded and retweeted to the invite to participate. 97 Respondents is a great result. Thank you everyone.

I was preparing a presentation for differentiating mathematics using technology recently, and ended up editing a TED talk by Salman Khan. What struck me was Khan's idea that technology can humanise the classroom - which, as Khan acknowledges, is in some ways counterintuitive. Indeed, when I talk to teachers about technology in the classroom, they have visions of a very inhuman scenario, where students have their eyes glued to the screens, interacting with noone. I'd argue that many things that currently happen in traditional classrooms are dehumanizing; however, we don't see them this way because that's how classrooms have always been. I'd also argue that technology can humanize these experiences. Here are four things I've invested time and effort into that have humanized the classroom.

"Julia Gardiner is taking photos of what appear to be the most mundane objects - sugar bowls and random wall shots - in the cafe where we meet for a chat. But she's an Instagrammer, one of a growing number of people using their smartphones to take pictures of the world around them and then uploading them for the world to see."

"This movie has been put together as a summary of what I see as my role as a teacher. It includes some of the highlights of teaching over the last 12 months. It will be shared with participants at the ICTEV conference in Melbourne on May 26th where I will be honoured with the ICTEV Teacher/Educator of the Year Award 2012"

KustomNote is a customisable note creation space where you can develop templates that can be quickly uploaded to Evernote with ease. You can start with a blank template or use one from the KustomNote community. With drop down and other SmartField assistants and Icon stamps and other features you can make appealing templates for recording all manner of reflections and observations, perfect for evaluation records and much more.