Group items tagged

Peter DeWitt questions why we do not make better use of blogs to support learning. He provides a number of possibilities, including curation, media literacy, student voice, assessing learning, collaboration and artistic freedom.

This is a freebie from Edudemic looking at how the iPad can be used under three columns, consume, collaborate, produce. Interesting as a starter document.

You may know TED, not as the guy from marketing, but as the nonprofit organization devoted to "Ideas Worth Spreading" - or as the set of global conferences, Talks, and videos that touch on the many heady, relevant issues surrounding Technology, Entertainment, and Design. As an increasingly powerful medium through which the world's experts share their hard-won knowledge, TED is also an educator. In March, the organization launched the first phase of its "TED-Ed" initiative, in practice a series of a dozen short animated YouTube videos "created for high school students and lifelong learners," in the big picture an invitation to teachers to collaborate with TED to create more effective video lessons that can be used in classrooms.

Too often the conversation surrounding the flipped classroom focuses on the videos- creating them, hosting them, and assessing student understanding of the content via simple questions or summary assignments. I wish the conversation focused more on what actually happens in a flipped classroom. If we move lecture or the transfer of knowledge online to create time and space in the physical classroom, how are we using that time to improve learning for students? What is our role as the teacher in the flipped classroom? How are we maximizing the potential of the group when students are together to design collaborative, creative, student-centered activities and assignments? This is the part I want to hear more about!

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.

Over the past couple of years, I've been trying to collect every good piece of writing and advice about verifying social media content and other types of information that flow across networks. This form of verification involves some new tools and techniques, and requires a basic understanding of the way networks operate and how people use them. It also requires many of the so-called old school values and techniques that have been around for a while: being skeptical, asking questions, tracking down high quality sources, exercising restraint, collaborating and communicating with team members. Post also contains a great Slideshare.

Hojoki's basic idea is very simple: they offer one newsfeed for productivity apps. It connects to apps like Google Documents, Evernote, Dropbox, Mendeley and Google Calendar, building you a newsfeed and a collaborative space for your work.

Mobile learning is a relatively new phenomenon and the theoretical basis is currently under development. The paper presents a pedagogical perspective of mobile learning which highlights three central features of mobile learning: authenticity, collaboration and personalisation, embedded in the unique time-space contexts of mobile learning. A pedagogical framework was developed and tested through activities in two mobile learning projects located in teacher education communities: Mobagogy, a project in which faculty staff in an Australian university developed understanding of mobile learning; and The Bird in the Hand Project, which explored the use of smartphones by student teachers and their mentors in the United Kingdom. The framework is used to critique the pedagogy in a selection of reported mobile learning scenarios, enabling an assessment of mobile activities and pedagogical approaches, and consideration of their contributions to learning from a socio-cultural perspective.

Keep a lifetime of learning at your fingertips. Evernote is a great tool for students and teachers to capture notes, save research, collaborate on projects, snap photos of whiteboards, record audio and more. Everything you add to your account is automatically synced and made available on all the computers, phones and tablets you use.

See what it's like to collaborate with famous storytellers. In this interactive demo of Google Docs you are presented with the words used by a famous author from which to write your own story.

Today saw the launch of Microsoft's Office 365 cloud collaboration and communication suite that is specifically aimed at schools and universities, replacing Live@edu, which will remain available for 18 more months to give its customers time to migrate into the newer software, writes Juan Carlos Perez for IDG News.

"See what it's like to collaborate with famous storytellers."

Technology and 21st Century Learning These films look specifically at the ways that the latest digital and mobile technologies can potentially transform the ways that young people communicate, collaborate, and learn.  

The world of education is often defined by the "haves" and "have nots." It is this separation that ultimately drives decisions when it comes to educational technology. Why should students in less affluent districts not be afforded the same opportunities as those with large budgets to utilize technology to create, collaborate, connect, communicate and develop essential media literacies? A BYOT initiative makes sense, as we can leverage a variety of devices that many students already possess. It is how we utilize these student-owned devices in schools that is the key to a successful BYOT initiative.

"This leaves us with the question of how to inspire students to look through Internet search results with tenacity, to approach new technologies that may require more problem-solving skills, and to address tasks that are not as instantaneously gratifying as playing video games. It is our role as teachers to help students develop the skills to problem solve independently and collaboratively use 21st-century skills while not relying on technology to do all of the thinking for them."

"Social media offers some great opportunities for learning in the classroom, bringing together the ability to collaborate, access worldwide resources, and find new and interesting ways to communicate in one easily accessible place. Teachers around the world have found innovative ways to use Twitter as a teaching tool (including TeachThought's favorite), and we've shared many of these great ideas here with you. Read on, and we'll explore 60 inspiring ways that teachers and students can put Twitter to work in the classroom."

"Bre Pettis knows a thing or two about getting things done rather than getting them perfect: He's the founder of Makerbot, a company that turns out cheap rapid prototyping machines. No one would say they've been perfectly realized, but a key to Makerbot's success is that it has evolved in the real world, rather than foundering as just another great idea. With that in mind, Pettis and collaborator Kio Stark gave themselves exactly 20 minutes to create a manifesto encapsulating everything they knew about bring a creative vision to life. They called it The Done Manifesto. Illustrator James Provost then took the extra step of turning their 13 maxims into a poster: "

"Collect text, images, video and audio streams from the web Stop fighting with cut&paste from web pages into text docs Mix content from different pages Organize the content as you like Contextualize adding value Curate also in group to minimize the effort Publish a magazine for each topic you like to curate Share your work on blogs and social accounts Get followed and become an influencer"

SNApps4Kids is a volunteer community of parents, therapists, doctors, and teachers who share information on how we are using the iPad, iPhone, iPod Touch and Android devices with children who have special needs. We have found these mobile devices to provide accessibility for children who may have been previously disengaged from the world because of challenging language, motor, or other developmental delays. Given the rising number of apps on the market and the diverse skills of children with special needs, parents have found each other to be one of the best resources for choosing apps to enhance everyday life for our children. While our group is primarily parent-driven, our efforts are naturally collaborative with the people who help our children develop particular skills - therapists and educators.