Group items tagged

Impressive make-your-own paper toys! Simply print the directions from the site and you have an interesting craft project.

This website allows you to create floor plans for houses. Although it limits you to one floor plan with the free version, you are able to create a floor plan and download or print it, then delete to make a new one. I am excited to try this out in my Spanish classroom when we discuss houses.

A color mixing game (sometimes you need to reload the page to make it work) that is interactive and fun. Players have to make secondary and intermediate color along with tints and shades. 

A blog created by art teachers for art teachers that shares tons of ideas to help make your classroom better. It focuses on technology integration in the art room and has information to keep art teachers up to date on things going on in the field currently. 

Describes how to make presentation software work for students and why if used correctly can enhance their learning process

This post describes how educators can develop a personal learning network that supports meaningful and relevant learning. Makes a distinction between personal learning environment and personal learning network.

I didn't realize there was a difference between PLN's and PLE's. PLN's do seem to take more work and energy to set up and maintain.

I didn't realize there was a difference between PLN's and PLE's. It does seems like PLN's take more work and energy to set up and maintain.

This is the government's take on Communities of Practice, and I included it because like it or not, it impacts many of us on so many levels. The National Education Technology Plan asserts that we need PLC's, and if you have never read this document, it is worth the read. It definitely furthered my knowledge when I read it in EDTECH 501. The bottom line is that because so many students have access to mobile technology, they are able to be a part of social networks. The goal is to harness this power and cultivate collaboration and engaging learning experiences. Its premise is student-centered learning where students are able to make decisions and choices that form their own pathway to learning.

Thanks for including this document. I was impressed to see the progressive views outlined with many strong and important points for changing our education culture. One of the main areas included the need to leverage technology to empower students and shift learning responsibility from teacher to learners. In essence we want to strive to create master learners, where students understand how to evaluate and gain the information they need as life-long learners. The section "Measure what Matters" I especially applauded, as I feel our extreme emphasis on testing is misplaced if we don't make sure the tests and measures are appropriate for what students need to know to be life-long learners. Do standardized tests even have a section about locating information and assessing its validity? This report started out with a short list of recommendations that included, "Be clear in outcomes we seek". I think this is an important point as we strive to embrace and utilize the growing potential of connectivness.

This author is from the Istanbul Kultur University. He reviews and applies connectivism theory research and discusses the methods used within social networking platforms for education purposes. He promotes the idea of the growing need for learning as a connected activity. Since people already use social networking for interacting and communicating personally and professionally, it makes sense that SN platforms be utilized for educational purposes. The author also pointed out a number of challenges in making this a reality. Some of the challenges include lack of training, lack of reliable technology and open access to SN sites, and unreliable information shared on SN sites.

I enjoyed this article very much because it goes deeper on how to integrate technology.

Students create a fake profile for Bill Gates that presents major life moments. "Friends" created by the fakebook page author can comments. Fellow students can also comments, making this a rich resource for research and academic social networking.

"Realfriends" was a social action project created by students who wanted to create a face to face social network to help make the school more social. Students were concerned about cyber bullying and isolation and thought it would be a good idea for the school community to meet face to face.

This website organizes groups of four students to work collaboratively to create a blog. Each student is in charge of writing to the blog for one week, others make comments during their "off" weeks. The cycle continues for 4 months.

This is a blog that highlights innovative ideas. This page emphasizes digital storytelling projects they had students create to promote how amazing the books were that they read. They present their digital analysis of the book in VoiceThread so that other students can make comments and discuss the themes, characters, plots, or whatever they want to share about the book.

This site dicates how facebook, twitter, and youtube were all used as social media for a school platform. While it does not make any strong conclusions it does indicate that it was positive, and how they made it so.

This article from ABC News discusses English teachers' perceptions that their students write more, and write better when social media tools are meaningfully employed.

As PLEs are often positioned as the antithesis (or antidote) to closed institutional based learning management systems, this article title struck me as an oxymoron. The article sets forth several plans for making the existing VLEs (think LMS) systems more like a PLE. This includes a widget store, significant options for customizing appearance and perhaps most interesting, a mechanism for making system data available back to users (where confidentiality is not an issue). Did not see whether or not, post-graduation access to institutional PLE resources will be provided or not, as this is a key issue in my mind.

Authors discuss connectivism as a framework for how students learn. They note that learning is making connections within a personal learning network and knowledge is recognition of these connections. They also note that knowledge is stored outside of the learner. They discuss connectivism and its origins as well as the role of connectivism in the work of librarians. They discuss how connectivism informs pedagogical practices in the library and defines the library as a node within student PLNs.

Exploration of the connectivist theory in relation to library media is the topic of this article. It expresses the idea that connectivism is defined by one's abilities to recognize connections, patterns, and similarities between concepts to construct learning. Dunaway argues that changes in technology, learning, and literacy make it necessary to apply connectivist ideas to library practices.

The author suggests that learning takes place when a learner connects ideas from his/her various personal learning networks. Further, those pieces of information is controlled by information technology. This idea becomes apparent when running the same search in Google, Bing or Yahoo. The author purports that in order for a teacher to be effective, he or she must understand this idea of connectivity and how it impacts a student's learning environment.

This article takes the provocative position that a PLN is *not* the best learning situation for all learners. The authors qualify this, however, explaining "when the technology used to support learning is designed to support a specific learning model, this can often lead to a compulsory learning process that users must follow to reach the course objectives." I am not entirely sure this is a bad thing, however; in formal learning situations, I think it makes sense to have clear objectives, assessments, and learning activities. In informal settings--such as personalized professional development for practicing educators, for example--this point might hold true. The authors explain that individuals' epistemological beliefs affect their willingness to learn in an informal (PLN-based) learning situation. Further, the authors believe that beliefs about the role of technology for learning will impact the learning that can occur in a PLN. I really agree with these ideas!

Interesting article here. There's a hand signal you can use to help students remember the power and importance of PLNs. This could be helpful to teach younger students the "why" they have to be learning these skills in order to make learning meaningful. Student- Thumb; rest of the team depends on them for resources and help. Mentor- Index finger; helps organize and keep the group on task. Expert- Ring finger; ensures accuracy. Advisor- Longest finger; pinpoints needs and identifies necessary changes. Peer- Pinky finger; shares thoughts, communicates frustrations and celebrates when things are successful. Watch the video here: http://videos.videopress.com/lzULinmO/collegeunboundpersonallearningnetwork-hd1_fmt1.ogv

Love it! The hand metaphor is great.. It actually helped me to better understand PLNs myself. "Just as the hand's function is to grasp, hold, and manipulate, making it essential to daily tasks, so is the student support team essential for the same reasons."

I really like this Ryan! Not only is the picture intriguing but the metaphor is great for understanding as well as teaching about PLNs. Good find!