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Contents contributed and discussions participated by J Black

J Black

video on using Google to bust students of plagiarism - 1 views

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    I've been using this method for years now -- it's nice to see someone made a video tutorial of it for other educators and students alike!
J Black

YouTube - Information R/evolution - 0 views

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    Below Information copied from Youtube (written by MWesch) This video explores the changes in the way we find, store, create, critique, and share information. This video was created as a conversation starter, and works especially well when brainstorming w... This video explores the changes in the way we find, store, create, critique, and share information. This video was created as a conversation starter, and works especially well when brainstorming with people about the near future and the skills needed in order to harness, evaluate, and create information effectively. High Quality WMV download: http://www.mediafire.com/?atyamxuyn2p Quicktime: http://www.mediafire.com/?6hqygitsy0v If you are interested in this topic, check out Clay Shirky's work, especially: http://www.shirky.com/writings/ontolo... Also check out David Weinberger's Everything is Miscellaneous: http://www.everythingismiscellaneous.... This video is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 License. So you are welcome to download it, share it, even change it, just as long as you give me some credit and you don't sell it or use it to sell anything.
J Black

eBistro Menu of Modules - 0 views

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    A very interesting site to promote self-paced learning of Web 2.0 technologies for educators! Very creative and well structured.
J Black

National Novel Writing Month - 0 views

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    Following is from Webware.com (overview of service) "National Novel Writing Month National Novel Writing Month is a really neat service. For 11 months out of the year, it's a place where aspiring writers can congregate, discuss books they love, and talk about what kinds of books they plan to write. But in November, it's home to a flurry of activity. During National Novel Writing Month, users write 50,000-word novels. As they hit different milestones, they update their profiles with information on how far along they are. When the story is complete, each qualifying manuscript idea will be added to the site's Winner's page. Winning authors receive a certificate and a Web badge. If they're lucky, an agent or publisher might like their idea, request to read the manuscript, and publish the book in hardcover."
J Black

Welcome | Wordnik - 0 views

shared by J Black on 08 Jun 09 - Cached
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    Fantastic web app to use for ESL classes because it is so much more than a traditional dictionary... "What is Wordnik? Wordnik wants to be a place for all the words, and everything known about them. Traditional dictionaries make you wait until they've found what they consider to be "enough" information about a word before they will show it to you. Wordnik knows you don't want to wait-if you're interested in a word, we're interested too! Our goal is to show you as much information as possible, just as fast as we can find it, for every word in English, and to give you a place where you can make your own opinions about words known. By "information," we don't just mean traditional definitions (although we have plenty of those)! This information could be: * An example sentence-even if we've only found one sentence for a word, we'll show it to you. (And we'll show you where the sentence came from, too! * Related words: not just synonyms and antonyms, but words that are used in the same contexts. (For instance, cheeseburger, milkshake, and doughnut are not synonyms, but they show up in the same kinds of sentences.) * Images tagged by our friends at Flickr: want to know what a "pout" looks like? We'll show you. * Statistics: how rare is "tintinnabulation"? Well, we think you'll see it only about once a year. "Smile"? You might see that word many times, every day. * An audio pronunciation-and you can record your own! * Something YOU tell us! Use the "Contribute" links to tell us something-anything-about a word.
J Black

The End in Mind » A Post-LMS Manifesto - 0 views

  • Technology has and always will be an integral part of what we do to help our students “become.” But helping someone improve, to become a better, more skilled, more knowledgeable, more confident person is not fundamentally a technology problem. It’s a people problem. Or rather, it’s a people opportunity.
  • The problem with one-to-one instruction is that is simply doesn’t scale. Historically, there simply haven’t been enough tutors to go around if our goal is to educate the masses, to help every learner “become.”
  • Through experimental investigation, Bloom found that “the average student under tutoring was about two standard deviations above the average” of students who studied in a traditional classroom setting with 30 other students
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    • J Black
       
      I agree - for example, blogging within a LMS does not allow this, whereas blogging with a known host (Blogger, WP) does help students to connect with others inside and outside of the learning environment/institution.
    • J Black
       
      This is a very profound statement that we should closely look at. Do LMS do nothing more than perpetuate the traditional classroom model?
  • here is, at its very core, a problem with the LMS paradigm. The “M” in “LMS” stands for “management.” This is not insignificant. The word heavily implies that the provider of the LMS, the educational institution, is “managing” student learning. Since the dawn of public education and the praiseworthy societal undertaking “educate the masses,” management has become an integral part of the learning. And this is exactly what we have designed and used LMSs to do—to manage the flow of students through traditional, semester-based courses more efficiently than ever before. The LMS has done exactly what we hired it to do: it has reinforced, facilitated, and perpetuated the traditional classroom model, the same model that Bloom found woefully less effective than one-on-one learning.
  • We can extend, expand, enhance, magnify, and amplify the reach and effectiveness of human interaction with technology and communication tools, but the underlying reality is that real people must converse with each other in the process of “becoming.”
  • Because the LMS is primarily a traditional classroom support tool, it is ill-suited to bridge the 2-sigma gap between classroom instruction and personal tutoring.
  • undamentally human endeavor that requires personal interaction and communication, person to person.
  • n the post-LMS world, we need to worry less about “managing” learners and focus more on helping them connect with other like-minded learners both inside and outside of our institutions.
  • We need to foster in them greater personal accountability, responsibility and autonomy in their pursuit of learning in the broader community of learners. We need to use the communication tools available to us today and the tools that will be invented tomorrow to enable anytime, anywhere, any-scale learning conversations between our students and other learners
  • However, instead of that tutor appearing in the form of an individual human being or in the form of a virtual AI tutor, the tutor will be the crowd.
  • The paradigm—not the technology—is the problem.
  • Building a better, more feature-rich LMS won’t close the 2-sigma gap. We need to utilize technology to better connect people, content, and learning communities to facilitate authentic, personal, individualized learning. What are we waiting for?
    • J Black
       
      Bingo
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    A very insightful look into LMS use and student achievment. Highly recommended read for users of BB or Moodle.
J Black

Educational Leadership:Literacy 2.0:The World at Our Fingertips - 0 views

  • Teaching students to contribute and collaborate online in ways that are both safe and appropriate requires instruction and modeling, not simply crossing our fingers and hoping for the best when they go home and do it on their own.
  • "Now more than ever, students need teachers who can help them sort through choices, apply technology well, and tell their stories clearly and with humanity."
  • Among our authors' guidelines for promoting the skills crucial to using social media well: Value reading and writing more than ever; Blend digital, art, oral, and written literacies; and Teach students to search, evaluate, summarize, interpret, and think and write clearly.
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  • As a result, the way we communicate, read, write, listen, persuade, learn from others, and accomplish community actions is changing. Or, as someone said when we were planning this issue of Educational Leadership, "Literacy—it's not just learning to read a book anymore."
J Black

Teaching as transparent learning « Connectivism - 3 views

  • Putting ideas out for discussion contrasts with formal “reach a conclusion and publish” model.
  • but it seems to me that individuals who share similar cognitive architectures (novices with novices and experts with experts) have greater capacity to communicate.
  • But the value of dialogue and discourse in learning can’t be subjugated to the view that all contributions should advance a field. Transparency in expressing our understanding, our frustrations, and our insights helps others who are at a similar stage.
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  • progressive insights.
J Black

Missouri District Starts Twittering - 0 views

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    Lee's Summit R-7 (MO) School District is atwitter over Twitter. A trial period had been proposed through the summer, but after more than a dozen people found the district on the social networking site, officials decided to launch the initiative immediately. Posts are usually about recent awards or links to the district site. It will not be used to announce school closings or other district emergencies.
J Black

Building the 21st-Century Mind: Scientific American - 0 views

  • Gardner is probably best known in educational circles for his theory of multiple intelligences, which is a critique of the notion that there exists but a single human intelligence that can be assessed by standard psychometric instruments. His most recent book, Five Minds for the Future, offers some advice for policy-makers on how to do a better job of preparing students for the 21st century. Mind Matters editor Jonah Lehrer chats with Gardner about his new book, the possibility of teaching ethics and how his concept of multiple intelligences has changed over time.
  • To summarize, they push the mind in three ways: disciplined (depth), synthesizing (breadth) and creative (stretch). There may be some division of labor across individuals, but everyone should have at least some experience with each kind of mind, otherwise we wouldn’t be able to work productively with others.
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    Gardner is probably best known in educational circles for his theory of multiple intelligences, which is a critique of the notion that there exists but a single human intelligence that can be assessed by standard psychometric instruments. His most recent book, Five Minds for the Future, offers some advice for policy-makers on how to do a better job of preparing students for the 21st century. Mind Matters editor Jonah Lehrer chats with Gardner about his new book, the possibility of teaching ethics and how his concept of multiple intelligences has changed over time.
J Black

Thinkature - About Thinkature - 0 views

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    With Thinkature, you can create a collaborative workspace and invite coworkers, friends, and colleagues to join you in just seconds. Once inside your workspace, you can communicate by chatting, drawing, creating cards, and adding content from around the Internet. It's all synchronous, too - no need to hit reload or get an editing lock.
J Black

100 Best Blogs for Those Who Want to Change the World | Best Universities - 0 views

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    The world is full of visionaries and people who want to make a difference in the world, and many of those people share their knowledge online through their blogs. Whether you want to change the world through environment, humanitarianism, business, or any other way, there's a blog out there that can offer you guidance and inspiration. Read on, and you'll find 100 blogs that can help you change the world.
J Black

The Three-E Strategy for Overcoming Resistance to Technological Change (EDUCAUSE Quarte... - 0 views

  • According to a 2007 Pew/Internet study,1 49 percent of Americans only occasionally use information and communication technology. Of the remaining 51 percent, only 8 percent are what Pew calls omnivores, “deep users of the participatory Web and mobile applications.”
  • Shaping user behavior is a “soft” problem that has more to do with psychological and social barriers to technology adoption. Academia has its own cultural mores, which often conflict with experimenting with new ways of doing things. Gardner Campbell put it nicely last year when he wrote, “For an academic to risk ‘failure’ is often synonymous with ‘looking stupid in front of someone’.”2 The safe option for most users is to avoid trying something as risky as new technology.
  • The first instinct is thus to graft technology onto preexisting modes of behavior.
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  • First, a technology must be evident to the user as potentially useful in making his or her life easier (or more enjoyable). Second, a technology must be easy to use to avoid rousing feelings of inadequacy. Third, the technology must become essential to the user in going about his or her business. This “Three-E Strategy,” if applied properly, has been at the core of every successful technology adoption throughout history.
  • Technology must be easy and intuitive to use for the majority of the user audience—or they won’t use it.
  • Complexity, however, remains a potent obstacle to realizing the goal of making technology easy. Omnivores (the top 8 percent of users) revel in complexity. Consider for a moment how much time some people spend creating clothes for their avatars in Second Life or the intricacies of gameplay in World of Warcraft. This complexity gives the expert users a type of power, but is also a turnoff for the majority of potential users.
  • Web 2.0 and open source present another interesting solution to this problem. The user community quickly abandons those applications they consider too complicated.
  • any new technology must become essential to users
  • Finally, we have to show them how the enhanced communication made possible through technologies such as Web 2.0 will enhance their efficiency, productivity, and ability to teach and learn.
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    First, a technology must be evident to the user as potentially useful in making his or her life easier (or more enjoyable). Second, a technology must be easy to use to avoid rousing feelings of inadequacy. Third, the technology must become essential to the user in going about his or her business. This "Three-E Strategy," if applied properly, has been at the core of every successful technology adoption throughout history.
J Black

YouTube - We Think - 0 views

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    Wonderful vid about the democratizing power of Web 2.0 and the main idea of "wikinomics"
J Black

FETC - 0 views

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    FREE 100 PERCENT ONLINE EVENT! APRIL 23, 2009 11:00am-7:00pm EST Registration Required PARTICIPATE WITH YOUR COLLEAGUES FROM THE CONVENIENCE OF YOUR OFFICE! The award-winning producers of FETC and T.H.E. Journal invite you to participate in a FREEvirtual conference for K-12 educators and technology staff exploring the most pressing issues related to 21st Century Skills. Join your peers and industry experts as they investigate a range of compelling topics including: * Career and technical education * The Obama administration's global workforce development agenda * Digital teaching methods and tools
J Black

Vocabulary Videos and Flash Cards for SAT, ACT and GRE - WordAhead.com > Home - 0 views

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    A video/illustration approach to learning vocab effectively. Thumbs up!!
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