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Todd Suomela

AAUP: Free Higher Education - 0 views

  • Deeper loan debt means more profits for the financial sector, particularly suppliers of student loans. Executives of SLM Corporation, the giant student loan company known as Sallie Mae, have said that the rising costs of education will swell its bottom line for some time to come. Sallie Mae, as a quasi-federal agency, was supposed to make money available so that college would be affordable. But under the Clinton administration, Sallie Mae became a private corporation, and it is profiting.
  • This state of affairs is unacceptable and an affront to any reasonable notion of a fair and democratic society. We believe that the appropriate response is to articulate, and mobilize in support of, a clear vision of how a fair and just society should provide access to higher education. We propose that all academically qualified students who desire an education should be able to get one—without constraint by cost or the need to amass crippling debt
Brian C. Smith

eSchoolNews - Students want more use of gaming technology - 0 views

    • Brian C. Smith
       
      Is it only the test scores? I worry about the actual translation of math skills to real world problems rather than having students do well on a test or beat their friends for bragging rights.
  • Nearly two-thirds of middle and high school students said “let me use my own laptop, cell phone, or other mobile device at school.”
  • While 53 percent of middle and high school students are excited about using mobile devices to help them learn, only 15 percent of school leaders support this idea. Also, fewer than half as many parents as students see a place for online learning in the 21st century school.
    • Brian C. Smith
       
      With a gap of 38% between students and admins you'd think the administrators might actually approach students, the most untapped resource in the school community, about how they might see the use of mobile devices to help or enhance thier learning and communication.
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  • And even fewer teachers, parents, and school leaders want students to have access to eMail and instant-messaging accounts from school.
  • Keeping school leaders well informed is the first step toward helping to bridge this disconnect
    • Brian C. Smith
       
      There are many, many timely and effective ways for school leaders to stay informed themselves. Why are they not taking advantage of these? Let's teach them to fish.
  • Hopefully, the results of this survey will reach them. If school leaders become more familiar with student views,
    • Brian C. Smith
       
      Suggestion: Listen and talk (sparingly) to the students in your schools, get to know them. One of the best strategies for learning I ever learned was to "know your students well". Listen to the students in your schools and you will learn a lot.
  • his vision for the ultimate school is one where the teachers and the principal actively seek and regularly include the ideas of students in discussions and planning for all aspects of education—not just technology.
    • Brian C. Smith
       
      Exactly.
Anne Bubnic

Messaging Shakespeare | Classroom Examples | - 0 views

  • Brown's class was discussing some of the whaling calculations in Moby Dick. When one student asked a question involving a complex computation, three students quickly pulled out their cell phones and did the math. Brown was surprised to learn that most cell phones have a built-in calculator. She was even more surprised at how literate her students were with the many functions included in their phones. She took a quick poll and found that all her students either had a cell phone or easy access to one. In fact, students became genuinely engaged in a class discussion about phone features. This got Brown thinking about how she might incorporate this technology into learning activities.
  • Brown noticed that many students used text messaging to communicate, and considered how she might use cell phones in summarizing and analyzing text to help her students better understand Richard III. Effective summarizing is one of the most powerful skills students can cultivate. It provides students with tools for identifying the most important aspects of what they are learning, especially when teachers use a frame of reference (Marzano, Pickering, & Pollock, 2001). Summarizing helps students identify critical information. Research shows gains in reading comprehension when students learn how to incorporate isummary framesi (series of questions designed to highlight critical passages) as a tool for summarizing (Meyer & Freedle, 1984). When students use this strategy, they are better able to understand what they are reading, identify key information, and provide a summary that helps them retain the information (Armbruster, Anderson, & Ostertag, 1987).
  • To manage the learning project, Brown asked a tech-savvy colleague to help her build a simple weblog. Once it was set up, it took Brown and her students 10 minutes in the school's computer lab to learn how to post entries. The weblog was intentionally basic. The only entries were selected passages from text of Richard III and Brown's six narrative-framing questions. Her questions deliberately focused students' attention on key passages. If students could understand these passages well enough to summarize them, Brown knew that their comprehension of the play would increase.
  • ...2 more annotations...
  • Text messaging is a real-world example of summarizing—to communicate information in a few words the user must identify key ideas. Brown saw that she could use a technique students had already mastered, within the context of literature study.
  • Brown told students to use their phones or e-mail to send text messages to fellow group members of their responses to the first six questions of the narrative frame. Once this was completed, groups met to discuss the seventh question, regarding the resolution for each section of the text. Brown told them to post this group answer on the weblog.
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    Summarizing complex texts using cell phones increases understanding.
Nedra Isenberg

Temporary Email | Larry Ferlazzo's Websites of the Day... - 0 views

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    Here are several options for setting up temporary emails to help students access web2.0 apllications.
Ben W

Purposeful Networking | Reflection 2.0 - 0 views

  • the older demographic uses networking more for professional purposes
  • Aaron describes how he’s fine with seeing the real side of prospective employees on Facebook profiles and twitterstreams because it gives him a better picture of who people are, but in our opinion and experience, networking is much more than simply posting information about yourself on various sites
  • the education profession historically has been a profession of “isolationism” despite recent efforts to establish Professional Learning Communities within schools.
  • ...1 more annotation...
  • Networking is extremely powerful for connecting educators and students to professionals outside of education - the challenge in education today is breaking down barriers and allowing students and teachers access to the sites and time in the school day and curriculum
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    A good in-depth article arguing that purposeful networking (easily done w/ web2.0 tools) should be a skill addressed in education.
Dave Truss

Share More! Wiki » Work/Build Your Own Personal Learning Network? - 0 views

  • If you fail to connect to the network of learners, you miss out on a global conversation about what you are passionate about. And missing out is a darn shame because it can save you time, energy, and increase your reach, no matter how brilliant (or not) you are. That’s a powerful idea. Smart people get smarter because they have access to the network of learners. People who are just starting out are able to learn as fast as they can to accomplish what they need to do. When I meet folks who are just becoming aware of the global conversation — usually because I push them over the edge in a workshop — I like to share several tools with them.
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    If you fail to connect to the network of learners, you miss out on a global conversation about what you are passionate about.
Emily Vickery

EdTech Solutions - Teaching Every Student: Free Technology Toolkit for UDL in All Class... - 0 views

  • My passion is to remove the obstacles to learning for all students and these free tools offer opportunities for struggling learners that promote academic success. When material is digital or electronic, it is flexible and accessible. It is our responsibility as educators to provide materials that promote success. Please encourage all educators to consider using these free tools.
Shaun Fletcher

CBC Radio | Quirks & Quarks - 0 views

    • Shaun Fletcher
       
      Podcasts are also playable in google reader.
  • Podcasting!Quirks & Quarks is part of CBC Radio’s podcasting project. For more information about podcasting and the CBC programs available, go to CBC.ca’s podcasting info page.To access the Quirks podcast, right click on one of the links below, copy the URL and paste it into your podcast software application. Quirks & Quarks Podcast - show in segments podcast or if you have iTunes installed Subscribe in iTunesQuirks & Quarks Podcast - show in one file or if you have iTunes installed Subscribe in iTunes(hint - iPod users might prefer the whole show in one file)
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    Join host Bob McDonald each week to find out the latest in science, technology, medicine and the environment. We cover every aspect of science, from the quirks of the expanding universe to the quarks within a single atom...and everything in between.
anonymous

Remote Access - 0 views

shared by anonymous on 29 Mar 08 - Cached
Peter Ruwoldt

Encourage schools to host a software freedom day event - 40 views

I would like to encourage all schools to give some thought to the software that they have the students use from the perspective of access and equity. Is the software you are using freely available ...

equity foss free opencourseware

started by Peter Ruwoldt on 04 Aug 08 no follow-up yet
Christy Tucker

Thanks for the delicious help tip -- added to Diigo's official HELP files - 77 views

I'd be willing to help with the documentation. Not to toot my own horn too much, but I did a quick slideshow on how to set up the daily blog post. You're welcome to add that to the resources too....

diigo howto

yc c

Readability analyzer - 13 views

  • Introduction Word length and phrase length influence the ease of reading and understanding of a given text. Short words are usually more common (Zipf's law). Short sentences require less abstraction ability to understand. The readability analysis could be useful to make a text better, augmenting its accessibility. Why have we developed this? The readability index tells us how easy a given text is to understand. A well-written text is effective, easy to understand and quick to read. This index helps us understand the text's complexity in order to better schedule the activities of translators and revisers. More than ever, written information, especially in the Internet, must be direct and well structured. This analysis can help achieve both goals.
Anne Bubnic

Wi-Fi Turns Arizona Bus Ride Into a Rolling Study Hall - 3 views

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    Part of a wider effort to use technology to extend learning beyond classroom walls and the six-hour school day. Internet buses may soon be hauling children to school in many other districts, particularly those with long bus routes. The company marketing the router, Autonet Mobile, says it has sold them to schools or districts in Florida, Missouri and Washington, D.C.
Ruth Howard

critical_thinking - Howard Rheingold on Diigo - 10 views

  • “Now I know some of you have already heard of me, but for the benefit of those who are unfamiliar, let me explain how I teach. Between today until the class right before finals, it is my intention to work into each of my lectures … one lie. Your job, as students, among other things, is to try and catch me in the Lie of the Day.”And thus began our ten-week course.This was an insidiously brilliant technique to focus our attention – by offering an open invitation for students to challenge his statements, he transmitted lessons that lasted far beyond the immediate subject matter and taught us to constantly check new statements and claims with what we already accept as fact."
  • while it is necessary (and possible) to teach facts to people, it comes with a price. And the price is this: facts learned in this way, and especially by rote, and especially at a younger age, take a direct root into the mind, and bypass a person's critical and reflective capacities, and indeed, become a part of those capacities in the future.When you teach children facts as facts, and when you do it through a process of study and drill, it doesn't occur to children to question whether or not those facts are true, or appropriate, or moral, or legal, or anything else. Rote learning is a short circuit into the brain. It's direct programming. People who study, and learn, that 2+2=4, know that 2+2=4, not because they understand the theory of mathematics, not because they have read Hilbert and understand formalism, or can refute Brouwer and reject intuitionism, but because they know (full stop) 2+2=4.I used the phrase "it's direct programming" deliberately. This is an analogy we can wrap our minds around. We can think of direct instruction as being similar to direct programming. It is, effectively, a mechanism of putting content into a learner's mind as effectively and efficiently as possible, so that when the time comes later (as it will) that the learner needs to use that fact, it is instantly and easily accessible.
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    Howard Rheingold's Diigo Bookmark tagged 'critical thinking'-thanks Howard!
Carl Bogardu

The Clever Sheep: 14 Tools to Teach about Creative Commons - 31 views

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    One of the most powerful, misunderstood and under-utilized tools for teaching 21st century skills, is the Creative Commons. Besides providing access to hundreds of thousands of media works that can be used to augment the creative process, the Creative Commons offers a legitimate way for students to license their own creative works, be they audio, video, text or hybrid products.
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    Blog about 14 tools to teach about Creative Commons
Adrienne Michetti

AJET 19(1) Boyle (2003) - design principles for authoring dynamic, reusable learning ob... - 1 views

  • delineate a coherent framework for the authoring of re-purposable learning objects
  • significant changes in the creation of learning objects
  • nternational work directed at developing learning object standards
  • ...33 more annotations...
  • a learning object is defined as any entity, digital or non-digital, that may be used for learning, education or training. IEEE
  • ork on metadata and learning object packaging
  • cohesion
  • ke any learning object and provide a 'wrapper' around this object
  • learning object is thus 'packaged' in a standard container format
  • learning objects must be developed with potential reuse, and especially repurposing in mind. The principal aim of this paper is to explore and delineate principles underlying authoring for reuse and repurposing.
  • taxonomy
  • This mapping suggests that each learning object should be based on one learning objective or clear learning goal.
  • The principle of cohesion, however, indicates that there should be a separate learning object for each type of loop. An immediate advantage is that the tutor can select the order in which these learning objects are combined. A tutor dealing with experienced student may wish to deal with these in sequence; another tutor with a different group of students may intersperse these learning objects with object dealing with other features of the language.
    • Adrienne Michetti
       
      This would, then, make them easier to edit and manipulate in the future. I can follow this article.
  • the principle of 'de-coupling', or more accurately minimised coupling.
  • unit (software module/learning object) should have minimal bindings to other units.
  • independently of the other (
    • Adrienne Michetti
       
      Right - and the goal is complete independence so as to be able to manipulate and change later.
  • The learning object should, as far as possible, be free standing.
    • Adrienne Michetti
       
      YES! Can we please apply this to items as simple as Word documents and HTML? It would make things so much easier. This also reminds me of good pedagogical design principles BEFORE we had digital learning -- the same should be true for worksheets, handouts, textbooks, etc. It needs to be able to be changed.
  • adaptation
  • The challenge is to maintain this richness in a system composed of reusable components.
  • We must face the challenge of creating learning objects that are cohesive, decoupled and pedagogically rich. This design challenge is associated with the issue of 'repurposability' as we might expect rich learning objects to provide further options for adaptation by local tutors.
    • Adrienne Michetti
       
      Yes, yes, and yes. We need to think beyond our own immediate purposes.
  • n the Java language
    • Adrienne Michetti
       
      quite honestly, I would have preferred a non-computer programming example. These principles apply to all technology design, not just programming. Something more accessible would have made this paper stronger.
  • The project involves intervention in syllabus development, the social organisation of learning and the introduction of new eLearning materials. The eLearning resources are being based on the authoring of rich, reusable learning objects. This development provides the focus for the present discussion.
  • The learning objects are being developed both to meet immediate pedagogical needs and to serve this larger goal. This produces extra pressure initially. However, it provides the potential to divide the eventual task among a number of contributing partners, exploiting considerable advantages of scale.
  • A key challenge for the project is to resolve the tensions in a creative and productive way.
    • Adrienne Michetti
       
      Basically, you have to take it all apart and put it back together again. This is fundamental to learning a new way to design anything, really.
  • A compound object consists of two or more independent learning objects that are linked to create the compound.
  • A further important feature is that each simple component object can be reused independently.
  • They thus provide a basis for pedagogical richness that fully exploits the opportunities offered by the technology.
    • Adrienne Michetti
       
      YES! use the tech to its best.
  • manage the bindings between one object and others
  • they should be able to reconfigure this to shape their own compound object.
    • Adrienne Michetti
       
      This is so crucial. Each educator must be able to restructure it, use to his/her advantage within context.
  • main types of binding: navigational bindings through URLs and non-URL based content bindings. This design pattern deals with the issue of URL based bindings.
  • we must have a design mechanism for managing these bindings.
  • learning object consists of a core and zero or more expansions. A default object is presented with the core with certain expansions added. These expansions aim to provide added pedagogical value to help in attaining the learning objective.
  • the relationship between learning objects and the syllabus, course or other higher organising structure in which they are delivered.
  • the syllabus navigation structure operates at a different layer of organisation for the learning object resources
  • . These syllabi objects operate at a different layer from that of main content objects
  • The key message is the need to establish distinct layers of organisation in eLearning
  • The central challenge is to design for reuse and repurposing.
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    painful reading with the example of Java - but the point remains that all learning objects should be managed and designed with the purpose of being able to use them in the future in ways that are dynamic and reusable. This means de-coupling them and ensuring they are made of distinct pedagogical units.
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