Group items tagged

LIstening to Lauren Ferro talk about Gamer Types and how it relates to designing games for education in the OOC Hangout now. #gamifi-ed - Great article to read about this. They are relating player types to personality types as they design games. The four main types are :killers, achievers, explorers, and socializers. This is fascinating.

This lifehacker article shares some of the research that has to do with productivity. This is one I wish all schools understood "when office workers get to arrange their space, productivity is increased." Some teachers I know have no ability to determine where they put their desks or the desks of their students. At my school, we are allowed a lot of freedom with arranging our rooms and it shows. The article also points out that office plans lower stress levels. Some interesting color research as well.

Excellent article from ASCD about meaningful work and students. I particularly appreciate the section on having a driving question. "A project without a driving question is like an essay without a thesis." Absolutely. Does your project or activity have a driving question? Great article worth a read.

While not everyone community is as forward thinking as Kalamazoo, Michigan (which gives every child in that community a free college education at a public university of their choice in Michigan), helping children from low income families apply for college is imperative. I love this article because it gives practical advice and discusses the issues as well as some creative approaches. I think that the least communities could do is fund college application fees for low income students... helping kids go to college is a start, but a very important one. From this AP Article from NBC Latino... "Yet, nationally, about half of high school graduates from families making below $18,300 enrolled in college in 2012 compared to about 80 percent of those whose families earned above $90,500, according to the College Board. In Washington, where Duarte lives, only 30 percent of high school graduates go to college - a lower percentage than the number who drop out of high school, despite the city having the highest level of college attainment in the nation, according to the College Board. Nearly all the students at Roosevelt qualify for free or reduced lunches. To help create a college-going culture, a bulletin board near the school's front doors features the names of seniors and the colleges they were accepted to. College acceptances are announced over the intercom."

H&R Block asked me to write an article to help people understand the hidden costs of being a teacher. It is important to help people understand the profession we love. If you agree, I hope you'll like and share this article to help others know what it is like to be a teacher.

Guidance counselors and principals should read this article - not to share and tout as a defense of bullying for there is no defending meanness ever - not among adults and definitely not among children. However, it is time to de-escalate the frantic misreporting and hysteria that some are causing on the topic of bullying and suicide. Suicide is horrible and often the person who commits suicide is bullied -- here's a quote from the article that I thought was telling. This would be worth discussing with those who can maturely see the balance that is called for here and again, not to use it to excuse atrocious behavior. "Reporters are often reacting to other misinformed authorities.  For example, Polk County Sheriff Grady Judd explained to reporters that he arrested two girls (one 12, the other 14) in Sedwick's death, after seeing a callous social media post from one of the girls, "We can't leave her out there, who else is she going to torment? Who else is she going to harass? Who is the next person she verbally and mentally abuses and attacks?" While it's a great quote, it implies that this girl has the ability, through random meanness, to inspire others to commit suicide. "Everything we know about unsafe reporting is being done here - describing the method(s), the simplistic explanation (bullying = suicide), the narrative that bullies are the villains and the girl that died, the victim," Wylie Tene, the public relations manager for the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention, wrote in an email to me. "She (the victim) is almost portrayed as a hero. Her smiling pictures are now juxtaposed with the two girls' mug shots. Her parents are portrayed as doing everything right, and the other girls parents did everything wrong and are part of the problem. This may be all true, and it also may be more complicated.""

Alarmist article? Research evidence?

My take on the power of the Zoho Office Suite for collaboration and resources for education and the classroom. Writer, Sheet, Show, Creator, DB, Notebook an amazing toolset of free "in the cloud" resources that can build and enhance student collaboration and authientic learning projects.

So, is Wikipedia headed out? Some scientists have found that: "The number of articles added per month flattened out at 60,000 in 2006 and has since declined by around a third. They also found that the number of edits made every month and the number of active editors both stopped growing the following year, flattening out at around 5.5 million and 750,000 respectively." I have to wonder if their changes in who can edit has caused this shift. People still look at it (I do) to kick off research.

Twitter has new photo filters powered by Aviary (an incredible tool that you can add for free, the last time I checked, to your school's Google apps for education account) it is easy to use. This article from mashable covers the changes but wonders if it is enough to pull people away from Instagram, who pulled the "twitter cards' feature earlier this week as more social media organizations try to claim "mine mine" over their users and don't want to share. Meanwhile, those who benefit, tend to be those who share the most.

Sad to see that the first major fail of a MOOC would happen at my alma mater, Georgia Tech, but I do applaud their transparency and moving forward with it. I hope they do it soon. With 41,000 students in the #foemooc - they had 40,000 students in a google doc which has a limit of 50 simultaneous editors - and with no backup - they weren't ready for the problems that would happen. This was a Coursera course and it just couldn't handle the load. Interestingly this was a Fundamentals of Online Education MOOC which makes it even more ironic. Read this article for more about what happened. "Maybe it was inevitable that one of the new massive open online courses would crash. After all, MOOCs are being launched with considerable speed, not to mention hype. But MOOC advocates might have preferred the collapse of a course other than the one that was suspended this weekend, one week into instruction: "Fundamentals of Online Education: Planning and Application.""

Welcome to the first November edition of my Edtech and ELT newsletter. In this editions you can find: A discount code for my new ebook Some really interesting articles on how the internet is impacting on truth and fact Some great new apps and tools to encourage students to create their own videos.

An article/ ebook on creating new learning spaces in the classroom. this one talks about the "pod room." I love the 7 spaces for learning that Ewan McIntosh wrote for us in our Choice Chapter in the Flat Classroom book - he espouses many of these same thoughts. 

Welcome to your new Google smarthome - not smartphone - smarthome. They've bought a smart thermostat maker - I can imagine all kinds of cool things with Google Glasses, Droids, and other Google integrations with this. This interesting article covers many of the things Google has gone into besides their traditional search box/ advertising model and it tells you about the future of our world as a major giant positions for the Internet of Things which moves far beyond our screens into the air we breathe. This will impact our schools beyond what we understand as our surroundings become smarter and able to be controlled remotely in ways we can't really understand today. These are trends I'll be discussing in my Intro to Computer Science classes. "Google Inc announced plans to acquire smart thermostat maker Nest Labs Inc for US$3.2bil (RM10.54bil), signalling the Internet company's intention to expand into a broader array of devices and bringing valuable hardware design expertise in-house. "

New Search Engine from ex google engineers plans to compete with Google - Called "Cuil" - this article outlines the story.

Great article about schools in New Orleans and what they're doing to try to get back up and running even this long after Katrina.

"Bell, F 2010, Network theories for technology-enabled learning and social change: Connectivism and actor network theory , in: Networked Learning Conference 2010: Seventh International Conference on Networked Learning, 3-4 May 2010, Aalborg, Denmark. PDF - Published Version Download (236Kb) http://usir.salford.ac.uk/9270/1/Bell.pdf Official URL: http://www.networkedlearningconference.org.uk/ Abstract Learning never was confined to classrooms. We all learn in, out of, before, during and after episodes of formal education. The changing sociotechnical context offers a promise of new opportunities, and the sense that somehow things may be different. Use of the Internet and other emerging technologies is spreading in frequency, time and space. People and organizations wish to use technology to support learning seek theories to frame their understanding and their innovations. In this article we explore Connectivism, that is positioned as a theory for the digital age, in use on a Massive Open Online Course (MOOC), Connectivism and Connective Knowledge, in 2008. We then compare Connectivism with another network theory, Actor Network Theory, to explore possible synergies. We found that Connectivism enables educators and learners to legitimise their use of technology to support teaching and learning. Connectivism, a relatively new theory, can benefit from a richer empirical base as it develops. Since the scope of educational change can vary from a specific learning setting through organisational and societal settings, we can develop theories through empirical exploration of cases across the range of settings to support our understanding and actions."

By Claude Almansi and Jan Schwartz October 3rd, 2011 "Scoop.it is a new application that is still in beta, although it's fairly easy to get an invite to join. Claude Almansi found the app, sent an email about it to a list serv, which prompted Jan Schwartz to join. We've only been at it for a month or so, but already both of us have found some good information that we otherwise would have missed, and we are helping to spread the good work about education technology and change. First, some information about Scoop.it that Claude dug up. The web service was conceived in France, launched in December 2010 and its web site is in English. It's a social site for sharing news events and articles via subscription. Even if you don't subscribe, Scoop.it can be used to look for information items selected by others on a given theme via its public search engine. You do need to subscribe if you want to create and curate your own topic on a given theme or subject. For example, Jan was particularly excited to find a blog written as a result of a live chat sponsored by the Chronicle of Higher Education, which talked about the topic of Cathy Davidson's recent book, Now You See It: How the Brain Science of Attention Will Transform the Way We Live, Work and Learn. There were four panelists and 1500 participants on the chat and one of them, David Palumbo-Liu, wrote a blog about his experience, which was very different than Jan's and so an interesting read for perspective. She would not have found that blog if not for Scoop.it. Claude curates a site for Multimedia Accessibility. Currently Jan is 'scooping' under the title Technology for Teaching and Learning . You can curate as many different topics as you like."

As teachers our time is unfortunately finite, but there are ways that we can use time in the classroom to have a positive impact on learning, progress, attitudes and mindset. In this article I hope you will find something that will really resonate. It is important that you carefully discriminate and find the new tips that work for you. After all, we don't have much time.

Great article from Larry Ferlazzo picked up by the Washington Post. Topping the list: Common Core.