Gwenna Moss Centre for Teaching Effectiveness

List of the most popular tech tools for education in 2012. It is interesting to see how some tools have dropped in the past year and how others have climbed. There are also some tools that I have never used before - worth checking out!

Good information on using Google Reader to stay on top of Twitter. You can also use it to follow individuals (he uses it to follow particular hashtags).

An interesting video on a very important skill - time management. It is delivered by Randy Pausch, made famous by his "Last Lecture" at Carnegie Mellon University before he died from Pancreatic Cancer.

"What is open access? Nick Shockey and Jonathan Eisen take us through the world of open access publishing and explain just what it's all about."

"Copyright and Creative Commons Explained by Common Craft can be very useful in helping students understand why they cannot simply copy and paste whatever images they like that they find online."

Very cool resource on inquiry-based learning from the CILASS project in Arts and Social Sciences at Sheffield.

"Students are not only intellectual but also social and emotional beings, and all these dimensions interact to impact learning and performance. To plan an effective course, it is important to consider who our students are, taking into account their: Prior knowledge Intellectual development Cultural background Generational experiences and expectations "

"Outline of this artilce : 1- What is Evernote 2- Why Evernote in Education 3- Top Reasons for Using Evernote 4- Some Ways Teachers can Use Evernote 5- Some Ways Students can Use Evernote 6- Video Tutorials on The Different Uses of EVernote 7- Webliography ( Important links for further resources )"

"Evernote is a great web service and software application that we can use in education. A lot of ink has been shed on this topic and just one click in a search engine is enough to get hundreds of links to guides and tutorials about Evernote. I have been going through so many of these resources and have collected ideas, videos, notes and many more."

Open Resources including Rubrics in and easily searchable database based on the AACU Essential Learning Outcomes

"What's at stake is not what children carry into their classrooms, but it's the experiences that they take part in and what they carry away from those experiences."

"Many of us who teach in higher education do not have a teaching background, nor do we have experience in curriculum development. We know our content areas and are experts in our fields, but structuring learning experiences for students may or may not be our strong suit. We've written a syllabus (or were handed one to use) and have developed some pretty impressive assessments, projects, and papers in order to evaluate our students' progress through the content. Sometimes we discover that students either don't perform well on the learning experiences we've designed or they experience a great deal of frustration with what they consider high stakes assignments. Vygotsky's zone of proximal development (Vygotsky, 1978) proposes that it's important to determine the area (zone) between what a student can accomplish unaided and what that same student can accomplish with assistance. This provides for consistent structural support, when required (Hogan & Pressley, 1997)."

This is a great resource introducing inquiry-based learning.

"Once students started Twittering I think they developed a sense of each other as people beyond the classroom space, rather than just students they saw twice a week for an hour and a half" "Dr. Parry declared that "it was the single thing that changed the classroom dynamics more than anything I've ever done teaching."

"Flipping the classroom changes the place in which content is delivered. If the teacher assigns lecture-type instruction-in the form of video, simulations, slidecasts, readings, podcasts-as homework, then class time can be used interactively. The class becomes conversation space, creation space, space where teachers actively facilitate learning.  The home becomes the lecture space. The hundred+ year-old frontal teaching model flips."

Bloom's Taxonomy 

From the site's FAQ: "IS IT UNETHICAL FOR ME TO BUY AN ESSAY? If a tree falls in the forest, does it make a sound? Only you can answer that question. ISN'T IT REALLY UNETHICAL FOR YOU TO BE WRITING THESE ESSAYS FOR CASH? Incredibly so, and because the academic system is already so corrupt, we're totally cool with that. We even all have matching tweed t-shirts."

Research poster on using a rubric to grade exams in a Calculus-based physics for science and engineering course that shows the level of specificity in the output possible with a rubric.

Good interview with a Sask teacher explaining how he used a class wiki in his high school courses - easily applicable to higher ed.

Interesting use of Diigo for social bookmarking with students in specific courses in higher education.