ICT4Champions

The #edchatsa community is full of insightful, committed and innovative thought-leaders in the South African education space. As a member of this community you are invited to submit a blog post on a subject close to your heart as long as it has connection to education. Your post will then be published and will be available on this site for comment by others. You may want to introduce readers to a particular edtech tool, open debate around a particular topic, challenge paradigms or simply add insight to the #edchatsa topic of the week. You will also be able to point readers to your own blog or social media platforms.

The First Steps into Learning and Teaching in Higher Education massive open online course (mooc) will run from 21 May to 22 June 2012. This mooc is developed by the HEA/JISC funded OpenLine Project at Oxford Brookes University. First Steps into Learning and Teaching in Higher Education, is targeted at new lecturers, people entering higher education teaching from other sectors and postgraduate students who teach. We also welcome experienced lecturers to update and share their knowledge and expertise. The First Steps course is an element of the Oxford Centre for Staff and Learning Development's (OCSLD) HEA accredited Post Graduate Certificate in Teaching in Higher Education (PCTHE).

Social networking websites are being used to threaten and make false allegations against teachers.

If you are a South African educator and would like to know more about technology integration by participating in short free online courses from SchoolNet, please think about joining our next two courses on offer for April and May.

It's time for SimpleK12's Online Education Conference - a 24 hour Training Extravaganza!  An international conference that's 100% FREE!  No travel.   No registration fees.  We're camping out in the SimpleK12 offices (bunny slippers on, coffee in hand) for 24 hours straight to bring you the best-of-the-best conference sessions with presenters from around the world. We may be crazy… but we're crazy for online professional development!   Won't you join us?  Come to one session, or come to them all (we dare you!).  

 Map a List which turn Google Spreadsheet information into Google Maps placemarks.

For students there are two distinct benefits of using Evernote. First, bookmarking online with annotations helps students not only keep track of websites they find useful while researching, it also helps them remember why they bookmarked a site. There's nothing worse that looking at your bookmarks a week or two later and wondering what it was about a website that prompted you to bookmark it. Second, by writing course notes in Evernote students can access their notes from any device that is connected to the web.

The 40 page guide is designed to help teachers who have never used Google Documents. Learn how to create self-grading quizzes as well as create share and publish documents and presentations.

Some great qr code tools here....

Some warnings and ideas to guard your safety when using location based services

co-meeting is a text-based group discussion tool. This live-typing chat tool lets you have a conversation that can also deliver the "atmosphere" which was impossible to share with your participants using traditional chat tools, and also lets you take meeting minutes during a discussion by using the document editor with the real-time concurrent editing ability. Because everything is done through texting, you can have discussions without constraint by time and location and make innovative changes in your meeting style for your teams that suffer from wasteful conferences.

Great list of tools!

A lovely screencast and tipsheet on how to get started with twitter.

Here's some ammunition for what often turns into a pitched, take-sides verbal brawl as well-intended teachers try to come to a compromise on using Twitter (in fact, many of the new Web 2.0 tools-blogs, wikis, websites that require registrations and log-ins, discussion forums. You can probably add to this list) that works for all stakeholders

A great site with primary school edtech lesson plans and resource sites

Here is what we will discover: How to use Google Spreadsheet to facilitate real time collaboration and easy sharing How to use Google Spreadsheet to quickly build resources for your lessons How to use Google Spreadsheet to insert interactive Gadgets How to use Google Spreadsheet to design charts that will have your students going 'wow' How to make self-grading assessments Your questions answered

LinkedIn Groups are communities of like-minded professionals who share a common experience, passion, interest, affiliation, or goal. Groups provide members with a private and focused space to discuss relevant topics, share news stories, network, and collaborate with others. Start a conversation with LinkedIn Groups today at http://www.linkedin.com/groupsDirectory

Before choosing to restrict the use of social and mobile tools in schools, policymakers and education leaders have to consider the negative impact such restrictions will have on learning. That's the premise of a new policy report released jointly this week by more than a dozen prominent education associations and advocacy groups.

Course Design and Development Ideas That Work examines this multifaceted issue from a variety of fronts to bring you proven course design alternatives implemented in courses of varying sizes and disciplines. Featuring 12 articles pulled from the pages of The Teaching Professor, the report will inspire you to rethink some components of your course. 

Andrew Miller, an educational consultant, writes that a "flipped" classroom still requires instructors to demonstrate the value of their content, whether online or offline. "Just because I record something, or use a recorded material, does not mean that my students will want to watch, nor see the relevance in watching it," he writes. " … If the flipped classroom is truly to become innovative, then it must be paired with transparent and/or embedded reason[s] to know the content."