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Amanda Berry

Educational Blogging (EDUCAUSE Review) | EDUCAUSE.edu - 2 views

www.educause.edu/...educational-blogging

blog blogging classroom education

shared by Amanda Berry on 28 Jan 14 - No Cached
  • "virtual extension of the classroom."
  • support tool to promote reflective analysis and the emergence of a learning community that goes beyond the school walls."
  • the events of September 11 brought home to me the immediacy of blogging.
  • ...24 more annotations...
  • ‘logs’ all the other webpages she finds interesting.
  • Personal journals, or online diaries,
  • Blog now refers to a Web journal that comments on the news—often by criticizing the media and usually in rudely clever tones—with links to stories that back up the commentary with evidence."
  • Blog posts are short, informal, sometimes controversial, and sometimes deeply personal, no matter what topic they approach."
  • Though consisting of regular (and often dated) updates, the blog adds to the form of the diary by incorporating the best features of hypertext: the capacity to link to new and useful resources. But a blog is also characterized by its reflection of a personal style, and this style may be reflected in either the writing or the selection of links passed along to readers. Blogs are, in their purest form, the core of what has come to be called personal publishing.
  • First, teachers use blogs to replace the standard class Web page
  • instructors begin to link to Internet items that relate to their course
  • Third, blogs are used to organize in-class discussions
  • The student who usually talks very loud in the classroom and the student who is very timid have the same writing space to voice their opinion. It puts students in a situation of equity."
  • Fourth, some instructors are using blogs to organize class seminars and to provide summaries of readings.
  • "group blogs"
  • fifth, students may be asked to write their own blogs as part of their course grade.
  • Blogging software breaks down into two major categories: hosting services and installed applications.
  • (http://www.blogger.com),
  • (http://www.livejournal.com),
  • weblogs break down barriers. They allow ideas to be based on merit, rather than origin, and ideas that are of quality filter across the Internet, "viral-like across the blogosphere." Blogs allow readers to hear the day-to-day thoughts of presidential candidates, software company executives, and magazine writers, who all, in turn, hear opinions of people they would never otherwise hear.3
  • writing weblogs is not for everybody.
  • It merely means that you participate in a different way.
  • What happens when a free-flowing medium such as blogging interacts with the more restrictive domains of the educational system? What happens when the necessary rules and boundaries of the system are imposed on students who are writing blogs, when grades are assigned in order to get students to write at all, and when posts are monitored to ensure that they don’t say the wrong things?
  • No matter how much we want to spout off about the wonders of audience and readership, students who are asked to blog are blogging for an audience of one, the teacher."
  • unconstrained
  • "great value in terms of developing all sorts of critical thinking skills, writing skills and information literacy among other things. We teach exposition and research and some other types of analytical writing already, I know. Blogging, however, offers students a chance to a) reflect on what they are writing and thinking as they write and think it, b) carry on writing about a topic over a sustained period of time, maybe a lifetime, and c) engage readers and audience in a sustained conversation that then leads to further writing and thinking.
  • As soon as these activities are put into the context of school, focused on topics the students are unlikely to care about much, they automatically lose a level of authenticity and engagement. These disengaged students (non-writers and writers alike) won’t get the main benefits of true reflective learning no matter how good the instruction and tools are."
  • Blogging is about, first, reading. But more important, it is about reading what is of interest to you: your culture, your community, your ideas. And it is about engaging with the content and with the authors of what you have read—reflecting, criticizing, questioning, reacting. If a student has nothing to blog about, it is not because he or she has nothing to write about or has a boring life. It is because the student has not yet stretched out to the larger world, has not yet learned to meaningfully engage in a community. For blogging in education to be a success, this first must be embraced and encouraged.
  • Amanda Berry on 28 Jan 14
     
    While slightly outdated, the article provides many crucial thinking points for educators who are interested in initiating a blog in their classroom(s). Educational Blogging is meant to be a "virtual extension of the classroom", but is most effective when students are allowed to read and write about what interests them. This article argues that when students are assigned a topic to discuss, with a main audience (the teacher), that they become disengaged, and their blogging becomes less authentic. Questions worth considering about blogging include: "What happens when a free-flowing medium such as blogging interacts with the more restrictive domains of the educational system? What happens when the necessary rules and boundaries of the system are imposed on students who are writing blogs, when grades are assigned in order to get students to write at all, and when posts are monitored to ensure that they don't say the wrong things?" Some suggestions for blogging software/tools are made in this article, but might not be relevant anymore. However, the point that blogging can develop critical thinking, writing, and reading skills, remains pertinent.
  • Brenda Sherry on 30 Jan 14
     
    Crazy that it could be outdated but that's how fast things change! Stephen Downes is one of the first ever bloggers!! and he is from Moncton NB and the National Research Council of Canada. He and George Siemens created the concept of Connectivism and created the first MOOC ever! (Massively Open Online Course) He is one famous Canadian dude in the tech world!
Amanda Berry

Web 2.0 Tools and Teacher Education - 1 views

www.citejournal.org/...v11i2currentpractice1.pdf

TPCK web 2.0 voicethread wiki social media blogs podcasts digital flexbook

shared by Amanda Berry on 28 Jan 14 - No Cached
  • Amanda Berry on 28 Jan 14
     
    This article is a PDF, and for some reason Diigo wouldn't let me highlight as I read. So here I am posting some of the main points: -Web 2.0 technology can be seen as "an ongoing transition of the World Wide Web from a collection of static websites to a full-fledged computing platform serving Web applications to end users. This includes applications such as wikis, blogs, podcasts, and social networking. -Example: A wiki is a Web 2.0 application that can be defined as a collaborative Web space where users can add and edit content to be published on the Internet. -Students do not have to be passive recipients of information but can become equal partners in the learning process as they collaborate and create knowledge in a social manner -mention of TPCK - content, pedagogy, and technology. There are also concrete examples of TPCK being implemented with students! Good to read (starting on Pg 228)! The examples revolve around the students creating their own Digital Flexbook, which are free, nonlinear, highly customizable and easy-to-use nature of open source textbooks. -Creation process happened along five distinct phases: awareness, analysis, collection, design, and reflection. Each of these phases was unique to the process but did not occur in isolation.
Christine Marsden

Collaborative Learning for the Digital Age - The Chronicle Review - The Chronicle of Hi... - 0 views

chronicle.com/...128789

shared by Christine Marsden on 28 Jan 14 - No Cached
  • science of attention
  • When the tape stopped, the philosopher asked how many people had counted at least a dozen basketball tosses. Hands went up all over. He then asked who had counted 13, 14, and congratulated those who'd scored the perfect 15. Then he asked, "And who saw the gorilla?"
  • I raised my hand and was surprised to discover I was the only person at my table and one of only three or four in the large room to do so
  • ...24 more annotations...
  • Attention blindness is the fundamental structuring principle of the brain, and I believe that it presents us with a tremendous opportunity
  • Fortunately, given the interactive nature of most of our lives in the digital age, we have the tools to harness our different forms of attention and take advantage of them.
  • our ability to pinpoint a problem and solve it, an achievement honed in all those years in school and beyond—may be exactly what limits us
  • Multitasking is the ideal mode of the 21st century, not just because of information overload but also because our digital age was structured without anything like a central node broadcasting one stream of information that we pay attention to at a given moment. On the Internet, everything links to everything, and all of it is available all the time.
  • The 20th century taught us that completing one task before starting another one was the route to success. Everything about 20th-century education, like the 20th-century workplace, has been designed to reinforce our attention to regular, systematic tasks that we take to completion
  • When we gave a free iPod to every member of the entering first-year class, there were no conditions. We simply asked students to dream up learning applications for this cool little white device with the adorable earbuds, and we invited them to pitch their ideas to the faculty.
  • Pod experiment
  • In the iPod experiment, we were crowdsourcing educational innovation for a digital age. Crowdsourced thinking is very different from "credentialing," or relying on top-down expertise. If anything, crowdsourcing is suspicious of expertise, because the more expert we are, the more likely we are to be limited in what we conceive to be the problem, let alone the answer.
  • So we relented and said any student could have a free iPod—just so long as she persuaded a professor to require one for a course and came up with a learning app in that course. Does that sound sneaky? Far be it from me to say that we planned it.
  • Working together, and often alongside their professors, they came up with far more learning apps for their iPods than anyone—even at Apple—had dreamed possible
  • Almost instantly, students figured out that they could record lectures on their iPods and listen at their leisure.
  • Students who had grown up connected digitally gravitated to ways that the iPod could be used for collective learning. They turned iPods into social media and networked their learning in ways we did not anticipate.
  • iPod experiment back into the classroom. I decided to offer a new course called "This Is Your Brain on the Internet," a title that pays homage to Daniel J. Levitin's inspiring book This Is Your Brain on Music (Dutton, 2006)
  • his class was structured to be peer-led, with student interest and student research driving the design. "Participatory learning" is one term used to describe how we can learn together from one another's skills. "Cognitive surplus" is another used in the digital world for that "more than the sum of the parts" form of collaborative thinking that happens when groups think together online.
  • "collaboration by difference." Collaboration by difference is an antidote to attention blindness.
  • I had the students each contribute a new entry or amend an existing entry on Wikipedia, or find another public forum where they could contribute to public discourse
  • But it got me thinking: What if bad writing is a product of the form of writing required in college—the term paper—and not necessarily intrinsic to a student's natural writing style or thought process?
  • Research indicates that, at every age level, people take their writing more seriously when it will be evaluated by peers than when it is to be judged by teachers. Online blogs directed at peers exhibit fewer typographical and factual errors, less plagiarism, and generally better, more elegant and persuasive prose than classroom assignments by the same writers
  • They pointed out that I had used entirely conventional methods for testing and evaluating their work. We had talked as a class about the new modes of assessment on the Internet—like public commenting on products and services and leaderboards (peer evaluations adapted from sports sites)—
  • crucial part of our brain on the Internet
  • I also liked the idea of students' each having a turn at being the one giving the grades. That's not a role most students experience, even though every study of learning shows that you learn best by teaching someone else
  • and mine was simply to extend the concept of peer leadership to grading
  • That says to me that we don't believe people can learn unless they are forced to, unless they know it will "count on the test."
  • If you give people the means to self-publish—whether it's a photo from their iPhone or a blog—they do so. They seem to love learning and sharing what they know with others
  • Christine Marsden on 28 Jan 14
     
    Collaborative Learning for the Digital Age By Cathy Davidson Cathy talks about attention blindness, and that it's the fundamental structuring principle of the brain, she believes that it presents us with a tremendous opportunity. Her take is different from that of many neuroscientists. Multitasking is the ideal mode of the 21st century, not just because of information overload but also because the digital age was structured without anything like a central node broadcasting one stream of information that we pay attention to at a given moment. On the Internet, everything links to everything, and all of it is available all the time. Research indicates that, at every age level, people take their writing more seriously when it will be evaluated by peers than when it is to be judged by teachers. Online blogs directed at peers exhibit fewer typographical and factual errors, less plagiarism, and generally better, more elegant and persuasive prose than classroom assignments by the same writers.
  • Christine Marsden on 28 Jan 14
     
    Sorry guys...didn't realize the annotations were posted too!...quite a lot!
Christine Marsden

Computers in the Classroom: Agents of Change - 0 views

www.papert.org/...ComputersInClassroom.html

shared by Christine Marsden on 28 Jan 14 - Cached
  • Within four years a pencil and a pad of paper will be placed in every single classroom of the country so that every child, rich or poor, will have access to the new knowledge technology. Meantime the educational psychologists stand by to measure the impact of pencils on learning.
  • In fact what I now understand that the Foobarian educators would actually do is not reject the pencil but appropriate it by finding trivial uses of the pencil that could be carried out within their meager resources and that would require minimal change in their old ways of doing things.
  • And the success of students like Bill in these environments shows that just as all children -- and not only those who "have a head for French" -- learn French if they live to France, so, too, all children learn mathematics if they meet it in a context that is more alive than the ordinary curriculum.
  • ...4 more annotations...
  • The differences between Bill's learning experience and what schools offer in the form of a few hours a week in a "computer lab" could fill many pages. Here I focus on just one: The computer lab fits into the structure of school by making "computer literacy" one more subject with its curriculum and its time slots while Bill's learning cut across all these structures. He had access to computers and other technologies all the time, whenever he needed them
  • Computers seem expensive because schools put them in the same budget category as pencils. The actual cost of production of a net-based computer powerful enough to support deep change in learning would certainly be less than $500 (and I believe that with a national effort we could bring it down to $200), and its expected lifetime would exceed five years. An annual cost of $100 per year is about 1.5 percent of direct expenditure on public schooling. Taking indirect costs and the social cost of educational failures into account, it is less than 1 percent.
  • We are already beginning to hear stories about the influence in classrooms of children whose access to home computers and to a home learning culture has given them a high level not only of computer expertise but also of sophistication in seeking knowledge and standards in what constitutes a serious intellectual project
  • It is 100 years since John Dewey began arguing for the kind of change that would move schools away from authoritarian classrooms with abstract notions to environments in which learning is achieved through experimentation, practice and exposure to the real world. I, for one, believe the computer makes Dewey's vision far more accessible epistemologically. It also makes it politically more likely to happen, for where Dewey had nothing but philosophical arguments, the present day movement for change has an army of agents. The ultimate pressure for the change will be child power.
  • Christine Marsden on 28 Jan 14
     
    Computers in the Classroom: Agents of Change By Seymour Papert This article appeared in The Washington Post Education Review Sunday, October 27, 1996 Seymour concluded that computers do not contribute to better learning. The computer lab fits into the structure of school by making "computer literacy" one more subject with its curriculum and its time slots. It's about access to computers and other technologies all the time, whenever needed. He has a new book, The Connected Family, He develops the idea that the computers that will be the pivotal force for change will be those outside the control of schools and outside the schools' tendency to force new ideas into old ways. He talks about the influence in classrooms of children whose access to home computers and to a home learning culture has given them a high level not only of computer expertise but also of sophistication in seeking knowledge and standards in what constitutes a serious intellectual project. The number of these children will grow exponentially in the next few years. Their pressure on schools will become irresistible.
Amanda Berry

Idea of the Week - susanwatt.ca - 3 views

www.susanwatt.ca/idea-of-the-week.html

susanwatt idea

shared by Amanda Berry on 21 Jan 14 - No Cached
  • Amanda Berry on 21 Jan 14
     
    This is a website by Susan Watt (who was our Monday guest speaker!), who posts a tech "idea of the week". When I first got my iPad, I used her site to find some starter apps which I could explore in the classroom. When you click on the idea, you will see a great summary and "how-to" section, to help you get going with the specific Idea of the Week!
  • Christine Marsden on 25 Jan 14
     
    Thanks for sharing Amanda, this is a great resource, been reading up on QR codes!!
  • Cindy Brown-Leigh on 27 Jan 14
     
    I used Susan's snowflake making app in my classroom last Friday. We all had a great time, especially those who lack the fine motor skills to make the snowflakes with paper. Many of the students kept their designs to try and replicate them for "real" on paper.
Cindy Brown-Leigh

The Machine is Us/ing Us (Final Version) - YouTube - 1 views

www.youtube.com/watch

web2.0 youtube

shared by Cindy Brown-Leigh on 27 Jan 14 - Cached
  • Cindy Brown-Leigh on 27 Jan 14
     
    Video: The machine is using us. This video is a visual timeline that explains how the use of technology has changed since 1996. It demonstrates the difference between HTML which was designed to define the structure of a web document. When people were first creating websites, they had to understand and imput the computer code that supported the website, you had to be knowledgeable beyond what everyday users (such as myself) saw on the screen. Form and content were dependent on each other. Today, xml or digital text is used so the data can be formatted without having to know complicated code. It lets users create blogs and websites and edit wikipedia without having to understand the process behind their creations. This has made information much more accessible and changes the way people use and interact with "facts" and stories and any type of information we can think of. In other words, Web 2.0, which is really what this video is about, has redefined how we use our machines and it has become inextricably linked with the sharing of information in our world.
Brenda Sherry

What is a MOOC? - YouTube - 0 views

www.youtube.com/watch

mooc laurier iicti

shared by Brenda Sherry on 26 Jan 14 - No Cached
  • Brenda Sherry on 26 Jan 14
     
    Susan mentioned a MOOC last week and Maryke was asking for a definition. I found this one that explains it pretty well!
Brenda Sherry

Online courses - Course - 0 views

educourses.withgoogle.com/course

google courses education

shared by Brenda Sherry on 26 Jan 14 - No Cached
  • Brenda Sherry on 26 Jan 14
     
    Self-paced courses for educators by educators! 
David Ogilvie

ICDL - International Children's Digital Library - 1 views

en.childrenslibrary.org

children's books digital

shared by David Ogilvie on 21 Jan 14 - Cached
  • David Ogilvie on 21 Jan 14
     
    Great multi-lingual children's on-line library
  • Christine Marsden on 21 Jan 14
     
    Ok this one!!
David Ogilvie

international children's digital library - Google Search - 1 views

www.google.com/search

children's books digital library

shared by David Ogilvie on 21 Jan 14 - No Cached
  • David Ogilvie on 21 Jan 14
     
    Great multi-language children's web-site.
  • Cindy Brown-Leigh on 21 Jan 14
     
    Looking forward to using this one. Does is have any books in Urdu?
  • Christine Marsden on 21 Jan 14
     
    I will share this with other teachers at school, this is great!
Cindy Brown-Leigh

Kids' Games, Animals, Photos, Stories, and More -- National Geographic Kids - 0 views

kids.nationalgeographic.com/kids

science kids photos animals

shared by Cindy Brown-Leigh on 21 Jan 14 - No Cached
  • Cindy Brown-Leigh on 21 Jan 14
     
    This is a great website for researching animals for primary students
  • Kendra Spira on 21 Jan 14
     
    I loved the bullfrog picture.
Christine Marsden

Upper Grand District School Board - Home - 0 views

www.ugdsb.on.ca/...elementary.asp

shared by Christine Marsden on 21 Jan 14 - No Cached
  • Christine Marsden on 21 Jan 14
     
    Our board website. Tumblebooks is great, Primaries love it. Older students are enjoying blogs for Forest of Reading. If you ever need a video clip go on learn360.
Kendra Spira

National Geographic Magazine - 1 views

ngm.nationalgeographic.com

science photography nature

shared by Kendra Spira on 21 Jan 14 - Cached
  • Kendra Spira on 21 Jan 14
     
    The National Geographic Magazine
Brenda Sherry

Thanks Susan! - lino - 5 views

linoit.com/...Thanks%20Susan%21%20

lino susan

shared by Brenda Sherry on 21 Jan 14 - No Cached
anonymous

Different approach to learning yields compassionate results - 0 views

www.essentialkids.com.au/...te-results-20131218-2zkmz.html

inquiry based learning

shared by anonymous on 18 Jan 14 - No Cached
  • anonymous on 18 Jan 14
     
    Great article, really makes you think
Peter Skillen

Tech2Learn - Project-Based Learning - 0 views

tech2learn.wikispaces.com/Project-Based+Learning

project based learning project

shared by Peter Skillen on 18 Jan 14 - No Cached
  • Peter Skillen on 18 Jan 14
     
    Brenda's PBL page on her wiki. Great resources for many topics.
Brenda Sherry

FotoFlexer tutorial to resize your photos - YouTube - 0 views

www.youtube.com/watch

resize photos

shared by Brenda Sherry on 15 Jan 14 - No Cached
  • Brenda Sherry on 15 Jan 14
     
    Here is a 9 minute tutorial that shows you how to resize your photos using Fotoflexer - the same tool that some of us used for our 6 word stories! Sometimes you need make your photos smaller to fit on a web page a little better.
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