Group items tagged

"Does your school or school district provide a moderated, interactive web platform for video sharing among students as well as teachers? While education-specific video sites like Edublogs.tv, SchoolTube, and TeacherTube can and are being used by learners around the world to share video interactively (as well as YouTube and YouTube EDU) there can be a number of benefits when schools provide "homegrown YouTube" video services. Often school district network administrators are loath to unblock / open access to YouTube. A homegrown video sharing site can be moderated and controlled (an extremely important word in the lexicon of IT directors) in ways a public video sharing website outside the school network cannot. Bandwidth limitations are often cited as the reason video sharing sites in schools are blocked. While software and hardware solutions exist to limit the percentage or total amount of bandwidth allocated to services like video streaming websites, many school networks are not presently configured to implement these types of imposed limits. "The fight to unblock YouTube" even for teacher access and use is an uphill struggle in many schools, but the case for a homegrown video sharing site can be less contentious."

"Although search engines provide a great starting point when you're searching for someone online, with all of the new social sites that have popped up over the past few years, they're often just not enough. In our recent State of Blog Search 2009 post we discussed the various reasons you may choose to use any or all of the following blog search tools: Technorati, Google Blog Search, Ice Rocket, Ask.com Blogsearch, and FriendFeed. While these blog search engines are great to fill specific needs, they're also another great place to look for your footprints on the Web. "

"Alan November talks about the importance of making students contributors to their own learning. I have been following his work for years (seen him present in person a couple of times too). I have been especially paying attention to his thoughts about how, over the years, it seems that we have taken away the reason/relevance for learning of our children."

"What to Look for in a Classroom" Good signs and Possible reasons to Worry!

"Cell Phones for Learning Cell phones are rapidly becoming ubiquitous in many school communities, but their presence in the classroom is commonly viewed as disruptive and unwanted. Modern cell phones offer a variety of capabilities, which are being used effectively by educators in different schools to support curricular learning objectives and boost student achievement. Explore reasons some school districts are embracing the use of cell phones for learning both inside and outside the classroom and examine specific guidelines school districts are utilizing for student cell phones. Explore specific applications of cell phones for learning, including use as electronic response systems, data access, media recording, homework tracking and social networking. This session is also presented as: * Guidelines and Instructional Applications for Cell Phone Use at School * Cell Phone Digital Storytelling"

I love the idea of leaving kids with one "cool tool" each time they visit me. During my second session with the grade 3-5 students, I modified an idea I found on Chad Lehman's website using Wordle. In a nutshell, Wordle creates a word cloud out of the text your provide. The more frequently a word is used, the bigger it becomes in the cloud. We began our Wordle lesson by modeling the process, and I had kids quickly brainstorm reasons we love Thailand. Yes, the beaches truly are amazing here, but I did cheat a bit when we made this. When one kid said 'beach,' I asked who else liked the beach and then added a bunch more to give them the idea.

"The main reason for inclusion in the top 10 was the impact a game had on the educational gaming field. Some of these are getting rather long in the tooth as far as games go, yet their impact is still being felt in educational research that was foundational or continues to be published. On the other hand, new titles are coming out all the time and this list may well change in the future."