Group items tagged

"Educational Origami is a blog and a wiki, about 21st Century Teaching and Learning. "This wiki is not just about the integration of technology into the classroom, though this is certainly a critical area, it is about shifting our educational paradigm. The world is not as simple as saying teachers are digital immigrants and students digital natives. In fact, we know that exposure to technology changes the brains of those exposed to it. The longer and stronger the exposure and the more intense the emotions the use of the technology or its content evokes, the more profound the change. This technology is increasingly ubiquitous. We have to change how we teach, how we assess, what we teach, when we teach it, where we are teaching it, and with what." A most interesting site that tells us what the learner needs to know. [Thanks to Bee Dieu.]

The creator of Hole in the Wall: The Future of Learning: can it be a school in the cloud. This 22+ min. talk is inspiring for those who love technology and futurist thinking. He aks for help in designing the "School in the Cloud, a learning lab in India, where children can explore and learn from each other -- using resources and mentoring from the cloud." Are we still creating for a machine that no longer exists? On anecdote about the Hole in the Wall: The children said that the machine used only English, so they had to teach themselves English to use it -- very casually.

An excellent resource that shows how the language teacher can gradually develop skills in storytelling using the right Internet tools in the correct order.

This is a nice tech scoop.it blog for the technology-using teacher. Very much mobile-user and classroom-teacher oriented.

"Zeen is a free site (in beta) that allows you to gather your favorite pictures and videos from the internet and add your own text to create an interactive digital magazine that you can share with other people. Zeen is easy to use and your end product is a very dynamic and interactive publication. This site is a fantastic tool for school projects, invitations, online memory books, business portfolios, and advertising just to name a few options."

Sounds like a good place for many different kinds of content- and project-based learning. "Free Map Tools is an online resource that allows you to utilize maps in really cool and interesting ways. With this site you can find the distance between two points, by land and air. You are able to calculate the area of a region on a map. It allows you to determine how far you can travel while walking, riding a bike, or driving a car for a designated amount of travel time. It will even tell you where you would end up if you tunneled through the earth. Free Map Tools is a very cool website that has applications for social studies, science , and math teachers."

This is an exhaustive rubric for six domains of online teaching, including learner support and resources, organization, assessment, etc.

The Science Genius project is demonstrated through an energetic classroom teacher. The project aims to use students' local culture, in this case rap/hip-hop, to engage students' attention and draw them into science concepts actively. Great video demonstration by Dr. Chris Emdin, including several examples of students' creative projects. The approach also worked with students who hadn't ever written rap music before.Follow the series.

Shelly Terrell offers FREE webinars every Friday at around 21:00 GMC/UTC at americantesol.adobeconnect.com/terrell/. This page gives a list of topics for upcoming webinars. Get somefree prof development with inspiring examples of how to use Web tools with your students.

A multimedia version of Wikipedia. Searchable by words in video or other media. As available as an app for iPad. Might be good for project-based and content-based learning. From Carla Arena.

Lots of documentaries on an enormous variety of subjects. These can be used to spark conversation and get students ready to do their own research for a paper. Professionally produced, and free. Many are award-winning. Categories are listed, and there is a search function. Not specifically directed to ESL/EFL, but good authentic content.

Another teacher training site for technology. However, this is rapidly spoken and may be difficult for NNEST to follow easily. The front page has a nice explanation of how the site works and how each video is set up. The site is divided roughly into tools for newbies, developing users, and advanced users. Each video also has a link, and all the tools described are free.

"See the best data visualizations on the web all in one place." Mainly infographics--charts and informational maps. Students could upload their own graphs, et al., for comment and feedback, and the site purports to be creating new data visualization tools.

A blog describing, very briefly, a large number of tools. Mostly a list, but promises to do more later. Includes both Web and mobile tools, but sorted only roughly into categories.

A nice set of short instructional videos by R. Stannard on how to set up a Moodle course, add materials, and manage the learning environment for your students. Looks carefully at some of the problematic areas of Moodle. This set of videos looks at Moodle set up on your own school's Moodle; however, much of what is done will apply to one of the free Moodles online.

Mailvu is a free video messaging system that looks simple and easy to use. R. Stannard's video helps you get started quickly, and he also discusses how he uses the tools with his students for language learning: you can have students send you video recordings and then comment on them. Also has apps for Android and iPhone.

Very short videos--36 sec--may be good for low level students to practice initial speaking/listening. Also has apps for various smart phones. Might be good for a quite pronunciation quiz, for example. The teacher can then send back a short video message with corrections, modeling, etc.

This remarkable concordancer has many quick and easy features, such as seeing visually with a graph the frequency of occurrences of a word, quick links to the word embedded in a concordance, a thesaurus of alternative vocabulary, and indications of "good" and "bad" uses of a word. Stannard doesn't talk much about the pedagogy of the tool, but it is well worth exploring, esp. with your more advanced students. The training tool gives you an idea of how a concordancer is used. JtW works with Wordle.

A video on how to use Keek to make and share short video messages. Although limited to only 36 secs, this might be a good application for beginning learners, or for a quick pronunciation quiz (you will see who is taking that quiz!) You can also embed a finished recording in your blog or wiki, as well as sending it by email. A good way to have students create a short, practiced conversation. Also has smartphone apps for mobile recordings, RSS feed to follow, and links to Facebook, Yahoo, and Twitter.

A cute way to introduce yourself to your students, and vice versa. Students in teams could post their pictures and comment on each other's "peach." Add music, share on Fb or Twitter, make comments, make private or public. Example from EVO_Drama_2012 at http://photopeach.com/album/10l8r5x.