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February 2009 | Volume 66 | Number 5 How Teachers Learn Pages 34-38 Learning with Blogs and Wikis Bill Ferriter Technology has made it easy for educators to embrace continual professional development. Few ideas about teachers' professional growth resonate with me more than those of Richard Elmore, professor of educational leadership at Harvard, who has gone as far as to argue that school structures make learning for adults unlikely at best and nothing short of impossible at worst. In a 2002 report for the Albert Shanker Institute, Elmore wrote, As expectations for increased student performance mount and the measurement and publication of evidence about performance becomes part of the public discourse about schools, there are few portals through which new knowledge about teaching and learning can enter schools; few structures or processes in which teachers and administrators can assimilate, adapt, and polish new ideas and practices; and few sources of assistance for those who are struggling to understand the connection between the academic performance of their students and the practices in which they engage. So the brutal irony of our present circumstance is that schools are hostile and inhospitable places for learning. They are hostile to the learning of adults and, because of this, they are necessarily hostile to the learning of students. (pp. 4-5)

Technology has made it easy for educators to embrace continual professional development. Few ideas about teachers' professional growth resonate with me more than those of Richard Elmore, professor of educational leadership at Harvard, who has gone as far as to argue that school structures make learning for adults unlikely at best and nothing short of impossible at worst.

Founded in 1943, ASCD (formerly the Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development) is an educational leadership organization dedicated to advancing best practices and policies for the success of each learner. Our 175,000 members in 119 countries are professional educators from all levels and subject areas--superintendents, supervisors, principals, teachers, professors of education, and school board members.

Vesely, P., Bloom, L., & Sherlock, J. (2007). Key elements of building online community: Comparing faculty and student perceptions. MERLOT Journal of Online Learning and Teaching, 3(3), 234-246. Vesely, Bloom, and Sherlock (2007) document that essential to the learning process is the student/student and student/teacher interaction, and building this community of learners is more challenging in online. Students in blended courses felt interaction may be better than in traditional courses. Students who feel silenced in onsite class discussions are more apt to contribute online. Seeking help can be a determining factor in successful learning. In the online communities, help is available virtually around the clock from the instructors and fellow classmates. Furthermore, through their experiences in the blended course, students would better understand the significance of managing their time, cultivating their study environment, regulating their effort, seeking appropriate support, and learning from classmates. In my experience, students reported that their online interaction with classmates had greatly assisted in their comprehension of course materials. Central to how they felt about blended learning was the quality and quantity of student and faculty interaction. In blended courses, students are often required to engage actively by reading and responding to discussion forum postings that become a permanent record of their participation and learning, rather than passively attending classes. Perceptions of interaction from faculty are also positive for blended courses. Faculty renovate their teaching methods by placing onsite lectures online and adding supplementary activities to aid student learning. Blended teaching and learning transforms education from "a command and control structure to a connect and collaborate environment" (Moskal, Dziuban, Upchurch, Hartman, & Truman, 2006) which is more student-centered than faculty-controlled. For faculty, the quality

The idea of storyboarding was developed at the Walt Disney Studio during the early 1930s. storyboard for video production is essentially a large comic of the film or some section of the film produced beforehand to help directors, cinematographers and television commercial advertising clients visualize the scenes and find potential problems before they occur. Often storyboards include arrows or instructions that indicate movement.More recently the term storyboard has been used in the fields of web development, software development and instructional design to present and describe, in written, interactive events as well as audio and motion, particularly on user interfaces and electronic pages.

tools and constructivism

Love that the "practical descriptions of constructivist learning" listed in the article "[C]onstructivist learning should engage students in meaningful learning and ... the critical features are that the learning should be ... * Active and manipulative, engaging students in interactions and explorations with learning materials and provid[ing] opportunities for them to observe the results of their manipulations * Constructive and reflective, enabling students to integrate new ideas with prior knowledge to make meaning and enable learning through reflection * Intentional, providing opportunities for students to articulate their learning goals and monitor their progress in achieving them * Authentic, challenging and real-world (or simulated), facilitating better understanding and transfer of learning to new situations * Cooperative, collaborative, and conversational, providing students with opportunities to interact with each other to clarify and share ideas, to seek assistance, to negotiate problems, and discuss solutions."

Abstract: As more and more instructors enter the world of online teaching and learning, a body of knowledge is emerging around the challenge of facilitating online interaction and fostering online collaboration. This paper draws from the literature on asynchronous learning and the authors' own experiences with online discussion and collaborative online projects. We identify a variety of techniques for focusing student dialogue, fostering an online learning community, and promoting successful collaboration. Instructors who are teaching wholly online courses or simply integrating online components into face-to-face classes will benefit from the observations and discussion.

Art Daily Tweet (REUTERS/Stefan Wermuth) http://www.artdaily.org/index.asp?int_sec=11&int_new=44618&int_modo=1 High resolution images of famous art work will be available on you laptop! Google has partnered with museums like MoMa- NYC, Freer Gallery of Art- Washington D.C. , Museo Reina Sofia, Madrid - Spain, Museum Kampa, Prague - Czech Republic, National Gallery, London - UK, Palace of Versailles - France, Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam - The Netherlands, The State Hermitage Museum, St Petersburg - Russia, State Tretyakov Gallery, Moscow - Russia, Tate Britain, London - UK * Uffizi Gallery, Florence - Italy and the Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam - The Netherlands. The site features over 1000 images, virtual gallery tours and something called Street View where "users can move around galleries virtually, selecting works of art that interest them and clicking to discover more or diving into the high resolution images, where available." Users can also use the Create and Artwork feature where they can save view of artwork they enjoy and build a collection of their own. I have been to MoMa, Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam, Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam and the Freer Gallery of Art- Washington D.C s I would like to see how these collections are represented and how this new Google tool works.

Tips are geared toward K-12 grades, but some could be used for college classes.

Many critics of Twitter believe that the 140-character microblog offered by the ubiquitous social network can do little for the education industry . They are wrong. K-12 teachers have taken advantage of The following projects provide you and your students with 50 ways to Twitter 's format to keep their classes engaged and up-to-date on the latest technologies.

Many critics of Twitter believe that the 140-character microblog offered by the ubiquitous social network can do little for the education industry . They are wrong. K-12 teachers have taken advantage of Twitter 's format to keep their classes engaged and up-to-date on the latest technologies.

Recognizing the grave consequences for individual opportunity and more generally for our economy and society, the Carnegie Statway ™and Quantway ™Networked Improvement Communities have embraced an audacious goal-to increase from 5 percent to 50 percent the percentage of students who achieve college math credit within one year of continuous enrollment. As a result of the Carnegie Advancement for Teaching (CAT) work, my college will undergo a pilot program for Fall 2012 where I will be the instructor to achieve college math credit within one year on continuous enrollment. The Pathways Blog provides information about Carnegie's work to create pathways for student success in developmental education in community colleges and makes connections between Carnegie's work and that of others concerned with student struggle. Even though I follow the pathways blog, there are several more blogs from the foundation and are listed blow:

I have used this in my classes and love it! The free Poll Everywhere mobile app is perfect for responding to polls, presenting polls, and clicking through PowerPoint presentations. Use it to... 1.) Respond to polls: Audience members can use the app to respond to the presenter's questions live. 2.) Poll an audience: Presenters can ask the audience questions and display poll responses live. 3.) Navigate in Powerpoint: Presenters can control the flow of Powerpoint presentations using a smartphone as a wireless remote. Participants Audience members or students can easily respond to polls or vote using the app on a smartphone or tablet. Aside from the app, they can respond via web browser, text message, or Twitter. Presenters Professors, teachers and presenters can create and display questions on the fly, including Q&A and multiple choice polls. Questions can be presented directly from the web or embedded in a PowerPoint or Keynote presentation. Audience responses are displayed in real-time. Great for classroom participation, or gathering opinions from the audience. PowerPoint Remote Presenters using PowerPoint can use the Poll Everywhere mobile app as a presentation clicker, to navigate through your PowerPoint presentation with ease. It has a slick, streamlined design and a set of polling controls built-in. Key Features: * Create or answer multiple choice, true/false, open ended, ranking poll, and clickable image questions. * Participants are automatically shown the presenter's current question, for quick and easy participation. * Watch results update live. * Click through a PowerPoint presentation with the included Presenter Remote feature.

What a great way to be able to asynchronously poll students and still allow them to remain anonymous. This also gives students to see how well their knowledge compares to other students. It also allows them to see if their way of thinking is similar to other students.

Harry discusses how the study of Social Media can help us better understand how youth are acting and interacting both online and offline, how young people adeptly navigate a growing and increasingly diverse assortment of social media, and how we can (and must) incorporate and account for social media in the classroom.

educational resource for public consumption re: Incorporating & accounting for Social Media in Education

Thank you for posting. I thought this was a very interesting TedTalk to watch. It gave some really good reasoning for adding social media into the classroom.

Edpuzzle is a Web-based application that allows instructors (and students) to upload videos or use pre-existing streaming videos from YouTube or Vimeo and overlay test/assessment items to create a more interactive lesson. Instructors can stop videos at anytime and present assessment items to check for understanding. Videos become lessons and engaging presentations. Great for flipped classrooms...............and it's free!

A powerful reference database that can be used to keep track of sources and also integrated with word processors to generate bibliographies and such. This does a very good job of importing metadata from websites and online texts, and pulling additional information for sources from other databases. It would be nice if this were a bit more customizable, but it may get there in time. The folks developing this are very helpful and responsive to users.

E-Learning Queen focuses on distance training and education, from instructional design to e-learning and mobile solutions, and pays attention to psychological, social, and cultural factors. The edublog emphasizes real-world e-learning issues and appropriate uses of emerging technologies. Who is the Queen? You are, dear reader. Susan Smith Nash is the Queen's assistant.

eLearn Magazine is a leading source of high-quality information on the uses of online learning and training strategies in a variety of contexts for K-12, higher education, and the corporate workforce.eLearn Magazine presents new technologies and approaches for creating, delivering, and supporting online instruction and workplace performance.

This course site and presentation will illustrate how the "Seven Principles of Good Practice in Undergraduate Education" (Chickering and Gamson, 1991) can be supported using the features of Blackboard Learn. Several online course design rubrics will also guide our showcase of quality instructional design options related to course structure, navigation, activities, assignments (individual and group), and communication. "Seven Principles of Good Practice in Undergraduate Education" (Chickering and Gamson, 1991), states a quality teaching and learning environment is one that: (1) Encourages contact between students and faculty, (2) Develops reciprocity and cooperation among students, (3) Encourages active learning, (4) Gives prompt feedback, (5) Emphasizes time on task, (6) Communicates high expectations, and (7) Respects diverse talents and ways of learning.

Students hate discussion boards and mostly feel like they don't get anything out of them. They go into check box mode and real dialogue is lost. How can we fix them?

I used discussion board for 2 full semesters. I received feedback from my students in both ways: course reflection and my performance evaluation. The feedback was very positive. The assignment for the discussion boards would include an actual company with specific operations (inventory, quality, process design, etc.). Students were free to answer any questions and required provide a feedback to at least one of the classmates answer. Students felt connected to their classmates, shared different views, had an opportunity to learn from each other.

The title is a bit misleading but some of the recommendations discussed can definitely spark some life into DBs. DBs are a good way to foster engagement but unless properly done can mostly be seen by students as a one and done exercise.

This article describes the use of social media as a bridge between students, teachers, and the online course. Many students are currently using social media such as Facebook and Twitter. The challenge for instructors is to learn how to leverage that as as an opportunity to create value for the student, the course, and for the instructor. The growing trend of Bring Your Own Device (BYOD) is commonplace among many campuses and it is now becoming common for institutions to require students to supply their own technology tools.

Freakonomics by Steven Levitt and Stephen Dubner was a New York Times bestseller in the early 2000's. Here is the description of Stephen Dubner's Radio Show: "Freakonomics Radio is an award-winning weekly podcast (subscribe here!) with 8 million downloads per month. It can also be heard on public radio stations across the country, on SiriusXM, on several major airlines, and elsewhere. Host Stephen J. Dubner has surprising conversations that explore the riddles of everyday life and the weird wrinkles of human nature - from cheating and crime to parenting and sports. Dubner talks with Nobel laureates and provocateurs, social scientists and entrepreneurs - and his Freakonomics co-author Steve Levitt. Freakonomics Radio is produced by Dubner Productions and WNYC Studios."

This website is an overview and serves as a hub to identify data grounded in resources managed by this federal agency. It includes reports and data sets concerning geography, wildlife, and climate information.

STEM, Humanities and Social Science disciplines can integrate these sites, papers and data sets into their curricula.