MVCR Tech Tools

Here are some useful tips for students to use to create a LinkedIn account.

The debate surrounding social media as a learning tool is unlikely to abate any time soon. Is it just a distraction, or do the interactive educational tools available outweigh any disadvantages? Social media platforms, such as Facebook and Twitter, are becoming steadily more integrated within a variety of apps targeted at learning.

is open source the wave of the future for academic publications

Different people communicate differently. Undoubtedly, you already know this. What you may not know is that these different ways of communicating are pretty much hard-wired into people and seldom reflect conscious choice.[1]Our communication style emerges from a combination of brain dominance, psychological preference, sensory approach and the communication examples that have surrounded us since birth.

For any classroom this could work to engage with content.

Technology is ubiquitous, touching almost every part of our lives, our communities, our homes. Yet most schools lag far behind when it comes to integrating technology into classroom learning. Many are just beginning to explore the true potential tech offers for teaching and learning.

Bricks don't make a school. People do. We are social organisations of parents, students and staff working together in the mission of training young people. What role can social media have in schools?

According to ACTFL, foreign language learners need as much as 240+ hours of input to reach an intermediate level of proficiency. I'm looking into ways to use Twitter together with other applications like Feedly to encourage students to become autonomous learners and get more input from authentic francophone listening and reading sources. I can help them navigate through the sea of information available by sending them my suggested feeds and then practice using the target language by discussing topics together. Feedly is used to create a personal list of RSS feeds to favorite online news, video, audio and learning sources and save, publish and/or share them with others via an RSS reader application or even Twitter.

Facebook and Twitter may be ubiquitous, but there are many other social media tools out there that can enhance teaching and learning. Here, three educators share their favorites.

Literature instructors teaching Shakespeare can bring his plays alive by incorporating technology into the literature classroom.

Discussion boards. Google documents. YouTube videos. TED Talks. Khan Academy. These are just a few of the many resources some of us have used in our ever-growing arsenal of techie tools. We want to stay on the cutting edge. The Sloan Consortium (now Online Learning Consortium) predicts this trend toward an increased usage of technology will continue into the foreseeable future.

Nice plain language account of online teaching from a happy veteran. Michelle Everson has been teaching online for five years. Here, she shares the top 10 best practices she has learned about online teaching.

Take the quiz. See if you are ready for social media in your class

The myth about social media in the classroom is that if you use it, kids will be Tweeting, Facebooking and Snapchatting while you're trying to teach. We still have to focus on the task at hand. Don't mistake social media for socializing.

10 blogs on instructional design

podcasts include extensive discussion on gaming as well as other aspects of eLearning

I know many people use Google Docs for collaborative writing - I used to use Google Docs all the time as well, but OneNote Online is my new favorite! It has a book-like layout and you can create several tabs for different groups so everyone has their own space (their own page in a tab), which is less confusing than Google Docs.

I use Padlet all the time in my class for a quick sentence or paragraph-level group writing activity - it's easy to share with your students and you can embed it very easily! http://padlet.com/salinmiso/8tihmalkbcyl

I have used Poll Everywhere, Padlet, Google Docs/Forms for checking students' group work in class, but I've always wanted a simple tool that takes a second for students to complete and another second for me to check their completion but a tool where students don't get to "cheat" by peeking at what other groups are writing because they can't see what other students are typing until they post their answers!

A website button generator. Design your very own button or use one of the preset examples. Then download or hotlink the image, or get CSS code. Fast & free!