Some very interesting ideas from a language teacher
After writing a few reflections on the units I covered last term, I realized that summative reflection could become a tedious chore that doesn't serve much of purpose. This term I would like to work on writing shorter more formative reflections to help me stay connected with my units, and that will hopefully illicit some useful feedback from you, dear reader.
TodaysMeet helps you embrace the backchannel and connect with your audience in realtime.
Encourage the room to use the live stream to make comments, ask questions, and use that feedback to tailor your presentation, sharpen your points, and address audience needs.
Find out what your students are really thinking as the lesson occurs, slow down, speed up, explain clearer?
A brand new online site from Aus (i think!) i will have a look and let you know.
Or drop them an email and they will send you an invite.
Here is a quote off the site
ReadCloud provides the answer to one of the most pressing questions librarians and teachers are facing today: What is your eBook strategy?
ReadCloud is the world's first social eReader software with built-in learning tools and a Digital Library Management system that works on any platform.
Our immersive digital library system connects teachers, students and eBooks through online and offline social reading classrooms. ReadCloud facilitates classroom conversations embedded within eBooks through rich media such as comments, videos, pictures and sound bites.
Our technology mimics real life classroom discussions. ReadCloud provides a digital reading ecosystem for each school.
Social Interaction
ReadCloud enables conversations to take place real-time within each book and tailored for each classroom. Teachers can seed a book with comments progressively splattered throughout the book viewable in the margins. Students can participate by commenting further within the book and marking the annotations as private, public or for the attention of a specific classroom. Annotations can be filtered by teacher or classroom discussion. Rich text and media such as video, images or sound bites can all be embeded within the margins of each book by student and teacher alike.
Every annotation can be shared within the classroom, copied to an email or posted to a social network such as Twitter, Facebook or Myspace. Books are about learning through stories and the sharing of information. ReadCloud gives students and teachers a toolset to spread and share the contents of books like never before.
There you go.
Let me know what you think!
This year, we would like to find even more primary sources in every country that our learners choose to investigate. Rather than a formal class structure, it would be great to see them in small groups talking via Skype to as many people as possible. We'd love to have them engaging with students in other countries and continuing to connect with them after the initial interviews. It would be great to see them work collaboratively on Google Maps to which they add photos, information, questions and new learning. Hopefully they will use their class blogs to reflect on what they learn and to record their wonderings, so that people 'out there' can respond.
With iOS 5 you can now use AirPlay to "mirror" your entire iPad screen and display or project it. All that is required is an iPad 2, the new iOS operating system and an Apple TV (which sells for around $100) that connects to any TV, monitor or projector with an HDMI interface. You can project your iPad with a couple of simple steps ... and it works wirelessly! Here's how: