Group items tagged

"quietube: Video without the distractions To watch web videos without the comments and crap, just drag the button below to your browser's bookmarks bar. On any of the supported video pages, click the bookmark button to watch in peace."

"Best Practices in Online Learning Posted June 26, 2012 in Online Learning From David Evans A recent Time magazine article, "The Teacher You've Never Met: Inside an Online High School Class," profiled Jane Good, one of Colorado's 21st Century Virtual Academy K-12 teachers. As a teacher who only sees her students' hands raised through buttons clicked on a screen and will never be able to tell if a student has dozed off on his or her desk, Good realizes that there are effective and ineffective practices for teaching in an online classroom."

"Open Educational Resources (OER) offer opportunities for increasing equity and access to high-quality K-12 education. Many state education agencies now have offices devoted to identifying and using OERs and other digital resources in their states. To help states, districts, teachers, and other users determine the degree of alignment of OERs to the Common Core State Standards, and to determine aspects of quality of OERs, Achieve has developed eight rubrics in collaboration with leaders from the OER community (download link for rubrics below). To allow users to apply these rubrics and evaluate the quality of instructional resources, Achieve partnered with OER Commons to develop an online evaluation tool. OER Commons, an online repository for open education resources, is now hosting the tool and its resulting evaluation data. Every resource available on OER Commons contains an "Evaluate Resource" button that will direct users to the evaluation tool. The coding for the tool is freely available online here. Resources rated on OER Commons will create a pool of metadata, and this metadata will be shared through the Learning Registry with other interested repositories."

screenr's web-based screen recorder makes it a breeze to create and share your screencasts around the web. Just click the record button, capture your screen & voice, and share the link. Some people even call it fun.

"The "publish" button isn't the end of the process. Now it's time to talk to-and learn from-strangers."

ZooBurst is a digital storytelling tool that is designed to let anyone easily create their own customized 3D pop-up books. Using ZooBurst, storytellers of any age can create their own rich worlds in which their stories can come to life. ZooBurst books are completely web-based and can be experienced using nothing more than your browser outfitted with the Adobe Flash plug-in. Books can be inspected from any angle from with a 3D space, and rotating around a book is as easy as dragging and dropping your mouse. In addition, the author of a book can choose to make items "clickable," allowing you to learn more about individual characters within a story. You can choose to experience a ZooBurst book in a number of ways, including in Augmented Reality. If you have a webcam installed on your computer simply click on the 'Augmented Reality' button at the top of the screen and watch as the book appears in the palm of your hand!

Told to me by the Denver Colorado district office

" What amazed me most about Classtools.net was not the valuable tools provided, but the ability for teachers to easily customize these tools and use them in any subject area. If that is not enough, how about the ability to embed your newly made instructional resource on your own classroom website, wiki, or blog? Any educator will also like the fact that students have no need to log in or sign up for an account… and neither do teachers! Need tutorials… they are provided! Do samples help you understand better… you will find plenty! Is budget a problem… then free should be affordable! Classtools.net is the work of educator, Russel Tarr, Head of History at the International School of Toulouse, France. Upon entering the site, educators will see the listing of tools. Clicking on a tool allows teachers to individualize that specific tool for their own classroom needs. Teachers then have the option of copying a generated link to place on their own web site or of copying a generated code to embed as a tool (widget) on their classroom site. Also, on the front page, are some video links that will provide further information. Two videos that provide excellent information are the 1 Minute Overview and How to Create Games. The Listing Of Over 20 Digital Tools For Your Classroom The tools that you can even customize are included below. Along with this tool listing you will find descriptions of each tool, an overview of and samples of specific tools (if provided), and any related video (if provided). * Arcade Game Generator - Allows teachers to create concept builders, practice exercises, and reviews. Best of all, one set up feeds into five different game possibilities at the same time The teacher can choose which game, or allow students a choice. Make sure you check out all the examples and pre-made games in (overview and samples). Also watch the How to Create Games . * Random Name Picker - Can be used as an activity management tool or skip the names.