Group items tagged

As you work with digital material (both in your own preparation and with your students), you will run up against the questions of copyright and fair use more and more. Students are becoming incredibly adept at grabbing and repurposing online material. This can result in powerful and inventive work (after all, there's very little created that is truly original, with no influence from prior works) but can also be a way to avoid original thought.  There's a fine line between copyright infringement and fair use. Not to mention outright plagiarism, of course. And educational use is not necessarily fair use; that's a common misconception.  This is a recording of an ISTE web conference on copyright and fair use. It even includes an original fair use rock song!

"When used effectively, technology plays an important role in enhancing the learning process. Teachers can use digital devices to present supplemental material for lessons or to encourage students to take a more hands-on role in their education. Even with all of the benefits of technology in the classroom, however, educators must use caution to ensure that students are focusing on the lesson and not giving in to distractions. Here are seven ways that teachers can use to help students pay more attention when using technology."

"Here is the problem with the term "Flipped Class:" it implies version one of our screencasting model: that which used to be done in class is now done at home, and that which used to be done at home, is now done in class.  In a nutshell, that IS "The Flipped Classroom," but it does not end there, which is why the term "The Flipped Classroom" does not do justice to the many models being used."

"Browse and use standards-aligned curriculum." Some free, some paid.

The 800-lb gorilla of online math learning. Carnegie Learning's Cognitive Tutor is an adaptive, differentiated learning system in which student understanding is assessed and individually addressed as part of the learning process. It's truly an amazing system, but it's not modular -- in other words, you won't get the best use of it pulling out items for use in your curriculum, because the system's curriculum is intended to be used in full. But it might be worth considering -- results show huge results from this system. See http://www.carnegielearning.com/research/reports/

"One of the most common questions we get is, "But where do we find the time to use all this new technology?" To answer that question, we developed this infographic - A Day in the Life of a Connected Educator to show that using social media in your classroom and in your life can be integrated, easy, and fun."

Good background information on blended learning. Pay particular attention to the footnotes.

Good tutorial resource about using Diigo

Online learning system used by High Tech High. Seems similar to Carnegie Learning. "Assessment and LEarning in Knowledge Spaces is a Web-based, artificially intelligent assessment and learning system. ALEKS uses adaptive questioning to quickly and accurately determine exactly what a student knows and doesn't know in a course. ALEKS then instructs the student on the topics she is most ready to learn. As a student works through a course, ALEKS periodically reassesses the student to ensure that topics learned are also retained. ALEKS courses are very complete in their topic coverage and ALEKS avoids multiple-choice questions. A student who shows a high level of mastery of an ALEKS course will be successful in the actual course she is taking."

Another advance in the flipped classroom construct. What I found most interesting was the use of the students as peer assessors when they were given papers to write instead of quizzes. not sure how effective it would be, but it might be very effective to have 1000 or so thoughtful critiques of a paper you've written. You would see a trend of the responses, and it might weed out subjectivity. That kind of "crowdsourcing" is something unique that technology could provide. There is a module in moodle which was not ready for primetime in version 1.9, but in Moodle 2.0 it might be. It was called Workshop, and allowed teachers and students to do peer editing and grading in an organized way. If it works better in 2.0, we should consider using it for peer editing exercises... ben

A nice range of uses for this social bookmarking tool. 

This one is worth reading, but not because it's necessarily worth following. It's a wrong-headed approach to tech integration, one that values the tools above the pedagogical goals -- because it assumes that the use of the tool is valuable in itself. What it omits is why any one of these scenarios can support learning... which would be a much more effective way to lobby a teacher to use it...

A physics professor at SLU uses free software to deconstruct the physics of Angry Birds. He measures velocity and acceleration over time using Tracker Video Analysis. Nice way to connect science to gaming...

If you've got an Android phone, you can easily build a program on it using this software. It uses a graphical programming interface that's quite simple to learn.

"While multitasking may seem to be saving time, psychologists, neuroscientists and others are finding that it can put us under a great deal of stress and actually make us less efficient."

"GFW High school  in Minnesota is really leading the race at this point.  I  read the blog Ed Galaxy by Kevin Cummins regularly.  Kevin frequently shares great stuff.  Today is a wonderful article, The Ultimate Guide to Using iPads in the Classroom. In that article, he links to the GFW iPad Policy, Procedures and information.  It is chalked full of good information for any school thinking about 1:1 with iPads.  So, I did a little diggin and found their school website, including the iPad initiative pages that has even more useful information.  They are in their 2nd year of this, so, clearly they have a lot of the bugs worked out.  No need to re-invent the wheel, take their lead and learn from them!!  What more can I say, but WOW!!"

"In this activity you will explore: What is Diigo? How to get started Joining and creating a Diigo group Ideas for using Diigo "

Video introduction to Moodle rubrics. You can use these in your Moodle assignments!

This teacher chose to have his students create RSA Animate-style videos as "an easy way to make them visualize their information, make connections, and re-tell their facts in a story that had a very tight story line that flowed.  All skills that would transfer nicely to any traditional essay." He really emphasizes the preparation and planning stages, which is great. He also talks about the process, which is useful.  All said, a great resource.

From the site: "We must first focus on creating the engagement and then look at structures, like the flipped classroom, that can support. So educators, here are some things to think about and consider if you are thinking about or already using the flipped classroom model."