Group items tagged

"The best way to activate your classroom is for your students to make something. This might an amazing high-tech invention or it might take the form of costumes for a historical reenactment, homemade math manipulatives, a new curtain for the local auditorium, toys, a pet habitat, a messy science experiment, or a zillion other things. Best of all, you don't need expensive hardware, or to start by mastering a programming language. You can begin with found materials: buttons, bottle caps, string, clay, construction paper, broken toys, popsicle sticks, or tape (hint: Google "tapigami" or "duck tape projects"). What are you having your students "make" to help them learn English?"

"This guide is the result of a collaboration among a group of individuals who were grantees of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation Global Libraries initiative. We came together as a voluntary project group to share our research, insights and experiences from Chile, Poland, Ukraine and other countries about the value of making in public libraries. We have compiled this short guide to share our learnings about: the case to support making in libraries; different services libraries can provide to encourage making; lists of equipment, software and other tools you can use to create physical or digital content; tips and ideas on how to implement maker activities; as well as links to other maker spaces, resources, and much more"

"Managing your digital identity is a skill that everyone needs to learn and educators should be teaching their students about. In a digitally focused world students may not understand the implications of what is shared via social media. Teachers need to be fully aware and proactive and start teaching students about the effects of their on-line activity and how to manage their own digital footprints."

Teach Your Monster to Read is a great series of online games designed to help students improve the speed and accuracy with which they recognize letters and sounds. The website gets its name from the friendly monster avatars that students help learn to read through the course of the games.

There are many tools available for students to publish their ideas to in the year 2015 and you no longer need a great knowledge of HTML and CSS. With the surge of online blogging and publication systems, students now have many opportunities to express their thoughts and ideas with the added chance of getting global feedback on those insights. The author of this post offers a list of some of the online publication tools they recommend that enable students to post their creative impressions on."

How to teach text structures for better reading comprehension and improved retention. Teachers of history, science, and other subjects are now expected to weave literacy instruction into their teaching of content. But how should they do that? What are the most effective ways to help students learn to read challenging content-area texts? This article breaks down the research behind explicit teaching of text structures and includes a video that shows how to do it (Great for content-area literacy)

"Interesting post looking at what "student-centered learning" means in a modern classroom"

An annotated list of tools that have application in schools. They are not oragnized in any particular way. Many I know but there are some new ones here that sound interesting.

"Part of a series devoted to facilitating proper student internet interaction in the classroom. This classroom might be 1 to 1 or might be using technology to leverage student centered learning. In this post I would like to discuss ten important ideas to consider when using internet resources and tools in the classroom."

"Links to a poster from the website Edmodo on the best digital citizenship practices. This visual is available for free download in PDF format. Edmodo succinctly outlined the key tips students need to keep in mind while using the digital space. These tips are valid for any kind of online as well as offline activity. The purpose is to teach kids about proper nettiquette and ensure their safety when using the net."

The meaning of the concepts of copyright and fair use, as applied to creative work, has broadened dramatically in the digital world. Students are some of the biggest consumers and creators of work created on digital platforms, but they don't often understand: 1. what they may legitimately use. 2. how they may use it what protection exists for their own creative work. 3.Introducing "fair use" concepts. The authors of the post explain how they took the excellent Rework, Reuse, Remix lesson from Commonsense Media to create the foundational lesson plan for an 8th grade Digital Learning class hat St. Francis Xavier School, in Winooski VT. It introduces the concept of fair use and how to apply it to case studies"

"Social media is here to stay. Never before have people been able to connect, share, and learn from one another as we do now. As a result, our students need skills to win at life in a digital world. The ability to use social media to support life goals and possibilities can be a game-changer. I know it has been very powerful for me in my professional life." & reasons are discussed by the author.

"Tool discovery is often a challenge for teachers interested in finding ways to use technology that will change the way they and their students work. With so much going on in the classroom, many teachers don't have the time to test out various apps and find the perfect tool to meet their needs. Luckily, several tech-savvy librarians have been curating the apps their colleagues find useful and sharing the all-stars with one another through personal learning communities (PLC) and edWeb webinars."

An argument against the censorship of reading matter. Some nice images and links to other information

An interesting article that looks at teaching critical thinking but in a way that shifts the ownership for the questioning to the students. The ap[proach empowers them to think at higher levels but at the same time there is support provided with the question stems

"It's up to teachers to guide students in choosing to uplift, teach, inform, challenge, and care for others with their messages versus break down others. Additionally, our students need guidance in realizing their self worth and seeing themselves as individuals in a digital world. They need to practice choosing what they feel is right as individuals versus going along with their peers for instant approval. These are ideas Shelly Terrell shared in a keynote speech"

"Social media can be an incredibly useful teaching tool. The social networks students use are conducive to so many facets of modern learning such as collaborative planning, data and resource sharing, and progress updates concerning group work. It appeals to our digital natives, and social media is very easy to use. The prospect of teaching with social media can be alluring or repulsive, depending on your understanding of it, and your experience with it. The truth is, it doesn't need to be difficult or stressful. For any teacher wanting to broaden connections with students through different teaching strategies, social media is a terrific choice. That said, it pays to do a bit of homework on the subject before diving in. Let's look at some of the things that are worth considering before making the move to teaching with social media in a classroom environment."

"Podcasts are a great way to help strengthen student listening skills. Podcasts are audio (and sometimes video) recordings similar to a radio program or television episode. A wide range of organizations and individuals host podcasts and share their thinking around a topic through this medium. There are a wide range of podcasts to choose from. If you are teaching a specific subject area, you can search for a related podcast to find a clip to share with your students. Teachers can use podcasts to help students build listening skills. By listening to a narrator tell a story or an expert discuss a topic, podcasts can help students strengthen their ability to gather information through multimedia." The author also links to another post where she shares some of her favourite kid-friendly podcasts.