Overall an informative page with some good guidelines. I especially appreciate the comments about keeping the maintainance work load low. Creating a blog is a good idea, but it has not been practiclal here in China since free services like blogger and edublogs are blocked. Adding wordpress to the ISP is the best solution. I tried this at one point and the server lost the wordpress download. Time and frustration has not allowed me to try it again, but I know it will work.
I'm surprised there is not a suggestion for wiki links. J. Valenza has shown that this is an easy and possibly effective collaborative process.
If we want to connect with the latest generation of learners and teachers, we have to totally redesign the library from the vantage point of our users—our thinking has to do a 180-degree flip.
This learning commons is both a physical and a virtual space that’s staffed not just by teacher-librarians but also by other school specialists who, like us, are having trouble getting into the classroom and getting kids’ attention.
specialists such as literacy coaches, teacher technologists, teacher-librarians, art teachers, music teachers, and P.E. teachers
In the physical space, we enter a room that’s totally flexible, where furnishings can be moved about to accommodate different functions and groupings.
experimental learning center,
the learning commons is both a giant, ongoing conversation and a warehouse of digital materials
—from ebooks to databases to student-generated content—all available 24/7 yea
Imagine a learning environment in which the multimedia world of information fed individual students’ needs, and where on-demand digital textbooks/multimedia/databases are available 24/7 and under the control of the user.
examples of one-way communication.
But in the new learning commons, homework assignments and library Web sites offer two-way communication.
Directive adults have been transformed into coaches; direct teaching has been transformed into collaborative inquiry.
On another day, parents may be invited to the learning commons to observe a jointly designed medieval art fair created by a classroom teacher, the art teacher, and the teacher-librarian.
The experimental learning center aims to improve teaching and learning by offering professional development sessions and resources that are tailor-made to each school’s greatest needs.
The teacher posts assignments on a blog that’s linked through an RSS feed to individual students in the class, each of whom can access the blog through an iGoogle page or another personal home page.
The Center for Social Media has created a set of teaching tools for professors who are interested in teaching their students about fair use. The tools include powerpoints with lecture notes, guidelines for in-class discussions and exercises, assignments and grading rubrics. We hope you'll find them useful!
These powerpoints with lecture notes were designed to help professors teach students the basic information they need to understand how to use fair use when making documentary fllms and online videos
Fair Use Scenarios: (To be used with the Documentary Filmmakers' Statement of Best Practices in Fair Use) Here are 4 filmmaking scenarios where students are called upon to determine whether they have a fair use right to use certain copyrighted footage, and if there are limits to that right.
Here are two sets of fair use clips for professors to use for in-class discussio
Here are guidelines for a short video production assignment that requires students to incorporate copyrighted material into a video and defend the decisions they make using the Code of Best Practices in Online Video.
Additionally, here is an assignment, similar to the discussion prompts above, that requires students to articulate why a video clip is fair use.
Here is a collection of videos that do a good job of explaining the Codes of Best Practices and the idea of Fair Use:
His take on the education system, for example, is that it is a badly designed game: students compete for good grades, but lose motivation when they fail. A good game, by contrast, never makes you feel like you've failed: you just progress more slowly. Instead of giving bad students an F, why not start all pupils with zero points and have them strive for the high score?
How can this idea be applied to information skills and school libraries?
a consultant on cyber-crimefighting speaks with undisguised joy about how much information the police could glean from Facebook, in order to infiltrate communities where criminals might lurk. Asked about privacy concerns, she replies: "Yeah – we'll have to keep an eye on that."
Until recently, the debate over "digital distraction" has been one of vested interests: authors nostalgic for the days of quiet book-reading have bemoaned it, while technology zealots have dismissed it. But the fusion of the virtual world with the real one exposes both sides of this argument as insufficient, and suggests a simpler answer: the internet is distracting if it stops you from doing what you really want to be doing; if it doesn't, it isn't.
Fascinating article about the next generation of the ubiquitous web and the implications. Good definition of "gamification." This is excellent background information for strategic planning and discussing the potential implications on education.
Fascinating article about the next generation of the ubiquitous web and the implications. Good definition of "gamification." This is excellent background information for strategic planning and discussing the potential implications on education.
School Library Media Kids -- Packed with book trailers and language arts-related games, School library media Kids is designed to provide an interactive learning experience to get students motivated to learn on their own! Students can choose from exceptional literacy-related resources such as author and book review websites as well as superb educational tools including reference works and search engines.
Students and researchers now have greater access to primary source materials for historical research than ever before.
Users of web resources must now consider the authenticity of documents,
This brief guide is designed to provide students and researchers with information to help them evaluate the internet sources and the quality of primary materials that can be found online.
"Here's an article written in 1944 by Stephan M. Cory (University of Chicago January 1944 edition of Childhood Education). It is a classic satire written in the first person of a seventh grade student discussing his experiences in elementary school.
I think it's a great example of the contrast of learning in rigid formal environments and learning in the context of meaningful problems and authentic tasks. The focus is public education but it's not a stretch to extend to classroom training in the workplace."