Group items tagged

"You may be thinking 'why do we need another tablet - there are already too many!' You're not wrong. But there are some notable features that are pretty interesting. Basically, the Amplify tablet is specifically built for classrooms."

"During the second half of the semester, student work outside the classroom is focused primarily on the completion of specialization badges. Students are encouraged to forge their own path through the course material by completing badges from the following categories: coding, industry analysis, graphic design, user experience, power user skills, and entrepreneurship. In order to earn an A grade on the badge component, students must master at least eight specialization badges. To ensure breadth, all students must complete at least one badge in each category in order to pass the course. (Note: Students were also allowed to pitch their own badges if they could make the case for the badge's connection to course themes.)"

"It speaks to students learning at their developmental level - what is right for them at that particular time (differentiated instruction, maybe even restructuring the grade system). Even as an adult, learning benefits when you have someone there to guide you through the process. My tile job is far from perfect. It would have been much better had there been someone to model the processes and give me feedback towards my performance. For other types of learners, videos would suffice (something which Salmon Khan banks on)."

"I think that's what electracy instruction might look like as an evolution of the literacy instruction that was once, in a past century, primarily the domain of English Studies."

Phillip Penix-Tadsen, assistant professor of foreign languages and literatures at the University of Delaware, is reaching his students at new levels inside and outside the classroom. The spring 2012 semester was the first time Penix-Tadsen required the use of Facebook Groups by all his students to increase engagement and participation.

"how can you use Skype to do more than just make calls? Well, there's a pantload of interesting ways! Check out these fun ideas:"

"From multimedia to geocaching, the possibilities for using mobiles to engage learners are endless. Teachers tell Emma Drury how and why they are using the devices in school"

Great list of ways to use an iPad in the classroom

"I have created example forms for each of the different topics, follow the links in each of the ten sections. With help from a Googler I have included a link so that you can get your own copy of the form - click on the appropriate link and it should open in your docs home."

"Wikipedia remains misunderstood because many educators have yet to recognize the distinction between Wikipedia as a tool for teaching and Wikipedia as a tool for research. Unfortunately, fear of the latter has blinded most to the possibilities of the former. I believe Wikipedia to be an effective tool for both."

"In a series we're dubbing How Do I Do It?, our inaugural course "Design a Classroom Game" brings together a team of game designers, learning designers and teachers who will lead you through the process of designing your own learning game to play with your students."

"Use of in-class concept questions with clickers can transform an instructor-centered "transmissionist" environment to a more learner-centered constructivist classroom. To compare the effectiveness of three different approaches using clickers, pairs of similar questions were used to monitor student understanding in majors' and nonmajors' genetics courses. After answering the first question individually, students participated in peer discussion only, listened to an instructor explanation only, or engaged in peer discussion followed by instructor explanation, before answering a second question individually. Our results show that the combination of peer discussion followed by instructor explanation improved average student performance substantially when compared with either alone. When gains in learning were analyzed for three ability groups of students (weak, medium, and strong, based on overall clicker performance), all groups benefited most from the combination approach, suggesting that peer discussion and instructor explanation are synergistic in helping students. However, this analysis also revealed that, for the nonmajors, the gains of weak performers using the combination approach were only slightly better than their gains using instructor explanation alone. In contrast, the strong performers in both courses were not helped by the instructor-only approach, emphasizing the importance of peer discussion, even among top-performing students."

"What do you want for your graduates (whether they leave you in 5th, 8th or 12th grade)?"

"Stephanie Richter introduced memes to her colleagues at Northern Illinois University with a Prezi, identifying a meme as a snippet of culture, a thought, behavior, or artifact it spreads via transmission and adaptation, sharing and imitation, and is something everyone has seen or recognizes."

What's more, 60 percent of the students responding said they saw an overall big positive effect on the classroom atmosphere, and 67 percent said they were able to concentrate a lot better in class without the phones.

There are a number of ways IPEVO and Evernote can help both teachers and students be more successful in and out of the classroom. Teachers can use the document camera to project a lesson, then easily save their lesson sheet to a Shared Notebook in Evernote so students can access the material at home or later in the year. For students, the document camera makes collaborating easier; groups can project a document to easily work on it together, then save completed work to a Shared Notebook to submit to the teacher or to share their work with the rest of the class. Together with Evernote, the IPEVO document camera can also help students create and maintain a digital portfolio. Students can capture projects, papers, and artwork using their IPEVO document camera and seamlessly save these artifacts to Evernote.

Teachers in our district, especially freshmen teachers, have a ton on their plates this year. Between the new curriculum and teaching a classroom full of freshmen with laptops, our staff is swamped! That is exactly the reason why starting a PLN today is a good idea. A lot of people might feel that they don't have time to take on one more thing right now, but developing a PLN will actually make things easier for teachers in the long run.

"As a former K-12 teacher and a current educator in higher education, I grappled with the idea of creating a Facebook account to communicate and become "friends" with my students. I was less concerned with using Twitter because of the difference between "following" and "friending." In my youth I was told by parents and teachers, "I'm not your friend." They said this to distinguish between the roles of friends and adults in the rearing of a child. An assumed level of respect was maintained between teacher-student and parent-teacher when such boundaries were made clear. Today's shift in learning environments to learner-centered classrooms thus raises these questions: Do educators now want to be friends with their students? Do students actually prefer not to be friends with their teachers?"

We scour the Internet for the best quality textbooks issued under open licenses that allow for printing. Instead of finding a list of 500+ books, you'll find a short list of books we feel are really adoptable and ready to use in a college classroom.

"Teachers who bring digital storytelling into the classroom are discovering what makes this vehicle for expression worth the effort. They watch students gain proficiency in writing and research, visual literacy, critical thinking, and collaboration. They see students take part in a range of learning styles. Of course, they also see students make authentic use of technology. Sometimes, they even hear students discover the power of their own voice."