Group items tagged

"First of all, blogging is writing, 21st-century style, plain and simple. Blogging constitutes a massive genre.  It comes in many forms, addresses myriad topics, and can certainly range in quality. For my money (which usually means free), blogging provides the best venue for teaching student writing. As bloggers, young people develop crucial skills with language, tone their critical thinking muscles, and come to understand their relationship to the world."

"There are many answers to that question, but here is one: Public edu-blogging is an essential element of digital age education, because a student blog acts as a launch pad for developing and leveraging student connectivity, reflexivity, and personal learning networks."

"Drawing on her experience as a consultant for VoiceThread in which she hosts monthly Google+ Hangouts, she created the very first "Teach & Share" Google+ Hangout, an online gathering of educators who, for this installment, shared their experiences using the learning management system Canvas. "I started thinking about how much faculty learn from simply talking to one another. These are always the most powerful professional development experiences," Pacansky-Brock said of her decision to host the event. "Faculty need to connect with each other to keep innovation moving forward. [...] That's the premise of the Teach & Shares.""

I have selected to expand my own Personal Learning Network by continuing my blog and following other educator's blogs as well. I also am going to start using my Twitter account for networking with fellow colleagues. The great advantage of using Twitter and a blog will be my ability to collaborate and communicate with teachers all over the world. I am also in the process of learning more about Ning and how I can use that to expand my current PLN.

"With this poorly articulated rationale in mind, I present first, some pros and cons to citing blogs within formal academic writing. Next, I put forth three main sub-questions that I think will help us-and by "us" I mean myself and the readers who grapple with the ethical and professional questions of rigor in standards of academic sourcing-organize our thoughts. "

"If friend requests, invitations to connect and potential Twitter stalkers are keeping you up at night, that needs to stop. Today. All you have to do is develop your own personal social media policy. Determine your own rules of engagement and apply them. And don't be scared to let people know how they can connect with you."

"First, it has strategically developed its own resources-through satellite campuses, online instruction, and rigorous faculty development-to extend its internal instructional capacity. For the past twenty years, UCF has supplemented its network of physical campuses with a vast, virtual extension of its instructional reach through technology. Now, nearly 78 percent of all UCF students take online or hybrid courses and 38 percent of all credits are earned online."

"The first part of this opinion piece finished by reporting there are over one hundred different models and frameworks claiming to describe the nature of digital literacies. Given the messy topography of the field this follow up blog post briefly describes some of the higher profile or more widely known frameworks from the United States, United Kingdom and Europe. The discussion identifies an inherent tension between universal and contextual definitions of digital literacies, and finishes with an example of a current Irish initiative. This local example (for me), and the other major models critically reviewed below, illustrate why we need to challenge some of our taken-for-granted assumptions, and metaphorically 'get off the tracks' in order to develop more transformative frameworks for digital literacies."

"Of the various professional development opportunities available, social media reigned supreme as the most popular way for educators to keep themselves up to speed on current issues in the education world. And while the report does note, "Most survey participants were pooled from social media websites, resulting in a sampling bias," other sources of information educators use to stay afloat extend beyond social media--Internet search, blogs, academic/education conferences, and news articles all topped 70% (see graph to the right)."

I have learned a few things along the way, which in fact have improved my teaching to some extent, as I have become more understanding of the need to express some things visually. Now i encourage students to incorporate photos and videos to support their written projects - to make the project more interesting for the students, but also to inspire them to think in different ways.

"This past semester, William Kiker and I (Kelly Wroblewski) applied to be part of a pilot iPad program at our high school.  As members of a small project based  learning community within Austin High School in Austin, TX, we latched on to the ShowMe app pretty quickly."

Colleges following what the company calls the Textbook Zero model would offer a section using open-education alternatives for every required course and elective needed to earn the degree. Lumen is now testing the model with an unnamed community college on the East Coast, and is also looking for colleges interested in applying the model to general-studies and computer-science degrees.

" after two years of development, Mozilla has released Open Badges 1.0, free software that allows for a new way to recognize learning: digital badges."

"Fluidity, flexibility and responsiveness seem like important skills for students to develop as part of their learning. Apart from anything else, it's a great way to bring some additional life into lectures and encourage students to think about their online presence; something they inevitably will have, but which is usually separate from their learning."

"An estimated 135 million people play video games, spending three billion hours a week glued to a screen. But that's not necessarily bad news. In fact, playing video games may be part of an evolutionary leap forward, according to Howard Rheingold, educator and author of the book Net Smart: How to Thrive Online. Rather than characterizing them as hapless drones wasting time, Rheingold's book contends that this massive population of gamers is part of a growing group of "supercollaborators," as described by Jane McGonigal, director of game research and development at the Institute for the Future, who's interviewed in the book."

This is true for digital natives...my grandson is always on- line playing games with people he has never seen in person. I am not quite there yet! I still like to make eye contact -:)

"Last year, based on our departmental assessment procedures, I determined that I wanted a more subjective way to give feedback to my students. To me, programming is more than just right or wrong code; I want students to develop good habits and styles of programming that use the tool to communicate the process of problem solving, not just the final answers. And I felt that that would be better achieved by giving students consistent verbal feedback, in addition to simple rubric scoring of their work."

"The Digital Framework is a comprehensive collection of digital capabilities, skills and competencies that NTU has identified as relevant across the institution. The Framework consists of a variety of areas of practice and each area is split into four levels of development. See both the CPLD website and the new NOW NTU Digital Framework learning room for further information about the Framework."

"Google Docs is an online suite of digital tools that provides teachers with some powerful features to help students develop 21st century writing skills. Since Docs are collaborative and available 24/7, the tool is well-suited for facilitating digital writing workshops that combine peer editing with cooperative grouping and small group fine-tuned writing instruction."

"With all of the new technologies that are surrounding us, and to the many school administrators that are not feeling comfortable with Twitter, Facebook, etc., I would like to suggest three ways (as opposed to the typical round number of 10) that you can focus on your own professional development over the summer. Less is oftentimes more in the digital world as we move from simply being "literate" to "fluent" in this language. "

The dichotomy she describes is a lot like the conceptual move from merely connecting with other educators to collaborating on specific projects. The internet has greatly enhanced educators' capacity to connect with one another, something that only used to happen during professional development or at conferences. But taking that ability to the next level, using it to innovate and produce something new, would mean collaborating beyond districts or even national boundaries.