Group items tagged

The field of social media is a burgeoning area of communication, and one that educators cannot ignore. Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Diigo, GooglePlus - these platforms for communication are not going to go away; and while there is a great deal of negative media surrounding their use, they can be harnessed to create myriad possibilities for schools as learning communities. Current research only proves the dominance of Social Media as a modern communication medium

"On October 10, 2010 (10.10.10), across the planet, documentary filmmakers, students, and inspired citizens will record the human experience over a 24-hour period and contribute their voice to the largest participatory media event in history. Founded in 2008, ONE DAY ON EARTH is creating an online community, shared archive, and film. Together, we will showcase the amazing diversity, conflict, tragedy, and triumph that occur in one day. We invite you to join our international community of thousands of filmmakers, hundreds of schools, and dozens of non-profits, and contribute to this unique global mosaic. Through the One Day on Earth platform, we will establish a community that not only watches, but participates."

Reading images - lots of good strategies here

Reading photos

Through the ©reativity on Film project, The Film Foundation hopes to create a respect and understanding among young people for the need to protect and preserve our cultural heritage, and enhance their appreciation of art and creation. The Film Foundation uses filmmaking as a point of departure to communicate to young people the important skills they will need to succeed in today's society-such as imagination, collaboration, communication, leadership, and responsibility. The key component of this project is the "Making Movies: A Guide for Young Filmmakers" production manual. Created with the assistance and expertise of 25 professional film artists and educators, this step-by-step production manual includes tips from experts, hands-on exercises, and an 8-week filming schedule-thereby explaining the filmmaking process from story concept to completed film.

" Time is always scarce, yet more things are coming our way.  Would I be comfortable that schools produced a student did not know cursive but could effectively communicate using a computer or mobile device? Probably. Would I be comfortable if a student knew cursive but had no idea how to communicate over a computer? Nope.  Would I prefer they could do both? Absolutely."

"..."Literacy" is more than just reading text on a page.Communicating in today's world includes multisensory, multimodal, and interactive experiences to engage audiences. What does this mean for teachers and students?"

" The shift from hierarchical power, lodged in the hands of the teacher, to lateral power, established across a learning community, is tantamount to a revolution in pedagogy.""

Lots of activities for team and community building involving digital tools, mobile devices and online spaces.

ABSTRACT This article outlines a learning intervention which the authors call Learning by Design. The goal of this intervention is classroom and curriculum transformation, and the professional learning of teachers. The experiment involves the practical application of the learning theory to everyday classroom practice. Its ideas are grounded in pedagogical principles originally articulated in the Multiliteracies project, an approach to teaching and learning that addresses literacy and learning in the context of new media and the globalizing knowledge economy. The need for a new approach to learning arises from a complex range of factors - among them, changes in society and the economy; the potential for new forms of communication made possible by emerging technologies; and rising expectations amongst learners that education will maximize their potential for personal fulfillment, civic participation and access to work. The authors first brought together the Learning by Design team of researchers and teachers in 2003 in order to reflect upon and create new and dynamic learning environments. A series of research and development activities were embarked upon in Australia and, more recently, in the United States, exploring the potentials of new pedagogical approaches, assisted by digital technologies, to transform today's learning environments and create learning for the future - learning environments which could be more relevant to a changing world, more effective in meeting community expectations and which manage educational resources more efficiently. One of the key challenges was to create learning environments which engaged the sensibilities of learners who are increasingly immersed in digital and global lifestyles - from the entertainment sources they choose to the way they work and learn. It was also about enabling teachers to explicitly track and be aware of the relationship between their pedagogical choices and their students' learning outcomes.

Pictorial Communication Language. Icons & Pictures that explain ideas. Great for simple presentations and for infographics. Similar to the Noun Project

Cool site describing community-building activities using mobile devices.

As a learning community, my school is further down the track in our understanding of inquiry learning than we were at this time last year. Teachers talk about how much they have changed. There is a greater awareness of what's possible when teachers let go and learning is more student owned.

"Despite more than a century of being bombarded with advertising and other media, educators all too often underestimate the importance of how we communicate using images"

Literacy as we know it and teach it; is not enough. There is a new grammar and a new literacy that students must understand and embrace in order access to the information, inspiration, and opportunities the world and web hold. You are central to this change process. Our students need teachers, leaders, policy makers and community stakeholders to be actively involved in creating new visions and pathways for literacy, learning and living.

measuring creativity.... "A metric that we have applied is originally based on the famous Torrance Tests of Creative Thinking (TTCT). We compared 437 ad campaigns from 90 leading brands in 10 different FMCG categories in Germany. Using an advertising creativity scale developed from communications researchers at Indiana University in 2007 we evaluated and indexed each campaign's creativity levels. Specifically, we measured five dimensions of advertising creativity: (1) originality (was the ad original, rare, surprising, unique?); (2) flexibility (does the ad link the product to different ideas, concepts, or subjects?); (3) elaboration (does the ad contain intricate or numerous details?); (4) synthesis (does the ad blend normally unrelated objects or ideas?); and (5) artistic value (does the ad excel visually, verbally, or graphically?). "

"The essay's job is to track consciousness; if you are fully aware of your mind you will find your thoughts doubling back, registering little peeps of ambivalence or disbelief. According to Theodor Adorno, the iron law of the essay is heresy. What is heresy if not the expression of contrarian doubt about communal pieties or orthodox positions? This is sometimes called "critical thinking," an ostensible goal of education in a democracy. "

With more schools opting for 1:1 student-to-iPad access, there exists a tremendous opportunity for a transformative shift in classrooms where students are empowered to navigate their own learning. While we've witnessed many effective approaches to incorporating iPads successfully in the classroom, we're struck by the common mistakes many schools are making with iPads, mistakes that are in some cases crippling the success of these initiatives. We're sharing these common challenges with you, so your school doesn't have to make them. 1) Focusing on content apps 2) Lack of Teacher Preparation in Classroom Management of iPads 3) Treating the iPad as a computer and expecting it to serve as a laptop. 4) Treating iPads like multi-user devices 5) Failure to communicate a compelling answer to "Why iPads?"

"An ethics policy explains your [school, library, technology, classroom] goals, values and program within the larger context of the [district, school] educational mission, policies and procedures. By stating the rules and identifying the norms as lived in daily practices, the ethics policy offers explicit guidance about an individual's behavior and clarifies the rights and responsibilities of the institution and its stakeholders, the community and its members, the classroom and its learners. "

"The First World War Poetry Digital Archive is an online repository of over 7000 items of text, images, audio, and video for teaching, learning, and research. The heart of the archive consists of collections of highly valued primary material from major poets of the period, including Wilfred Owen, Isaac Rosenberg, Robert Graves, Vera Brittain, and Edward Thomas. This is supplemented by a comprehensive range of multimedia artefacts from the Imperial War Museum, a separate archive of over 6,500 items contributed by the general public, and a set of specially developed educational resources. These educational resources include an exciting new exhibition in the three-dimensional virtual world Second Life. Freely available to the public as well as the educational community, the First World War Poetry Digital Archive is a significant resource for studying the First World War and the literature it inspired."