Group items tagged

Summaries the benefits of blogging: blogging is public, we are more attentive to quality of work; blogging creates a person-centered discussion; and blogging "encourages higher levels of reasoning-- at times upper levels--analyzing, evaluating, and creating--of Bloom's Taxonomy" and ways to get started.

Kevin Jones summarizes the difference between Web 1.0, CMS, Web 2.0, Social Media, and You Tube.

In this article, Steve Wheeler discusses the changing role of teachers from traditional classroom teachers to global educators. He discusses the top five tools he believes global educators need to connect with global communities, resources and audiences.

This is one teacher's case study on the use of Social Media, in particular blogs, to evaluate student engagement and whether "whenever technology is used effectively, learning outcomes do improve". The essence of this teacher's conclusions? "The effectiveness of the application of technology is heavily dependent on how it is put to use."

Jane Hart gives a preview of her list of the top 100 tools for learning on the web.

This article, written by EDUDEMIC author, Jeff Dunn, offers 5 distinct reasons why schools need to move toward Digital Textbooks/ebooks as opposed to traditional paper books/texts. He begins by adding support to his stance by citing Ed Secretary, Arne Duncan's call to make "textbooks obsolete". Among Dunn's reasons and pertinent to our Media/Inform Literacy discussion are these ideas: Using digital texbooks or ebooks on line, allows for students to interact with the book. Some books have videos, highlighting/notetaking features, moveable models and interactive diagrams. In addition, such technological books are more immediate-they are simply accessed by the press of a button. Arne Duncan also remarked that the US is lagging behind other countries in converting to these computerized books. With states desiring a lead position in education in the US, and Obama's push (Connect Ed) campaign to have all schools connected (internet/computer/tech), this transition to Digital Text/ebooks seems a likely probability-and exciting one too. Though sitting back, especially in a beach chair, with a paper book still holds an appeal for me.

This Edutopia article highlights how to develop the seven steps you need to help bring social media in your classroom and adapt a social media policy in your school culture. It shares valuable resources to get to a shared vision for your school.

Explore parts 1,2,3 information literacy and web 2.0 tools for the classroom

A discussion forum does not have to be question and answer. There are many different ways to use a discussion board. Their discussions need to be divergent, formative, and reflective.

This article talks about teacher created digital content and the confusion when it comes to copyright, sharing and ownership. The 3 must-knows (Know the concepts, know what the law says and doesn't say, know your policy options) about teachers and copyright are explained in detail.

This app lets kids access purchased databases and will also let users know available sources within 10 miles of there location. I think this app has the potential of combining 21st century informational literacy skills with "classic" literacy skill.

Students with the "Access My Library School Edition" app for their iPhone can search for their school library, enter a password and then access the Gale Databases . WPS has free access to the Gale Databases through the Massachusetts Library System. It is available online from the school computer network or online. See your school librarian for details.

An Iphone Ap for kids to let them access online data held in a library within 10 miles radius of them.

In this article, a school is implementing Ipad use in classrooms to encourage students to go beyond the box for education. The article mentions the need for a global learning environment and articulates that this move is allowing students to be more team oriented, less distracted, and think more critically in their learning.

This article discusses how the implementation of iPads in education has been successful in some schools.

Great article to support how to go about teaching students how to locate, evaluate, and use information effectively.

The article uses a friendly approach to help teens stay safe and for parents (adults) to understand how to change privacy settings. There is a series of videos (11) to help learn more about social networking and how to check yourself it something doesn't seem right. The article also demonstrates the use of protection your personal property from hackers and spammers.  I personally think the article does a great job using the friendly approach with teens, and using videos, and teens will click on a video than read an entire article. Holly

These are great articles. I like the user friendly approach to all of these; In www.connectsafely.org there are great personal accounts of what can go wrong using social media. Those articles really resonate with my own fears. We must be wise when we use the web.

This online discussion forum offers adults insight into the legal, social, and safety issues tied into specific social networking sites.

Discusses how to enhance the classroom by using a discussion board in a skills-based course by allowing students the chance to use information literacy skills.

This article offers insight into the process of appropriately constructing class discussions online. It cautions that discussions should be based on critical thinking than on sharing facts or answers. The author notes that problems can result if a student posts incorrect information and then other students respond thinking that it is correct.

November 11, 2010 Making Online Discussion Boards Work for Skills-Based Courses By: Rob Kelly In this article, an accounting teacher described how he used online discussion boards for study groups in his course. I appreciated this suggestion...online "study groups" could be a great way to motivate students to study and also for faculty to monitor their studying. Teachers could step in to clarify information a group appears to be confused about based on their discussion strand.

I have never been a fan of lecturing during class...for either the high school or college classes I teach. If there is information I need to share, I will always use a Power Point (or something similar) and then make those files available for students to download. But even when presenting information in this manner, I continue to engage students with questions, asking for real life examples, etc. And I limit the time, or break it up with another activity. It seems to work pretty well and the ideas from this article pretty much confirm what I have always felt about the lecture style class.

This article looks at how students can use data bases to process the information they are gathering online while doing research. It is an excellent article promoting ideas to move away from multi-tasking and stealing ideas form the net.

A great article about how it is actually quite easy to use many of the web 2.0 tools to collect and analyze quickly, the current media and create connections between it and your classroom, or at least ideas to which you teach. This teacher did a great job of doing what so many of us try to do everyday. Finding current events and relating it to our classroom. But by having more feeds connected to one site, she was able to quickly narrow her search to whatever it was that she was teaching at the time. She also made it a point to observe the news feeds with her students and ask them to try to make the connections. If there was a story that made sense or got them intrigued and interested, they researched and read it together. A great way to teach young students how to filter the information that they are being exposed to, and to seek out credible references to initial questions and information.

A study showing how social networking is contributing to cheating.

There is so much information available now to people that plagiarism is easier and more tempting.

"Plagiarism is cheating, it is dishonest, and it is unethical." The first way to avoid students from plagiarizing is to set clear expectations in a written format that provides concrete examples. There are programs such as Glatt Plagarism Services that can be used to detect plagerism. By giving students a good background on the importance of citing ideas, topics, and quotes and providing them with how to cite correctly, they will be less tempted to plagiarize. As educators we can take many steps to provide support for our students so that they do not plagiarize.

Multimedia allows for students to express their creativity and show their understanding of material in a fun way. Multimedia is also a great way for teachers to represent information and allow their students to take in information an alternative way (compared to the traditional textbook, powerpoint slides, etc.). This site highlights some great apps for educators and students to make their own media!