Group items tagged

'We do not need to teach creativity, but rather inspire its daily practice.' This opening sentence is intriguing yet inspiring to me. As said in the title, this article introduces 18 apps to support students developing creativity at different thinking stages. The writer also suggests some practical strategies which could be incorporated in our daily teaching practice. Nevertheless, what strikes me more is the reminder that we, as a class, school, or community, need to build a culture of trust in the first place to cultivate culture of creativity and innovation.

What a great article about creativity.  What I loved is that the article states that schools do not need to teach creativity.  Schools need to foster it by providing students a safe place to take risks and providing them tools that make that risk taking possible.  Creativity is about finding solutions to problems using one's own ideas and thinking skills.  Students can do this when given the power and opportunities to do so.

Like Chris, the opening to this post caught my eye. "We do not need to teach creativity, but rather inspire its daily practice." Ms. Darrow's article captures the importance of creating a school that values it's students, encourages them to take some risks, and lets them practice these skills with abandon. With support and coaching from teachers, students can work through the steps outlined in this article using technology to streamline the process, help them develop real life/career skills, and appeal to their interest in digital media. I like how Darrow labels this process; there are clear steps to increase understanding. Collaboration or group work can use this format as well, group members' jobs are easily created with the resulting structure. It also creates natural places to scaffold the process for individualizing learning in a classroom full of all kinds of learners. Each activity we do in a class may not need all these steps and some may need more, but I plan to keep this article in mind as I tweak my courses this summer.

You do not have to join to view some of the basic features of this site. However, if you do decide to join you gain access to lesson plans, illuminated texts, discussion groups and so on. All you need to do is participate in the site - if you add a lesson or make comments in discussion groups you accumulate points. I joined because I was very interested in making illuminated manuscripts with my students using either powerpoint or the adobe group materials. I was really impressed with Prezi for the power of that tool but sometimes I just want student work to stay within our classroom and not be shared on the web so I like the idea of the illuminated manuscripts.

Merits of Project-Based Learning. This is where I want my teaching to head back to. In career and technical education I did a lot of projects with my kids. Not so much lately and really want to move back to this because I really believe that it works!

It made me want to do more than I do. I cannot afford to use "time" as an excuse. Good learning from PBL's takes time and there are many benefits including providing applications to the teaching and answering the question "why do we need to learn about this?"

The final section talks about how teachers have changed the way they teach, now using the laptops as tools for students to create products, such as pubic service announcements, or podcasts explaining the concepts for other students.

Liz, This is an excellent article that should help us with our 1 to 1 program next year. As I heard in Shanghai last year, teacher training is key to a successful program.

Liz, This is an excellent article that will help us plan our 1 to 1 program. It reinforces what i was told in Shanghai in September, teacher training is the key to success.

Exploring wikis has been an adventure. But before I embark on this journey for a classroom assignment, I just have to cover all the basics. Being able to objectively assess this environment is important. This resource has provided a decent, comprehensive rubric

Great find Kae! I sent it to Diigo! for future use!

This great article from the BBC in February of 2014 talks about The Last Places on Earth without Internet Access. As you can imagine, they are few and far between but I found the *why* of the explanation very interesting. And the conclusion deals with something I feel everyone needs to do every day -- unplug. Oh, and I can add one more place where they don't have Internet access - in the guest rooms at the Luxor in Las Vegas. Speaking from experience. Linda

This may sound strange but after reading the article it made think of "Internet Free Zones" like we have smoke-free environments. We are so connected everywhere we go that it seems fine now. But all things in moderation, right. In the future I can see internet free environments happening to help peoples health :) I am sure like everything we overconsume, this will be bad for us too. Great article.

I really thought I had bookmarked this the other day - but I guess I didn't. Maybe I blogged about it instead. Really insightful and interesting view of all stakeholders in the classroom being responsible for making it a safe and dynamic workplace.

Not Bad as a Simple Staring point for a rubric to evaluate a Prezi presentation. Needs Modification, though. I set my 'expectation bar' quite a bit higher. 

Good way to start in grading a Prezi presentation. I found when my students used Prezi (learned from another class) that I wished I had a different rubric from a general or powerpoint presentation rubric. There is a creative and design piece that was unique.

I like the hands on idea of this video. I think students of all ages could benefit from different levels of exploration with the toy snakes.

Quick Facts About HOT No one thinks perfectly or poorly all the time. Memorizing something is not the same as thinking about it. You can memorize something without understanding it. Thinking is done in both words and pictures. These are just a few of the HOT qualities identified in this article

Thanks, Tom. I went back to the article after reading your comment. The address is: http://www.cdl.org/resource-library/articles/highorderthinking.php As I was exploring the site I must have copied an incorrect address. Sister

Sister Jacqueline, The article was well worth reading. It does a nice job of explaining the importance of higher order thinking and how it relates to problem solving and its importance in a school setting. Tom

This article puts forth the premise that if student transgressions with technology are handled early on with an open school, parent, and student communication loop - then there will be a decreased likelihood of a major transgression later on in life.

After reading the article and as a parent myself. I tend to disagree with this article. Students learn by reading, seeing and applying. It's great to be book smart, but you need to know how to apply the smarts. I love my classes and the project based learning. I think that's all I do the majority of the day. It's great to be a teacher and facilitator at the same time. All students are different.

The original link, found in the vhs newsstand, is essentially a bookmark. I post the destination URL here. This site teaches the skill of observation and that of reading for comprehension. I would use it for small group collaborative work at problem solving.

This article discusses 5 technology tools to help teachers incorporate differentiated instruction into any lesson. These tools appeal to different learning styles and individual strengths. Advanced students can be challenged and struggling students can receive help. The 5 programs/tools cited are Museum Box, The Elements, Garage Band, Intro to Math, and Dragon Dictation.

Each of the apps listed in this article deserve a glance, some especially for the younger grades and special education. Garage Band appeals to all ages - my colleague uses it to set poems to music in her 2nd grade class. I hope to have students use it this year as background to a video. The Elements app is awesome! (I just spent an hour checking it out - I was completely swept away and so not focused on the task at hand.) I can also imagine an group project with Museum Box, that would appeal to the ultra-organized students. This article really showcases just how technology and all the ensuing apps has something for every student to latch on to and feel success with.

This article provides (as it says) over 100 different tips on how to use Google as a search engine in a way that can get you around blocked websites, or to glean search results that are refined to what you are specifically looking for. I included this article as it seems useful when building a blog, to structure search links and topic links in a way that will result in the consumer of the blog obtaining the content they are looking for. As the article begins, time is precious. As an educator, I need my time in class (and outside if class) to be structured in a way where I can access information easily and quickly and teach students to do so as well. These 102 tips for how to use Google are the tools in the toolbag I believe are necessary to bring this need to fruition. As stated above, the relevance to Blogs is providing useful tips on the Blog for users to utilize to refine searches and yield more meaningful results. These "tricks" would also serve well for a Blog on how to search the Internet!

This is a fascinating article to read about a NJ school that took on the Google Platform. Much of what is documented in the article reminds me of why school district went with Google. The ease of emails, calendars, saving documents and designing websites through one platform is so helpful. What I found interesting is that the principal of the school operates with a BYOT (Bring Your Own Technology) policy. Her arguments being that as soon as schools make investments in iPads, or laptops etc. the "hardware" is obsolete in no time. She advocates a "learn anytime, anywhere on any device" approach - which I find refreshing and so innovative. At my school, there are many teachers who want to outright ban all personal electronic devices in school - well...for students! This article is a powerful reminder that with guidance and careful, thoughtful planning and implementation, we can make use of everything students bring to school with them - including personal electronic devices.

This article explains that critical thinking skills are needed everywhere in life - not just in the classroom. As teachers, we need to help our students realize that just because information exists, doesn't mean that it's correct. Using web tools can help students do this by having them take information and present it in a different form, or by having them create their own presentation based on correct information gathered.

I agree with you that students need to question what they read and be able to see through the writers agenda. I think that is why I worry about the websites that students are getting their information. As teachers we need to help students'analyse and question each source they use before they accept what the web articles have posted. I also need to align my curriculum with standards that include critical thinking. It will be the next step in my journey from guidance counselor to teacher.

I created a Mind42 map to show how Web 2.0 tools can support communications skills, and types of lessons where our curriculum can use these tools and skills. From a Career and Technical School, I focused on the Web 2.0 tools that the articles mentioned that focuses on communications such as videos, podcasts, interactive posters, voice thread, mixbooks, podcast and glogsters. I didn't add them all but just provided examples. These tools can all in some way or another be used to enhance basic work skills of reading, writing, listening and communications. For each skill, I identified type of activities and projects that can be created using these tools. For example writing can be enhanced by having students write procedures, memos or reports.

This is a nice thing that someone put together. It categorizes today's web 2.0 websites into a Bloom's Taxonomy of thinking.

I really liked this and printed out to give me some ideas about the Web 2.0 Tools. I enjoyed the organization of this with the Blooms taxonomy.

Great site! So much information in one place.

Sara Ring's poll provokes thinking about how assessment methods might be evolving to include information literacy. Interesting posts follow the poll results, which at the time I retrieved this URL showed Yes ahead of No. The most votes went to Maybe.

I think the choices in the poll are interesting--Yes, No or Maybe. I thought the distribution of answers would be a little different. About 50% maybe seemed to be a lot. This article made me think a lot about what I would do.