Group items tagged

13 great products, apps and tools for preparing students for tests.

This site overviews some AV products designed to help students, educators, and other professionals work together on projects and easily share information. The systems allow for two-way collaboration between teachers and students using any device.

This article made me think of some of our discussion topics this week about blogging and how it engages students. I had wondered about the use of threaded discussions rather than a blog. However, this article focuses on how students preferred the blogging. They felt an online discussion was more academic whereas blogging allowed students to engage with their learning by applying to their existing lives and knowledge base. Students felt they could develop their own voice and create a more meaningful sense of community with their online classmates. I thought this was interesting because I have used both forms in my VHS and f2f classes. I really find the threaded discussions to be more productive, but it appears that students feel the blogging is more productive. I will need to rethink my tools.

This article discusses how students can gain real-world experience by blogging and podcasting.. They are able to hone writing skills, learn to take and give criticism and direction, use software in the production of the blogs and podcasts. They are using the essential skills of managing, analyzing, creating and evaluating, etc.

Ben Miller, a teacher at the University of New South Wales, wanted his students to build learning materials for his course. He decided a wiki was the best platform to capture the group's work over the semester. Ben chose to create his wiki on UNSW's Wikispaces Private Label site as it gave his students a university-branded environment for their academic work. Students loved the wiki and after several weeks, were building most of the content for the site - summarizing theories on free speech, arguing their viewpoints, and highlighting censorship cases that they wanted to further explore. The final product was a rich body of knowledge that helped the students prepare for their end-of-year exam. We encourage you to check out this wiki and listen to Ben's discussion about his wiki project.

A shared slideshow that showcases the many uses for Google Apps in education, not just as a teaching tool, but to support productivity as well. It has great suggestions and practice for different level users

This article introduces a contest which promotes reading and media skills that began in 2008. It is sponsored by major publishers such as Simon and Schuster and Scholastic and 5 regional libraries, The contest is for students in grades 1-6. The students need to create a storytube on a book they have read. It is important to point out that teachers are not replacing a written report or are using this to enhance the report. I reviewed some of the winners and it is so great to see kids excited about what they read and using technology so easily. With students creating video media at such an early age and being so comfortable doing it only leads me to believe that when these students reach high school the work that they will create will be fantastic.

This article originally appeared in SLJ’s Extra Helping. Sign up now! By Jennifer Pinkowski -- School Library Journal, 07/09/2008 Funny accents, strange wigs, and spoiler-free plot summaries are the common elements in the winning videos made by contestants in StoryTubes, a new contest for kids that promotes reading-and new media skills-by capitalizing on the popularity of YouTube.

This link explains how libraries are using the power and popularity of YouTube to promote learning, literacy, creativity and technology. StoryTube is a great project idea that uses the power of the contest as a wonderful motivator.

Author Bernard Luskin indicates that most of today's literature refers to the physical changes in technology but as we learn more about human behavior and how people learn, it will dramatically impact the way we teach globally. The author provides 'key takeaways' from the article which all relate to media literacy. He explains that this new 'exploding' environment will impact the future of learning for all levels of education as the media, learning psychology, technologies become popular tools for learning. As we learn more from research and studies about media and how it relates to human behavior, it will increase the effectiveness of the ways technology is used in education. The author states that the 'big "E" is for "exciting, energetic, engaging, extended learning". He explains that E learning has and will continue to grow as a key in media literacy and the way people learn, study, individual behavior in society, and products that are produced. This interest in technology, media, communications and how humans learn has actually developed a new field of study, Media Psychology. The author supports the need for people to enter this field and recommends that we learn what e-learning is about and go beyond the electronic gizmos and gadgets.

The exploding new media and communications environment has implications for the future of both K-12 and adult learning as media, technology, and learning psychology increasingly become tools for learning in and outside the classroom. The new research area of media studies, i.e., the study of media effects, includes media psychology because an understanding of human behavior is vital to the effective use of technology in education.

Shows 50 tips that your students can make use of when incorporating Google Docs into the classroom. I like using Google Docs instead of emailing attachments and create shortcuts.

Stoodle , an online white board service partly supported by CK12 Foundation, enables students and educators to quickly create and work on a collaborative whiteboard space.

This is a short but sweet reminder of why and when teachers should use technology in their classrooms. Really, technology is the tool for learning, not necessarily the creation of a product. There is a great list to ways we should and should not implement technology tools. This list is actually a good reference to check as you are contemplating using tech in the classroom -- should I or should I not use it? References within the text.

A must-share with all faculty!

Degreed is a free service that monitors and validates your lifelong educational learning from internet learning and real world degrees.

According to this article, "Design thinking can transform your classroom into a space of creativity, excitement and possibility". Design thinking is an 8-step process where students 1) Define the problem; 2) Research the problem; 3) Analyze the situation; 4) Redefine the problem; 5) Ideate (brainstorm); 6) Prototype (find a solution); 7) Refine; and 8) Repeat. A classroom activity is detailed where students look at the ads that recently won Clios and go through the process as if they were the ads' designers. They are basically putting themselves in the designers shoes. They are trying to recreate what was done and why it was done. A followup activity is to have the students design their own ads for the products using the steps of Design Thinking. I must admit I wanted to do it!

List of 12 amazing online tools for students.

This article is about using predicative analytics to improve instruction. Predicative analytics has been used in industry for years. Netfix will send you suggestions for your next movie pick; Big Y will generate a coupon for a product they think I much like to try. By looking at a student's "breadcrumbs", we should be able to improve instruction. Data driven instruction is here to stay. We need to able to understand the data and do something with it.

Here's a list of some Math apps aligned to Common Core Standards that according to me are among the best available out there.

Here is a list of some of the most highly recommended apps that are appropriate for young learners to learn coding skills.

This article is a review for animation software for the grade school level. While this article is not about HOTS directly it describes an interesting tool that can promote HOTS. Students are well versed in making PowerPoints these days and moving to a more extensive animation platform is the next logical step. The animation process involves HOTS because students must process the information into a format that is more then just memorization and repetition. This tool would promote the skills of analysis, synthesizing, and critical thinking as students take information presented in class and work to share their knowledge through film/animation.

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.

An important component of information literacy is finding 'good', reliable information. When students become skillful at research, they can create amazing products and apply the knowledge learned. As Clive writes, "better to concentrate on important underlying concepts and principles".