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An integral part of nearly all online classes is the threaded discussion-it is where students interact on a nearly daily basis, posting their thoughts and information on main discussion topics, your postings, and the postings of other students. While you have measured control over the content, length, and tone of student postings, you have full control over your own. To ensure that your responses to student postings in discussion are effective, incorporate the following ideas:

In this article, Errol Sull provides us many good reminders of what we should be doing to make sure our online learning environment is effective and positive for our students. I feel confident in his guidelines because he's been teaching in the online environment for fifteen years. His suggestions also make sense in both an online and f2f discussion.

This article by Errol Sull presents us with suggestions for online discussions. I personally have been nervous about having all class online discussions after a Moodle incident I had last year. Fortunately, my Moodle settings were set so that only two students were able to get a at each other. I will apply these ideas to my classes in August.

"...creating new models for professional development by combining live, interactive webinars with a social networking community."

This article showcases some Web 2.0 creative media tools. Students should have the ability to create new media. The tools outlined in this Edutopia article are great suggestions to assist in creativity and student participation, as well as provide a showcase for their critical thinking. Also includes links to Parts 1 - 3 of Eric Brunsell's series.

I picked this one for Media literacy, but looking at it different. When students have access to media, they look at what we want them to and then wonder off to other items and sites, thus impacting their ability to accurately analyze, evaluate, and create.  

From the makers of Gronckit the collaborative, social, online learning and test preparation company comes their latest venture Learnist. Learnist is a continual learning and professional development platform kind of like Pinterest, but with more features. Learnist is a community geared for creating, sharing, communicating and improving collective resources.  I signed up for an account and started to follow @LearnistTweets on Twitter.

Like blogging, Adapt Courseware is a social learning space that allows the student to create a profile to get to know his/her peers. Allows the students to participate in discussion groups and to seek help or support from study groups. It also allows the student to create a post that they are interested in or to comment on posts from others.

An Interesting "brochure" categorizing Ipad apps using Blooms taxonomy of thinking skills; remembering, understanding, creating,  applying, evaluating & analyzing. A handy guide for how to use in the classroom.

I am glad for the realistic easy viewing of Bloom's taxonomy of skills. Using the iPad in the classroom it is a good quick reference to see what apps I am already using and promoting that my students use as well as which apps I would like to promote with enhancement of other skills.

I am not sure I agree with the categorization on many of these and I definitely do not think it is all inclusive. It is interesting though.

As we are creating new opportunities for students to develop their 21st century skills, it is important to stay current wit rigorous and relevant assessments for real world work.  This blog speaks to this issue

Use the initial checklists to easily create rubrics for student projects.

University students create videos for younger, k12 students to help inspire future computer science students. This is two fold. The process of creating the video also reinforces topics mastered while benefiting society.

This is amazing on so many levels. Thanks for sharing. For us- great teaching resources, but also a great learning tool for the MIT students.

This is an academic paper examining the reasons why an online learning group should 'move ... from cohort to community.' (abstract), and how students resources and strategies may be managed to accomplish this. The paper asserts that students in a distance learning situation are isolated from each other and the teacher, therefore it is of vital importance that the cohort needs to create a sense of community rather than simply exist alone in the virtual learning room. The article quotes Vygotsky's social development theory of 1978, Selznik's seven elements of community: history, identity, mutuality, plurality, autonomy, participation, and integration (1996), and how the author's of the article modified the characteristics to conform more with current online learning theory. I found this article particularly relevant to the current situation I find myself in. Even though I am happy in my own space and don't need the close interaction with others, I can see that it is important to push myself forward in the sense of gleaning the most benefit from the course and those many intelligent people out there. This is difficult for me because I find the time necessary to maintain so many contacts, and actually have something worthwhile to say and share goes against my slow, ponderous thinking and non-gregarious nature!

I found a link from the Newstand that connected me to an article from mashable.com, which discusses a new educational program from the people at TED talks. The program allows teachers to turn any YouTube video, including TED talks into a lesson. The article aligned this new tool with the phenomenon of flipping classrooms. To flip a classroom means to prepare a lesson that students can complete at home. The pedagogical foundation of flipped classes is connected to project-based learning. The proponents of this approach believe if students can cover lessons at home, then classroom time could be used for collaborative student projects. The new TED-Ed program allows for teachers to create a unique URL, where student can access the video as well as a series of questions. The types of questions vary from multiple choices, to short answer, to more high order thinking questions. These HOT questions expand the ideas from the video into high order thinking akin to Bloom's Taxonomy. The TED-Ed team is also producing their own educational videos, which are a collaboration between educators and animators. At this point there aren't many of the TED-Ed videos produced, but the ones I explored are quite interesting. The mashable.com article has links to TED-Ed. I am not the biggest proponent of flipped teaching, but I am intrigued by TED's involvement.

Spaaze is a website that allows for the simple creation of a virtual cork board. It is extremely dynamic and easy to use. You can add video, images, files, titles, and notes all in one spot so your students can have easy access to unit material. The canvass size of Spaaze is huge so you can add quite a few units to one canvass.

When looking for various assessments in relation to technology, I stumbled upon this article that discusses assessments, not only in relation to all students, but students with special needs.  Technology has really made a breakthrough with communication barriers among children with autism.  Technology assessments have helped with data collection, communication, and allowing various learning techniques to create new methods of retaining information.  In relations specifically to children with autism, the internet is a social network for them and allows them to communicate without the need for speech.  It is very interesting and worth a read through.

Dabbleboard is a great place for students to have the ability to draw collaboratively. If you have an assignment where students are required to diagram or draw then this site might be useful.

Cacoo is a concept mapping/mind mapping/brainstorming site. It is free and allows for many methods of concept mapping. Great site to use with your classes and students.

Throughout the ages of educational ideas and philosophies teachers have been big fans of having their students keep a journal. Journals are kept in language arts, foreign language classes, and I have seen them in science classes. Students don't particularly like doing them unless they enjoy writing. If given a choice between keeping a journal in their spiral notebook and keeping it online, I would wager that a majority of students in this digital age will prefer to keep it online. So why not give them the choice and tool of Penzu.

Aviary is a powerful suite of graphics and audio tools that can be used for educational purposes and assignments. It is a very dynamic piece of software that is hosted in the cloud and is an excellent web 2.0 tool. Click here to read more about using Aviary in the Classroom.

Love this app. The opportunities for creativity are only limited by the user's imagination. A great way to introduce students to graphics and image editing.

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.

you are presented with a very simple text editor perfect for student journals. Each note can include images, links and attachments as well as tags to help with searching. For example, journal entries for a history unit might be tagged, "WWII". In addition, multiple notebooks can be created with one account. NotePub, like many online writing tools, works great for role playing assignments. Have your students assume the role of a person they are studying or character from literature. Then, your students write a daily journal entry. Completed entries can be shared in several ways including email.