Group items tagged

30 New Media Tools and Web Sites for Writing Teachers. This article is really for adult learners but it offers loads of information and ideas for how best to incorporate technology into your lessons...everything from online learning to screen video capturing programs to online collaboration to web conferencing to video to animation creating tools...and it goes on and on! Worth looking at all the options.

"As companies grow, in the age of the internet, they are drowning in electronic documents. Some people get so many e-mails each day that they don't even bother opening them. Official documents are nice, but they are no way to communicate." This article encourages and promotes the use of videos to communicate and tell stories.

This article provides great tips for incorporating video into your lessons, including helpful technical tips, such as "clipping" the video off a dvd at the beginning and end of the video clip that you need so you don't waste time or lose momentum in class setting up the video.

Simplicity and Organized--important in blogs and concept maps. Great way to spark and then keep interest.

The article suggests 3 approaches to develop multiple choice questions to assess higher-order thinking skills. Students can be asked to respond to real-world scenarios, analyze visuals such as diagrams and graphs, and synthesize explanations that support the answer. Included are samples of questions that measure these higher-order skills.

A first-rate account of how students can analyze, evaluate, and internalize the information on websites, rather than merely collecting sources and spitting back unprocessed information.

The article looks at how to shift from limited classroom instruction focused on lecture, homework, discussion, memorization to using the web as a tool to expand the learning experience. Imagine getting a tweet from a student who is outraged when Lennie kills Curly's wife in Of Mice and Men? Aaron Iffland explains how to make your classroom viral while requiring students to engage more in their own learning.

I like this article and I think students learn best by doing. I think I am addicted to my phone. I can paly games, read, wrtie, email and socialize all at the sametime. It's fun and educational!

An excellent piece on the relationship between Web 2.0 and the development of high-order thinking skills. The article describes a project by EDC to train teacher-trainers in Indonesia via Web 2.0 tools. The article describes in very concrete detail how specific Web 2.0 tools promote thinking skills in the upper realm of Bloom's Taxonomy. The article includes a useful chart linking applications like Diigo and Voicethread to the specific skills they promote. It also explains why Web 2.0 tools are more conducive to higher-order thinking than less interactive Web 1.0 tools.

threading and tagging

The author of the article reviews a new training software release "Articulate Storyline". The program combines several elements: video, dialog balloons, and questions with multiple scenario resolutions for starters. Each scene is very short. The video action stops, and text balloons appear showing the dialog of the scene. Then three possible resolutioins to the scene appear. The user chooses one, and the video continues. It works like an improv play where the audience chooses how each scene will end. Although it's designed as a tool for the teacher, I can see where students would love this, too. The reviewer is definitely not unbiased, but there are links to samples that showcase just what the program can do.

This has great tips for new bloggers and using blogs. Everything you wanted to know about blogs but were afraid to ask.

This website is a guide to effective assessment In a Digital Age. The online resources from this website enable teachers to investigate the potential of enhancing assessment and feedback through technology.

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

"Creativity and innovation are the keys to continued advancement in business as well as education (Sharda, 2010)."  In this article, Sharda discusses how e-learning systems based on digital storytelling can enhance creativity and innovation.

The author of this article compares reading on eReaders to a nostalgic paper novel. I share many of her sentiments, but she is optimistic about how reading textbooks on an eReader totally changes how students read for information. Joann Vidall-Cox explains that reading on an eReader allows you to jump to other sources for supplements and explanations for what you are reading. In a way, readers are no longer help hostage by the bookcovers because the eReader allows you to transition to new pages of information. Maybe novels will soon be written with hyperlinks as well!

Nice explanation of the difference between paper and eReaders. I like the hestitation of the author, and the clarification she uses as to the difference with notations in a certain location. It's great if you like a screen in your face prior to night time reading. It is interesting how students gravitate to the new and then often revert to the old, tried and true formats.

Easyclass.com is one of the recent examples of next-gen LMS solutions by providing a collaborative learning platform that allows schools to integrate online education, classroom management, and social networking through a user-friendly interface.

I found this video on Twitter tonight thanks to David Walker (@drdjwalker) who re-tweeted the video from The Partnership of 21st Century Skills. The video is called "Above and Beyond: the story of the 4Cs". Enjoy "In an increasingly complex, demanding and competitive 21st century, students need to learn more than the 3R's they are tested on in school. Although the 3R's are the foundation of learning (most especially reading), students must be prepared to Think Creatively and have Intellectual Curiosity in order to excel in the 21st century.

Oh, what fun! This video is a great tool to share with students. It's simplicity is a delight. The notion is that we all have different talents and skills we can bring to collaborative projects. We need to encourage students to take the time to share their creative ideas together; plan, explore, negotiate, compromise and problem solve together. My fifth and sixth graders will enjoy this video.

This video is fun, interesting and great for students to see. It stresses the collaborative nature of projects and how much more we can do together rather than alone. It reminds me of Odyssey of the Mind type projects, and I will definitely show this to my Advisory. I think they will find it interesting and funny, but more than that it can jump start a discussion about the creative power of collaboration. It also makes me think that it will demonstrate to students that diversity of ideas is powerful.

There can be different approaches to teaching problem-solving with the aid of technology.