Group items tagged

"This list of five things that you may not know about QR codes contains some simple ideas that definitely pack a punch. These tips include strategies for differentiating instruction, distributing materials, and keeping families up to date on classroom activities. If you've tried one of these QR tips or have another to add to the list, the comments section of this post is the perfect place to share!" The article also tells how to make dynamic QR codes requiring a login, for example, for a daily lesson assignment, using Kaywa.

"Description: A breathtaking array of 'learn to code' Apple, Android and Windows phone apps. Learn C++, Python C#, HTML, SQL, JavaScript, Java, CSS, php and Swift via the site or apps. These are 'must try' tools for anyone starting out with coding. The site even has a 'Code Playground' to experiment with your code." I haven't had a chance to try out any of these, but this should be an interesting starting point to get students coding.

"The Newseum displays these daily newspaper front pages in their original, unedited form. Some front pages may contain material that is objectionable to some visitors. Viewer discretion is advised." This would be very handy, and easy to use, for adult ESL/EFL, social studies classes, or cross-cultural study: What is considered important in each location? How is the same news story treated differently in different cities or different parts of the world? Excellent for visual learners.

This would be very useful for h.s. social studies or an adult ESL/EFL class where students can compare how the news is presented in different newspapers, or compare what is considered important in different cultures.

The Newseum displays these daily newspaper front pages in their original, unedited form. Some front pages may contain material that is objectionable to some visitors. Viewer discretion is advised.

Check out the extensive list for topics of interest to EFL/ESL teachers. These are interesting and professional-looking, each about 30-40 min. on embedded video.

"With the advance of web 2.0 technologies, there emerged a wide range of educational tools that we can use with our students in and outside the classroom.Collaborative web tools is one example. Using such websites, teachers will be able to help in holding online and real-time discussions with their students, help them in their projects and assignments, guide their learning, do backchanneling, and synchronously moderate discussion threads and many more." The focus here is on tools for collaboration. Many are new and interesting, such as virtual whiteboards, search team to do online searches together, browse websites together, create online projects collaboratively, create your own chatroom, etc. Some of these will be gone quickly, but they all appear quite useful. About 30 in the list.

"If you're the "techy" person in your school but you're not in the IT department sometimes your colleagues come to you with their tech help questions before heading to the IT folks. Sometimes those questions come over the phone and you find yourself trying to explain where to click next or struggling to understand the problem the other person is trying to explain. That's when it's handy to have a screen sharing tool readily available. Here are five that are quick and easy to use." Actually, these screen-sharing tools might be really great for seeing what your students are doing, or to allow remote collaborations.

In an ideal world, every time your company rolls out a new application or a major upgrade on an existing application, full-time trainers would handle the duties of educating end users. In the real world, however, help desk analysts not only provide support for these applications but are often asked to train users on them as well.

These are divided by subject matter, and each has a short description, so it's not as daunting a list as appears at first glance. Take some time to explore the content areas, many of which are useful for language learners, such as Daily Haiku. There will be many apps with comparable features/functions for Droid-based smartphones and tablets also.

We all have had many years of experience in learning in face-to-face settings in both classrooms and seminar rooms. Although the face-to-face learning environments are often complex and unpredictable, we are very familiar with them and have developed high levels of skill in working in these environments. We cannot assume, however, that the skills, strategies, and techniques that we so effectively use in face-to-face learning environments will also work well in online learning.

"Google added two fantastic new features to Google Slides. First, Google Slides now has a Q&A feature that lets your audience submit questions to you. Second, Google Slides now has a built-in laser pointer that you can use to call attention to parts of your slides. I've already received some questions about how to use these new features so I made the following short video." t/h R. Byrne This makes Google slides very versatile for online presentations. Check out the how-to video.

"As part of the Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS), students need to "ask questions to clarify evidence of the factors that have caused the rise in global temperatures over the past century." Many teachers have little to no formal training on how to teach about climate change. Along with the ever-changing research and the controversy that comes with it, some teachers inevitably shy away or even prevent students from digging deep into the content. Some suggest that teachers might be getting climate change all wrong. Since teachers can't rely on books to stay current with all the new research, digital resources are the only effective way to stay on top of such a dynamic field. Consider these practices when using technology to teach about climate change:" Sites include NASA Global Climate Change, Climate Kids for younger learners, Global Oneness Project, and Earth-Now to analyze realtime data.

"Each day author/teacher Bill Zimmerman is offering excerpts from a new ‘’Make Beliefs’’ book aimed at encouraging students to express their thoughts through writing and drawing, as well as to spur their creative imaginations. They are in the form of comic strip panels in which comic characters raise a provocative question and students can write their responses by creating comic strips at MakeBeliefsComix. com, a free educational resource. " These are imaginative prompts and many could also be used for stand-alone creative writing activities.

"Mouse Mischief integrates into Microsoft PowerPoint 2010 and Microsoft Office PowerPoint 2007, letting you insert questions, polls, and drawing activity slides into your lessons. "Students can actively participate in these lessons by using their own mice to click, circle, cross out, or draw answers on the screen. " This sound like a great tool to make your presentations interactive, get students attention and help them learn as you teach. Sorry--looks like Windows only. Originally from Gre Duncan's blog: http://coolthingoftheday.blogspot.com/2012/02/add-little-mischief-to-your-next.html

From R. Byrne: "Creating and delivering quizzes and tests online offers a number of advantages over paper-based quizzes and tests. Many online quiz services allow you to create quizzes that give your students instant feedback. Some of the services provide the option to include picture and video prompts in your quizzes. And all of these services save you the hassle of printing your quizzes. "

Many of these sites/apps have surprising features, such as the ability to insert a poll, educational portals where student accounts can be created, easy embedding of a collage or slideshow in a blog, student response systems within the slideshow, video mash-up, animation, video narration side-by-side, mobile apps, etc. Far more than Powerpoint can do.

"With so much competition for job placement these days, the need to stand out has never been more prevalent. A resume and cover letter simply aren't enough. Fortunately for the job seeker, the hunt for a good career can be simplified with the abundance of digital resume and portfolio platforms at our disposal."

This site is going EFL/ESL in a big way, using video: "We recently found out that 22frames.com is becoming a popular site for learning English as a second language (ESL). It turns out that watching captioned videos provides a way to not only learn formal English but also idioms and other cultural concepts. To find videos, you can browse through categories or make caption-only video searches on your interests. Even more, we have been devoting significant time and resources to developing ESL-specific features that are motivated by our users' feedback." "Recently, we found out that many of our users are using the site to supplement their English learning (see: http://www.22frames.com/esl.aspx ). They also began to pitch ideas we could implement to make the site even more useful for this activity. With so many requests, we decided to seriously consider these ideas and devote significant time and resources into realizing them. Now, we are turning our site into a substantial and FREE English learning resource. We are aware of a couple sites out there that are also focused on using captioned videos for English learning, so we've been focusing on the unique user-motivated features. Therefore, my goal here is to let you know about our free resource and that we are opening the door to requests for anyone who might desire features that have not been implemented elsewhere. Perhaps, you can share this with your colleagues/readers/etc as it will help us better gauge which features to prioritize and to increase the rate with which we will release new features. Please note that we are really serious about considering whatever feedback we get. I'm also pleased to announce our first feature, which we expect will help in learning/teaching popular English idioms. Idioms are a big deal in learning English, and it is clear that watching them used in real situations will increase the rate with which they are learned. We therefore processed a large group of YouTube videos in o

22 Frames is going to the ESL/EFL market, and is free. First features are idioms.

These wonderful videos take you from initial lessons to interviews with teachers and students to advice by the expert, and a view of how those lessons are put to use in the classrom. Amazingly good teacher training in 26 videos.

This is a great set of podcast questions by students to be used as the basis of a cross-cultural exchange. Nice examples to get your students going. These examples are from 16-17-yr-olds. Students get some writing practice, too, by inputting the questions they read aloud.

Vocabulary exercises at many different levels with lots pre-reading (sentence-level), and then exercises with cartoons and sounds for help. Highly interactiv--point and click on an item, drag-and-drop an item to a cartoon figure, listening to the item and type, etc. Despite cartoon/movie figures, adults could use these exercises, too (from Russel Stannard, TeachertrainingVideos.com).