Group items tagged

"Programming is magic. It's the ability to create things from pure imagination. We started CodeCombat to give learners the feeling of wizardly power at their fingertips by using typed code. "As it turns out, that enables them to learn faster too. WAY faster. It's like having a conversation instead of reading a manual. We want to bring that conversation to every school and to every student, because everyone should have the chance to learn the magic of programming. "CodeCombat is a community project,with hundreds of players volunteering to create levels, contribute to our code to add features, fix bugs, playtest, and even translate the game into 50 languages so far. Employees, contributors and the site gain by sharing ideas and pooling effort, as does the open source community in general. The site is built on numerous open source projects, and we are open sourced to give back to the community and provide code-curious players a familiar project to explore and experiment with. Anyone can join the CodeCombat community! "

The paper concludes that while there are some preliminary positives about online PLC's, educators' thinking about online PLC's has not moved beyond the scope of traditional PLC's. In other words, more time will be required to truly evaluate their impact, but in the meantime, blended traditional and online PLC's seem to offer the most promise.

Read a summary of the report or the full report at:

http://ies.ed.gov/ncee/edlabs/projects/project.asp?projectID=368 This link is not working as I post this, so I need to check back later

Networking for the English language teaching community

Building Community in your classroom with web 2.0 tools.

extensive collection of resources we've assembled to serve our community of writers

extensive collection of resources we've assembled to serve our community of writers.

timely, helpful reminders for us all as EVOs begin! Holly

"Do you Diigo? To be honest, I signed up but never used the online social-bookmarking tool. Fortunately, TESOL's Computer-assisted Language Learning (CALL) Interest Section has been busy bookmarking some great online resources. Dr. Elizabeth Hanson-Smith shared the Diigo CALL IS Virtual Software List on the TESOL CALL Community: http://www.diigo.com/user/call_is_vsl. This list contains tons of resources on various teaching topics! However, this post focuses only on the teacher-training videos." A nice review and selection by Sandra Rogers for the TESOL Blog.

Great resources for planned and executing project-based learning in your school: "According to Edutopia, studies have shown that students who use project-based learning remember the material much longer and have healthier attitudes toward education. "Project-based learning is based on the idea that students learn best by tackling and solving real world problems. Students are much more engaged with the subject matter and look to the teacher as more of a coach who guides them through their own reflections and ideas. Project-based learning often involves students working in pairs or groups, thus facilitating a deeper understanding of cooperation and communication in solving problems."

eLanguages is a global online community of teachers sharing ideas and working together with their students on curriculum-relevant projects.

"In this video, made while I was Tech Liaison for the Alaska State Writing Consortium, I share some ideas about teaching with Twitter and reflect on using Twitter with both local and distance students at the University of Alaska, Fairbanks. "This video was created as part of an online presentation I did with, David Wicks, Seattle Pacific University, and Jason Rhode, Northern Illinois University. It was presented online for the Northwest eLearning Community January 27, 2011. We have posted more materials and links to additional videos at their Google site: Twitter in Edu." From Jacquie Cyrus, Guam.

PurposeGames.com is host to educational quiz and trivia games created by its members. In just a few minutes, you can create your very own game to share with your friends!. Play games and tournaments to compete against your friends, co-workers, and classmates! Become the reigning champion of your community! The easiest way to learn something is to have fun while doing it! Geography, Science, and Languages, any subject is easier and more fun to learn by playing a quiz game!

"Welcome to elearnspace! This site and blog explore elearning, knowledge management, networks, technology, and community. Many resources exist for elearning, yet a model of how the pieces fit together is often missing. elearnspace has been organized to present a whole picture view of elearning" George Siemens' collection of interesting articles, mainly about connectivism.

"Global collaboration projects, which allow students to work with peers across state and national boundaries, aren't just fun. They can also address several of the ISTE Standards for Students, including Digital Citizen, Global Collaborator and Empowered Learner. " Good ideas for getting started and maintaining the spark, including ensuring your class is already working as a community before going global.

The Mixxer - a free educational website for language exchanges via Skype