Group items tagged

...Class members were invited to start their own blogs (which I then linked and followed by means of a Feevy students in turn chose to embed into their blog templates) and weekly post their reflections on assigned readings.... fostering individual expression ... the weekly assignment also involved posting a comment on at least an entry made by a partner...

"Shawnee High School Language Arts Literacy teacher Kristin Giles came to the ETTC recently to seek out websites to support her research paper unit. Here are some of the places she visited on the World Wide Web:" A list of links to info/advice/help with research skills. Nice way for a teacher to get herself prepped for teaching the research paper.

SimplyBox is a great way to add some Web 2.0 to your research. This would be esp. useful with group objects where students can then look at what each other group member has found. Use SimplyBox for Education, and get the free app (also has fee-based district or school-wide application that can be hosted and access controlled safely, and boxing from any application). The teacher could start the ball rolling, and have students join in, boxing their own sites and info. Esp. good for visual learners. This page has three good help videos: Overview, Sharing, and Twittering with SimplyBox. Fairly easy to use, once you get used to it.

"In the original 2004 article I stated: "The pipe is more important than the content within the pipe. Our ability to learn what we need for tomorrow is more important than what we know today. A real challenge for any learning theory is to actuate known knowledge at the point of application" (Conclusion section, � 1). I find Verhagen�s (2006) critique falls at precisely this point. The core of what I wrote in the initial article is still valid: that learning is a network phenomenon, influenced (aided) by socialization and technology. Two years is a lifetime in the educational technology space. Two years ago, web 2.0 was just at the beginning of the hype cycle. Blogs, wikis, and RSS�now prominent terms at most educational conferences�were still the sandbox of learning technology geeks. Podcasting was not yet prominent. YouTube didn't exist. Google had not released its suite of web-based tools. Google Earth was not yet on the desktops of children and executives alike�each thrilled to view their house, school, or business in satellite images. Learning Management Systems still held the starting point of most elearning initiatives. Moodle was not yet prominent, and the term PLEs (personal learning environments) did not exist. In two years, our small space of educational technology evolved�perhaps exploded is a more accurate term."

Another school/pedagogy oriented site for video resources. Ideas for curriculum, advice, guides, videos of and by students as well as education professionals and parents. [Really annoying music on the front page.] T/H R. Byrne

Great ideas for tools and their uses, categorized by media aspects, e.g., blogging and writing, photos, audio, PLNs, presentations, research databases, search, etc., with an intro to get you started. The list then continues with other, less frequently used tools, such as digital portfolios, Google drawings, notetaking tools, apps, etc.

It's the law, but captioning also helps ESL students and students with disabilities. There is also some evidence of improved test scores when captioning is used throughout a school term. Captioning also makes video search easier. T/h to N. Flynn (cielo24.com)

"Use these strategies to help middle and high school students identify relevance, accuracy, bias, and reliability in the content they read." The article includes results of a study on how youngsters use the Internet. Links to guides and other teaching materials. T/h J Coiro

"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! "

This page shows how a student website can be created and maintained. The topic is "digital health and wellness" or "digital citizenship" but can be revised and improvised on for other topics. The plan shows how teams are created, expectations for individuals within the team, grading, tasks, etc. Great lesson planning for a problem-based learning experience. T/H to J. Brueck on Diigo in Education.

Have you ever tried this idea?

Webquests and Projects

via @courosa