The time is finally here for my annual list of my top favorite sites of the year. This year I decided to up my post to the top 100 instead of 25 due to the number of sites that I reviewed and due to the popularity of the post. I tried to cover a wide range of sites from flash card creators, to digital storytelling, and of course social networks which really shined in 2011.
"The Smithsonian vowed that it would open up its digital collection by early 2015, Both the institution's Freer and Sackler galleries have posted over 40,000 pieces of global art online, all of which can be used for non-commercial purposes for free.
"Several of us at ProfHacker incorporate blogs into our pedagogy, and we have written on a range of course blog-related issues such as "Integrating, Evaluating, and Managing Blogging in the Classroom" (Julie) and "Tools for Managing Multiple Class Blogs" (Amy) among many others. In this post we (Jeff and Julie) will offer a few specific tips for evaluating course blogs and addressing the common question "how are you going to grade this?""
Several of us at ProfHacker incorporate blogs into our pedagogy, and we have written on a range of course blog-related issues such as "Integrating, Evaluating, and Managing Blogging in the Classroom" (Julie) and "Tools for Managing Multiple Class Blogs" (Amy) among many others. In this post we (Jeff and Julie) will offer a few specific tips for evaluating course blogs and addressing the common question "how are you going to grade this?"
For teachers hoping to infuse multimedia into their classrooms, YouTube makes for an excellent starting point. Plenty of universities, nonprofits, organizations, museums and more post videos for the cause of education both in and out of schools. The following list compiles some of the ones most worthy of attention, as they feature plenty of solid content appealing to their respective audiences and actively try to make viewers smarter.
Leading up to the annual conference of INOTE, the Irish National Organisation for Teachers of English, at the end of next week, here is a start on a list of useful websites for English teachers (not as a foreign or second language, but as a 'humanities' subject). 'Useful' actually means recommended - this is a 'curated' list, and very much evolving.
The list will be updated almost every day, so feel free to suggest more sites, with a brief comment, by the comments section underneath the post, or by Twitter via @sccenglish. Starting with Shakespeare, and continuing with General Poetry and English Teaching.
"Anthropology professor Michael Wesch has the awesome job of studying YouTube and thinking about what it all means. We asked him to curate a playlist of his favorite videos, and he came back with an impressive list of clips that exemplify how the "wonderfully playful participatory culture" you've created manifests itself on YouTube. Four of those videos are on our homepage today, but he also wrote this thoughtful blog post to accompany his picks. Reading it, you'll get a sense of how a single video or person can create a ripple that swells into something so much bigger than ourselves."
Experimenting fearlessly is an important step in redesigning education and encouraging the development of 21st century skills.
Clay Burell is Korea's best kept secret, asking provocative questions about the changing nature of schooling. Jenny Luca is an Aussie dynamo, encouraging teachers to create meaningful service learning projects. Kevin Jarrett runs one of the most inventive elementary-level computer labs in New Jersey.
Wouldn't young adults truly prepared for the 21st century have experience using computers to learn with—rather than simply about—the world
Don't today's 12-year-olds need to recognize that future coworkers are just as likely to live on the other side of the world as on the other side of town?
This is a great point which is why worldwide collaboration in education is so important to pursue and engage in.
no one has taught them about the power of these connections
few are using those networks to pursue meaningful personal growth
Consider the potential: Students from different countries can explore global challenges together. Small cohorts of motivated kids can conduct studies of topics with deep personal meaning to them. Experts can "visit" classrooms thousands of miles away.
When does this education begin? Or, does it matter? The impulse of typing the "emotion of the moment" overides what the adolescent brain has been taught.
each conversation includes opportunities for students to ask questions and feel a push against their preconceived notions.
This sounds like such an awesome opportunity to encourage students to defend their thinking (which is something we want them to do) in a form where it doesn't feel like a teacher assignment
I began using discussion tools like VoiceThread (http://voicethread.com) to create electronic forums for my students to interact with peers around classroom content—with extraordinary results
Why twitter? Aren't there other forums to find this same information?
Clay Burell
our students have no trouble connecting, but no one has taught them about the power of these connections. Although tweens and teens may be comfortable using digital tools to build networks, few are using those networks to pursue meaningful personal growth. Our challenge as teachers is to identify ways that students can use these tools for learning.
This points to the fact that we must teach students about digital citizenship. They are creating their own rules in these online environments. They need some direction to cut down on the terrible negative sides of online life.
What if we build time into the daily classroom routine for checking and interacting with our digigal relationships. Teachers would visit their professional learning communities and students would do the same. This could be a once a week activity, or every day...
The key to becoming an effective 21st century instructor is to become an efficient 21st century learner.
Wouldn't young adults truly prepared for the 21st century have experience using computers to learn with—rather than simply about—the world?
This is exactly what I've been saying in my blog posts...
Once you've taken your digital plunge, share with students how the digital connections you engage in enhance your skills and deepen your knowledge. Model learning transparently.
I wish I had the time to keep up with all the sites out there! I remember when we first showed VoiceThread - kids loved it. Now, they are more familiar and not as excited because they use it elsewhere, which is wonderful, but requires me to keep up on the "newer" options.
Am I ready to be tethered to my phone even more than I am?
Then start by following some of the good education blogs written by teachers. Many of these are listed in the Support Blogging wiki (http://supportblogging.com) and on my list of resources (www.pageflakes.com/wferriter/16618841).
I sort of model this when I give exemplars for projects in which writing in their own words is part of a rubric. I'm not sure that is enough, however. I think maybe my writing doesn't sound enough like their writing in all cases
This instruction should focus on the supposedly simple technique of summarizing sources, which is in truth not simple. Many students are far from competent at summarizing an argument— and students who cannot summarize are the students most likely to plagiarize.
This strikes me as someting teachers in many learning areas could work on with kids rather than defaulting to Language Arts as the place where kids learn about plagiarism
The teacher in this tale uses the incident to teach students that using others' words without attribution is a serious crime. He then emphasizes to students the importance of citation and source integration techniques and enlists the school librarian to model how to cite outside works used in a piece of writing.
I'm not sure that I see the evil/missteps in this example. It doesn't say the student was punished it says the teacher & librarian used it as an opportunity to teach about proper attribution...
Educators should also communicate why writing is important. Through writing, people learn, communicate with one another, and discover and establish their own authority and identity.
Being able to write about things that you are passionate about will bring even more importance to students' writing.
it is easy for well-intentioned students to overlook the boundaries between what they themselves have produced and what they have slid from one screen (their Internet browser) to another (their word-processed document)
She begins by explaining that inserting synonyms is not paraphrasing. She then guides students in studying a passage and identifying its key words and main ideas that must be retained to paraphrase the passage. Shirley shows her students poor paraphrases of the passage for them to critique. Finally, she has them write their own paraphrase of a 50- to 100-word source passage that they themselves choose.