Education Technology & Tools for Teachers

Learning in motion: EASY stop-motion animation with Google Slides For years (centuries ... really, millennia), students have had access to paper. And with that, they've been able to gather their ideas and turn them into static, two-dimensional images. To put those images in motion ... well, that's been trickier over time. Technology made that possible with the creation of animation software. Ten Strategies for Teaching English-Language Learners Online (This is the fourth post in a multipart series. You can see Part One here, Part Two here, and Part Three here.) The new question of the week is: How can we best support students when we teach online? In Part One, David Sherrin, Lorie Barber, Janelle Henderson, and Cathleen Beachboard contributed their experiences.

Education Technology Tools for Teachers Massive Open Online Courses make it possible for students of all ages to access high-quality coursework at no cost. Colleges and universities across the country publish video lectures, podcasts, reading lists, practice exams and more for anyone who wants to learn about a particular subject and/or experience what it’s like to take a college class. Over the last decade, organizations such as Coursera and Khan Academy have taken MOOCs one step further by creating or aggregating thousands of free courses in areas ranging from early American history and civics to trigonometry and multivariable calculus. Khan Academy is a non-profit educational website created by educator Salman Khan in 2006. Khan, a graduate of MIT and Harvard Business School wanted to provide a free world-class education for anyone anywhere.

EdTech Blog Why Student Engagement is Essential This Year This post is in partnership with GoGuardian. All opinions are my own. This school year is very different than any in the past — and that is truly an understatement. This fall, I connected with the team at GoGuardian. Add-Ons and Templates Add-Ons and Templates Add-Ons using Google Apps Script I learned a little JavaScript which is applicable for Google Apps Script. This allows me to code Google Docs and Sheets to create custom applications. PBL on HUMAN RIGHTS Students’ final works! It was December 12th when I published the first post of our PBL on Human Rights and after 4 months of class and individual work we have now finished researching, selecting and collecting materials and it’s about time to see the students’ groups’ final works and oral presentations. I’m very proud of my students when watching and listening to them presenting their Prezis and Emazes I realize how much they have improved in these 4 (or 2 in the case of 3M) years together. It’s amazing the quality of some of their works that show a great deal of creativity and that was exactly what I aimed at.

Thoughtful Learning Blog You may have noticed a new symbol on some of our resource pages: This is a Creative Commons license. When you see this symbol, you’re free to use, share, and re-purpose the material in your classroom as you see fit. The symbol designates the material as an open-education resource, or OER for short. Open-education resources are part of an emerging content revolution, with the potential for immense impact in the classroom and beyond.

Using a Chromebook Offline Mythbusting When you weigh up the pros and cons of buying a Chromebook, the topic of offline access is often hotly debated. Many people think that using a Chromebook offline is impossible, but that's not true. In fact, there is a lot you can do with a Chromebook when you are offline, and it's probably more than you think. Eight important facts about Working Memory and their implications for foreign language teaching and learning Introduction There is no blogpost of mine which does not mention Working Memory (WM) at some point. Why?

Six ‘useless’ things foreign language teachers do Recasts Recasts are the most frequent form of feedback that teachers give students in the course of oral interactions. They consists of utterances by the teacher that repeat the student’s erroneous utterance but ‘fix’ the mistake(s) without changing the meaning in any way. Describing photos (comparing, contrasting and speculating) You are going to practise language for; Describing photosComparing and contrasting photos (discussing similarities and differences)Speculating on what might be happeningReacting to photos (giving opinions) Discuss Look at the presentation. Follow the instructions and talk about some of the photos Blended Learning Definition The term blended learning is generally applied to the practice of using both online and in-person learning experiences when teaching students. In a blended-learning course, for example, students might attend a class taught by a teacher in a traditional classroom setting, while also independently completing online components of the course outside of the classroom. In this case, in-class time may be either replaced or supplemented by online learning experiences, and students would learn about the same topics online as they do in class—i.e., the online and in-person learning experiences would parallel and complement one another. Also called hybrid learning and mixed-mode learning, blended-learning experiences may vary widely in design and execution from school to school.

How Technology Should Have Already Changed Your Teaching How Technology Should Have Already Changed Your Teaching by Terry Heick Ed note: this post has been updated from a fall 2015 post A little bit of technology doesn’t change much. It can make things a little easier by automating them. It could make a lesson here or there gee-wiz flashy, or even engage hesitant students.