Projects As of July 1, 2013 ThinkQuest has been discontinued. We would like to thank everyone for being a part of the ThinkQuest global community: Students - For your limitless creativity and innovation, which inspires us all. Teachers - For your passion in guiding students on their quest. Partners - For your unwavering support and evangelism. Parents - For supporting the use of technology not only as an instrument of learning, but as a means of creating knowledge. We encourage everyone to continue to “Think, Create and Collaborate,” unleashing the power of technology to teach, share, and inspire. Best wishes, The Oracle Education Foundation
Blogs as Showcase Portfolios I am a huge advocate of blogs as ongoing, reflective portfolios of student work. After using them with students for the last six years in a variety of formats in three different schools, in my opinion, they are the perfect container for sharing, organizing and reflecting on student learning. For starters, they are so amazingly easy to use. I’ve used blogs with students as young as third grade and it really only takes one lesson for them to understand the basics. In addition to the ease of use, the accessibility of connecting with other learners around the world, since work is online and easy to comment on, makes blogs a straightforward tool for building a global classroom. So I was very happy that YIS had an existing blogging portal, The Learning Hub, (set up by Colin and Brian last year) when I arrived last August. Basically, all I would like students to do is reflect on their goals for the year and share pieces of work that are important to them. Showcase Portfolio Include:
QR Coded Student Videos: Classifying Activity This is part of my continuing series of blogs about how I am integrating mobile learning into my undergraduate course on interpersonal relations. There are a dozen students in the class. Ten of them are in the 17 to 21 year old age range. The other two are over 35 years old. All of them own mobile devices – four of them being Smart Devices (iPhone, Android). The following activity was part of a three-hour class on nonverbal behaviors. Goals of the Activity: To use videos and QR codes to explore and learn about a class topic.To build community by working on a common project. Needed Materials/Functions: One mobile device per group to create videos that can be uploaded directly to YouTubeOne mobile device per group with a QR reader. Procedures: Form students/members into smaller groups – 3 to 5 members per group.Ask students to create short videos using their mobile devices that demonstrate smaller concepts within a larger topic. Ask students to upload each of their videos to YouTube.
Introducing School-Wide Digital Citizenship Practices with iPads An elementary school in our district recently got 30 iPads and asked for some advice implementing them with students and teachers. In addition to suggesting some starter apps, I recommended that we have conversations with kids around the appropriate use of these devices. While almost every child has used an iPad, iPod Touch, or iPhone, the exciting learning opportunities these mobile, Internet-connected, media creation devices create also open the door to new challenges. Cyberbullying or inappropriate web publishing happens more through the camera than regular computer use does; the mobility of the device combined with the reality that multiple users are using the device with no personalized, password-protected, network-tracked accounts makes it more challenging to keep track of who is doing what with the device or that the device itself is safe. Rather than tell the students how they should and should not use iPads, I felt compelled to involve the students in the conversation.
PBL Learning | Project Based Learning Resources, Examples About ETR Community EdTechReview (ETR) is a community of and for everyone involved in education technology to connect and collaborate both online and offline to discover, learn, utilize and share about the best ways technology can improve learning, teaching, and leading in the 21st century. EdTechReview spreads awareness on education technology and its role in 21st century education through best research and practices of using technology in education, and by facilitating events, training, professional development, and consultation in its adoption and implementation.
Recommended Resources: Mobile Learning, Digital Activism, Multitasking Professor of urban planning, Amy Hillier, recently spoke at TEDxPhilly to talk about how data visualization technology can map a city’s emotions and memories. Geographic Information System (G.I.S.) technology has become more commonplace and allows statistics to be easily mapped, but in this article, "Mobile Technology: Mapping a City's Emotions, Memories," Hillier argues that we can go one step further. By using data visualization to map the city that isn’t visible to the eye (i.e. sewage system, water pipes, and other underlying infrastructure), it can be used as an experiential tool. She gives an example of two children living in different neighborhoods whose experiences can be quantified by mapping where they eat, where they go for entertainment, and average household income. Occupy LEGO Universe (online movement) Occupy LEGO Universe is a day for players to “occupy” a certain location in this virtual world. What We Learn From Open Source (video)
Why English teachers should care about project-based learning: multiliteracies, assessment for learning and digital technologies. | There is impetus for pedagogical change in the English classroom. Bull and Anstey (2010, p.6) observed that, ‘literacy teaching and learning should respond to the rapid changes in literacy arising from increasing globalization, technology and social diversity.’ This transforming social, cultural and technological landscape necessarily brings with it a new set of opportunities and challenges for secondary English teachers. This study is designed to answer three questions: How are digital technologies used when project-based learning is introduced into the Australian secondary English classroom? The researcher is a practicing educator and this study draws on broader learning theories of constructivism, engagement, assessment and literacy. Founded in Constructivist theory, project-based learning (PBL) “involves completing complex tasks that typically result in a realistic product, event or presentation to an audience” (Barron and Darling-Hammond, 2008, p. 2). Figure 1 Data Collection Figure 2
Book Creator, nouvelle version améliorée « aeemtech Bonjour, Book Creator – une application qui a elle seule est une bonne raison d’avoir un iPad – a été améliorée. Je vous traduis ça à la volée … Il est maintenant possible de : - Ajouter des hyperliens aux images et aux textes. Ces liens peuvent mener à des pages du livre, à des sites web, peuvent créer un courrier électronique, passer des appels téléphoniques et ouvrir d’autres application. - Ajouter un soulignement, le style italique ou gras à un mot. - Importer des livres dans Book Creator pour continuer leur édition. - Combiner des livres ce qui permet à plusieurs personnes de travailler sur une partie d’un livre commun puis à une personne d’assembler les parties pour n’avoir plus qu’un livre. - Les documents pdf sont maintenant exportés avec des images haute résolution et du texte vectorisé de manière à être aussi précis que vos iBooks. Si vous voulez en savoir plus : Bien à vous ! Like this: J'aime chargement…
Turning Students into Good Digital Citizens 21st Century Literacy | In Print Turning Students into Good Digital Citizens Schools have always been charged with the task of producing good citizens. But how has our definition of a "good citizen" changed over the ages? By John K. In today's world of near-ubiquitous connectivity, in which ordinary people have almost instantaneous access to unlimited stores of information and the ability to interact with anyone, anywhere, anytime, what does it mean to be an effective citizen? Ask a K-12 educator these questions and chances are the answers will have something to do with teaching proper behavior and setting appropriate prohibitions. But some educators, particularly those who think about this issue in higher education, will say that digital citizenship has less to do with safety and civility than participation in the worldwide online conversation--participation that requires a set of relatively sophisticated skills.
Why Your Project Needs a Verb Designing project-based learning (PBL) assignments opens up several decisions. The challenge that students will face, the assessments that measure their learning, the amount of voice and choice to offer, the calendar and length of the challenge—these are just some of the many facets of an effective PBL project. As we design a project, we may have trouble really focusing it. Why Focus on Verbs? Verbs are powerful. Projects are supposed to focus on authentic problems and challenges, whether real or scenario-based. Verbs can help us hone our purpose for the project. Weak Verbs, Powerful Verbs A weak verb can make or break a project, or cause you to run into pitfalls. Here is an example of how finding the right verb can transform a project. Through reflection and by picking the right verb, she came to the overall purpose of the project. Teachers should pick verbs that are appropriate to their students and contexts. Can Students Choose the Verbs?
Seeing the Classroom as a Hub of Technology-enabled Social Change Antero Garcia, who teaches English at a high school in South Central Los Angeles, is a PhD candidate, focusing on critical literacies and civic identity through the use of mobile media and game play. He utilizes his classroom as a center of youth participatory action research. His students assess and address real-life needs in their South Central community. Garcia is on the conference committee for the 2012 Digital Media & Learning Conference in San Francisco, Calif: “Beyond Educational Technology: Learning Innovations in a Connected World.” Garcia is heading up one of four important sub-themes in the conference, “innovations for public education.” A strong advocate for youth and teachers in public education settings, he is also one of the featured bloggers at DMLcentral, where he consistently pushes the digital media and learning community to be innovative, yes, but also relevant and meaningful. We have an identity problem as an educational community.
The 35 Best Web 2.0 Classroom Tools Chosen By You 100 Web 2.0 Tools Every Teacher Should Know About 44.24K Views 0 Likes We're always trying to figure out the best tools for teachers, trends in the education technology industry, and generally doing our darnedest to bring you new and exciting ways to enhance the classroom. 20 Free and Fun Ways To Curate Web Content 23.98K Views 0 Likes What's the best way to organize it all into at least some reasonable manner? It’s Time To Crowdsource Your School’s Social Media Policy 12.53K Views 0 Likes Every school has a different policy when it comes to social media. Creating Books on the iPad Book Creator for iPad: $7.49The simple way to create your own beautiful iBooks, right on the iPad. Read them in iBooks, send them to your friends, or submit them to the iBookstore. Ideal for children’s picture books, photo books, art books, cook books, manuals, textbooks, and the list goes on. eBook Creator: $4.49 ‘eBook Creator’ is a simple and easy ebook creation application. Ebook Magic: $4.49 An easy way to make custom epub books. Demibooks: FREEDemibooks Composer is the first iPad-based authoring software for creating interactive books. StoryPatch: $2.99 Now you can help your child's creativity grow with Story Patch, a beautiful new application for the iPad that children can use to create their own picture books. And thanks to Scott Meech for letting me know of another great App to include - Creative Book Builder.