background preloader

7th Graders Publish Their Own Textbook

7th Graders Publish Their Own Textbook
Mac Life wrote an article titled Super 7th Graders Publish Their Own eBook to the iBookstore. It explains the project in more detail. "Each student has to choose an organisms they wanted to study and were required to submit their topic for approval. Afterward, students had to write informative – but entertaining! – articles about their organism." Andrea collected work from 69 students and entered it into iBooks Author. iBooks Author is free but only works on Macs running 10.7 Lion or higher. iBooks Author is a fantastically powerful tool. There are some disadvantages to using iBooks author for crafting your own learning materials. Check out what Andrea and her students say about writing their book. I think the comment by CNEBBY in the Customer Reviews of Creatures, Plants and More sums up the project well: "This is an awesome example of what kids can do when they are properly motivated by a skilled teacher."

www.inquiryhub.org Step-by-Step: How to Create a Collaborative Class eBook   Previously, I have published the following posts about creating eBooks: More and more classrooms are wanting to take their already created content and turn it into an eBook to share with parents, grandparents and the community who own eReaders. Here are some possible ideas to create content: Any Unit of StudyBook Report AnthologyPoem AnthologyVisual Quotes CollectionCreate your own TextbookEssay Collection about a Specific TopicDrawing/Painting CollectionPortfolio So, how do you create a collaborative CLASSROOM eBook? If you only have one iPad available, it is not such a big problem. Here is our Step-by-Step procedure (we are using the BookCreator app). 1. To get images into the gallery, students can: search for public domain or creative commons images on the web (via Safari) and save the image to the iPad Photo Gallery by holding a finger for a few seconds on the image until a drop down list pops up > choose “Save Image”. 4. 5. 6. Screenshot Edit Image E-Mail Tap anywhere on the image. 7. 17.

Introducing the Inquiry Hub Hello & welcome! ... 21 Reasons Technology Works for Education If you're an educator or someone who works in the nation's K–12 system, you're probably familiar with the word no: No, we don't have enough money for supplies. No, we can't afford new computers for the science lab. Yes, we believe in the power of technology. It's an unfortunate and all-too-common refrain. In May of last year, the folks at CDW-G surveyed more than 1,000 high school students, faculty, and district IT professionals around the country to get their take on technology's place in the classroom. Next time someone asks you why your school should open up its checkbook for a new wireless network or a computer lab, offer one of these 21 reasons. For the full report, see CDW-G's 21st-Century Classroom Report.

Veranderen nieuwe media de taal? | Taalcanon Niemand zou het twintig jaar geleden hebben durven voorspellen, maar er wordt tegenwoordig meer geschreven dan ooit tevoren. Iedereen lijkt eraan mee te doen. In bus en trein zit al snel de helft van de mensen op een schermpje te kijken en berichten in te tikken. Twitter: kort en krachtig? Om zulke vragen te kunnen beantwoorden moeten we eerst weten of – en zo ja op welke manier – taal nu precies verandert onder invloed van de moderne media. En ook in een verzameling van twitterteksten van de Nederlandse taalkundige Folgert Karsdorp valt op dat twitteraars niet per se korte woorden gebruiken. Het gebruik van afkortingen in tweets is relatief zeldzaam: in Karsdorps verzameling twitterteksten komt bijvoorbeeld maar twaalf keer lkr voor, naast 6320 keer de normale spelling lekker. Sms en chat: geen klinkers meer nodig Anders dan twitteraars schuiven sms’ers en chatters graag woorden of zelfs hele zinsdelen in elkaar. Waar komt nu het verschil vandaan tussen tweets en sms’ jes?

The Socratic Method The Socratic Method:Teaching by Asking Instead of by Tellingby Rick Garlikov The following is a transcript of a teaching experiment, using the Socratic method, with a regular third grade class in a suburban elementary school. I present my perspective and views on the session, and on the Socratic method as a teaching tool, following the transcript. The experiment was to see whether I could teach these students binary arithmetic (arithmetic using only two numbers, 0 and 1) only by asking them questions. I had one prior relationship with this class. When I got to the classroom for the binary math experiment, students were giving reports on famous people and were dressed up like the people they were describing. "But what I am really here for today is to try an experiment with you. 1) "How many is this?" 2) "Who can write that on the board?" 3) Who can write ten another way? 4) Another way? 5) Another way? 2 x 5 [inspired by the last idea] 7) One more? X [Roman numeral] 14) Which, nine or ten?

BioBook, A Gates-Funded iPad Textbook, Would Create A Free Database For Customized Learning Since the launch of the iPad, colledge educators have been seeking an inexpensive alternative to paper textbooks that could leverage the collective knowledge of teachers and students. With a $249,000 grant from the Gates Foundation's Next Generation Learning Challenge, Dr. Daniel Johnson of Wake Forest University and education technology firm Odigia might have found it. For educators, the BioBook allows professors to track individual student progress and develop their own textbooks from a national database of professor-generated, mix-and-match chapters. Threaded Learning "Every learner brings unique prior knowledge, misconceptions, and pre-existing mental models to the process of learning a new concept," Dr. Instead of reading like storybook, chapters are reformed into a branch/leaf relationship; all students start with the same fundamentals and explore details as their curiosity guides them. A National Database Dr.

What Is PBL Really? Do you want to engage your students in Project Based Learning (PBL)? Maybe you are asking yourself what is PBL really? Am I doing it right? Well, first of all, the most important thing to understand is that PBL is a construct made up by human beings and so there are lots of variations! My suggestion is to study many of the great resources that are available to you and then create your own working definition and effective PBL practice. Some Parameters to Consider I have created this diagram, enhanced by the critical eye of Brenda Sherry, which may be useful as you consider what is important to you and to your students. We like to think with the frame of continua rather than dichotomies simply because things are rarely on or off, black or white, ones or zeroes! You could likely add other dimensions to consider as you build your own understandings and beliefs! Trust Who is in control? Questioning Who is asking the question to be investigated in the project? Collaboration Content Knowledge Purpose

59% of Young People Say the Internet Is Shaping Who They Are - Rebecca J. Rosen An opinion survey commissioned by The Atlantic finds telling differences among America's generations. JodyDigger/Flickr One thing that we often overlook as we try to understand how the Internet is remaking our world is just how recently it appeared in our lives. We have adopted new technologies with such remarkable speed and enthusiasm that they seem like they have been here much longer than they actually have. A few points of reference: When the country elected Barack Obama just four years ago, Twitter was a fledgling startup. Our world has been remade in short order. In the new survey, commissioned by The Atlantic and The Aspen Institute and conducted by Penn Schoen Berland and Associates, we can see some hints of what this early generation of Internet users looks like, vis-a-vis that very technology that they've grown up on, and also with regard to questions of values that cut to the core of what America will look like in the years ahead.

College Readiness: Writing to Learn The controversial author Norman Mailer said, "I don't know what I think until I write it down." Joan Didion perhaps said it better in this way, "I write entirely to find out what I'm thinking, what I'm looking at, what I see and what it means. What I want and what I fear." There is an amazing power to learn when you read what you have written. Learning From What You Write Perhaps the first level of writing to learn has already been discussed in my post on critical reading. Though writing is an active learning endeavor, not passive as in listening, the act of writing involves more of the entire body in the process and thus will increase the likelihood of learning. Writing to learn is more than just putting words on the page for someone else to read. In the Classroom Students begin to write to learn by laboriously reading what others have written and then mimicking their style and methods in their own writing. What's the difference between reflexivity and reflectivity? Suggested resources

The Digital Education Revolution, Cont'd: Meet TED-Ed's New Online Learning Platform - Megan Garber - Technology TED's new tool lets teachers create customized lessons that revolve around web video. The iconic image of high school education, forged for most of us through personal experience and viewings of Dead Poets Society, is this: a teacher, standing in front of his or her class, lecturing. There are exceptions, definitely: the class discussion, the interactive lab experiment, the game, the field trip. For the most part, though, despite years of education reform, we tend of think of education as a highly vertical experience, one of active teachers and passive students, one in which knowledge radiates out from a single speaker to a roomful of silent listeners. That model is changing, though, and quickly. Today, it's going a step further: TED-Ed is launching a suite of tools that allow teachers to design their own web-assisted curricula, complete with videos, comprehension-testing questions, and conversational tools. That's big. Video, unsurprisingly, is an important component of that toolbox.

More reasons to love iPad with iBooks Author iPad Published on February 29th, 2012 | by Mark Anderson You won’t have failed to notice the big launch by Apple a few months ago with various links to education. They released 3 big education related items that have (if they hadn’t already) made educational establishments really sit up and notice the iPad as a serious learning tool. iTunesU app was released which gives amazing access to hordes of online courses from universities from all over the globe. iBooks2 which included developments in interactivity within the books you can read within the app. Finally and I think perhaps more importantly, they introduced the new iBooks Author app. The following hits are reasons why iBooks Author tied with iBooks2 is a complete win for schools, particularly in 1:1 type scenarios. Teachers can easily (yes, easily!) The possibilities for fantastic books to be created for all subject areas is immense. Tags: #edtech, #iPad, learning About the Author

Whole-School Project Builds Pride In rural Howe, Oklahoma, home to about 700 people, the school has long been the heart of the community. Students from pre-K through high school all congregate on the same campus. Now, thanks to the creative efforts of high school students and their teachers, the campus will be getting a facelift that should make local pride shine even brighter. Project Lion Pride was a schoolwide immersion in project-based learning that engaged every student and teacher at Howe High during 10 weeks this spring. Although most students were new to PBL, they stepped up to the challenge of answering this highly relevant driving question: How can we make our school better? On the line was an offer of $1,000 to implement the top idea presented to a panel of judges. Behind the scenes, the entire staff of 13 teachers invested months of preparation to make the project a success. Howe Public Schools is already a 1:1 laptop district that integrates technology effectively. #1. #2. #3. #4. #5.

Related: