5 Free Tools to Collect Student Feedback There are several free web tools that teachers can use to gather feedback from their students both formally and informally. You can also use these tools to poll your students about a learning event, assess their level of comprehension, or simply to get to know their opinions about a certain topic. Educational Technology and Mobile Learning has already posted a list of such tools last year but today we are updating this list deleting the ones that no longer work and including new ones . Check out the list below and as usual share with us your suggestions or additions 1- Poll Everywhere This is my favorite. 2- Kwiqpoll This is another polling service that you can use to create polls for your classroom. 3- TodaysMeet This tool lets you maintain a back channel chat with your students. 4- SimpleMeet Me This is an awesome web service that enables users to chat with others without having to install any software or even registering. 5- Utrack
What are Open Educational Resources There is no one, standard definition of Open Educational Resources. However, the following broad definition of OERs from OER Commons seems to be generally accepted by the community: Open Educational Resources (OER) are teaching and learning materials that are freely available online for everyone to use, whether you are an instructor, student or self-learner. Examples of OER include: full courses, course modules, syllabi, lectures, homework assignments, quizzes, lab and classroom activities, pedagogical materials, games, simulations, and many more resources contained in digital media collections from around the world. OERs exist within a wider 'Open' movement and context, explored below. The Open Movement Open source (relating to business and technology)Open source softwareOpen source hardwareOpen standardsOpen access (research)Open designOpen knowledgeOpen data Open content Open courseware Open educational resources Open educational practice What are educational resources?
A List of 16 Websites Every Teacher should Know about 1- Teachers Network Teachers Network provides lesson plans, classroom specials, teacher designed activities for different subjects and many other resources. 2- Smithsonian Education Smithsonian Education offers a wide variety of free resources for teachers, students and parents. 3- Education World This is another great website for teachers. 4- Discovery Education Discovery Education offers a broad range of free classroom resources that complement and extend learning beyond the bell 5- The Gateway This is one of the oldest publicly accessible U.S repositories of education resources on the web. 6- EdHelper EdHelper provides teachers with free printables, graphic organizers, worksheets, lesson plans, games and many other activities. 7- Thinkfinity Thinkfinity is a free online professional learning community that provides access to over 50.000 educators and experts in curriculum enhancement, along with thousands of award-winning digital resources for k-12 8- PBS Teachers 9- Teachers.net 10- 42explore
Open Educational Resources (OER): Resource Roundup Resources by Topic: OER, a part of the global open content movement, are shared teaching, learning, and research resources available under legally recognized open licenses -- free for people to reuse, revise, remix, and redistribute. Why are OER important? High-quality OER can save teachers significant time and effort on resource development and advance student learning inside and outside the classroom. Further, open sharing of resources has the potential to fuel collaboration, encourage the improvement of available materials, and aid in the dissemination of best practices. Getting Started Sharing Resources The nonprofit Creative Commons offers free, easy-to-use copyright licenses that allow you to specify which rights to your works you want to reserve and which rights you'd like to waive. Quality Considerations With all the promise of OER, some challenges remain. Back to Top How to Find OER Open Lesson Plans, Courses, and Activities Open Alternatives to Textbooks
The Teacher’s Survival Kit for Lesson Planning! Tips & 1000s of Free Lesson Plans Posted by Shelly Terrell on Saturday, August 18th 2012 Goal 16: Plan An Engaging Lesson of The 30 Goals Challenge for Educators I cannot teach anybody anything, I can only make them think. – Socrates Lesson planning is stressful and time-consuming, but is important in giving us an action plan for the entire school year. A Few Tips … When planning a lesson, I think we need to keep objectives in mind but there are other factors that make up a great lesson. G- group dynamic R- relevance to learners’ lives and needs E-emergent language and ideas focus A- attentiveness T- thoughtfulness To this list I would add flexibility. Templates Some of us will need a framework from which to build our lessons. Structured Templates: Another idea: Map our your lesson plan in a mindmap More Lesson Planning Tips: 1000s of Free Lesson Plans Here are a few places to find free lesson plans to teach English in any subject or to any age level! Lesson Plan Sites for Other Subject Areas Bookmarked Resources Important News
Bloom's taxonomy Bloom's wheel, according to the Bloom's verbs and matching assessment types. The verbs are intended to be feasible and measurable. Bloom's taxonomy is a classification of learning objectives within education. Bloom's taxonomy refers to a classification of the different objectives that educators set for students (learning objectives). Bloom's taxonomy is considered to be a foundational and essential element within the education community. History[edit] Although named after Bloom, the publication of Taxonomy of Educational Objectives followed a series of conferences from 1949 to 1953, which were designed to improve communication between educators on the design of curricula and examinations. The first volume of the taxonomy, "Handbook I: Cognitive" (Bloom et al. 1956) was published in 1956. Cognitive[edit] Skills in the cognitive domain revolve around knowledge, comprehension, and critical thinking on a particular topic. Knowledge[edit] Comprehension[edit] TranslationInterpretationExtrapolation
25 Free Resources for Learning a Language Online Jane Hart is the Founder of the Centre for Learning and Performance Technologies, one of the most visited learning sites on the Web. In her monthly column for eLearn she shares some "gems"—useful or valuable tools, resources, and products she has unearthed for learning and performance improvement/support. In this month's column she focuses on free resources for learning how to speak a foreign language. I learned German at school and actually went on to study it at university. In school I was taught the rules of German grammar and spent a lot of time building my German vocabulary mostly through memorization. Learning a language therefore involves a number of different aspects-learning the rules of grammar, acquiring vocabulary, practicing speaking the language, as well as simply being immersed in the language. 200words-a-day If you find learning new vocabulary a time-consuming grind, try boosting it with the 200 Words a Day!
Community College Consortium for Open Educational Resources | for Open Educat... Teaching ESL Students Reading & Phonemic Awareness- Reading Horizons By Robin Schwarz Spoken language is noise which the experienced listener sorts into meaningful chunks. A child spends many years perfecting this sorting. This was good news for me, as I was searching for a way to help at-risk students in the college-level intensive English program where I teach. When I first decided to find a way to help these students, I began searching the ESL literature for ideas. Because the foreign language learners who were having difficulties had poor phonemic awareness as well as poor phonological skills, my first priority was clear, direct teaching of the sound system of English. Another lesson learned from the foreign language research was that the sounds should be taught one at a time in a clear sequence. The process requires lots and lots of repetition. We continued on to long vowels, and the process became faster because the students had begun to discriminate sounds more accurately and knew what to expect in the activities and practices.