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Why Curation Will Transform Education and Learning: 10 Key Reasons

Why Curation Will Transform Education and Learning: 10 Key Reasons
There is a growing number of key trends that are both rapidly revolutionizing the world of education as we know it and opening up opportunities to review and upgrade the role and scope of many of its existing institutions, (as the likeliness that they are going to soon become obsolete and unsustainable, is right in front of anyone's eyes). George Siemens, in his recent Open Letter to Canadian Universities, sums them up well: 1) An Overwhelming Abundance of Information Which Begs To Be OrganizedThe goal is not (and probably it never was) to learn or memorize all of the information available out there. It's just too much even if we focus only on the very essence of it. The goal is to learn how to learn, to know where to look for something and to be able to identify which parts of all the information available are most relevant to learn or achieve a certain goal or objective.This is why new digital literacy skills are of such great importance. From the New York Times: "...Mr. Related:  digital skills

You have a Twitter account... now what? So you have a Twitter account. Great! But what's next? Maybe you've had this account for months or years and you haven't figured out what to do with it. Here are a few quick tips to enhance your experience! 1. Say who you are and why you are using Twitter. 2. Who? How I decide who to follow? 3. Time to get going! Should you tweet about matters that are not about your work or study? If you have any questions or tips for others, please post them in the comments. Remember it is fun. How Can Web 2.0 Curation Tools Be Used in the Classroom? Digital Tools Jeff Thomas “Curation” may be one of the big buzzwords of 2011. As the amount of information accumulates thanks to the Web, it becomes increasingly important that we use tools to help us find information that’s relevant and useful. The role of the curator has always been to help pull together and oversee collections of materials. There are a number of tools that enable this. “Curation offers a context on the biggest learning playground the world has ever known.” That’s another vital part of the act of curation: what other people have deemed important. While the Web has perhaps democratized who can be an expert, we do still prefer to turn to those with specific backgrounds and from specific professions, especially when it comes to education.One interesting new curation tool is Scoop.it. Curation was once the purview of experts and professionals who collected and preserved resources. Related Explore: Scoop.it

Online friend or foe? | Learning out and about with tech When we advise children about being safe online, we often tell them to be aware that who they are talking to online may not be who they think. But as adults how many of us think that could happen to us? I thought I was pretty careful but along with many of my twitter friends, I was duped by someone in a rather impressive way. Why do I say impressive? Because this person maintained this false and other false identities, blogged/tweeted under this identity for over two years. This week through some mistakes by this person and some pretty good detective work by other twitter friends, it was discovered that the pictures of the twins were taken from a blog in the States and the wedding pictures were fake too. How do I feel about this? We came with our families to a Helen’s mums farm in Yorkshire where we spent a fantastic two days doing a variety of activities such as: daytime astronomy, geocaching, den building, football, painting, mission explore, walking, weird science, origami etc.

teachnology / Digital Storytelling DigiTales- The site created by Bernajean Porter, with resources for digital storytelling, many of which are linked below Center for Digital Storytelling- Based in Berkeley, with international digital storytelling resources Digital Storytelling Cookbook- By Joe Lambert, from the Center for Digital Storytelling The Educational Uses of Digital Storytelling- Site from University of Houston, with examples, guidelines, tips, and other resources, many of which are linked below The DAOW of Storytelling- by Jason Ohler, another look at the elements of digital storytelling; a good lunchtime read! What is a Digital Story? 7 Things You Should Know About Digital Storytelling- An overview of the pros and cons of digital storytelling Examples Island Movies- These movies were part of a contest for students in Hawaii. Nice example using clip art to have students write a creative story Should You Be Afraid of Snakes? Pre-Writing/Brainstorming

Educators need Twitter! I read a message while following the chat at #connectedca that stated, “I’ve learned more from Twitter in the last year than in the last 5 years of PD activities.” This message was similar to one I provided at my opening address beginning this year. This does not imply that I have not attended some powerful professional development opportunities over the past five years. Twitter is immediate and revolves around my time. A second aspect of the importance of Twitter deals with the overall positiveness of the conversations. I’m witnessing a number of our schools engaging in Twitter workshops.

The Five Best Tools for Creating Videos Without Installing Software Over the years I've published some lists and reviews of free tools for creating videos online. Quite a few of those tools have been for creating simple videos that are really just automated, audio slideshows. See Animoto for an example of this. There's nothing inherently wrong with having your students use those tools, but at some point you will want to take your video projects to the next level. These are the five tools that I recommend for creating and editing videos without installing any special software. Pixorial is the online video creation tool that I hear teachers talking about a lot lately. WeVideo is a collaborative online video creation tool. PowToon is a nice service for creating explanatory videos through a drag and drop process. Wideo is a service that allows anyone to create animated videos and Common Craft-style videos online. WIDEOO REEL ENG NEW LOGO from Agustin Esperon on Vimeo.

50 Innovative Ways To Use Twitter More Effectively With over 170 million active users and playing a significant role in media consumption, Twitter has turned into the go-to site for real-time updates and gathering snippets of info from those we're interested in. Pretty much everyone knows how to put a tweet together and how to reply to users, but what about more advanced features such as shortcuts, apps and SEO. If you want to improve your knowledge or want to pick up a few tips and tricks to help you get more out of the service, then read on. Twitter Keyboard Shortcuts With many of us spending large amounts of time on Twitter every day, there has to be a quicker way to use the desktop interface and that comes in the form of keyboard shortcuts. App Security Over the time that you've been using Twitter, there is a very good chance that you have given some apps permission to access your account. Schedule Tweets Sometimes you can come up with a good tweet, but feel that it's not ready to be posted for the world to see. Sensitive Content Apps

Blog | The Magic of Learning Remote Scavenger Hunt We are heading into our third week of social distancing, school closures and “shelter at home&... We are in the Midst of... Are you aware that we are in the middle of making history? It is March of 2020. We are living throug... #remotelearning as an ... Why the disenchantment with Twitter? | Technology | The Observer By any standards, Twitter is one of the wonders of the digital world. A service that didn't exist seven years ago has somehow become a central part of our media ecosystem, old and new: I can't remember when I last heard a radio programme that didn't invite me to "follow" it on Twitter, while at the opening of every conference I attend nowadays, after the obligatory notices about the location of the fire exits, there is the unveiling of the event's Twitter hashtag. So Twitter is huge. It has more than 500 million active users who send 340m tweets on an average day, and is consistently one of the top 10 websites in the world. Two-thirds of the world's top companies have an active Twitter profile. Twitter spread like wildfire for various reasons: it was easy to understand and use; it was quirky; and, most importantly, it was asymmetrical. Recently, however, Twitter has come in for some heavy criticism on two fronts. This new disenchantment with Twitter seems daft to me.

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