6 YouTube lessons for building better instructional videos With the rise of the blended learning model of education, video is becoming an increasingly important medium for instruction. The essential components of blended learning - such as flipped classrooms, MOOCs and “Bring Your Own Device” programs - are facilitated by video instruction to ensure the personalization and flexibility of a digitized education system. Over the last few years, a wave of YouTube channels has emerged to deliver high quality educational content in an accessible, engaging format. Here are six takeaways from these channels: 1. Sometimes, the most compelling videos are short and to the point. 2. Eye-catching graphics play an important role in making videos both accessible and entertaining. 3. If the introduction of a video piques curiosity, the viewer will be more likely to follow through with the entire presentation. 4. The success of educational YouTube channels owes a lot to the charisma of their hosts. 5. 6.
Google Drive: A Better Method for Giving Students Feedback Last year Google Docs was upgraded to become Google Drive. Like its predecessor, Google Drive allows you to create and share documents with ease. The enhanced Google Drive format has given the program some wonderful additional features that I encourage you to explore. Google Drive is entirely free and works within any browser, although to enjoy all of its features, you do need to use Google’s Chrome Browser. Using Google Drive with student writers With Google Drive students can create a variety of content, but here we are going to focus on word processing documents. The Google Drive word processor is less feature-packed than Microsoft Word or Apple’s Pages — which actually makes it easier to use. Students will need a Google account to create and share documents; this is the way Google assures that document access can be controlled by the creator. What makes Google Drive different is the ability to share documents with others. The share/feedback feature is a really powerful teaching tool.
What if Your Child is in a Flipped Classroom? - Turning Learning On Its Head In the past few years, many teachers from around the world have started to use a new method called the flipped We send students home with the hard stuff classroom. Some parents are curious, others skeptical, and a few hostile. But first: What IS the Flipped Classroom? For too many years we have been “doing” school backwards. Here are my top five reasons why you should be thrilled your child’s teacher is flipping his/her class. 1. There is something I fundamentally believe about good teaching – it is about developing good relationships between the teacher and the student. 2. How many times has your child come home with homework they were unable to understand? 3. I have three children and we have had times where our kids came home with homework and they were stressed. 4. In one of the early years of the flipped classroom, my daughter Kaitie was watching a video of me in my living room basedrumsnaredrum.com 5. I want to hear from you Like this: Like Loading...
10 Important Things for Students to Be Good Digital CIitizens Online netiquette, digital citizenship, and good digital manners are all components of the same internet safety kit every student and teacher should know about. Being able to plug in and browse through the digital world is one important step in becoming a global, independent learner, however, more important is the respectful and responsible use of the net. Today's students learn in what Howard Rheingold called social mobs. These are people who met online, most often through social media, to co-learn and peer instruct each other. Be it a learner in a social mob or a learner in any kind of technology-mediated setting, manners always matter.
Why Teachers Should Be Preparing For A Multi-Screen Classroom You don’t need an infographic to tell you that your students (and probably most of your friends, colleagues, and family members) have their nose pointed towards a screen more often than not. While I’m definitely not above chastising my dinner mates for getting too cosy with their phone instead of interacting with everyone at the table, I wouldn’t necessarily transfer that same open shaming technique to a classroom. Studies show that so much of our daily media interactions are screen based – 90%, in fact. So while your inclination may be to have students focusing on one thing at a time to make sure they’re getting all they need to out of an activity, maybe you should think again. Google has put together this little graphic (below) that shows that most of us are quite adept at functioning in what they call a ‘multi-screen world’. Something to keep in mind as you’re planning classroom activities, for sure. A Multi Screen World A Multi Screen Classroom
46 Tools To Make Infographics In The Classroom Infographics are interesting–a mash of (hopefully) easily-consumed visuals (so, symbols, shapes, and images) and added relevant character-based data (so, numbers, words, and brief sentences). The learning application for them is clear, with many academic standards–including the Common Core standards–requiring teachers to use a variety of media forms, charts, and other data for both information reading as well as general fluency. It’s curious they haven’t really “caught on” in schools considering how well they bridge both the old-form textbook habit of cramming tons of information into a small space, while also neatly overlapping with the dynamic and digital world. So if you want to try to make infographics–or better yet have students make them–where do you start? Ed note: The original list has somehow become corrupted, so we’ve substituted the following list–only 36 tools, but the best of the bunch–visually, pikotchart, easely, etc.
6 Brilliant EdTech Tools for Student Projects One of the most exciting applications of education technology is its potential to turn the long, one-dimensional, wordy school projects of yesteryear into multimedia-filled, action-packed, graphic-illustrated masterpieces! With all the tools available to students online, what once had to be a vast handwritten tome can now metamorphose into a video diary or a blog project, an animation or a slideshow presentation. And it doesn’t have to mean giving up all text either – here are 6 fantastic tools for adding to and enhancing student presentations… 1. Add an animation… Thanks to the simplicity of brilliant, easy-to-use online animation websites, the moving image can replace the old-fashioned diagram or hand drawing in school projects with relative ease. 2. Now that great programs like Scribus are available online, students can turn their projects into seriously snazzy looking finished products. 3. 4. A mind map is a fantastic illustration for complex ideas and interconnected concepts. 5. 6.
A Handful of Ideas for Using Tellagami In School This is a guest post from Samantha Morra at EdTechTeacher.org Tellagami, a free iOS app that lets you create short animated movies called "Gamis," is one of my new favorite animation apps to explore. Although the site promotes the app as a way to send greetings and messages for use within social media, I see it as a great tool in the classroom. With Tellagami, begin by creating and customizing a character. After you customize your character and background, you can choose how you want your character to talk, either by recording your voice or typing in text. Some quick ideas you might try: You can also save them to your iPad Photos, which is what I like to do. Using animation with your students can have a profound effect on how they participate in a project. Samantha will be presenting more about Tellagami and other apps at the Boston and San Diego iPad Summits.
Redefining Learning Through Screencasting Introducing new technology into the classroom, especially iPads, can be overwhelming -- even daunting. When first getting started, the technology may seem like more of a distraction than a learning opportunity. So how do you begin? Scott Meech (@smeech), Director of Technology for the Downer's Grove School District in Illinois, offers this perspective: A lot of times, when technology is first introduced into the classroom, the technology becomes the target. Dr. The SAMR Model What technology can you use to get to redefinition? One of the most valuable tools afforded by iPads is the ability to screencast -- to combine audio, images, drawing and text on a whiteboard to create a video. Cement Foundation: Substitution & Augmentation Whether you choose Screenchomp, Educreations, ExplainEverything or any other screencasting app, at the substitution level of SAMR, they all enable the production of PowerPoint-like videos to deliver lecture-based content. Teaching Above the Line
Design 101 for Educators: An Icon Is Worth (at Least) a Dozen Words Image credit: iStockphoto Although modern syllabic languages are far more complex than the hieroglyphic languages of the ancients, a well-placed pictogram (or icon) can still come in handy when you need to communicate a complex concept in a small space. The problem is that finding good icons -- images that don’t look like cheap clip art -- can seem daunting. An icon is a simplified picture used to represent a concept or object. They can be a single color or multiple colors, but it's important to keep icons as simple as possible. They are often a single flat color, but can become increasingly complex, even photos in some cases. Indeed, although individual icons can have simple meanings, combining icons allows them to take on more complex meanings and even tell stories, a fact that educators can begin to take advantage of. Figure 1. Credit: Jason Cranford Teague How Icons Work Icons should always do one or more of the following: Choosing Icons Figure 2. 1. Figure 3. 2. 3. Figure 4. Credit: Ikea
4 Ways High School Makes You Hate Reading I can't be the only one who feels like the schools pulled a sort of bait-and-switch job on us when it came to reading. When I was in elementary school, they went to a lot of trouble to make sure we thought reading was fun, with bookmobiles and read-a-thons and tons of fun books about mice and motorcycles and phantom tollbooths. I had confidence that I could go to the library and pull anything off the shelf except a Baby-Sitters Club book and I wouldn't be disappointed. Goodreads.comThis is one of those books that you could judge by its cover. That was the bait. So one summer you are reading A Wrinkle in Time or Fantastic Mr. GettyThis is when the flashbacks start. Let me be clear: I still love reading good books, but since experience has taught me that there's about a 95 percent chance that a random (adult) book I pick up is going to be unenjoyable, I spend more time researching a book before I read it than I spent researching my house before I bought it. #4. #3.
Create your own Interactive Fiction What is Interactive Fiction? Interactive Fiction (formerly referred to as Text Adventures) are a cross between reading a book and playing a game, where you control the main character. Rather than reading the story from start to finish, you interact with everything by typing commands at a prompt, discovering things as you go along. Most interactive fiction follows the same basic rules - these include walking from location to location using compass directions (north, east, south-west etc). How do you create Interactive Fiction games? There are several different systems for creating interactive fiction. ADRIFT is different by being a completely GUI driven application, designed to be intuitive and easy to use. ADRIFT has a separate editor for each item you want to add to your game. About ADRIFT Developer ADRIFT Developer is a Windows application that allows you to create complex interactive fiction games quickly and easily. ADRIFT 5 Developer is free. About ADRIFT Runner ADRIFT Runner is free.
All The Text Message Acronyms You Ever Wanted To Know Kids these days. Constantly with their noses in their phones, texting their friends who are nine feet away from them. And if you had to take their phone away from them, you probably can barely decipher what they’re saying. While some of the abbreviations are pretty mainstream and/or understandable (LOL has been around for ages, and K is fairly self explanatory to everyone besides my grandmother), other abbreviations definitely need some deciphering. So here it is: your fun post of the day – a guide to understanding the text messages your students send. For the record, I’m firmly in the camp of using actual words, but I will admit to using shortcuts on my iPhone. BTWITIAILWY: By the way, I think I am in love with youPOS: Parents over shoulderNTK: Nice to knowWFM: Works for meWDYT: What do you think? Want a hi-res PDF? Katie was a teacher, graduate student, and is now the lady who makes sure Edudemic is as useful as possible.
7 Ways to Send Group Texts to Parents and Students This week I'm taking a few days off to ski, play with my dogs, visit with friends and family, and generally recharge my batteries. If you're on vacation this week too, I hope that you're having a great vacation. While I'm away I'm rerunning the most popular posts of the year. The selections are based on pageviews during 2012. People, particularly teenagers, have an almost compulsive reaction to open text messages when their phones beep or buzz. So if you want to quickly deliver an important message to student or parent today, sending a text message is the best way to do it. Class Parrot is a service that enables teachers to send text messages to groups of students and parents. Class Pager is another service that teachers can use to send group text messages to their students. gText is a new service offering free group text messaging. Kikutext is a service for keeping parents informed about your classroom and or school through text messages. WeTxt offers free group text messaging.