instaGrok | A new way to learn More Spanish: Five for Friday: 5 Web 2.0 tools to record oral communication I am working on a series of blog posts for the summer called Five for Friday. Today I want to share my favorite five Web 2.0 tools to record oral communication in the classroom.The biggest shift in oral assessment for my class occurred because of the variety of web 2.0 tools that can be used to record students. I still believe the best way to practice the language is in person, with a partner or in small groups, but the best way to formally assess a large group of students (at the same time) or gauge their progress is by using the following tools. Each one will fulfill a different need. Google Voice My students use this tool weekly. Voicethread My class gets a lot of mileage from Voicethread as well. Lingt Language I did not use this website this year, but as I was preparing for an end of school inservice that described it, I regretted not using it. Cell phone Record App If I am not mistaken most smart phones have the capability of being used as a portable recorder.
6 Free Tools to Easily Cite Resources for Students and Researchers Citing resources is an important skill for the 21st century students and for any other learner or researcher. I have already included it in my ebook " The 21St Century Skills Teachers and Students Need to Have ". It is a fact universally acknowledged that citing resources nowadays is way harder than it used to be when technology was not a huge issue. As technology crouches into our life, new ways of communication emerge giving birth to novel content providers. We have now blog posts, online newspapers, ebooks, tweets, emails,.. and several other forms where learners can get the information they want. Do they know how to properly cite these new resources is where the shoe pinches. 1- How to Include Tweets in your Citations MLA has recently issued a guideline showing researchers using its method how to include tweets in their papers. 2- Cite This For Me This is a citation generator for Harvard and APA. 3- Son Of Citation Machine 5- Purdue Online Writing Lab 6-Zotero EasyBib refDot
Educational Networking - List of Networks Elgg:Grou.ps:Facebook:Linked In:Ning:General:Art:Classroom Networks:Conferences:Course Material:English as a Foreign Language:English as a Second Language:English Education (Pre- and In-Service):Russian Education:Georgian recruiting :French as a Foreign language :Language Learning:Leadership:LibrariesMusic:Other LanguagesProfessional Development:Science:Social Studies:Spanish as a Foreign Language:Student Organizations:Teacher Education:Technology:Virtual Environments:Visual Mapping (Mind Mapping):Vocational:Other: A listing of social networks used in educational environments or for educational purposes. Please add to this list (alphabetical by category and within categories). BuddyPress: Apprendre 2.0 - Social Network across the world about education 2.0 and learning to learning - Most of the activities are in French in this network ! CourseCracker: Diigo: Elgg: Grou.ps: Facebook: Linked In: Ning: ScolaMates: General: Art: Classroom Networks: Conferences: Course Material: FSC-KU M.Ed. Leadership:
Video Archive By Category MacMost includes more than 900 free video tutorials on how to use your Mac, iPad, iPhone and other Apple technology. Select a category below, or search above to find a tutorial and learn how to get the most from your Mac! Also: Accessories (2), Accounts (2), Contacts (3), Disk Utility (1), Dock (2), dvds (1), iBooks (3), iBooks Author (1), iDVD (1), Internet (3), LaunchPad (1), Mac Applications (2), Mac Apps (3), Mac Hardware (3), Maps (1), Messages (2), Mission Control (1), Networking (1), PDF (2), Photo (1), Photos (2), Printing (3), Support (2), Switching (1), Utilities (2), Video Editing (3), Widgets (3).
Wind Map An invisible, ancient source of energy surrounds us—energy that powered the first explorations of the world, and that may be a key to the future. This map shows you the delicate tracery of wind flowing over the US. The wind map is a personal art project, not associated with any company. We've done our best to make this as accurate as possible, but can't make any guarantees about the correctness of the data or our software. Please do not use the map or its data to fly a plane, sail a boat, or fight wildfires :-) If the map is missing or seems slow, we recommend the latest Chrome browser. Surface wind data comes from the National Digital Forecast Database. If you're looking for a weather map, or just want more detail on the weather today, see these more traditional maps of temperature and wind.
20 Common Grammar Mistakes That (Almost) Everyone Makes I’ve edited a monthly magazine for more than six years, and it’s a job that’s come with more frustration than reward. If there’s one thing I am grateful for — and it sure isn’t the pay — it’s that my work has allowed endless time to hone my craft to Louis Skolnick levels of grammar geekery. As someone who slings red ink for a living, let me tell you: grammar is an ultra-micro component in the larger picture; it lies somewhere in the final steps of the editing trail; and as such it’s an overrated quasi-irrelevancy in the creative process, perpetuated into importance primarily by bitter nerds who accumulate tweed jackets and crippling inferiority complexes. But experience has also taught me that readers, for better or worse, will approach your work with a jaundiced eye and an itch to judge. While your grammar shouldn’t be a reflection of your creative powers or writing abilities, let’s face it — it usually is. Who and Whom This one opens a big can of worms. Which and That Lay and Lie Moot Nor
Kids and video games: Why children should play more Parents, politicians, and educators often criticize video games as a waste of time that distract kids from healthier activities such as school, outdoor play, sports, and community service. Just one problem: Research is quickly proving the theory wrong and illustrating that gaming can be a beneficial and well-rounded part of a healthy, balanced media diet. Moreover, due to their interactivity, at odds with passive mediums such as television, kids’ video games can actually be one of today’s most powerful tools for sparking learning and creativity. But while gaming offers tremendous potential, it also bears remembering: It takes a running commitment from parents and teachers to actively follow and participate in the pastime to make it a truly safe, healthy, and rewarding part of household life. Among the findings she cites are the marked benefits of outings like the Legend of Zelda and Bakugan games, which encourage planning, problem solving, and creative self-expression.
Teaching: Prepare and Connect Goal: Professional educators will be supported individually and in teams by technology that connects them to data, content, resources, expertise, and learning experiences that can empower and inspire them to provide more effective teaching for all learners. Teaching today is practiced mostly in isolation. Many educators work alone, with little interaction with professional colleagues or experts in the outside world. Professional development typically is provided in short, fragmented, and episodic workshops that offer little opportunity to integrate learning into practice. A classroom educator's primary job is understood to be covering the assigned content and ensuring that students test well. Many educators do not have the information, the time, or the incentives to continuously improve their professional practice from year to year. Not surprisingly, half of freshly minted teachers leave the profession within the first five years (Ingersoll and Smith 2003). Figure 3. Teachers.tv
How to Teach Internet Safety to Younger Elementary Students With children spending time online at younger and younger ages, it’s vital that we explicitly teach young children how to protect themselves online. Most young children get the “stranger danger” talk at school, so they know about how to handle strangers in their neighborhood and in face-to-face situations. There are three considerations when addressing internet safety with these students. First, the transfer of knowledge about how to handle strangers in real life to those in virtual environments is not automatic. It needs to be taught. Second, while most stranger danger programs teach that strangers are scary and mean and want to hurt or abduct children, this contradicts the way collaboration occurs between strangers online. Protecting Private Information Online This is a lesson I’ve done with my kindergarten and first-grade students to introduce the idea that strangers exist on the internet and to discuss how we should interact with them. “What is a stranger?” More Resources
Education Program - Free Digital Storytelling Software for Educators At Mixbook, we offer discounts for bulk and volume custom yearbook orders for Elementary School Yearbooks, Middle School Yearbooks, High School Yearbooks, as well as education centers and academic programs. Transform your sports team, student and school photos into lasting memories with our premium, professional quality custom school yearbooks. Whether you’re looking to capture the baseball team photos, create a custom school yearbook or class project photo book, or celebrate your student’s art projects in a class calendar, Mixbook has hundreds of unique and easy to create photo products that can be customized to your heart’s content. Creating photo keepsakes for your students and teachers has never been easier than with the Mixbook editor.
Aggregate, Curate and Create Your Own Textbook The Journal's article: 5K-12 Ed Tech Trends for 2012 includes: ‘Beyond the Digital Textbook’ as one of the trends with the premise of adding interactivity to digital versions of textbooks. Apple has now partnered with the major textbook publishers with the newly unveiled iBooks Textbooks. There are a handful of textbooks available through iTunes at about $15. Several concerns about Apple's new enterprise have been voiced in the blogosphere. Is there an option for a free, relevant course companion? With information being ubiquitous, I believe that teachers can (and should) take control of their courses by creating their own interactive textbooks. In this post I will explain the process of creating a digital textbook, tools for each step of the process and strategies for involving the students in its development. The process of creating your digital textbook involves three steps: The first step is to gather the sources of information. Diigo V5: Collect and Highlight, Then Remember!
35 Sources for Curated Educational Videos Like explorers approaching an unfamiliar landscape, teachers who are ready to take the plunge into flipped classrooms and blended learning often approach the opportunity with a mix of excitement and trepidation. Just dipping a toe into the virtual waters of online content can be overwhelming, and there’s a risk that even the most fearless educator can become paralyzed by the bottomless depths of content and endless pools of resources. While many teachers begin by creating their own content and videos, most start by sifting through free online sources. The amount of available information out there is staggering. YouTube users across the globe upload 48 hours of content every minute. Fortunately, there are some great websites and services that take the guesswork out of finding and sorting educational video content. Backpack TV: Backpack.tv pulls from various sources to create a highly curated library of education videos organized by academic subject and detailed topic.