Useful Links

• snopes.com: Urban Legends Reference Pages Snopes is a good reference tool for any kind of urban legend or hoax. Search by keyword in the search field or browse the archives, arranged in categories like “Crime,” “Embarrass” and “Quotes.”

• Blended Learning: A Disruptive Innovation [INFOGRAPHIC] #edtech #edutech  This offers a visual overview of Blended Learning. It is a good resource to assist in developing a sound understanding this phenomenon. Covers: what blended learning is, why it’s spreading, and how it works in real and virtual classrooms.

• Free Technology for Teachers: Three Mobile Blogging Activities for Students Another great post from Richard Byrne that offers ideas and links for teachers who want to create interesting and dynamic experiences for their students.

• Different forms of Blended Learning in Classroom – EdTechReview™ (ETR) Post including infographic trying to explain blended learning: What is blended learning, what are its different forms, why i it spreading, and how does it work in real and virtual classrooms.

• Bloom’s Taxonomy Apps- A Great Resource Section for Teachers ~ Educational Technology and Mobile Learning A post that offers variety of iOS apps that correlate with the different levels of Bloom’s thinking levels. This is a very useful resource from the Educational Technology and Mobile Learning site.

• Ultimate Guide to Google Hangouts – Martin Shervington “Getting yourself set up on a desktop or a laptop. Download the app for your system and ‘Hangouts’ that you have ‘open’ will now be on your desktop instead of appearing within the browser. iOS – http://goo.gl/h3glR Android – http://goo.gl/g61QW Chrome App – http://goo.gl/cr3XE You can also move them around the screen as well. Handy. (Thanks Laura Manach for the links) Tip: use a Chrome extension for more flexibility”

• ACTFL 21St Century Skills Meet Technology Infographic In well designed infographic that lists some of the possible applications that could help foster skill development in today’s language learners specifically but could also apply to other areas.

• Media History Digital Library – Online Access to the Histories of Cinema, Broadcasting & Sound The Library is a massive archive of documents about the history film, television, and radio. The library can now be searched and the documents viewed online through MHDL’s new site called the Lantern. On Lantern you will find reviews and critiques of movies, books and playbills, many periodicals about the movie, television, and radio industries. Your search can be refined according to date, language, and publication type. You can also browse through collections curated by MHDL.

• How Do Rubrics Help? | Edutopia Whether you are new to rubrics of have been using them for some time this short article will be useful in creating rubrics and using them effectively.

• Educational Leadership:Informative Assessment:The Best Value in Formative Assessment This short article offers educators a valuable introduction to formative assessment, which the authors also call assessment for learning. It offers insights into the value for students and the importance of feedback.

• What Are Formative Assessments and Why Should We Use Them? | Scholastic.com Judith Dodge explains formative assessment and offers 25 quick formative assessments for educators use. “Formative assessments are ongoing assessments, observations, summaries, and reviews that inform teacher instruction and provide students feedback on a daily basis. The time they take from a lesson is well worth the information you gather and the retention students gain.”

• IMSA’s PBLNetwork This site offers some good background and resources that teachers can make use of. Problem-based learning (PBL) is focused experiential learning organized around the investigation and resolution of messy, real-world problems.

• Authentic Education – What Is an Essential Question? “What is an essential question? An essential question is – well, essential: important, vital, at the heart of the matter – the essence of the issue. Think of questions in your life that fit this definition – but don’t just yet think about it like a teacher; consider the question as a thoughtful adult. What kinds of questions come to mind? What is a question that any thoughtful and intellectually alive person ponders and should keep pondering?”

• D-Day to Victory: Home

• MindMup: Working with Dropbox This will allow you to store your maps on Dropbox

• The Digital Lives of Teens: Turning “Do As I Say” into “Do As I Do” | Edutopia An article that looks at how parents/adults can help young people to best handle their on-line/ digital lives and develop a healthy perspective.

• How to teach … esafety and digital citizenship | Education | The Guardian An article from “The Guardian” that discusses the topic and links to some important resources on how to teach esafety & digital citizenship.

• Instagram or Vine? 5 Things to Know If Your Kids Are Sharing Videos | Common Sense Media Instagram and Vine are 2 popular social apps that allow you to share videos. This post examines the differences and the parameters of each. Tips for adults to be aware of as they try to assist young people in staying safe are also discussed

• DIY Professional Development: Resource Roundup | Edutopia Links to some excellent resources that teachers could use to improve their use of educational technology. Topics include Twitter, un-conference material, tech tools and developing your own PLN.

• Dropbox for Dummies: Why You Shouldn’t Need Your USB Key Again | teachingwithipad.org Some good advice about using Dropbox as a personal tool as well as for teaching purposes.

• Say What? 5 Ways to Get Students to Listen | Edutopia An interesting post that examines steps that may assist our students to become better listeners? A few tactics for encouraging a deeper level of listening are discussed, and all are quite do-able. Also included in the discussion is student accountability.

• What Does A Totally Technology-Centric School Look Like? – Edudemic – Edudemic What would your classroom look like if it were entirely technology- centric? Many might come up with something that looks quite similar to our current classrooms, just with fewer books and more computers and/or other devices. Educators and administrators in the Netherlands have created new schools that are completely iPad-centric. The traditional ultra-scheduled school day is a thing of the past in these new schools. Students can continue their learning at home, since the apps on their iPads will be available to them at home as well. There is a personalized learning plan is developed collaboratively between the teachers, parents, and student rather than everyone following a specific curriculum that applies to all students of a particular grade or age level. The learning plan is reviewed every six weeks with everyone involved have input.  In theory the days of some students being bored because the teacher is moving through the material too slowly and others struggling to keep up are gone. Each student is encouraged to develop their own natural talents, foster their independence, and generally be more creative.

• Google Docs: Grading Tips & Tricks | Catlin Tucker, Honors English Teacher Practical tips for grading online writing from a high school English teacher

• How to Create an Infographic in an Hour or Less [5 Free PPT Templates] “5 free infographic templates — all easily customizable in PowerPoint for you to use. All you have to do is bring the content to use inside them.”

• WordItOut – Generate word clouds (and make custom gifts) Word It Out helps create word clouds from any text, similar to the way Wordle does. The text needs to be pasted into the box assigned for it. The application enables the word cloud to be personalized as per requirement and allows you to choose the font, color theme, and the size as well. If you do not want to use certain words, would like to exclude them, and lets you ignore them and keep them out. This application does not need a log in, however to use the saving options, email is required. You can also get a screen print by right clicking your mouse.

• You Are Your Words – AHD A webtool from The American Heritage Dictionary. It enables users create a self-portrait using their words.  You can link to places where you have already written (Facebook or Twitter) or write something unique specifically for the portrait.  The unique image can be shared, saved and printed.  It works best in Firefox, Google Chrome, or Safari Internet browsers. Pictures with high contrast generally work better than pictures with similar coloring and low contrast. You can adjust the colors, contrast and font after you have created an image.

• VocabGrabber : Thinkmap Visual Thesaurus This creative tool helps students analyze a set of words. It has more than enough features that can be used to create lessons to understand what you’re reading a bit better. VocabGrabber picks the most useful words in the text and tells you how these words have been used according to the context. All you need to do is cut, copy, and paste text from any document and hit Grab Vocabulary and see the list of vocabulary that is created by VocabGrabber. It can be sorted and saved and merely clicking on the word offers pop-up definitions of the word from Visual Thesaurus.

• WordSift – About Wordsift is presented by Stanford University and allows you to do anything with or to a word. Though it does not has as many features as Wordle but it is a versatile app that lets you study a word cloud. The words may be listed by their commonality and rarity, and allows them to be listed in order, alphabetically. Click on a word and Wordsift lets you view the meaning in an online dictionary; helps view the images through Google, and understand the word sentence placement as well. The subject they are related to, through a specialized color coding system can view words. It lets you analyze lengthy speeches and oratories. This app does not require email or login and print is through screen print.

• ImageChef – Word Mosaic From Image Chef , it is a great creative tool for classroom use. You can experiment with different colors, fonts and shapes, and is an easy to use word cloud. You can email your creations to various social network forums and have them posted/embedded. Saving information is easy and can be accomplished with the click of a button. If you require larger images with better resolutions, you will need to pay accordingly. This one too doesn’t require email or login, although, s always, you should read the terms and conditions before setting off.

• A Great Edmodo Cheat Sheet for Teachers ~ Educational Technology and Mobile Learning “Edmodo provides a wide variety of features and services for teachers including the ability to create classroom groups where teachers and students get to share learning materials. The cheat sheet you can access from the post sheds more light on what Edmodo is and how you can use it to first create your account, then set up your classroom group and finally a few words on how to post stuff on it.”

• Free Technology for Teachers: How to Create Image-Based Quizzes in Google Forms From Richard Byrne “Creating image-based quizzes in Google Forms was one of the things that was a hit with a good portion of the

• 26 Questions Every Student Should Be Able To Answer – Some questions that all students could use to better understand how they are learning and improve their skills with tips on how they might be used in classroom situations.

• 8 kickass cyber security awareness tips to inspire change in your organisation | IT Governance Blog on IT governance, risk management, compliance and information security. Everyone should understand the need for vigilance and awareness of your online safety. A few tips that are simple but effective.

• The 10 Countries With the Fastest Internet And where is Australia going?

• Twitter Literacy (I refuse to make up a Twittery name for it) | City Brights: Howard Rheingold | an SFGate.com blog How to get the best out of using Twitter

• A Must See Interactive Graphic on Teaching Students about Copyright ~ Educational Technology and Mobile Learning

  This post looks at how you could use “this wonderful resource from Cyberbee. This is basically an interactive image which includes important information in the form of answers to questions students might raise when discussing the topic of copyright. To start using this resource all you need to do is to hover your pointer over a student to read the question then click on that student to read the answer.” Offers a guide to questions the students might answer before (as a test of what they know) and after or as they go through the information.

Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.