Useful links

   by  christinlopez13 

• The Top 35 edTech Influencers List with biographies of 35 educators who are innovating education through using technology. With links to them online.

• Bitstrips – Comics starring YOU and your Friends This is an online comic creator. It offers flexibility and quite a lot of customization with the options and features. This flexibility in Bitstrips comics allows you to create virtually any story that you can imagine.

• ExitTicket – Android Apps on Google Play You can use the ExitTicket app to make the class create an “exit ticket,” where they must write down something they learned or enjoyed from the lesson. When students have the app on their own devices, the teacher can send out a question and obtain instant feedback. You can register individual or group responses and track the data over time to assist with data analysis of student performance.

• Free Technology for Teachers: MyStorybook – A Good Platform for Creating Picture Books “An online tool for creating short storybooks. MyStorybook provides blank pages on which you can type, draw, and place clipart. Your storybook pages can also include pictures that you upload.”

• LIS future employment prospects are positive — new ALIA report on LIS education, skills and employment | Australian Library and Information Association “The Australia Library and Information Association (ALIA) said there is a positive outlook on employment prospects for library and information professionals over the next five years, but the job market will remain tight. This is one of the conclusions in a new report ALIA LIS Education and Employment Trend Report 2014 today (18 Sept 2014) launched in Melbourne by ALIA President Damian Lodge at the Association’s National Conference. ‘This report provides a valuable overview of what has been happening in LIS education over the last five years and will contribute to our understanding of how best to direct our efforts,’ Mr Lodge said.”

• Free Online Jigsaw Puzzles Simple to use. Go to the site to access the expanding library of jigsaw puzzles created by others. You can search for puzzles based on a theme, by puzzle difficulty (easy is 60 pieces or less and challenging puzzles have 240 plus pieces). In the puzzle work space, you can zoom in or out to give yourself more room to work. The ‘full screen’ mode removes other distractions and helps to focus on the challenge at hand. The site requires the Flash plug-in to make the puzzles interactive. If you create an account (it’s free) you can upload your own images to make your own jigsaw puzzles to share. This will also remove ads from the puzzle pages. The tool does not require an email address to register.

• GifDeck GifDeck is a tool that can convert your SlideShare presentation into an animated GIF. It is simple to use – go to the site, paste in a SlideShare URL, and out comes an animated version. You can then embed the GIF whatever you like. You can also adjust how long you want each slide to appear, how many slides you want to included and the size of the GIF.

• critical-digital-pedagogy-definition.jpg (1000×750) Points that offer a nice summary.

• National Poetry Month: Exemplars from EDSITEment: Poetry for the Common Core | EDSITEment National Poetry Month: Exemplars from EDSITEment: Poetry for the Common Core. EDSITEmentput together multimedia resources for students of all ages. For each of the following poetry exemplars students and teachers will find a link to the poem, commentary about the poem, and a host of multimedia resources to assist teachers in unpacking the poem with students. These resources include EDSITEment lessons as well as EDSITEment-reviewed websites that discuss the poem, the poet, and its context.

• Rachael Lehr on Twitter: “9 effective instructional strategies for improving learning http://t.co/tNiB99FCdP”

• Initial findings | Australian Institute for Teaching and School Leadership “ITSL, in collaboration with the Centre of Program Evaluation at the University of Melbourne are conducting a three-year process and impact evaluation of the implementation of the Australian Professional Standards for Teachers. The purpose of the Evaluation is to assess the usefulness, effectiveness and impact of the Standards on improving teacher quality. Over 6,002 respondents including teachers, school leaders, pre-service teachers and teacher educators participated in the 2013 National Survey. Initial analysis from the survey highlights the key findings below.”

• European Search Engine: safe, neutral, confident | UNBUBBLE.EU “Unbubble is a web search engine from Germany providing results in eight languages. Its primary goal is to create neutral search results. It takes strong measures to protect privacy.”

• Education App Review and Sharing Sites – Google Sheets “This is a repository of educational apps for teachers and students. Below is a document created using Google Docs and in which is featured a variety of platforms and web resources where teachers and educators can find educational apps.

• ESL English Language Learning – Adult Literacy – Listening & Reading – Audiobooks – Stories

• libraries past – libraries future – YouTube

• Using Padlet for Class Collaboration – In a Manner of Speaking Some great practical ideas for using Padlet in the classroom. “Padlet is basically an online bulletin board. Teachers & students can post to the board, so in-class activities with Padlet can happen collaboratively and asynchronously (meaning all at the same time, no turn-taking needed). You can post links, videos, images and document files from your computer, phone, or tablet. Boards can be made private or public. They can be embedded into a blog or website (see below) and still function within the blog as it would on Padlet’s site. You can have as many boards as you like and adjust the privacy settings for each.”

• Grammar Girl :: Quick and Dirty Tips ™ “Your friendly guide to the world of grammar, punctuation, usage, and fun developments in the English language.” A good “writing” blog to follow – useful for all sorts of tips on using English.

• 15 Sites and Apps Kids Are Heading to Beyond Facebook | Common Sense Media A good post from Common Sense Media about where teens are with social media today. The questions “Are teens totally over Facebook? Or are they using it even more than ever? are asked and an answer is attempted. From reports it is evident that there are many and varied social media being used by young people. Teenagers are dividing their attention between a sizeable number of apps and tools. These all allow them to write, share, video-chat, and even shop for the latest trends. The advice is:”You don’t need to know the ins and outs of every app and site that’s “hot” right now (and frankly, if you did, they wouldn’t be trendy anymore). But knowing the basics — what they are, why they’re popular, and what problems can crop up when they’re not used responsibly — can make the difference between a positive and a negative experience for your kid.” A few of these media are discussed in light of this.

• ISTE | Know the ISTE Standards*T 4: Model digital citizenship Standard 4 of the ISTE Standards for Teachers focuses on the concept of digital citizenship. The past decade has seen an exponential increase in digital tools and opportunities, which carry the need for students to master a new set of life skills for behaving responsibly online. Contrary to popular belief, however, digital natives don’t pick up these skills through osmosis. It falls on parents and educators to teach them how. Just as a teacher would talk to students about etiquette and safety before they enter a public place on a school trip, so must they remind students of what’s expected of them online. Students are much more likely to understand good digital citizenship — the norms of appropriate, responsible technology use — when teachers model it on a regular basis. The three social studies activities described in the table below are designed for students in grades 5-7. The objective of the lesson is to help students explore another culture and share traditions, events, customs and rituals from their own culture. There are different ways to address these objectives, but not all of them take advantage of the prime opportunity to promote and model digital citizenship.

• Popplet “In the classroom and at home, students use Popplet for learning. Used as a mind-map, Popplet helps students think and learn visually. Students can capture facts, thoughts, and images and learn to create relationships between them. Available on both the iPad and the web, you can create Popplet boards and access them from either platform.”

• Storyboard That: The World’s Best FREE Online Storyboard Creator This is a service that provides templates in which you can create your stories in a comic strip style. You are provided with many scenes, characters, and text bubbles to fill your storyboard’s frames and help you create your story. Any element that you drag into the frames can be re-sized, rotated, and re-positioned to however you want it. The completed storyboard can be saved as a comic strip, a set of images (one image for each frame), or saved as a set of PPTX slides.

• Fastest Way to Create Comic Strips and Cartoons – Toondoo “ToonDoo is a comic-creating tool from Jambav, a free, fun site for kids. Jambav is devoted to creating a unique array of free and customizable online games of educational value for children of all abilities.” It is fast, easy way

• Storyboard That Classroom Edition – Starting at Just $5.95 per month This is a service that provides templates in which you can create your stories in a comic strip style. You are provided with many scenes, characters, and text bubbles to fill your storyboard’s frames and help you create your story. Any element that you drag into the frames can be re-sized, rotated, and re-positioned to however you want it. The completed storyboard can be saved as a comic strip, a set of images (one image for each frame), or saved as a set of PPTX slides.

• 3D-printed books make pictures real for blind children – tech – 28 August 2014 – New Scientist “A new project is printing Braille picture books for visually impaired children. Each page turns the pictures from the original book into raised 3D shapes alongside traditional Braille text. “The advantage of 3D-printing is really about making one-of-a-kind objects,’ says Tom Yeh, who heads up the Tactile Picture Books Project at the University of Colorado at Boulder. Later this year, Yeh’s group will work with the National Braille Press in Boston to offer children a copy of Dragons Love Tacos by Adam Rubin that has a page customised with the child’s name in Braille.”

• Cracking The Code To Teams: What Educators Can Learn From Programmers | EdSurge News “A model for educators when it comes to increasing team effectiveness, highlighting seven takeaways:”

• Cool Tools for 21st Century Learners: 3 Great Ways to Use a Google Form Three simple but effective ways to use googleforms. Could be adapted for library activities too.

• Why don’t teachers use eBooks for professional development? | ELTjam “The evidence suggests that most teachrs aren’t using ebooks, despite the proliferation of laptops, tablets and eReaders, and the ease of purchasing eBooks online. The vast majority of language teachers and ex-language teachers have at least a couple of ‘classic’ ELT methodology books on their (physical) bookshelves, and the more fortunate ones will have a well-stocked resource library where they teach, giving access to both practical guides and theoretical texts.” The discussion is not just applicable language teachers.

• Five Research-Driven Education Trends At Work in Classrooms | MindShift “Increasingly, educators are looking to research about how kids learn to influence teaching practices and tools. What seemed like on-the-fringe experiments, like game-based learning, have turned into real trends, and have gradually made their way into many (though certainly not most) classrooms.”

• Back-to-School Reader Inventories This is about gathering data/information about readers – What you might want and how you go about it. It also links to other resources that might help.

• 5 Research-Based Tips for Providing Students with Meaningful Feedback | Edutopia

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

Advertisement