Useful links

   by  Ken Whytock 

• How to Ensure that Making Leads to Learning | School Library Journal “Thinking and sharing have always gone on in school libraries,” Preddy notes. “Maker spaces connect thinking and sharing with creating, and that takes learning to a whole new level.”

• Art: Found Poetry on Pinterest | Blackout Poetry, Altered Books and Book Pages Pinterest board that has examples of beautifully executed blackout poetry

• Newspaper Blackout Poems: A Creative Way To Write Poetry “A post that explains the fascinating creative process of black out poetry. You start to pick out individual words that when pieced together with other words on the page, create a poem of some sort.
  There is a video that also shows you how to go about the process. There are links to Austin Kleon, who first created this process, and he’s even published books on it. There is also a tumblr dedicated to these poems. If you’d like to submit one or browse through the poetry, You can also click over to Newspaper Blackout from here.”

• SuZen Art: Blackout Poetry Visually beautiful blackout poetry

• Project Pinterest: Black Out Poetry | The Amateur Librarian Some great ideas and examples can be found here. Also includes a easy to follow guide about how to create a blackout poem.

• hidden poems by miriam paternoster – YouTube YouTube video, published on 7 Dec 2012, that shows how to create blackout poetry. “Discover the hidden poems in a page of an old book, draw any subject and find the words hidden in the page… you’ll be surprised! Draw any pattern freely”

• Make Blackout Poetry | Gallery

• Blackout Poetry | History Tech

• Flipping the classroom together—from 3,000 miles away | eSchool News | eSchool News “An explanation about how two teachers overcome the challenges of flipping their classrooms and co-planning lessons across states”

• Part 2: Over 35 Formative Assessment Tools To Enhance Formative Learning Opportunities | 21 st Century Educational Technology and Learning This post showcases a range of tools that can assist teachers with formative assessment. They range from providing interactive quizzes/check ups to providing the useful feedback that is essential in a classroom focused on student centered formative learning.

• Creating Safe, Strength-Based Classrooms | Edutopia “Schools are a network of human beings who feel, think, behave, and function within a human system that is alive and never static. Inside living systems, we need to feel safe and felt. This system is wired to thrive, even through difficult times. We’re here for deep learning, which is profoundly relational, and connection to one another is a prerequisite for our collective emotional, social, spiritual, and cognitive growth and development. In creating an environment that feels safe and relational, behavior management develops into behavior engagement”

• Youth exposure to and management of cyberbullying incidents in Australia | Australian Policy Online “The Social Policy Research Centre was commissioned by the Australia Government, as part of its commitment to Enhance Online Safety for Children (link is external), to investigate youth exposure to cyberbullying and how it is being managed. The report was developed in collaboration with National Children’s and Youth Law Centre, the University of South Australia, the Young and Well Cooperative Research Centre, and the University of Western Sydney.”

• How To Create A Backup File In Outlook 2013 | Digital Trends “it’s important to make sure that the application’s files – your emails records, contacts, and calendars – are periodically backed up to a safe location. Likewise, if you’re moving to a new PC, it’s a lot easier to re-load a single file than to go through the tedious process of setting up your email accounts again. Outlook makes it simple to manually back up your account and settings, and also to re-import them for easy setup. The guide below applies to Office 2010, Office 2013, and Office 2016.”

• 3 Ways to Curate and Share Great Content | The Principal of Change In this information-rich world learning to filter information is important. George Couros discusses how he sets about curating and sharing the work of others. ” I have been blessed with a huge network on social media and I want to use that to not only share my voice, but hopefully the voice of others as well”

• Googleable vs Non-Googleable Questions \ The Lab

• Why Teacher Leaders Are Critical to Advancing Global Education – Global Learning – Education Week “Schools do not need the word international in their name to offer a global education to their students. Schools around the world that have a global approach can serve as incubators for global teaching and learning. Teacher leaders across the country can then play a central role in taking it to scale so that ultimately, all schools provide students with a truly global, 21st century education. “

• It’s time to kill the timetable  | Innovative pedagogy – Dean Pearman ” What if we changed the time table in the same way. What if student’s came to school to learn and not just move from class to class. What if we changed how we use time? Is our current school structures killing learning? “

• 25 Fun Ways to use QR Codes for Teaching and Learning — Emerging Education Technologies The author of the post has culled a bunch of ideas from different teachers who have shared their approaches to using QR codes in a classroom setting. Once students are equipped with a device that can read QR codes and they know how to scan them, it is easy to adapt the ideas here to use a classroom.

• Twelve Ideas for Teaching with QR Codes | Edutopia “As mobile learning becomes more and more prevalent, we must find effective ways to leverage mobile tools in the classroom. As always, the tool must fit the need. Mobile learning can create both the tool and the need. With safe and specific structures, mobile learning tools can harness the excitement of technology with the purpose of effective instruction. Using QR codes for instruction is one example of this.”

• Interesting ways to use QR Codes – Google Slides From Tom Barrett

• QR Codes in the Classroom – Kathy Schrock’s Guide to Everything “Quick response (QR) codes are easy to create and have many uses in the classroom. With the posting of a QR code, you can lead students to information by just using their computer’s or mobile device’s camera. This page provides links to QR code readers and creators and tons of ideas for their use in the classroom!”

• 9 Goals of a Successful School Makerspace “There are many approaches but the overall objective should be to drive the Four Cs: creativity, critical thinking, communication and collaboration. A makerspace should create a spark in the minds and heart of the students.”

• 15 Common Mistakes Teachers Make Teaching With Technology Updated from an earlier post. “The role of technology in learning isn’t entirely clear–or rather, is subjective.While it clearly is able to provide access to peers, audiences, resources, and data, it also can be awkward, problematic, distracting, performing more strongly as a barrier to understand than anything else. Why this happens also isn’t clear, but there are some common patterns and missteps to look for while designing or evaluating a learning process.”

• Coding overtakes French as Britons’ favourite new language to learn | City A.M.

• Why Kids Need to Move, Touch and Experience to Learn | MindShift | KQED News ““We can start leveraging the power of our bodies to help us learn, think and perform at our best,” Beilock said. Too often students are cooped up inside for six or more hours, sometimes without an adequate recess ,and more likely than not, with little attention paid to ho

• 31 Things You Can Make With A Cardboard Box That Will Blow Your Kids’ Minds

• Free Technology for Teachers: Eight Alternatives to Google Image Search “This chart by Richard Byrne is designed to provide a quick overview and comparison of good sources of images for students’ slideshows and other multimedia projects. “

• How to Use EasyBib to Check a Site’s Credibility – Using Technology Better “With the sheer amount of available information from different sources online, how could you make sure of a source’s credibility? You may use Google Chrome. It has an extension that lets you look into and assess the reliability of a site. Called EasyBib, the extension is actually an app for creating bibliographies. Check out the video below to learn how to use it to check a site’s credibility”

• Maker Club: 3D Printing with a Chromebook (or just a browser) “Given the prevalence of Chromebooks in schools, and the momentum with 3D Printing as a school science activity, it seems logical that people would ask “How can we do 3D Printing with just Chromebooks?”. Here’s some ideas for tools that will all work on the web – on your Chromebook (or in your other computer’s browser with no downloaded software).”

• YouTube And Flipped Teaching | Flipteaching “Whether you are just beginning your flipped teaching journey, or an experienced flipped teacher, YouTube offers a variety of ways to organize instructional videos for both teachers and students alike. Note taking with VideoNot.es is just one avenue teachers and students can explore to increase the benefits of video instruction.”

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