Useful Links

• A Principal’s Reflections: BYOD Begins With Trust and Respect. An interesting analysis about one school’s experiences of BYOD. “Our BYOD initiative at New Milford High School has succeeded and grown up to this point based on the basic premise of trust and respect. Yes, we have policies in place, the right infrastructure, and support our teachers with professional development and guidance. However, the most important elements stem from the fact that we trust our students to use their devices as tools for learning, enhanced productivity, and to conduct better research. Time is spent working with them on digital citizenship and the creation of positive digital footprints that they can be proud of. We also respect them as learners growing up in the digital age where these tools are playing a greater role in the world we are preparing them to succeed in. When creating a BYOD initiative grounded in these principles the possibilities are endless.” 

• Getting Going with Mobile Devices: Workflow, Organization, and Fundamentals | Connected Learning How do/should you develop the long-term capacity to manage student work and a daily workflow process in a mobile classroom?

• What is Connected Learning | Connected Learning Post with infographic and video that tries to explain what connected learning is and why it offers an important pathway in education

• Discovering Pathways Through Connected Learning | Connected Learning Interesting discussion about learning as a whole. Debates why we should acknowledge learning that occurs outside the classroom/school as well as within and how that might be acknowledged ( and more specifically at having badges to recognise achievements)

• Teaching Skills: What 21st Century Educators Need To Learn To Survive Listing the traits that make an/the ideal 21st teacher. Post tries to answer What does an educational professional need to be or do to tune in and synchronize with the new realities silently emerging inside schools and educational environments?

• The 33 Digital Skills Every 21st Century Teacher Should Have | Fluency21 – Committed Sardine Blog “Med Kharbach compiles an extensive list of 21st century teaching activities and presents resources to assist others in adopting these activities into instruction. This post comes from Educational Technology and Mobile Learning at http://www.educatorstechnology.com, where they offer a host of web resources and educational tools that are definitely worth checking out.”

• Big History Project The Big history project tells the story of the universe. It starts at the very beginning and reaches to the complex societies of today. It illustrates the connections between what are often seen as diverse subjects and weaves together insights and evidence from many disciplines into one single, understandable story. Insights come from astronomy, physics, chemistry, biology, anthropology, history, economics, and more.

• Atlas of Living Australia “The Atlas of Living Australia (Atlas) contains information on all the known species in Australia aggregated from a wide range of data providers: museums, herbaria, community groups, government departments, individuals and universities. You can also get facts and figures about the information contained in the Atlas from the Atlas dashboard.”

• Tech Learning : Bloom’s Taxonomy in the Classroom Applying Bloom’s Taxonomy in the Classroom – Infographic with ideas and assessment.

• How To Build Powerful Tech-Infused Lesson Plans – Edudemic – Edudemic The piece offers advice on how to go about creating “21st century lesson plans” that leverage the technologies available to support a lesson without being the lesson.

• Free Technology for Teachers: A Short Guide to Creating and Grading Quizzes Through Google Forms This is another great guide to using Google Docs by Richard Byrne. Here he offers screenshots of those processes he has discussed in some of the workshops and webinars he has run on how to create self-grading quizzes through Google Forms and Spreadsheets. He has put them into one PDF that you can use to guide you through the processes. . You can view the PDF below. (If you are viewing this on an iPad, you might not be able to see the guide.

• The Teacher Report: 7 Tech Tools for Collaboration A short list of tools that offers tools that enable teachers to connect in our own time and in a variety of interesting ways with educators around the world. These tools offer the platforms for learning from one another and sharing best practices.

Useful sites (weekly)

  by  mikefisher821  

• Teens Find Innovative Ways to Control Their Facebook Presence “Ever heard of “Super-logoff” or “whitewalling”? They are ways to designate what some teens have been doing in order to have total control over who posts what (and when) on their Facebook page:”

• Digital Culture & Education: Classroom perspectives – Digital Culture & Education In this issue we present articles that push the boundaries of research on digital cultures, teaching, and technologies in fruitful and generative directions.  Researchers and practitioners in this issue present case studies and analysis of practical classroom use of copyright literacies, learning management systems, mobile/cell phones, social video, Twitter, and Google Reader.  The articles demonstrate how the affordances of digital culture have shifted our understandings of how pupils learn as content can be accessed, designed, and shared.  Despite the affordances of digital culture, teaching and learning—with and through digital technologies—requires effective pedagogy.  Digital technologies are not ‘teacher-proof’ tools; they require thoughtful and thorough integration into pedagogy, in a manner that reflects carefully articulated instructional and learning goals

• Media Awareness Network (MNet) | Reports and Publications The Digital Literacy in Canada discussion paper is a response to the Government of Canada’s Digital Economy Consultation, launched in May 2010. The paper calls for federal leadership in the creation of a national digital literacy strategy to ensure all Canadians have the necessary skills to use digital technologies to their fullest potential.  

• Roald Dahl – The Official Web Site  This is the official web site of author Roald Dahl. A great site to visit for fans of all ages. It contains Dahl’s biography, books, and special links to peruse and enjoy.

• Mobile Digital Storytelling with StoryKit, Storyrobe, and SonicPics #edapp « Moving at the Speed of Creativity Post from Wes Fryer. An overview of StoryKit, StoryRobe (both free), and SonicPics (small cost) on iOS devices (iPhones, iPod Touches, and iPads)- Some great apps for creating digital stories

• Blekko Tries to Filter Out Web Search – NYTimes.com NY Times article: New search engine Blekko aims to show search results from only useful, trustworthy sites

• Sir Ken Robinson, Daniel Pink and David Pogue the Creativity World Forum #cwf2010 « Moving at the Speed of Creativity Wes Fryers notes from Sir Ken Robinson’s presentation at the 2010 Creativity World Forum in Oklahoma City. “Sir Ken is part of our morning panel along with Dan Pink and David Pogue. My notes from their panel discussion after Ken’s remarks are also included”

• TEFL Non – Stick Teaching | EFL Classroom 2.0 – Teacher Talk post about 25 ways to be a good teacher

• e-Learning Stuff » Blog Archive » Adobe Photoshop Express – iPhone App of the Week 

• Violating a Creative Commons License | edte.ch Interesting case over in the “interesting ways” world.. resources built up through widespread teacher use. Australian company, Edsoft, using our “Interesting Ways to use an iPad in the Classroom” resource as a handout at a sales event. You can see the image clearly showing how they have used it, breaking the terms of the CC license. 

• 40 Astounding Examples of Abstract Photography | Inspiration Some great examples of photography 

• 30+ Outstanding Websites of Higher Education Institutions | Vandelay Design Blog These College and Uni sites contain huge amounts of information and they managed to design an attractive and usable websites. Links from this post take you to more than 30 outstanding sites for your inspiration. 

• Global Education Conference – Home The conference is a collaborative and world-wide community effort to significantly increase opportunities for globally-connecting education activities 

• Bookapedia The blog for a NZ school book club. Links to their website for hosting the Bookapedia Book Battles project. 

• 10 best Android tablets in the world | News | TechRadar UK  These are worth a look if you are wondering about how the Andriod tablets will compare to the ipad. Article about 10 best Android tablets in the world In Depth: Which Android tablet is best for you?” 

• Using new visualizations to tell your story – Official Google Docs Blog This blog post gives information and examples about the new charts and graphs that Google Docs offers using new visualizations to tell your story  

• 10 iPad / iPhone apps for primary school teachers – TEACHING APPS: iPhone – iPAd, iPhone, Android, AIR – Edgalaxy: Where Education and Technology Meet. 

• And the Most Popular Way to Read an E-Book Is … | Epicenter | Wired.com 

• DeweyDigger An innovative way to discover what the Dewey Decimal Classification system involves!By clicking on one of the Dewey classifications, you are then presented with a range of topics that would be found under that classification. Clicking on one of those you are then presented with a range of options to dig further. 

• Make a word cloud – WordItOut Much like Wordle, this tool creates word clouds out of any text that you paste into the text box. The application allows the word cloud to be customized by size, font, and color scheme. Word It Out also allows the user to ignore certain words and thus keeps them out of the word cloud. It can be used without a login, although the saving option requires an email. You can work around this option by right clicking to save as jpeg and/or screen print.

• Australian humour – Australia’s Culture Portal  This article describes the nature of Australia’s unique sense of humour and how this developed. It also contains a brief overview of how humour has been used in literature, film, television and radion. Links to relevant online resources are provided. 

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

Useful sites (weekly)

  by  lynetter 

•  HowStuffWorks “Top 5 Google Killers — That Didn’t” “Google is the world’s search engine leader. But that doesn’t mean every other company has given up on dethroning the king. See why so far no company has had what it takes.”

• BBC – Writersroom – Writing Resources Writing resources and tips for the screen, radio, theatre, magazines, etc from BBC

• BBC – Writersroom – Writing Tips Writing resources and tips for the screen, radio, theatre, magazines, etc from BBC

• EduKindle A blog that looks at using the kindle in academic arenas. It is designed to provide information and tools that will enhance the Kindle experience of anyone with an interest in teaching and learning with support from the Kindle.

• In Scholastic Study, Children Like Digital Reading – NYTimes.com NYTimes Article summary of research: “Many children want to read books on digital devices and would read for fun more frequently if they could obtain e-books. But even if they had that access, two-thirds of them would not want to give up their traditional print books. The report also suggested that many children displayed an alarmingly high level of trust in information available on the Internet: 39 percent of children ages 9 to 17 said the information they found online was “always correct.” “

• New Study on Reading in the Digital Age An article about research conducted in the USA, but has applications for Australia as well.. As expected, kids have embraced new technology faster than many adults, and are keen to read ebooks.

• The Code of Best Practices in Fair Use for Media Literacy Education | Center for Social Media 

• Alone Appealing website for James Phelan’s Alone series

• The problem of the read-aloud – readerswithautism.com Read Alouds are a vital component of the literacy curriculum, yet many autistic children do not respond well to them. Advice on this issue is from the Readers with Autism blog. 

• Over, Under, and Beyond Words: Alternative Strategies for Observing Talk in Classrooms (E-GUIDE) conversation

• How To : Five Common Sense Social Networking Rules for Kids : ReputationDefender 

• BBC EARTH LIFE IS An amazing site from BBC Earth. The beautifully interactive site is full of images, video, and stories from BBC Earth’s most captivating documentaries. Each month features a different theme. The astonishing images and video capture life’s most colorful displays in nature. The search page is equally stunning, offering an on-screen widget that lets students adjust the pictures in the grid by filtering by hot/cold, slow/fast, sea/sky, or colour.

• Bloom’s Taxonomy Bloomin’ Tree from iLearn Technology » Blog Archive » A teacher created these for her classroom so that she could share Bloom’s with her kids in different ways that would make their classroom fun, but also give them a different way of viewing the information. Here she is sharing her Bloomin’ Tree. As she started making her Bloom’s re-imagines, students started coming to her with ideas of how to display the information. The tree was a student idea and the boy underneath is Lance, who made the suggestion.

• MathMovesU | making middle school math fun MathMovesU is an innovative approach to maths practice that shows students how maths is used in real life. As students explore the MathMovesU virtual world they will collect points by discovering maths and tracking solutions. This site encourages students to discover more, dig deeper and think critically about maths.

• The easiest way to download lossless YouTube to your computer – HOME – Edgalaxy: Where Education and Technology Meet. 

• Futurelab – Resources – Publications, reports & articles – Literature reviews – Serious Games in Education 

• Comic Master Comic Master that lets you create a graphic novel online that can be saved and printed. The interface is very intuitive and fun to use Using the Graphic Novel Creator, students can create their own multi-page graphic novels with interesting backgrounds, characters, props, and customized text.

• Researching and Writing Bestsellers – An Interview with Joseph Kanon | The New York Public Library 

• THOSE WHO DON’T BUILD MUST BURN (Featured Article) « The Burning Platform 

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

Bring on the Learning Revolution – Sir Ken Robinson (TED)

TED recently released this video of Sir Ken Robinson’s talk from TED in Feb 2010. His latest talk Bring on the Learning Revolution is a follow-up to his very popular TED Talk Schools Kill Creativity given in 2006.

 

more about “Bring on the Learning Revolution – Si…“, posted with vodpod

 

I have listened to teachers in my school talk about punishing students who do not finish their word documents or powerpoints or the kids who just copy and paste in the answers. It never occures to them to look at the assignments and the work they are setting the students.

What did I learn from this TEDtalk?. We must recognize the need to allowfor  a diversity of talents in education (and in society as a whole) and that education often works best when it is an organic and a real-world , authentic process.

Useful sites (weekly)

From Flickr Uploaded 2009-10-26 by vicky_n

• ClassChats.com ~ Connecting Students, Teachers, and Classrooms Worldwide  This is a social network that has been set up to help educators connect world wide. Many teachers are starting to use this site to match up with other classrooms and skype and video conference between them. Classrooms can communicate via chat, webcam, interactive whiteboard, forum posts, and more.

•   12 Key Messages for Education in a Social Media Age by Blog By Carol In June 2009, Edelman convened 100+ professors of communication, journalism, business and pubic relations to discuss how companies and organisations effectively engage with their stake holders through social media

• Social Media for Education Informative slideshow on the uses of social media in the classroom. It is helpful in identifying uses to which social media can be put for research purposes

• Intute – Blog – A Bakers Dozen of Practical Podcasting Tips Simple tips for producing a better quality audio podcast

• Educator Pln Twitter List by Shelly S Terrell on Listorious 

• Mashpedia, the real-time encyclopedia This tool matches reference articles from Wikipedia to materials from other sources like YouTube, Flickr, Twitter, Digg, etc.. The purpose of drawing materials from multiple sources is to provide users with a comprehensive view of news stories and reference topics. 

• FlockDraw FlockDraw is a simple service that allows people to quickly and easily collaborate on the creation of a drawing. To use FlockDraw simply visit the site, click the “start drawing” button, and start drawing. To invite other people to draw with you, just send them the url assigned to your drawing board.

• WiseMapping | Visual Thinking Evolution “Wise Mapping is a free collaborative mind mapping tool. Wise Mapping has fairly easy to use editing and sharing functions. Each cell created in a Wise Mapping mind map can be dragged and moved around in the mind map without losing any text or text formatting. Wise Mapping lets users collaborate on the creation of mind map. Mind maps made on Wise Mapping can be shared with others via email, url link, or be embedded into your blog or website.”

• Enterprise Social Software | Wikis, Microblogging & Feeds – CubeTree CubeTree is a free service designed for companies that would like to build a social network of wikis, shared items, and microblogs for their employees. On CubeTree anyone can create a network and invite colleagues. All colleagues must have the same email domain.

• Jabbster | Your private online meeting place Jabbster is a free service that allows groups to create private online communication networks. Within your private network you can host discussion boards, share photos, post an event calendar, and share bookmarks. Setting up a Jabbster group is quick and easy: register for an account, name your group, and send invitations to the people you want in the group. If you create the group, you are the group administrator and can delete any content or user from the group at any time.

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

Useful Sites (weekly)

•  Teaching Resources – Free Printables and Lesson Ideas for Teachers!  Website for general resources and lesson plans for teachers.

• Listorious: Discover the Best Twitter Lists Listerious offers browsing through popular twitter lists   

• Science Oxford Online This online resource from Science Oxford presents science news features with the aims of illustrating connections between different areas of science and demonstrating connections between science and everyday life. Users can submit articles and press releases. A newsletter, tweets and RSS feeds are available.   

•  Intelligent YouTube Channels | Open Culture youTube channels with educational content.    

• Edge Perspectives with John Hagel: Defining the Big Shift The Big Shift. We must master a new set of techniques required to access, attract and accumulate resources to unleash peer based learning in far more flexible ways than conventional push programs permit.   

• Citrify Photo Editor Citrify, is an easy to use photo editor with powerful features.  

• Roman Numerals The big differences between Roman and Arabic numerals (the ones we use today) are that Romans didn’t have a symbol for zero, and that numeral placement within a number can sometimes indicate subtraction rather than addition.    

• Evaluating Websites The Internet contains an immense range of information that is posted by individuals and organisations from around the world. There is no single body or organisation that ensures the quality of this information.    

• Bullying. No way! Bullying. No way! is developed and managed by all Australian education authorities for use by Australia’s Government, Catholic and Independent school communities. 

• Cyberbullying – digizen.org On this area of the Digizen website we outline the three major areas of the advice, Understanding, Preventing and Responding; and provided links to current resources.   

• CyberNetrix – Internet Safety Education for Secondary Schools Australian online safety site CyberNetrix offers computer-based activities that have been designed for secondary students from years seven to nine as a cross-curricula, cross-year level resource. There is a teacher guide and 11 downloadable student activities.      

• BBC – Newsbeat – Pupils ‘bypassing school internet security’ BBC article about the dangers of students using proxy servers.    

• High school: What students take versus what they need – Mind Dump   Interesting post        

• Official Google Blog: Safety Mode: giving you more control on YouTube  “Diversity of content is one of the great things about YouTube. But we know that some of you want a more controlled experience. That’s why we’re announcing Safety Mode, an opt-in setting that helps screen out potentially objectionable content that you may prefer not to see or don’t want others in your family to stumble across while enjoying YouTube ”        

• Twitlonger – When you talk too much for Twitter    Twitlonger is an easy way to post long messages to Twitter without the need to write a blog post. Write what you need here and we post the link to Twitter for you.        

• 20 Essential Tricks Every Skype User Should Know – Page 2 | Maximum PC    This article has tips and ideas on how to more effectively use the features of Skype.        

• The Lovett School: Lovett News    What do you get when you put digital cameras into the hands of Lower School mathematicians? Children who are engaged in the learning process, and students who see the variety of mathematical possibilities in the world around them.        

• Sorry I’m Late    Great example of stop motion animation. Watch through to the credits at the end to see how it was done. Quite brilliant!        

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

Useful Links (weekly)

• Scientific Calculator

• AIDLT ~ A new voice in ICT Education Site of Australian Institute of Digital Learning and Teaching

• Google Image Swirl A new way to search through Google Images, with a nice interface that let’s you look at images grouped by similarities

• 4Teachers : Educator’s Resources Resources from 4Teachers. Can be used to assist in developing lessons, web pages and calendars to share

• 15 Things All Classrooms Should Have PK-12 – The Educators’ Royal Treatment Tries to come up with a list of everything a classroom should have.

• 25 Great Sources of Blog Ideas & Inspiration | Site Sketch 101 25 good sources of Blog ideas & inspiration

• Parent Advice – Tech Talk: Beyond Internet Safety – Common Sense Media Parent advice and tips on Tech Talk: Beyond Internet Safety Common Sense Media seeks to help parents choose what’s best for their kids

• Stock Photography – Search 5.8 Million Stock Photos, Stock Footage Video Clips, Royalty Free Images, and Illustrations The Fotos earch image search engine saves you time by allowing you to search over 5.5 million images from over 100 stock photography, stock illustration, and video stock footage publishers at one website. Make sure the royalty Free box is checked when doing a search

• e-Learning: What’s Hot and What’s Not? « Performance X Design Overview of current trends in e-learning. According to this post, what’s hot is social media, informal learning, simulations & scenario-based learning, virtual worlds, rapid learning, mobile learning, open source, and performance support.

• Learntrends 2009 Sessions Live Blogging « Online Sapiens Collected links to live blogging posts from LearnTrends Good to have all of them together in one place

• Mr. Higgins’ Blog » Blog Archive » ClustrMaps as Student Motivation A good description from a teacher describing how his students are motivated by the ClustrMap on his class website, including how it inspires them to look up places on Google Earth.

• Blogs Give Students an Audience | Edutopia Interview with an 8th grade teacher about how having an audience for their blog has motivated her students

• Steve Stander :: Blog :: Blogging & Motivation: Psychology of Language Learning Looking at blogging as a way to motivate students to write through the lens of Determination Theory (Autonomy, Competence, Relatedness), examining how to generate and maintain motivation. Also discusses an inquiry-based learning approach with blogging.

• Great Opening Sentences From Science Fiction – Books – io9 A list of interesting opening sentences from sci-fi books 

• Ninjawords – a really fast dictionary Great tool for students to define vocabulary or spelling words or to study multiple meanings of a word. Uses Wiktionary database for definitions instead of the WordNet database. Also has an iPhone app. Case sensitive when looking up words.

• Things That Keep Us Up at Night – 10/1/2009 – School Library Journal Thought-provoking article on current technology & trends and their impact on libraries & information literacy.

• A Way to Teach | The Text is a Terrible Thing to Waste 

• Angela Maiers Educational Services: Great Readers Have Strategies

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