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English Learning Websites A site that collects the most important sources of English learning websites. It also provides the visitors with useful articles about good ways to learn vocabulary.
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Build Your Own Adobe Creative Suite With Free And Cheap Software | Lifehacker Australia “Adobe’s Creative Suite is one of the best software packs out there for professionals, but the suite is prohibitively expensive for most people. If you can’t drop the cash, you can still get a similar experience with free or cheap software. Here’s how to build your own Creative Suite. Adobe Creative Suite is more than just Photoshop: it contains other software that helps you build websites, design logos, edit video, layout books and more.”
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Research and Evaluation | Australian Institute for Teaching and School Leadership “AITSL is committed to improving Australia’s educational outcomes by leading and influencing improvement in teaching and school leadership. Our work is driven by research and aims to foster evidence-based practice. We draw upon educational specialists and our own expertise to create high-quality research publications. This research then guide the practical resources we develop to support teachers and schools leaders”
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The Leading Free Stock Photography Site – freeimages A collection of items useful for inspiration. They offer royalty-free photos, illustrations, video, audio and Flash® files from $1.
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Damien Kee – Home – How do you store your LEGO? ” A collection of different ideas that were gathered together from teachers from all over the world via the LEGO engineering mailing list. This mailing list has over 200 participants, exchanging ideas about how robotics is taught in schools. “
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The New Librarian: Leaders in the Digital Age | Digital Promise “Part of a series of case studies produced by Digital Promise examining the work of members in our League of Innovative Schools. ” “Teacher librarians must recognize the need to remake their jobs, programs, and spaces for the 21st century.”
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Stop Teaching – Start Learning | IPAD 4 SCHOOLS The basic ideas work across all classrooms although written on the Ipad 4schools blog. “By ‘teach’ I mean talk to the whole class to share instruction or discuss content. The three common reasons for talking to a whole class are: Task instruction; Delivery of content/concept/facts; Class discussion. I believe that only the first of these 3 can be said to succeed in it’s aims and even then fails often. All forms of learning should offer equal opportunity to all, not only to be involved but succeed in the learning intentions. Every learner deserves to maximise their time available to ensure they definitely learn and grow. People are different and so any one-size-fits-all mechanism is guaranteed to fail to be fair to all…”
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The Daring Librarian: Saddle Up & Rope ‘Em In! From the #TLChat Virtual Cafe webinar series: Shelly Terrell & Jake Duncan. Diverse conversation about education and schools from experienced and inspirational educators. You can view, listen/watch the webinar via the link to the recorded Blackboard session.
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Reading Writing Responding: Things Are Not Always As They Seem Post about audiobooks. The author listens whilst they are walking, driving, working, gardening – basically, whenever allows. A few favourites listed with some videos from youtube accompany the descriptions.
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So You’re Already A Connected Educator… Now What? | Getting Smart “Social media has revolutionized what it means to be an educator and, unfortunately, it often carries a negative connotation such as unprofessional and immature adults who use social media as a means to berate or belittle their students or colleagues. That’s not what it means to be a connected educator. However, once folks sign up for class Twitter pages or create Google+ profiles and begin finding others with whom they can share ideas, the question looms: now what? Maybe more importantly, so what? Here are 5 things to focus on once you’ve taken the plunge and decided to become a Connected Educator:”
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10 Brilliant Examples Of Sketch Notes: Notetaking For The 21st Century “Sketch notes-or graphic notes, or whatever other term you like-are one of the single most important developments in note-taking history. Exactly why they matter has something to do with the way our brains work, and the explosion of technology, and a little bit of viral success. The point of notes is to capture important ideas for future reference. Notes that combine images with words and phrases, sketch notes are actually an evolution of this idea. Then Ken Robinson’s Changing Educational Paradigms exploded across the internet, and the sound of the little marker squeaking across the whiteboard became synonymous with digital storytelling. Iconic even. Why? Because sketch notes like these don’t just capture ideas, they tell a story. “
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37 Insanely Smart School Teacher Hacks Esoecially for proimary schools. A lot of simple ideas that could be used in library situations – with students or adapted for displays.
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Connected Librarian Day 2014
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Teaching Writing With Technology? Blogging, Blogging, Blogging Helping students to cultivate the skills needed for writing is often about cultivating a love of writing. Every student needs to be able to express themselves clearly, concisely and intelligently, whatever they are going to end up doing in later life. “The best way to help them develop those skills is to make writing personal and give them a vested interest in communication. Blogs have become one of the most popular website formats in recent years. Blogging websites have become the essential ways for many people to broadcast their personal stories, challenges and insights. This has created both a new generation of budding writers as well as a generation with a keen interest in the stories of others. Blogging offers an immersive experience. Students are simply encouraged to begin a blog chronicling their life story or a subject that ignites their interest. That’s when the skills are picked up and developed as a matter of course. The initial blogging assignment should be simple, but at the same time offer a bit of a challenge.” Post offers some useful advice about student blogging.
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Our technology messages are important | Dangerously Irrelevant “What technology messages is your school system sending when we ban student technology for bad behaviour, limit teachers using technologies with classes etc.?”
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Art Inspired / FrontPage “A wiki that offers many visual art ideas and resources to inspire and motivate your lessons, artwork and art curriculum.”
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Creativity 2.0 / Some Assessment Activities Some creative assessment activities. Post about authentic assessment. links to technologies mentioned. Includes a table from the Art Inspired wiki. Table with ideas about how to use artwork or photos to generate ideas, critical and creative thinking and writing.
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ReadPlus “ReadPlus offers a collection of over 10,000 selected books and films arranged under themes for librarians, teachers and parents about books for young people aged 5 to 18. Lists of books and films under subject headings can be generated. The books range from picture books to adult fiction and are organised into different age categories. You can search for books using theme, author, title, genre and age-range. There are reviews and links to teacher resources, reading group guides and author sites. Bookmarks of Read Similar Authors can be printed out. There are also lists of Read Similar Books for popular books. Pat Pledger and Fran Knight are editors”
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Inside A Dog | “Outside of a dog, a book is a man’s best friend. Inside a dog, it’s too dark to read.” – Groucho Marx “All about books – by young people, for young people. Inside a Dog is a place for teen readers and the home of Inky, the reading wonder-dog. Here you can: Find great reads, Share your reviews of books you love – or hate Discuss book news and hot topics on our news blog and in our forums Win stuff!, Gain insight into an authors’ thoughts about writing and reading with our Writer in Residence for September, Join or create a book club to talk about your reading”
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The Reading Hedgehog “This is a place for bookworms to come and talk about books. Reviews, new releases, movies based off of books – anything bookish. Because my passion is books, I wanted to express and share that love with like-minded people on a literary blog. The Reading Hedgehog’s main focus is Young Adult and Middle Grade literature. On the rare occasion, an Adult book will make its way on, but kid/teen literature is my favorite, and always will be. Friendly comments and questions are always welcome, and The Reading Hedgehog doesn’t mind people who disagree, so long as they don’t get nasty. Part of discussing literature is to talk about difference in opinion as well, right? Mainly, this is a place for fun and warm discussions among friends – new and old – about our shared passion: books.
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ThirstForFiction – A YA Book Review Blog “ThirstForFiction is the result of Author’s unsatiable passion for reading young adult fiction. Founded in 2010, when Rhys was a tiddly fourteen years old, ThirstForFiction aims to provide well-written, informed and discerning reviews of currently published fiction, peppered with the occasional giveaway, guest post and author interview.”
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GUYS READ “Guys Read is a web-based literacy program for boys founded by author and First National Ambassador of Young People’s Literature Jon Scieszka. The mission is to help boys become self-motivated, lifelong readers.”
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Persnickety Snark Blog of Adele Walsh – SLV’s Reader Development team- Program Coordinator for the CYL.
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inkcrush “Blog of a slightly Less Young fans of Young Adult literature. Blame it on the all-round awesome authors who are writing in the genre. Books I love: Among my fave YA authors are Jaclyn Moriarty, Melina Marchetta, Elizabeth Scott, Kirsty Eagar, Cath Crowley, Fiona Wood, Kirsten Murphy, Gabrielle Williams, Steven Herrick, John Marsden, Sonya Hartnett, Markus Zusak, Sherryl Jordan, Sarah Ockler and C.K. Kelly Martin.”
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The Unfinished Bookshelf “The Unfinished Bookshelf. Author can never resist the urge to browse in bookshops and will usually leave with at least one book tucked under her arm. Her reading tastes are rather eclectic, but she has a soft spot for contemporary YA, particularly if it’s Australian.”
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5 easy ways to introduce new users to your digital library | OverDrive Blogs From Overdrive blog – some ideas for introducing library clientele to your digital collection.
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Using Social Media for Personal Learning Networks From Phemie Write. “Social Media Tool Guide for PLNs”. Based on and Adapted from the Moodle for Educators guide by the legendary Joyce Seitzinger. Slide presentation and a good infographic.
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The networked academic: New identities & roles Created by Bonnie Stewart to support presentation at ACEC 2014. “Networked identities differ from institutional roles, and networked practices therefore change not only what scholars do, but who they think they are. The presentation outlines findings from a 2013/14 ethnographic study on the different ways and purposes scholars engage in networked scholarship, especially on Twitter.”
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21st Century Learning Design – Making Learning Relevant – ACEC 2014 “Created to support a 21st Century Learning Design Workshop at the ACEC 2014 Conference in Adelaide, Australia on October 1, 2014.”
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Chrome extensions | transformative LEARNING Chrome is a powerful and useful browser and the choice of many. It is powerful, well organised and reasonably quick. One of the better aspects is that there are some very useful extensions available. Listed (and linked) in this post are a few useful ones.
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Book Marketing The Old Way Versus The Way That Works Today — Part 1: Book Reviews | Digital Book World Article about how to get information about your book/s out to the most people. The new ways – use digital services. Useful for us to get students to review books – make it for a wider audience than just their teacher.
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Transparency: Bullying Redefined and Identified | Edutopia “Educators have taken many approaches to solving the problem of bullying, whether making it “uncool” to bully, meting out scary punishments, or teaching tolerance. Tolerance is certainly part of the issue, but even that starts with highlighting differences between people and suggesting that one “tolerate” the other. There is no solving the issues, but there can be improved transparency, and a new tone for how we respond — educating in kid-friendly and authentic language, using real-world examples with updated definitions, all in pursuit of total transparency for a growing problem.”
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SAMR – Kathy Schrock’s Guide to Everything “SAMR is a model designed to help educators infuse technology into teaching and learning. Developed by Dr. Ruben Puentedura, the model supports and enables teachers to design, develop, and infuse digital learning experiences that utilize technology. The goal is to transform learning experiences so they result in higher levels of achievement for students. Kathy Schrock feels teachers need to both create tasks that target the higher-order cognitive skills (Bloom’s) as well as design tasks that have a significant impact on student outcomes (SAMR). My thoughts about the the model are further down this page.”
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Bloomin’ Apps – Kathy Schrock’s Guide to Everything “This page gathers all of the Bloomin’ Apps projects in one place. Each image has clickable hotspots and includes suggestions for iPad, Google, Android, and Web 2.0 applications to support each of the levels of Bloom’s Revised Taxonomy. Kathy Schrock created a page to allow you to share your favorite Web 2.0, iOS, or Android app with others.”
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Rhondda
