Useful Links

“Educational Postcard: ”Grades are not t” (CC BY-NC 2.0) by  Ken Whytock 

Texting in the Classroom (or using Fake texts to connect & engage students). The Brown Bag Teacher A discussion about different ways to use the tool “ifaketext” It allows users to create faux iPhone text conversations. The website lets you fit between 35 and 50 words on one screen (a conversation between 2 different people). Then, you can take a screen shot of the conversation or right-click to save the picture as a Jpeg. Here are three different ways I see myself using this free resource.”

50 Insanely Useful Websites College Students Need To Know – SOCIETY19 “There are many apps and websites for college students that make the learning process a lot easier. Here it has been simplified by consolidating 50 good websites for college students into one list you can access any time, any place.”

Cultivating Mindfulness in the Classroom | Getting Smart “Mindfulness: a mental state achieved by focusing one’s awareness on the present moment, while calmly acknowledging and accepting one’s feelings, thoughts, and bodily sensations, used as a therapeutic technique.

Mindfulness is about more than the stereotypes that might pop into your mind when you hear words like “meditation” and “guided visualization.” Teaching kids how to be more mindful and aware of their thoughts and feelings has been shown to improve memory and attention, boost learning outcomes, decrease behavior issues and more.”

The Research Files Episode 21: The impact of Snapchat in education settings | Teacher | ACER

What Constitutes Plagiarism? § Harvard Guide to Using Sources “While it may seem obvious that copying someone else’s words verbatim and submitting them in a paper with your name on it is plagiarism, other types of plagiarism may be less familiar to you. These more subtle forms of plagiarism are actually more common, and you should make sure you understand all of them, as well as how to avoid them by conducting your research and writing carefully and responsibly.”

Part 5: STEM, STEAM, Makers: 35 Resources For A Makerspace | 21 st Century Educational Technology and Learning

Top 10 Things You Didn’t Know Your Makerspace Needs | Getting Smart Some makerspace components are very commonly known. Educators planning makerspaces know they can start small with simple circuitry materials, cardboard and hot glue guns, or go to the biggest level with 3D printers and laser cutters. The level of sophistication/extravagance of the space will vary enormously depending on each institution’s choices and funding but there were a few surprises as we developed our space, noticing or finding unexpectedly critical makerspace components that have made our space more successful. Here are 10 unexpectedly critical makerspace components, clickbait countdown style!

EdTechTeacher | How to Design Your Own MakerSpaces – From Courtney Pepe “What is a MakerSpace?  Makers build, fix, and create.  They are students, teachers, tinkerers, cooks, technology buffs, architects, crafters, performers, hobbyists, builders, artists, engineers, scientists, and writers.  They use the MakerSpace to solve real life problems with access to tools and materials.  A MakerSpace is not confined to a school setting but can also be a community space like a public library where community members of all ages, means, and abilities can design, prototype, and create original works.”

Adding value: Principals’ perceptions of the role of the teacher-librarian | QUT ePrints “This paper reports on a study into principals’ perceptions of the role of the teacher-librarian. Nine principals in Australia were interviewed about the role of the teacher-librarian and library in their school. The findings indicated a range of ways in which the teacher-librarian adds value to the school, including in their role as teacher, providing the principal with a broad perspective on the workings of the school, providing advice and ideas, and providing leadership in the use of information and communications technology (ICT) at the school. It also identified a number of personal qualities valued by principals.”

How to STEAM ” Once you have the foundations of what STEAM is and why it’s important, the next step is to understand how to implement STEAM with integrity.  Many schools claim to be “STEAM Schools”, and yet their model of implementation is weak or simply brushes the surface of what STEAM truly requires.  The authors’ core belief is that STEAM has a foundation of integration at it’s core, which means that each curricular area should be both taught in its own right, as well as connected through standards and assessments when used in tandem.”

8 digital skills we must teach our children | World Economic Forum   “How can we, as parents, educators and leaders, prepare our children for the digital age? Without a doubt, it is critical for us to equip them with digital intelligence. The digital world is a vast expanse of learning and entertainment. But it is in this digital world that kids are also exposed to many risks, such as cyberbullying, technology addiction, obscene and violent content, radicalization, scams and data theft. The problem lies in the fast and ever evolving nature of the digital world, where proper internet governance and policies for child protection are slow to catch up, rendering them ineffective. 8 skills suggestions and a great infographic to visually set out different area.”

5 Ways to Make YouTube Safer for Kids – YouTube Youtube short pPublished on 1 Jul 2015 by Common Sense Media. Kids love watching funny videos, learning cool stuff or uploading their own creations on YouTube. Discover 5 ways to make YouTube Safer for kids, whether they are watching or creating a channel. “

5 Social Media Rules for Teens & Tweens – YouTube Short video published on 2 Oct 2015 by Common Sense Media. “Social Media is a way of life for many teens, and even some tweens. Here are 5 rules to share with your kids before they start posting, uploading or sharing online”

12 Reasons To Teach Searching Techniques With Google Advanced Search… Even Before Using The Basic Search | 21 st Century Educational Technology and Learning “Google Advanced Search, when used correctly, can facilitate student’s to expand their digital abilities while promoting productivity and learning in the classroom.”

20 Awesome BYOD and Mobile Learning Apps | Edutopia Post from Vicki Davis. “Bring Your Own Devices (BYOD) have been in her schhool for three years. Students certainly took to it. They bring it all! We have iPads, Surface, iPhones, Droids, Chromebooks, Macs, and PC laptops. Here’s her thinking about some of the tools she likes.”

Smithsonian Learning Lab :: Discover. Create. Share A great resource. “The Smithsonian Learning Lab is about discovery, creation, and sharing. ” The Smithsonian Learning Lab contains more than one million resources (videos, photos, and documents, etc.) on topics from the Discovery space shuttle to the French and Indian War. Students and teachers can organize content into “collections” and set up quizzes or assignments, among other things. The Lab’s Senior Digital Strategist Darren Milligan also says that the array of content will grow over time, both with user-generated resources and new digital museum artifacts.

Part 2: STEM, STEAM, Makers: Over 40 Amazing STEM Resources | 21 st Century Educational Technology and Learning “Welcome to this second post in a series that brings STEM, STEAM, and Maker Space together with Project Based Learning and proper technology integration in the classroom. You will discover around one hundred resources in this series along with some great ideas for finding student success.”

Hanyu@Narralakes: Screencasting on a budget Screencasting (making a video recording of your computer or tablet screen” can be used for making a presentation.  Teachers can find this resource valuable as it is a recording that can be used by students to learn or revise lessons or can be reused for future use. It can also be edited if need be.

Upper Elementary Snapshots: Reading Strategies that Work! “6 simple strategies that we can teach our students to drastically improve reading comprehension.” Link to downloadable posters

Google Arts & Culture A useful resource. An aggregator like Google Cultural Institute can bring together collections from multiple institutions from around the world.

Top six Apps for creating word clouds – ICTEvangelist

A Handy Infographic Featuring 10 Things Every Teacher Should be Able to Do on Google Classroom ~ Educational Technology and Mobile Learning “An Infographic that features 10 of what we believe are basic things every teacher should be able to do on Google Classroom. Instructions included are only for Classroom on the web, check out Google Classroom Help to learn more about how to use these features on mobile devices.”

Three schools reforms that will lift student outcomes Analysis piece. “A federal election is an opportunity to take stock of how Australia is doing, where it’s going, and what governments can do about it. This series, written by program directors at the Grattan Institute, explores the challenges that Australia faces and advocates policy changes for budgets, economic growth, cities and transport, energy, school education, higher education and health.”

Part 4: STEM, STEAM, Makers: Turning STEM to STEAM… 24 Resources | 21 st Century Educational Technology and Learning “It is the STEAM that allows students to not just be technology consumers, but technology creators! Proper infusion of the Arts will create a STEAM culture that engages and promotes intrinsic learning. In the post the author has included some sites that may just allow educators to integrate the Arts, allowing STEM to become STEAM! While there is a lot of talk on STEAM Education, it is difficult to find a lot of material.”

Character Scrapbook Teaching Guide | Scholastic.com Character Scrapbook, produced by Scholastic, is a web resource that is a simple to use. It offers a reader’s response activity that students can use to analyse any character in a book or story.

The template allows them to include details and reflections about a character through text, but it also provides the students with an opportunity to create a visual representation of that character. Once created they can save or print it as a type of scrapbook. .
It offers is a simple way to engage students and also offers an opportunity to help them form a deeper understanding of a book’s character(s).
Character Scrapbook could be utilized with fiction or non-fiction text as an individual, small group and/or even whole class assignment
There is a detailed teacher’s guide on the Scholastic site that has a detailed how-to as well as lesson extensions.

STEM

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

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Useful links

  by  tassattack 

• Europeana 1914-1918 – Explore stories It is a treasure trove of unique sources for anyone interested in WWI. Timely with the 100th anniversary upon us. The site offers access to digitized films from the period, institutional cultural heritage and official records alongside thousands of stories shared by the general public, illustrated with digital images of objects, letters, personal diaries, photographs, and other items from the period of the First World War.

• Teacher Resources for Learning about Copyright and Fair Use ~ Educational Technology and Mobile Learning  Post from Ed tech and Mobile Learning Blog. “It is important we teach our students to be good digital citizens. They need to understand how to properly credit sources and documents they grab from Internet, and it is not always straightforward. The University of Texas offers a course entitled “Copyright Crash Course” that outlines in a very clear and eloquent language the different things we all need to know about copyright.” Links are given to a few important sections.

• Legendary Lands: Umberto Eco on the Greatest Maps of Imaginary Places and Why They Appeal to Us | Brain Pickings “Celebrated Italian novelist, philosopher, essayist, literary critic, and list-lover Umberto Eco has had a long fascination with the symbolic and the metaphorical, extending all the way back to his vintage semiotic children’s books. Half a century later, he revisits the mesmerism of the metaphorical and the symbolic in The Book of Legendary Lands (public library) — an illustrated voyage into history’s greatest imaginary places, with all their fanciful inhabitants and odd customs, on scales as large as the mythic continent Atlantis and as small as the fictional location of Sherlock Holmes’s apartment.

• Inside The Most Interesting Man In The World’s Personal Library [31 Photos] | The Roosevelts  ” Jay Walker made a lot of money starting Priceline.com. He spent his money collecting. The collection, dubbed the Library of Human Imagination, has grown into something epic that rivals any museum on Earth. the 3,600 square foot, three story facility features multilevel tiers, “floating” platforms, connecting stairways, glass-paneled bridges, dynamic lighting and is bursting at the seams with artifacts of all types. A truly amazing collection that celebrates human endeavour and preserves it for future generations.

• Pullman: ‘every school should have a good library’ | The Bookseller A short piece in The Bookseller about a Radio 4 programme with Pullman’s who spoke out in defence of school libraries, saying it is “very important that every school, secondary or primary, should have a properly staffed, and properly equipped and properly furnished library.”

• Keep Students Safe Online Infographic | e-Learning Infographics

• Wepware :: Share your vision Wepware is a web app that allows you to capture any web page or part of it and then organize it into Pinterest-like boards. These boards can be easily published and shared on social media channels. The interesting thing about this tool is that it can capture dynamic information “boxes” that will continue to be updated even after you put them into your curated collections. These live dynamic information pieces can also be easily pasted on any web page and kept there as a live reference.

• Digital Citizenship Resources and Template – Google Drive From the Edmonto Public Schools, the information is meant to work as a guide for schools in the area of digital citizenship. The information can be altered the fit the specific needs of any school.  

• 27 Simple Ideas To Stimulate Creativity – Edudemic There are some simple but effective ideas here that should stimulate creativity. They are easy to incorporate into daily routines. The infographic is a useful image that you can use to help you think of new ways to approach things.

• Interactive: 100 years of drought in Australia – ABC News (Australian Broadcasting Corporation) From ABC news site: “Use our interactive map to see 100 years of rainfall patterns across Australia, famously a land “of droughts and flooding rains”.

• 6 Technology-Based Poetry Ideas For Students That Think They Hate Poetry Some useful ideas explained by a classroom teacher about how to engage students using some of the available technologies to explore poetry.

• How to Take a Screenshot on a Chromebook and Annotate it!

• A Guidebook for Social Media in the Classroom | Edutopia “Social media is another tool that you can use to make your classroom more engaging, relevant and culturally diverse.” A great post with matter-of-fact delivery and links to relevant sources.

• How To Cite Social Media: MLA & APA Formats | TeachBytes Now you can officially cite social media sources in MLA and APA formats.

• 9 Things Every Student Should Be Able to Do with Google Drive ~ Educational Technology and Mobile Learning Useful basic checklist for skill development.

• Online Poetry Resources | Edutopia A useful, annotated list of poetry resources.

• Phil Bradley’s weblog: The trojan horse of Getty ‘free’ images

• Developing digital literacies – Jisc infoNet “Digital literacy looks beyond functional IT skills to describe a richer set of digital behaviours, practices and identities. Digital literacies encompasses a range of other capabilities represented here in a seven elements model”

• Survey shows deep class divide in reading habits | Books | theguardian.com Data supporting many of the things we knew already. Sometimes things need to be repeated.

• The Unpretentious Librarian: Google Add-Ons Include EasyBib How to use the Google add-on – Easybib

• Technological, Pedagogical and Content Knowledge – Mark Anderson’s Blog ” One teacher describes how he has been trying to apply the three (technology, Pedagogy and Content Knowledge) things in the model in order to bring about use of technology in lessons so that technology that doesn’t dictate and is at the heart of everything.” “Part of my methodology for thinking behind how it might fit in a classroom was to re-create the classic TPACK Venn model so that I could make sense of it in my own head. Reproduced below with kind permission of the publisher, © 2012 by tpack.org with the addition of the 7 different elements of TPACK is my version”

• Learning Never Stops: 50 websites that help make learning science fun A long, annotated list of science websites that one teacher has used in classroom situations.” Especially useful for the younger year levels.

• Minecraft – Where Everybody Knows Your Name » edurealms.com If you don’t know about Minecraft this is post offers a good place to start with videos, links to further reading and sites, including school sites to visit.

• ICTmagic – Cross Curricular A useful list of education technology that can be used for Cross Curricular activities. Each is commented on and link supplied. Many are primary but not all.

• Kicked Out of the Library | Pam Librarian The way NOT to go! All the things that a library in today’s world should not do.

• 10 changes a school library must consider in the digital era | eSchool News | eSchool News The changes listed are under the headings: 10. Update, 9. Spend, 8.  Evolve, 7. Replace, 6. Showcase, 5. Assess, 4. Divest, 3. Adapt, 2. Promote and 1. Track . The ideas are a good source for debte and the advice could adapted by most libraries.

• 11 Tips For Students To Manage Their Digital Footprints – Useful advice for everyone but we should be giving this information to our students if we are really preparing them for life beyond school.

• Digital Footprint Video | Common Sense Media A short, simple video created to make people aware of  how their digital footprint might be created.

• Google time-saving tips to improve student learning | eSchool News | eSchool News | 2 Some useful ideas that can be adapted by most teachers.

• Listen to 15 Literary Icons Reading Their Own Work – Flavorwire “A collection of 15 writers — some alive, some long gone — reading their own words (all fiction, with the exception of William Faulkner, whose Nobel Prize speech is included because it’s now often taught alongside his novels and stories, and Joan Didion’s memoir, The Year of Magical Thinking). ” Authors collected: Anne Sexton, David Foster Wallace, Dorothy Parker, Flannery O’Connor, Frank O’Hara, James Baldwin, Jeffrey Eugenides, Joan Didion, Kurt Vonnegut, Marilynne Robinson, Saul Bellow, Truman Capote, William Faulkner, Zadie Smith.

• 12 Most Common Things To Know About Creative Commons A good overview that could assist when explaining CC to students and teaching colleagues. It could help you create a simple summary (or even infographic) of important points.

• 20 Guiding Questions To Develop A Digital Literacy Plan – These questions offer a great starting point as you develop a digital literacy plan.

• 8 Types of Learning Events Every eLearning Course Must Have Infographic — e-Learning Feeds “A learning event is a simplified description of the student’s learning activity. There’s an infinite number of learning strategies, but only eight learning events. It isn’t necessary to use all the events in the creation of your course. The 8 Types of Learning Events Every eLearning Course Must Have Infographic presents a ‘palette’ of 8 specific ways that the eLearning designer can use to describe any point in the development of learning activities.” The infographic gives a simple visual of the 8.

• 27 Things Your Teacher Librarian Does | An Ethical Island Great promotional infographic – 27 Things Your Teacher Librarian For You! from blog by Mia MacMeekin (An Ethical Island)

• The World Today – Landmark case awards damages for Twitter defamation 05/03/2014 Understanding your social media responsibilities is important. Landmark case in NSW – libel case upheld for plaintiff

• Infograph Shows how Google Works | UKEdChat.com – Supporting the #UKEdChat Education Community An interesting infographc explaining how the search engine Google pulls information from the web. It is reasonable simple and would be a useful resource to use when trying to explain the process to students.

• A Principal’s Reflections: Global Connections Made Possible Through Technology Great use of technology giving students a global understanding of topic. Principal’s Reflections: simple but very effective.

• Prezi – Blog – The 5 Metrics You Need to Know to Give a Great Presentation These tips are simple pieces of advice to help you connect with an audience and get your message across. They are practical and should be keep in mind for most presentations and even teaching in the classroom.

• Innovations in Education – Student Curators: Powerful Learning A reflection on some powerful learning in the classroom. Some of the highlights, with examples of student work, and some amazing student feedback are described. It was a great way to develop learning skills and address research standards. It also exemplified personalized learning by some high motivated students.

• The Book Fairy-Goddess: Digital Citizenship A useful post that offers some ideas about re-enforcing good digital citizenship practises.

• Phil Bradley’s weblog: The trojan horse of Getty ‘free’ images

• Google Forms: how to create a quiz or a test that automatically grades itself in Google Docs–Internet–Tools & Tips for Multimedia Designers–Planet of the Web Useful tips from a classroom teacher. “Using forms in Google docs lets anyone create forms quickly and share those forms via email, embed them into a webpage or blog. If you are a teacher, you can create formulas that allow you to have these forms graded in minutes. The formula part is a bit challenging, so I wrote this article to talk about how I recently created a final for one of my classes.”

• Getty Images makes 35 million images free in fight against copyright infringement » British Journal of Photography “Getty Images has single-handedly redefined the entire photography market with the launch of a new embedding feature that will make more than 35 million images freely available to anyone for non-commercial usage” Be careful to read the small print though as there are other considerations apart from the initial image.

• Beg & Intermediate Google – Technology Integration This offers some great practical video tutorials on different Google services including: Gmail, G Calendar, GDrive, GDocs, GForms, GSpreadsheets, GPresentations,GDrawings, GSites. These tutorials are 30 minute screencasts of webinars.

• Scootle – Home Scootle is a website which is a way of locating any of the 8000 items/learning objects in the Learning Federation for K-12. It just makes it easier to locate, download and manage required items, and a means to access this bank of resources. You can manage the resources into folders of your own, and can give instructions and/or comments for each item. It provides a URL for students or other staff to access your bank of resources webpage.

• Free Technology for Teachers: Webinar Recording – Digital Storytelling With Comics  The recording of a webinar where Richard Byrne discussed how to create comic strips with Storyboard That and then how to use them in other services including WidBook and WeVideo.

• Kurt Vonnegut’s Shapes of Stories in infographic form – Boing Boing

• 15 Best Tech Creation Tools | graphite Blog These useful tools give students the right tools to narrate, animate, and dictate. The post will explains them to teachers by giving some examples of how to incorporate art and design lesson plans into their existing courses.

• 4 Great Rubrics to Develop Students Presentations and Speaking Skills ~ Educational Technology and Mobile Learning The 4 represent rubrics for different educational levels.

• 10 of The Best Bibliography and Citation Tools for Teachers and Student Researchers ~ Educational Technology and Mobile Learning A good annotated list with a few tools new to me.

• 11 Tips For Students To Manage Their Digital Footprints – Useful advice for everyone but we should be giving this information to our students if we are really preparing them for life beyond school.

• Digital Footprint Video | Common Sense Media A short, simple video created to make people aware of  how their digital footprint might be created.

• Google time-saving tips to improve student learning | eSchool News | eSchool News | 2 Some useful ideas that can be adapted by most teachers.

• Listen to 15 Literary Icons Reading Their Own Work – Flavorwire ”A collection of 15 writers — some alive, some long gone — reading their own words (all fiction, with the exception of William Faulkner, whose Nobel Prize speech is included because it’s now often taught alongside his novels and stories, and Joan Didion’s memoir, The Year of Magical Thinking). ” Authors collected: Anne Sexton, David Foster Wallace, Dorothy Parker, Flannery O’Connor, Frank O’Hara, James Baldwin, Jeffrey Eugenides, Joan Didion, Kurt Vonnegut, Marilynne Robinson, Saul Bellow, Truman Capote, William Faulkner, Zadie Smith.

• 12 Most Common Things To Know About Creative Commons A good overview that could assist when explaining CC to students and teaching colleagues. It could help you create a simple summary (or even infographic) of important points.

• 20 Guiding Questions To Develop A Digital Literacy Plan – These questions offer a great starting point as you develop a digital literacy plan.

• 8 Types of Learning Events Every eLearning Course Must Have Infographic — e-Learning Feeds ”A learning event is a simplified description of the student’s learning activity. There’s an infinite number of learning strategies, but only eight learning events. It isn’t necessary to use all the events in the creation of your course. The 8 Types of Learning Events Every eLearning Course Must Have Infographic presents a ‘palette’ of 8 specific ways that the eLearning designer can use to describe any point in the development of learning activities.” The infographic gives a simple visual of the 8.

• 27 Things Your Teacher Librarian Does | An Ethical Island Great promotional infographic – 27 Things Your Teacher Librarian For You! from blog by Mia MacMeekin (An Ethical Island)

• The World Today – Landmark case awards damages for Twitter defamation 05/03/2014 Understanding your social media responsibilities is important. Landmark case in NSW – libel case upheld for plaintiff

• Infograph Shows how Google Works | UKEdChat.com – Supporting the #UKEdChat Education Community An interesting infographc explaining how the search engine Google pulls information from the web. It is reasonable simple and would be a useful resource to use when trying to explain the process to students.

• A Principal’s Reflections: Global Connections Made Possible Through Technology Great use of technology giving students a global understanding of topic. Principal’s Reflections: simple but very effective.

• Prezi – Blog – The 5 Metrics You Need to Know to Give a Great Presentation These tips are simple pieces of advice to help you connect with an audience and get your message across. They are practical and should be keep in mind for most presentations and even teaching in the classroom.

• Innovations in Education – Student Curators: Powerful Learning A reflection on some powerful learning in the classroom. Some of the highlights, with examples of student work, and some amazing student feedback are described. It was a great way to develop learning skills and address research standards. It also exemplified personalized learning by some high motivated students.

• The Book Fairy-Goddess: Digital Citizenship A useful post that offers some ideas about re-enforcing good digital citizenship practises.

• Phil Bradley’s weblog: The trojan horse of Getty ‘free’ images

• Google Forms: how to create a quiz or a test that automatically grades itself in Google Docs–Internet–Tools & Tips for Multimedia Designers–Planet of the Web Useful tips from a classroom teacher. “Using forms in Google docs lets anyone create forms quickly and share those forms via email, embed them into a webpage or blog. If you are a teacher, you can create formulas that allow you to have these forms graded in minutes. The formula part is a bit challenging, so I wrote this article to talk about how I recently created a final for one of my classes.”

• Getty Images makes 35 million images free in fight against copyright infringement » British Journal of Photography ”Getty Images has single-handedly redefined the entire photography market with the launch of a new embedding feature that will make more than 35 million images freely available to anyone for non-commercial usage” Be careful to read the small print though as there are other considerations apart from the initial image.

• Beg & Intermediate Google – Technology Integration This offers some great practical video tutorials on different Google services including: Gmail, G Calendar, GDrive, GDocs, GForms, GSpreadsheets, GPresentations,GDrawings, GSites. These tutorials are 30 minute screencasts of webinars.

• Scootle – Home Scootle is a website which is a way of locating any of the 8000 items/learning objects in the Learning Federation for K-12. It just makes it easier to locate, download and manage required items, and a means to access this bank of resources. You can manage the resources into folders of your own, and can give instructions and/or comments for each item. It provides a URL for students or other staff to access your bank of resources webpage.

• Free Technology for Teachers: Webinar Recording – Digital Storytelling With Comics  The recording of a webinar where Richard Byrne discussed how to create comic strips with Storyboard That and then how to use them in other services including WidBook and WeVideo.

• Kurt Vonnegut’s Shapes of Stories in infographic form – Boing Boing

• 15 Best Tech Creation Tools | graphite Blog These useful tools give students the right tools to narrate, animate, and dictate. The post will explains them to teachers by giving some examples of how to incorporate art and design lesson plans into their existing courses.

• 4 Great Rubrics to Develop Students Presentations and Speaking Skills ~ Educational Technology and Mobile Learning The 4 represent rubrics for different educational levels.

• 10 of The Best Bibliography and Citation Tools for Teachers and Student Researchers ~ Educational Technology and Mobile Learning A good annotated list with a few tools new to me.

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

Flipboard: Using and sharing in education

There are many people using Flipboard already and they are great fans so I have just decided to give it a try.

It was originally designed as a social network aggregation, magazine-format app for iPad in 2010.  Today is has become a  popular magazine-like content aggrregator apps for a variety of devices (iOS, Android, Kindle and others). You can even read Flipboard magazines in your web browser.

It is easy to set up . You simply pick a few categories you’re interested in,  add your favorite news sources, reading matter and Youtube videos and bring across any social networks such as Facebook, Twitter or Instagram.  Flipboard can connect it all together and makes it easy to curate the things that matter to you into your Flipboard magazine.  Each “tile” on the Flipboard dashboard represents a different subscription.  The thumbnail image on the “tile” changes as the content is updated. Tapping on a tile will open up the subscription for you to view the content.

It is easy to get started but Sue Waters (The Edublogger) has created a great step-by-step guide.

This is a tool that I can envisage being used in a number of ways by teachers and students.

Teachers could create a magazine for their students, whereby they “flip” all the articles, resources, etc they want students to access into the magazine which the students subscribe to. This could also be a ways of sharing professional learning materials between teaching colleagues, with all having access to add content. (This is the way i hope to begin  using it.)

Students could create a resource that they could add content to create a “textbook”.  An entire class could have access to a magazine, allowing all the students to add to the “textbook” thus creating a  very rich resource about a given topic or subject.

I am sure that there ae many more ways people are using this tool but its a start.

 

Useful links

  by  Ken Whytock 

• Dr Seuss Stories online | Smore Simple little videos accompany readings

• 4 Powerful BYOD Apps For The Disconnected Classroom – Edudemic The four tools mentioned are free and available for smartphones, tablets and laptop/desktop computers.This means that anyone can use them to create or complete work or connect with others. These are dynamic and comprehensive tools that can improve teaching and learning in the classroom. The tools discussed are: Edmodo, Curriculet, ClassDojo and Khan Academy.

• Group Reading with Google Documents – YouTube “How to use Google Documents for group reading in the classroom.” by Richard Byrne. Useful video on how to go about task.

• 10 Online Alternatives to PowerPoint for Creating Great Presentations A useful list of online alternatives that let you create interesting presentations on any device. By storing them in the cloud allows you to work on them wherever you are and whatever device you have. It is also very easy to share them or embed into other sites. They do not all have some of the flashier animations of PowerPoint but are still visually interesting.

• Strategic Directions for School Libraries From Judy O’Connell – Looking at how education libraries will best serve their communities in 2015.

• Teacher Infographics | An Ethical Island | Page 2 Infographic identifying 27 ways to be an effective classroom teacher

• Online Discussion Tips. | An Ethical Island Infographic about online student discussion boards. Tips for teachers to get the best responses from students.

• So you Want to be an Effective teacher? | An Ethical Island Ways to be an effective teacher in the classroom Infographic

• Infographic: “Tips For Teachers On Family Engagement” | Engaging Parents In School… Post links to the entire downloadable infographic developed by the PTA. Positive, useful advice.

• The Complete Guide to Twitter Lingo Useful guide with longer explanations.

• 5 Things Innovative Schools Do Differently – A.J. Juliani The 5 points are not complex but the implementation of each in schools has always proved more difficult. The point about having the students actively use technology and demonstrate their learning in real time is a great idea and well made.

• New Handy Chart on The Difference Between Projects and Project-based Learning ~ Educational Technology and Mobile Learning A useful chart comparing project-based learning in classrooms to simply doing projects.

• http://unicefdayforchildren.org.au/wp-content/uploads/2013/08/MG-creative-writing-FINAL1.pdf A document (PDF) written especially for UNICEF by Australia Ambassador & popular children’s author Morris Gleitzman. It incliudes 5 tips to inspire students to read and write their own stories or articles. This is part of an activity kit with information for teachers to use, including frameworks and sample pieces for them to use with students.

• How mobile developers are using games to help the victims of cyberbullying | GamesBeat | Games | by Jeff Grubb

• Reflection in the Learning Process, Not As An Add On | Langwitches Blog A very comprehensive post about how reflection supports and deepens the student learning process.It is offers many different tools as examples for reflecting, so that a student can choose the one that suits them best and use it later in their studies as a learning strategy. I have used mindmapping effectively as pre-post “tests” before and after a unit, and it is wonderful to see students realize how much they learned during the unit. It is one way of making learning more meaningful for them “

• Free Technology for Teachers: Teaching Literary Terms With Comics “An explanation about using “Storyboard That” to create comic strips to help students understand literary terms. Just part of the lessons created to help students understand the creative writing process.”

• Free Technology for Teachers: Educators App Turns Your Blog Into an iOS and Android App for Free This could be a useful tool for bloggers.

• Blogs and Labels are about Information Literacy | Langwitches Blog

• What is Evernote? | Using Evernote | How To Blog Better Interesting post discussing another way to use Evernote – this time to keep a blog organised.

• How to Comment | 4KJ @ Leopold Primary School

• Learning About Blogs FOR your Students- Part VI: Consistency | Langwitches Blog

• Learning About Blogs FOR your Students- Part V: Reciprocating | Langwitches Blog

• Learning About Blogs FOR your Students- Part IV: Connecting | Langwitches Blog Connecting students with blogging

• Learning About Blogs FOR Your Students- Part III: Commenting | Langwitches Blog Blogging with students – stepping it up to blogging-commenting.

• Educational Technology and Mobile Learning: Teachers Quick Guide to Blogging

• Learning About Blogs FOR your Students: Part VII – Quality | Langwitches Blog

• http://langwitches.org/blog/wp-content/uploads/2012/04/blogging-commenting-rubric.pdf A comprehensive rubric for student blogging from langwitches.

• Two Handy Blogging Rubrics for Teachers to Use with Their Students ~ Educational Technology and Mobile Learning

• Build a team | An Ethical Island The collaborative opportunities that the web offers can easily be mirrored within the four walls of the classroom. We should provide students with the right environment where they can work in teams and mentor each other. Mia from the “anethicalisland” site has this great visual featuring 27 tips for teachers to boost team work in class.

• Henry Sibley Presents: Managing Your Digital Footprint – YouTube A useful video developed for students at Sibley High School. College. Administrators and employers comment on how student representation in social media (digital footprint) influences college admission practices and hiring decisions.

• Digital Learning and Teaching Victoria | Digital Learning and Teaching Victoria (DLTV) replaces ICT in Education Victoria and the Victorian IT Teachers’ Association “Digital Learning and Teaching Victoria (DLTV) replaces ICT in Education Victoria and the Victorian IT Teachers’ Association. This new association will deliver professional support and networking opportunities to all educators.

• Five Best Free CD Ripper: Extract CD Collection to Various Audio Formats

• 10 Excellent Social Bookmarking Tools for Teachers ~ Educational Technology and Mobile Learning

• An Insider’s Guide to Social Media Etiquette This is a useful post about social media etiquette. It would useful to discuss that ideas with students. A lot of the advice is common sense but it is often good to clearly state what is common sense so everyone has a clear understanding of what to do and not do.

• 60 Ways To Use Twitter In The Classroom By Category A good list of innovative ways to use twitter as a learning and teaching tool.

• Cybersafety A useful site from the Victorian Dept of Ed and Early childhood development Offers links to anti-bullying and cyber safety sites.

• A Quick Visual Guide on How to Create An eBook from Wikipedia Articles ~ Educational Technology and Mobile Learning

• Touch Van Gogh – An Android App for Learning About Van Gogh | Android 4 Schools

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

Social media activities for Libraries.

Back in 1973 “The Two Ronnies” did the skit called “Shouting In The Library” It was from series three – Broadcast: September 1973 – January 1974. How to change this image? This one of libraries that the media often harks back to.

However Phil Bradley made this nice poster about social media activities. So many things have changed about library services. Some mentioned below we use, others are new and I have some new ideas for different uses to what we are doing at the moment.

The poster is available under Creative Commons licensing, so you are free to take a copy of this and use it without having to ask. However as always remember that you should attribute it to him and not change it nor make money from it.

  by  Phil Bradley