Tuesday 28 May 2013

Curation Tools for Education


image credits: Content Crossroads

What is Content Curation?

As instructors, we are all  information curators.  How do you collect and share currently relevant content with your students?  How do your students research and share information that they find with the rest of class? What tools do you use to manage or facilitate presentation of resources? Is it public? Can students access it at other times? In groups?

Modern web tools make it easy for both students and instructors to contribute online discoveries to class conversations.  Using free online content curation software, we can easily integrate new content in a variety of ways.


How can I use Content Curation in My Class?

Instructors are using online content curation tools in the classroom to:

  • create group activities.
  • organize and disseminate new content as a sort of digital handout to students in online and flipped classrooms.
  • collect and share professional reading materials with students.
  • foster discussion about current events.
  • encourage students to become both content creators and curators.
  • connect to experts outside class and to the world knowledge base.
  • critique information available on the web.
  • teach students to curate social media.
  • help students gain credibility and exposure.
  • keep track of online research efforts.
  • create reading lists.
  • help students gain access to the ‘collective intelligence’ of the Internet.

The following are some real-life examples of how content curation tools are being used in education. Pinterest is a pinboard-styled social photo sharing website. The service allows users to create and manage theme-based image collections linked out to sites of origin.


Storify is a way to tell stories using social media such as tweets, photos and videos. Users search multiple social networks from one place, and then drag individual elements into stories. Users can re-order the elements and also add text to help give context to the readers.


Scoop.it allows users to create and share their own themed magazines designed around a given topic. 


Diigo is a soical bookmarking tool that allows users to collect bookmarks, annotate them and share to groups or lists.


Pearltrees is a content curation site that forms communities through sharing links through a visually striking interface. 


Get Started Using Content Curation Tools

Each service listed above offers a Bookmarklet to help you grab items of interest to add to your curation boards. A Bookmarklet allows you to quickly grab any content you find on the web and put it into your chosen collecting/sharing service. More information on bookmarklets at: Tech Support Guides.

In  iTeachU (sligthly abridged)

Wednesday 22 May 2013

The Cone of Experience

Due to its importance, today, we are reposting a theory created in the 40s by Edgar Dale but that is still so updated, concerning the concepts of multimedia/ hypermedia learning, playing a central role in our every day life as teachers.

found pic @ Edu Technorama

Wednesday 15 May 2013

Learning New Vocabulary



Professor Word is a service that can help students learn new SAT and ACT vocabulary words. Professor Word operates as a browser bookmarklet in Chrome, Firefox, Internet Explorer, and Safari. When you're reading a webpage click on the Professor Word bookmarklet to quickly identify SAT and ACT vocabulary words on that page. You can also use Professor Word to get definitions for any unfamiliar word on a webpage. To get a definition just highlight the word a small dialogue box containing the definition will appear.

Vocabulary Spelling City offers a database of more than 42,000 spelling words and sentences. The words and sentences can be customized for your students. This means that Vocabulary Spelling City supports US and UK spellings of words like "favorite" and "favourite," "color" and "colour." Teachers can use Vocabulary Spelling City to create custom lists of words for their students to practice spelling and to study the definitions of those words. To help students learn the proper pronunciation of the words on their practice lists, Vocabulary Spelling City provides clear, spoken recordings of every word. Students can play games, study words, and quiz themselves on the spellings of the words on their lists. Vocabulary Spelling City allows teachers to print activities for use in their classrooms when their students don't have access to computers. 

Wordia is a service that offers features videos of people (students and teachers) explaining and demonstrating the meaning of words. Wordia offers games based on the words in the word lists developed by Wordia staff and the lists developed by teachers and students. Students and teachers have the option to create their own word lists and create their own games based on those lists. 

Knoword is a fun and challenging game that tests your ability to match definitions to words. Knoword is played like this; you're presented with the first letter of a word, its part of speech, and the definition. You then have to fill in the correct spelling of the word. If you enter the correct word, you earn points. If you don't get it right, you lose points. You don't have to register to play Knoword, but you can register if you want. Registering for Knoword gives you the option to keep track of your game statistics. Registered users can also earn badges based on their performances.

Vocab Ahead offers online study rooms in which students can take practice vocabulary quizzes. The quizzes provide instant feedback on each question as well as summary information at the end of the quiz. While taking the quiz if a student is stuck on an item he or she can click on the hint tab. Vocab Ahead also offers video demonstrations of SAT vocabulary words. Teachers can create their own custom video playlists and place them into playlist widgets.

Tuesday 14 May 2013

Using Video to Reinvent Education

Salman Khan talks about how and why he created the remarkable Khan Academy, a carefully structured series of educational videos offering complete curricula in math and, now, other subjects. He shows the power of interactive exercises, and calls for teachers to consider flipping the traditional classroom script -- give students video lectures to watch at home, and do "homework" in the classroom with the teacher available to help.

Thursday 9 May 2013

Creating Video Questionnaires


Intervue.me is a website based on the use of webcams. The site enables users to create questionnaires and then get the recipients of the questionnaire to leave video recorded answers. The site is very easy to use.
Register the go to 'My Dashboard' and click on 'Create New' to start your first questionnaire.


First you decide on the levels of privacy you want for the questionnaire and whether you want people to be able to leave anonymous answers or add comments to the answers.


Next you click on 'Start adding questions'.

You can type in your question and give more explanation below the question if you think that makes it clearer. You can add as many questions as you want. You'll also need to click on 'Edit title' so that you can give your questionnaire a name.


Once you have added all your questions you can just click on 'Share' or 'Invite' to either get a URL for your questionnaire or to email it to specific people.


Then once people receive the questionnaire they just click on the questions and record their answers using the webcam in their laptop.
To see all the videos you can just go to 'My Dashboard' and click on the 'Videos' tab.


How to use Intervue.me with students:
  • Create comprehension check questions to go with reading homework so that students also do some speaking for homework.
  • Create opinion polls for students to answer.
  • Make action research questionnaires
  • Play the alibi game and get students to explain where they were and what they were doing at particular points in time.
  • Ask students about childhood memories.

Tuesday 7 May 2013

The Importance of Using a Firewall


People often think about the best way to configure their computer to protect against threats, such as, worms and Trojan horses. They say they have installed antivirus protection and never open unexpected email attachments. But they wonder if that is enough. Antivirus protection is certainly an important part of aneffective protection solution. It has the ability to detect known threats as well as many new ones, but there is a second technology that can be added to help complete the picture: a firewall.
image credits: How Stuff Works
While antivirus software helps to protect the file system against unwanted programs, a firewall helps to keep attackers or external threats from getting access to your system in the first place. Most people are aware that worms often travel through email. They generally arrive as an attachment to an email that the user is enticed to click on by the text of the email itself. We call these threats “mass-mailing worms.” The best thing to do with these threats is simply to delete the email and not click on the attachment.
Other threats travel from computer to computer without the knowledgeof the user. They can find a computer that has lower security settings or unpatched vulnerabilities, and insert themselves onto that system without the user ever knowing what is happening. Many worms and Trojanhorses, often known as “bots”, travel this way. They utilize the Internet to find computers to infect. The user will never know that their system has been compromised because the threat enters the computer quietly.
This is exactly where a firewall can help protect you. The firewall monitors all network traffic and has the ability to identify and block unwanted traffic. Since most computers these days are connected to the Internet, attackers have many opportunities to find victim computers. These attackers probe other computers on the Internet to determine if they are vulnerable to various types of attacks. When they find a suitable computer, they can compromise it and insert themselves onto it. At that point the attacker can make the victim computer perform almost any task he desires. Attackers will often try to steal personal information for the purposes of many types of fraud. All of this activity takes place in the background without the user knowing what is happening.
There are two basic types of firewalls: client firewalls and appliance firewalls. A client firewall is software that resides on the computer itself and monitors all of the network traffic on that computer. An appliance firewall is a hardware device that is connected between the Internet and your computer. These devices are often used in small network environments where several computers need to share the same Internet connection. The small routers that many people use in their offices and homes usually have built-in firewalls. If you use a router, make sure it has a firewall. Both types of firewalls can keep the attackers from gaining unwanted access to your computer. Users who travel should always have a client firewall installed on their system. You don’t want to take any chances when you are connected to the Internet away from the office or home.
While antivirus software is a great tool to help keep you safe, adding a firewall will give the bad guys out there the one-two punch that will be a knockout.
Source: Symantec Official Blog (slightly abridged)
Here you can get an extense list of firewall software available online, both for paid and free download.

Monday 6 May 2013

The Origins of Writing


This video could be part of a warm-up to any writing task. It might also be of interest to History or Art teachers to approach topics, such as, the development of civilizations, typography and calligraphy. 

Wednesday 1 May 2013

International Workers' Day

Google doodle for Workers' Day 2013

International Workers' Day (also known as May Day) is a celebration of the international labour movement. May 1st is a national holiday in more than 80 countries and celebrated unofficially in many other countries.
In Portugal, the May 1st celebration was harshly repressed during the fascist dictatorship regime of António de Oliveira Salazar. Since the "Revolução dos Cravos" (Carnation Revolution) on 25th April 1974, the "Dia do Trabalhador" (Worker's Day) is now celebrated by the several political parties. Worker's Day also represents the unionized workers that try to improve the increasingly hard conditions of work. It is an official public holiday.