Thursday 31 January 2013
Wednesday 30 January 2013
Tuesday 29 January 2013
Using online portfolios in the classroom
Our digital world is transforming the way we learn, and today's teachers
are tasked with the challenging job of sifting through the deluge of
educational technologies and creating a meaningful learning experience
for students.
Next-generation education portfolio platforms - such as Digication, Pathbrite, Taskstream and Epsilen - are one way for teachers to start early and educate students about how they can manage their own academic and professional accomplishments. From using portfolios for giving students educational feedback to the portability of transcripts and official academic documents, new opportunities exist for lifelong learning and sharing.
Here are five best practices for implementing an education portfolio platform in any K-12 or college classroom.
1. Build in Opportunities for Peer-to-Peer Learning
Focus on the goal of increasing students' digital literacy by fostering a collaborative learning environment where some of the more tech-savvy students can guide and help others learn. These practices can generate trust, offer problem-solving opportunities, and deepen peer-to-peer learning on the educational lessons taught in the course.
2. Create Lessons That Foster Data and Knowledge Curation
Sifting through the endless hoards of information on the Internet is becoming a necessary skill. Students need to learn how to find reliable sources and how to conduct research in an organized and discriminating way. Eleventh-grade English teacher Amy McGeorge of Leadership Public Schools, a high school in the San Francisco Bay Area, began using next-generation education portfolios in the classroom to teach the literary classic Catcher in the Rye. She assigned a digital literary analysis and asked students to create an online portfolio that included what they learned about the characters. The results showed better-than-ever student engagement and understanding of the story.
3. Engaging for All Levels of Learners
One of the biggest challenges for today's large classrooms and high student-to-teacher ratios is offering high-performing students engaging activities that won't hold them back while the teachers focus on students who need additional support. Online portfolio projects are a stimulating activity that allows learners of all levels to deepen their knowledge on a subject matter or assignment while maintaining a common ground with their peers.
4. Develop Organization Skills and Plan for the Future
Instead of sorting through crumpled assignments in the bottoms of backpacks, students are able to login to their online portfolios and find everything in an organized manner. Using tags for common subject areas helps students sort through all of the information they have collected so that they can see the "bigger picture" and be reminded of all the work they have done in a specific area. I saw one example from a graduate level course at the University of Illinois in the School of Library and Information Science. Here, students were given the assignment of creating an online portfolio that showed digital materials reflecting theoretical concepts on gender, race and sexuality learned in the course. Not only did student understanding of the concepts far surpass the classes that weren't using online portfolios, but students also reported high levels of satisfaction with their ability to share their class portfolios with professional and personal contacts beyond the classroom.
5. Not All Online Portfolios are Created Equal
When picking an online portfolio, look for portfolios where the creators remain the owners of the data compiled. It's important that students and users have access to the content of the portfolio beyond the course or college education.
Using online portfolios successfully gives early adopters in the classroom the latitude to teach peers how to master the technology. Learning can be accelerated through the process of independently curating new knowledge and can also be extended beyond the classroom for a long-term collection of academic and professional successes.
By Heather Giles @ Edutopia - Technological Integration (slightly abridged)
Next-generation education portfolio platforms - such as Digication, Pathbrite, Taskstream and Epsilen - are one way for teachers to start early and educate students about how they can manage their own academic and professional accomplishments. From using portfolios for giving students educational feedback to the portability of transcripts and official academic documents, new opportunities exist for lifelong learning and sharing.
Here are five best practices for implementing an education portfolio platform in any K-12 or college classroom.
image credits: Carbon Made Portfolios |
Focus on the goal of increasing students' digital literacy by fostering a collaborative learning environment where some of the more tech-savvy students can guide and help others learn. These practices can generate trust, offer problem-solving opportunities, and deepen peer-to-peer learning on the educational lessons taught in the course.
2. Create Lessons That Foster Data and Knowledge Curation
Sifting through the endless hoards of information on the Internet is becoming a necessary skill. Students need to learn how to find reliable sources and how to conduct research in an organized and discriminating way. Eleventh-grade English teacher Amy McGeorge of Leadership Public Schools, a high school in the San Francisco Bay Area, began using next-generation education portfolios in the classroom to teach the literary classic Catcher in the Rye. She assigned a digital literary analysis and asked students to create an online portfolio that included what they learned about the characters. The results showed better-than-ever student engagement and understanding of the story.
3. Engaging for All Levels of Learners
One of the biggest challenges for today's large classrooms and high student-to-teacher ratios is offering high-performing students engaging activities that won't hold them back while the teachers focus on students who need additional support. Online portfolio projects are a stimulating activity that allows learners of all levels to deepen their knowledge on a subject matter or assignment while maintaining a common ground with their peers.
4. Develop Organization Skills and Plan for the Future
Instead of sorting through crumpled assignments in the bottoms of backpacks, students are able to login to their online portfolios and find everything in an organized manner. Using tags for common subject areas helps students sort through all of the information they have collected so that they can see the "bigger picture" and be reminded of all the work they have done in a specific area. I saw one example from a graduate level course at the University of Illinois in the School of Library and Information Science. Here, students were given the assignment of creating an online portfolio that showed digital materials reflecting theoretical concepts on gender, race and sexuality learned in the course. Not only did student understanding of the concepts far surpass the classes that weren't using online portfolios, but students also reported high levels of satisfaction with their ability to share their class portfolios with professional and personal contacts beyond the classroom.
5. Not All Online Portfolios are Created Equal
When picking an online portfolio, look for portfolios where the creators remain the owners of the data compiled. It's important that students and users have access to the content of the portfolio beyond the course or college education.
Using online portfolios successfully gives early adopters in the classroom the latitude to teach peers how to master the technology. Learning can be accelerated through the process of independently curating new knowledge and can also be extended beyond the classroom for a long-term collection of academic and professional successes.
By Heather Giles @ Edutopia - Technological Integration (slightly abridged)
Monday 28 January 2013
Blended Learning Resources by MIT
BLOSSOMS is an MIT educational project in partnership with colleagues in
Jordan and Pakistan. Each BLOSSOMS module is a multi-segment
educational video to be shown in a high school math or science class,
with the in-class teacher leading the students in interactive
educational activities between each BLOSSOMS video segment. BLOSSOMS is
funded by the Hewlett Foundation with additional funding by the Sloan
Foundation and by partners in Jordan and Pakistan.
Check the following video to understand the potential of this tool:
Friday 25 January 2013
Thursday 24 January 2013
Wednesday 23 January 2013
Tuesday 22 January 2013
President Obama!
image credits: The English Blog |
This cartoon by Luojie, cartoonist for the English-language China Daily, depicts the swearing-in ceremony of President Obama, marking the start of his second term of office.
Under the Constitution, a president’s
term ends at noon on January 20, and the new president has to be sworn
in on the same day. The presidential inauguration
usually takes place in public, but when Jan. 20 falls on a Sunday,
presidents have shifted the public ceremony a day and opted for a
swearing-in at the White House, which is what happened this year.
Yesterday's ceremony took place in the Blue Room at the White House, and
Obama took the oath of office on Michele Obama's family bible.
Yesterday, which also happened to be Martin Luther King Day, saw a more lavish public reenactment. This public swearing-in drew about 800,000 to the National Mall
to watch the poetry, music and oratory outside the U.S. Capitol and included several nods to this president’s place in history as the
first African American to hold the office. Obama placed his hand
on two Bibles, one owned by the slain civil rights leader and another
used by Abraham Lincoln at his swearing-in on March 4, 1861.
This cartoon shows a worried-looking Obama taking the oath on a pile of debt, surrounded by piles of debt—a reference to the U.S debt mountain, which currently stands at over $16 trillion and rising fast. Having avoided the fiscal cliff, one of Obama's priorities in his second term will be to deal with the exploding national debt.
Source: The English Blog (slightly abridged)
Monday 21 January 2013
Friday 18 January 2013
Recycling old blog posts
image credits: SearchTempo |
If you’ve been blogging for
a while, you’ve probably had a day where you thought, “I have nothing to blog
about! I’ve blogged about everything I can imagine already!” It happens to
everyone.
So what can you do? You
could try clearing your head to come up with new blog post ideas or taking a
break from blogging until you’re inspired again.
But those two options are
passive—you’re waiting for the good idea to come to you. If you don’t have the time
to wait around for inspiration, reworking some older posts to be current and
relevant is a great way to get blogging again.
If you’re recycling an old post, you need to find a
way to keep the content current and engaging.
How to make your new content
better than the old
1. Use analytics to see what’s working. Before picking any old post to rework, pause to
reflect on what your analytics already tell you. Which posts have done the best
for you? Then take a deeper look at the content in those posts—are there any
common topics or formats that your readers best respond to?
By using your analytics to figure out common threads
in your most popular posts and then applying them to your recycled post, your
new post will be much more likely to succeed.
2. Listen to feedback from your readers. Besides checking out the numbers associated with
previous posts, read through successful old posts’ comment sections for ideas
on how to rework the post. Through comments and shares on social media, you may
find new angles or ideas for the reworked post you wouldn’t have thought of on
your own.
If you end up using reader feedback for the post, be
sure to thank them—they’ll be pumped to hear that you’re listening just as much
as they are.
3. Use Google Trends
(formerly Google Insights).
You can also use Google’s search data to spice up your content. Can your old
post be seen differently in light of a current news story or trend? If you’re
expanding on a topic you only briefly covered before, is it still relevant to
people today? Google Trends will help you figure out just how fresh your post
is and how to make it even better.
Ideas for awesome reworked,
reused, and recycled posts
So now you know how to make your new posts better than
your old, but what types of posts do best as reworked forms of their old
selves? Here are a few ways to do it:
1. Follow up with Part 2. Have a post that did really well or drew out an
intense debate? Breathe life into that old post by continuing the story or
addressing unanswered questions in a new post.
2. Create a themed series. If you notice that a post format has done tremendously
well, try turning it into a series. Whether you make the series a weekly post
or just one that pops up from time to time, continuing a theme builds anticipation
and regularity for your readers—a great way to establish a solid reader base.
3. Pull back the curtain. If you can take a personal spin on a post you’ve
already written—do it! For example, if you’re a food blogger and have written a
recipe that rocked, try putting together the process behind finding that
recipe.
4. Reflect and add more
info. You can also
update an old post with new information, especially if there is a lot of time
between the two.
5. Create The Ultimate Guide
to Something. After
blogging for a while, you probably have a ton of posts that could fit nicely
together…so why not round them up into an Ultimate Guide? Ultimate Guides are
great ways to get readers to discover more of your posts since you’re linking
to them all in one place.
6. Get visual. Try using the same content in a new medium. Make a
video explaining the post more in-depth or add an infographic to download for
free. For example, if you’re a fitness blogger, you could do a video workout
and a one-sheet guide of all the moves you’re doing. Your readers will enjoy
seeing your awesome content in a new light.
By Ginny Soskey, in How to Reuse, Rework and Recycle Old Blog Posts, (slightly abridged) via Shareaholic
Thursday 17 January 2013
Staying healthy during the school year
image credits: chloraseptic |
I will
admit that I have suffered far too many times with sickness in my years as a
teacher. It seemed that whenever a
student crossed my path I would inevitably catch whatever the little darling
was carrying. What I would like to offer is some advice to teachers who are
facing the onslaught of the worst cold and flu season on record, and perhaps
some of these habits can be helpful year-round to keep healthy and in the classroom. Obviously, seek the suggestions of a medical
professional before altering your lifestyle, especially if you have risk
factors for chronic diseases.
Get enough sleep
I will
admit I more often than not will not and cannot follow this advice, however the
benefits of sleep are numerous. While
you sleep your body purges itself of toxins and does necessary repair
work. If you do not get enough sleep,
chances are you are short-changing your body on its repair time. We cannot expect a plumber, for example, to
install a sink in 15 minutes and then complain when we lack the fixture. Your body is the same way. Get at least 7 hours of sleep each night. A nap after school can also help a little,
too.
Disinfect your hands
My
students laugh when I put a new bottle of hand sanitizer next to the box of
tissues, but at least they use it. Teach
your students that, when they cough or sneeze into their hands or after they
blow their nose, they should use hand sanitizer in order to kill off bacterial
germs. You can get bottles of it in the
dollar store and it will do the trick, but the visual reminder will help them
remember to use it. Also, disinfect your
hands after handling student paperwork.
Think about it: James suddenly
sneezes while he is getting his materials out to hand in to you. The droplets hit his paper and he innocently
hands it in to you. You now have his
germs on your hands. Yuck! I keep a key chain bottle on my work keys to
remind myself to use it. After you use
hand sanitizer several times it is a wise idea to wash your hands like normal
and start fresh. Furthermore, keep your
hands away from your eyes, nose, and mouth.
If you make yourself aware of how often we touch our faces, it would
surprise you. Those are common locations
to catch diseases because they are warm, moist areas: bacteria and viruses love
those places! Do not give them the
chance.
Sanitize your desks
While the
maintenance staff in our school is fantastic at wiping our desks with cleaner,
they could always use the extra help.
Use disinfectant sprays and wipes to assure yourself that you are
killing off some of the germs your students are encountering. Think about the other places student
touch: desks, tables, doorknobs,
bookshelves, the community pen cup… and just give them a quick spray or
wipe. I usually try to do this before I
leave for the day so the disinfectant chemicals have time to work undisturbed.
Eat right
Aside
from helping us with the added calories we can build up, eating correctly provides
your body with the necessary nutrients to restore and repair itself. Give it the fuel it deserves.
Take a multivitamin
Most
adults try to take a multivitamin to supplement the nutrients they miss in a
normal day. It would be good practice for
you to start this if you have not already done so. I also add in additional Vitamin A, C, D, and
E, but that is a personal choice.
Vitamin C and zinc, I have found, tend to be effective in giving your
immune system a boost and help you fight off a cold more easily.
Stay home if you are sick
Yes, I know, we have all gone to work feeling under
the weather because we have obligations that we cannot miss, we do not want to
make substitute plans, we can survive it and then rest when we get home. I have
said them all and none of them have made me a more effective teacher. In fact, if I am too sick to think straight,
I am too sick to teach effectively.
Therefore, if you have a fever, if you feel dead on your feet, just take
the day and rest. You more than likely
need it. Listen to your body. If you go in sick you expose your students,
colleagues, and yourself to other opportunistic infections or to reinfection if
you have not disinfected your area. The
school will still be standing when you return, and your students will have
missed you but will be much better off having a teacher at the top of his/her
game.
While all
of us will probably end up getting sick during the average school year, taking
care of yourself is something you should make a priority. Our students count on us, and they
deserve us at the top of our game. You
are worth the extra effort and care, and since we are a self-sacrificing group
of individuals that can ultimately be the hardest lesson we learn.
By Sarah Sorge, in Sick and Tired – Staying Healthy During The School Year (slightly abridged), via The Educator's Room
Wednesday 16 January 2013
Monday 14 January 2013
Friday 11 January 2013
How Shakespearean are you?
How Shakespearean are you? is a wonderful
tool from Oxford Press. It is a "How Shakespearean are you?" meter.
You have to copy and paste some text into the tool, then "your words will
be compared with all the words used by Shakespeare in his plays and our verdict
will be delivered on its Shakespearean content." Running Teaching & Learning's
post about the 150th Anniversary of the London Underground through the tool, it
said we were 85% Shakespearean. "Is this the Bard I see before
me?" it said! We are pretty happy with the result!
Thursday 10 January 2013
World Wonders Project
The Google World Wonders Project is a
platform which brings world heritage sites of the modern and ancient world
online. Using Street View, 3D modeling and other Google technologies, Google
has made these amazing sites accessible to everyone across the globe. With
videos, photos and in-depth information, we can now explore the world wonders
from our armchair just as if we were there. The World Wonders Project is a
valuable resource for students and scholars who can now virtually discover some
of the most famous sites on earth. The project offers an innovative way to
teach history and geography to students of primary and secondary schools all
over the world. There are several educational packages for your classroom use
available for free download.
From the archaeological areas of Pompeii to the
Hiroshima Peace Memorial, Google’s World Wonders Project aims
to bring to life the wonders of the modern and ancient world.
By
using our Street View technology, Google has a unique opportunity to make world
heritage sites available to users across the globe. Street View is a hugely
popular feature of Google Maps which is already available in dozens of
countries. It allows users to virtually explore and navigate a neighborhood
through panoramic street-level images. With advancements in camera technologies
we can now go off the beaten track to photograph some of the most significant
places in the world so that anyone, anywhere can explore them.
Street
View has already proved a real hit for tourists and avid virtual
explorers.
The
World Wonders
Project also
presents a valuable resource for students and scholars who can now virtually
discover some of the most famous sites on earth. The project offers an
innovative way to teach history and geography to students all over the world.
The
Project is supported by a broad, connected suite of other Google technologies,
bringing wonders of the world within reach of an unprecedented global audience.
The project website also provides a window to 3D models, YouTube videos and
photography of the famous heritage sites. Together with partners including
UNESCO, the World Monuments Fund and Cyark, the World Wonders Project is
preserving the world heritage sites for future generations.
Source: World Wonders Project
Wednesday 9 January 2013
London Underground is 150 years old
Google Doodle for the 150th Anniversary of London Underground |
Today marks 150 years since the first ever train
travelled under the streets of London. The staple of city life has been
chugging along longer than film, longer than the modern Olympics and
it’s even older than the oldest person in the world.
With 11 tube lines and 83 stops in zone 1 alone, the tube is one of the
most convenient forms of transport in the city. Imagine if everyone
chose to roam above ground during rush hour; nothing would ever get
done.
After many iterations, Harry Beck
was commissioned in 1933 to design the map we all know and love
today. His innovative grid system made reading the map a lot simpler for
everyone, including first time tube-goers.
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