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The 37 Best Websites To Learn Something New — Personal Growth — Medium
Forget overpriced schools, long days in a crowded classroom, and pitifully poor results. These websites and apps cover myriads of science, art, and technology topics. They will teach you practically anything, from making hummus to building apps in node.js, most of them for free. There is absolutely no excuse for you not to master a new skill, expand your knowledge, or eventually boost your career. You can learn interactively at your own pace and in the comfort of your own home. It’s hard to imagine how much easier it can possibly be. Honestly, what are you waiting for?
Author Archives: Heather
Worth a read (weekly)
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Cyber Safety – Internet Safety Tips To Stay Safe Online : InformED
The Internet is without a doubt one of the best resources available to us. Unfortunately it’s also extremely dangerous if you aren’t aware of who and what lurks behind the scenes. Everyone should know how to be safe when surfing the web, but internet safety tips and tricks are spread out all over the web without a go-to resource. Since the majority of internet scam and virus victims are students and young people, Open Colleges is a perfect place to post the very first full guide to being safe on the internet.
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How to Make Great Presentations With Pecha Kucha
A Pecha Kucha presentation utilizes imagery and efficient use of spoken word to create a seamless, memorable, meaningful and concise presentation. It’s a great method for teaching students how to create their best presentations for class projects.
Worth a read (weekly)
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Bloom’s Digital Taxonomy Verbs [Infographic]
When using Bloom’s Digital Taxonomy (a revised take on Bloom’s devised by educator Andrew Churches), it helps to have a list of taxonomy verbs to know what actions define each stage of the taxonomy. This is useful for lesson planning, rubric making, and any other teacher-oriented task requiring planning and assessment strategies.
The Bloom’s Digital Taxonomy verbs in this handy infographic apply specifically to each stage of the taxonomy, from LOTS (lower-order thinking skills) to the HOTS (higher-order thinking skills). -
Internet Safety Cheat Sheet For Digital Media Use In Schools
Unfortunately, internet safety is something many teachers–and worse, students-take for granted. While many teachers–and librarians–are concerned with breaking copyright laws, controlling digital media use is often an afterthought.
Or worse, so heavily scrutinized that district filters kill any authentic access at all.
But as our libraries gradually become virtual spaces, and our media becomes digital, controlling digital media use is going to become increasingly relevant.
Which makes Jen Gordon’s–from the aptly-named internetsafetycheatsheet.com–inforgraphic below on netflix, YouTube, Instagram, Google, and Apple hardware so relevant for you.
Worth a read (weekly)
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The Top Ten S’Cool Tools for Q1, 2015 | EdSurge News
Every week, EdSurge sends out an educator-specific INSTRUCT newsletter containing a section called “S’Cool Tools,” where we showcase 3-5 edtech tools that have tickled our fancy.
Out of 75+ S’Cool Tools, ten products from Q1 have risen to the top based on the number of clicks they’ve received from our INSTRUCT readers. Check them out below! (And educators, if you’ve got some cool tools you haven’t seen yet in the newsletter or on our site, let us know!)
Worth a read (weekly)
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Google Classroom | Teacher Tech
@alicekeeler’s collected blog posts on Google Classroom
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Instructional Fluency: 10 Activities with Google Slides
New technologies are changing the way students learn. These days, those old PowerPoints that we’ve spent so much time on aren’t cutting it.
Not to worry. Put your slides to work in new ways. Better yet, have your students do it. Here’s some ideas on how to use Google Slides beyond the traditional use.
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20 Free Tools for Teachers: Videos, Guides, and Printables!
Anytime, anywhere, teachers like to have plenty of resources to pick from to help them create great classroom experiences to engage their students. We’ve got some wonderful content-packed free tools for teachers to explore. They’re online and ready to be discovered!
There are slideshows, printables, lesson plans, downloadable content and guides, videos, and much more. The sites listed below offer lots of stuff for all subjects and grades, so dive in and see what you can dig up. -
A map can change the world. And so can you. With the right resources, you too can create beautiful, powerful maps like these that we love.
eduCanon
eduCanon is an online tool for creating and sharing interactive video lessons. Start with a clip from a video platform (YouTube, TeacherTube, Vimeo, Khan Academy, TedEd and more), crop to just the selection you wish to show, add questions at the time you wish them answered, save and share. You can register your students so that you know who has viewed and whether their answers were correct or share anonymously. The completed video lessons (known as bulbs) can also be embedded in any website or LMS. Like similar websites and tools, this is a commercial enterprise so the free version has limitations. With it you can:
- have up to 8 classes
- monitor an unlimited number of students
- create unlimited lessons
- share with colleagues
but your question types are limited to multiple choice, check all that apply and reflective pause. Upgrading to premium (US$89 per year) gives you
- fill in the blank and free response question types
- ability to skip to a time point in the video
- autograding
- copying and editing public lessons
- ability for your students to create lessons
- worksheet printing
- downloadable grades
There is also a “Blended school” version with even more functions starting at US$990 per year. Free accounts offer three ways to share:
- With students – ie those you have registered. This will record their responses
- Share unique list code – students don’t have to be registered. Responses will be recorded but not linked to an individual
- Share with colleagues – for teachers to copy. No login needed to view but no tracking.
Each version includes a different link and embed code. I have used the embed code from Unique list code to share a bulb I created for a lesson I created about one of my pet hates. You might not show this one to students, but it’s a bit of fun:
This the Unique List code link – if you use it you are asked to enter your name and email address before being taken to the video. I haven’t yet used this with students so it’s difficult to comment on how well eduCanon is works from their perspective but even the simple facility to easily crop a video to just the section you wish to show and share the link or embed is appealing. I can see applications for this not just in the Flipped Learning environment but also in situations where you want students to be able to view and answer questions at their own pace.
Word of warning: when this was demonstrated to me by our media studies teacher he was using a clip from a movie that his students were studying. There were some inappropriate ads showing at the bottom of the screen. Today I turned off my Adblock Plus and Adblock for YouTube extensions but didn’t see any ads appear at all. I’m not sure when or why advertising will appear, whether it is related to the video being shown or something from eduCanon itself (I certainly hope not!) but it’s something to be aware of.
iPad news and views (weekly)
Worth a read (weekly)
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Solution Fluency-Style Blog Writing: The Basics
Are you or your students looking for a way to help your thoughts flow freely and constantly as you write blog articles? Tired of wasting valuable time and losing focus? For a special treat today, we’re going to give you an inside look behind the scenes of blog writing for Global Digital Citizenship Foundation.
We put our money where our mouths are and really put into practice the 21st Century Fluencies, especially in the blog writing process. So we’ll show you how we do it, the tools we use, and the thought processes that are entailed, especially using Solution Fluency as a template for flowing smoothly to completion. Of course, all other fluencies make appearances as well.
Worth a read (weekly)
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12 Awesome Formative Assessment Examples
Formative assessment tools used in the classroom provide critical feedback to teachers, helping them to monitor and modify their instruction methods and lesson plans. Teachers are better able to meet the unique needs of individual students, empowering them through personalized and timely feedback.
It’s important to use a variety of teaching and learning formative assessments, changing them frequently to stimulate both students and teachers. Assessment techniques are only as limited as the teacher’s imagination!
Worth a read (weekly)
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How To Use Google Voice Commands In Google Drive | Edudemic
Since its inception, Google Drive has been a source of excitement for innovation-minded educators. However, as with any new teaching technology, you may find yourself thinking “it sounds intriguing, but will it really make a difference?” In regards to Drive features like audio feedback, the answer to that question is an unequivocal yes. Aside from offering convenience and helping spare teachers from endless amounts of typing, the addition of voice commenting brings with it profound benefits to the learning experience as a whole.
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“Teach for Google is a brand-new collection of resources designed to help teachers get the best from Google Apps for Education. You’ll find many short courses that bring together strategies and best practice from leading educators. Each course comes complete with templates, forms, tips and other top-quality assets to help you deliver better teaching that boosts student engagement and actual attainment.”