Yelp-like review site for teaching tools, where it is asking professors to review and comment on how useful various digital services were in their classrooms
The hope, said Mr. Rascoff, is to reduce the unnecessary bureaucracy and effort that each campus goes through to purchase new technologies — and to streamline the process of obtaining the right tools by asking the faculty to weigh in.
The biggest advantage of the learning-technology commons, Ms. Martin said, is that she will be able to connect with professors in similar disciplines on other campuses and more easily find tools to use in her classroom.
++++++++++++++++
What are your thoughts? Would you like such service on your campus?
PicLits is a site for finding creative writing prompts. PicLits aims to provide inspiration for writing short stories. PicLits tries to reach this goal by providing users with images upon which they can build their writing.
“We now need to train everybody to understand the basics of computer science,” she says, “and I don’t equate it to just coding. I equate it to principles of thinking.”
There are ways of approaching problems, for example, or of structuring data, that help students program more effectively and more thoughtfully.
Here are five different ways to apply the same rubric in your classroom.
1. A Rubric for Thinking (Invention Activity)
2. A Rubric for Peer Feedback (Drafting Activity)
3. A Rubric for Teacher Feedback (Revision Activity)
4. A Rubric for Mini-Lessons (Data Indicate a Teachable Moment)
5. A Rubric for Making Grades Visible (Student Investment in Grading)
How often have we heard that students believe grades to be arbitrary or capricious? Repeated use of a single rubric is good for both students and instructors. Switching roles between author and editor results in students’ increased familiarity with the process and the components of good writing. Over the course of the semester, students will synthesize the rubric’s components into effective communication. The instructor, too, will shift from “sage on the stage” to “guide on the side,” answering fewer questions (and answering the same question fewer times). In other words, students will gain greater independence as writers and thinkers. And this is good for all of us.
Zaghab, R. W., & Beckenholdt, P. (2014, June). Textbook-Free Learning: A Framework for Critical Analysis. In Proceedings of the 9th International Conference on e-Learning: ICEL 2014 (p. 190). Academic Conferences Limited.
Textbooks are losing relevance in the higher education classrooms partially due to the high costs and slow speed of textbook publication in the midst of the growing supply of open electronic resources. With trends toward online course delivery, more colleges are considered online resources as a matter of policy without an adequate framework for decision making during times of rapid transformation. The purpose of this paper is to improve the balance and deliberateness of university decision making in considering Textbook-free approaches. The proposed line of inquiry responds to a critical and timely question: Under what conditions might Textbook-free online course resources offer the best approach to a quality higher education learning experience? A three-part analytical framework is proposed to consider resource quality, institutional commitments, and external trends. By distilling the literature, the authors propose: 1) universal quality indicators for online and open education resource selection for a course or classroom; 2) institutional factors and resources that impact the quality of the Textbook-free approach; and 3) the selection of instructional resources based on environmental factors and transformational change influencing fields of study. Punctuated equilibrium theory helps to inform the framework. With the assumption that classrooms prepare students for the world of work, the proposed framework identifies challenges to the identification of educational resources for fields undergoing disruptive change.
http://www.freetech4teachers.com/2016/02/7-tools-for-hosting-online.html#.VrlFHEZa2zB Simple Surface is a browser-based tool for collaboratively creating outlines and mind maps.To get started with Simple Surface just click on “use for free now,” double click on the surface, and then start typing. To create an additional thought box just double click anywhere on your board. To make sibling and child thought boxes use the enter and tab keys. You can edit the color and size of fonts. Your boxes can be linked to URLs too. Right-click on your surface to open the full menu of editing options.
NoteBookCast is a free whiteboard tool that will work in the web browser on a laptop, iPad, Android tablet, and Windows tablet. NoteBookCast is a collaborative whiteboard tool. You can invite others to join your whiteboard by entering the code assigned to your whiteboard. You can chat while drawing on NoteBookCast whiteboards. While you can create an account on NoteBookCast, it is not a requirement for using the service. You can create a whiteboard by simply clicking “create a whiteboard” then entering a nickname for yourself to use on the whiteboard. If you do create a NoteBookCast account you can save your whiteboards and create whiteboard templates to re-use.
iBrainstorm is a free brainstorming application for the iPad and the iPhone. The app allows you to record brainstorming sessions using a combination of free hand drawings and sticky notes. You can share and collaborate with other users of iBrainstorm. Sharing notes and drawings between users in a local setting is a simple matter of “flicking” an item to another user.
Realtime Board is a platform for hosting online, collaborative brainstorming sessions. Realtime Board is built with HTML5 which means that it works equally well on your laptop and on your iPad or Android tablet. Realtime Board provides a blank canvas on which you can type, draw, and post pictures. You can connect elements on your boards through a simple linking tool. The boards that you create on Realtime Board can be shared publicly or privately. To help you communicate with your collaborators Realtime Board has a chat function built into every board. Realtime Board grants teachers and students access to all premium features for free. In order to get the premium features for free you do need to complete the form here.
Stoodle is an online whiteboard service supported in part by the CK-12 Foundation. Through Stoodle you can quickly create a collaborative whiteboard space. On your whiteboard you can type, draw, and upload images. You can connect Stoodle to your computer’s microphone and talk your collaborators while drawing, typing, or sharing images. Stoodle does not require you to create an account. Stoodle will work in the web browser on your iPad or Android tablet.
Pitting two of the most important entities of our schools — curriculum and IT — against each other is the ultimate power struggle. What are we really trying to achieve when we address this battle using the phrase “bridging the gap?”
If the technology and the infrastructure supporting it doesn’t work, then why have the technology at all? Likewise, if professional development and training are not a priority, then the technology will become nothing more than a glorified paperweight.
both curriculum and IT leaders need to come together to discuss the decisions that can make or break a learning environment.
“SEO” has been explained many different ways. The acronym stands for search engine optimization. To have a search-engine-optimized website, your content must be organized in a way that’s easy for search engines to understand. Following best practices for SEO will allow your site to be properly indexed and will result in a higher organic ranking.
Thematic SEO allows us to categorize content by context. One of our favorite examples is Life of Pi. If you search “movie about a tiger on a boat,” Life of Pi appears in the search engine. Semantic SEO allows us to structure content throughout a site so search engines can understand the purpose of each page rather than just reading keywords.
Here is a link to an image optimization article from the experts at Google.
It’s important to make sure your website makes sense from a navigation and content perspective.
e-Education: Systems, Design and Technologies
practices and cases in e-education
systems and technologies in e-education
applications and integration of e-education
e-learning evaluation and content
campus information systems
e-learning technologies, standards and systems
mobile learning
computer aided assessments
knowledge management
virtual learning environments
multimedia in e-learning
marketing and promoting e-learning
social benefits of e-learning
organization learning
technology adoption and diffusion of e-learning
other relative topics
e-Learning: Systems, Design and Technologies
e-Learning platforms
portals and Virtual learning
environments
Course design
Emerging and best practices
Partnerships in e-Learning
Evaluation of e-Learning
Cross-cultural
education
e-Learning strategies
Social benefits of e-Learning
my Instagram account got hacked this week. Besides the nasty revamp of my profile (lude), being forced to change password and my account being blocked for that many days, the most painful part was having to manually unfollow 500+ users.
Here are useful steps to prevent such mishaps:
4 things you should be doing right now so you won’t get hacked