Let the Games Begin: Students and Teachers Dive Into SimCityEDU
categories: gamification, gaming
Optimal Video Length for Student Engagement – no longer then 6 min
categories: video
Optimal Video Length for Student Engagement
https://www.edx.org/blog/optimal-video-length-student/1239
The take-home message for instructors is that, to maximize student engagement, they should work with instructional designers and video producers to break up their lectures into small, bite-sized pieces.
http://www.edudemic.com/social-media-in-education/
How Social Media Is Being Used In Education
good graph on the bottom of the article (http://www.edudemic.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/10/social-media-for-teaching.jpg)
- The level of personal use of social media among faculty (70.3 percent) mirrors that of the general population
- 55 percent of faculty use social media in a professional context (any aspect of their profession outside of teaching), up from 44.7 percent last year
- Only 41 percent of faculty use social media in the classroom, but this use continues to experience steady year-to-year growth
- Faculty are sophisticated consumers of social media. They match different sites to their varying personal, professional, and teaching needs
- Concerns remain about privacy, maintaining the class as a private space for free and open discussion, and the integrity of student submissions
- Most faculty agree that “the interactive nature of online and mobile technologies create better learning environments” and that digital communication has increased communication with students
- Faculty believe that online and mobile technologies can be distracting, and that they have resulted in longer working hours and more stress
10 TWITTER TIPS FOR TEACHERS
10 TWITTER TIPS FOR TEACHERS
1 Use TweetDeck
2 The more you give, the more you get
3 The power of the hashtag
4 Join the #edchatNZ club
5 Focus on following not followers
6 Make use of lists
7 Saving tweets for a rainy day
8 Don’t be a boring tweeter
9 Teaching with Twitter
10 The art of pithiness
Differences between Digital Natives and Digital Immigrants
Differences between Digital Natives and Digital Immigrants
http://www.educatorstechnology.com/2013/10/a-nice-graphic-featuring-differences.html
Teachers on Pinterest – A Great Resource for Teachers ~ Educational Technology and Mobile Learning
categories: pinterest, social media
Teachers on Pinterest – A Great Resource for Teachers ~ Educational Technology and Mobile Learning
http://www.educatorstechnology.com/2013/10/teachers-on-pinterest-great-resource.html
Videos Explaining BYOD for Teachers and Students ~ Educational Technology and Mobile Learning
http://www.educatorstechnology.com/2013/11/excellent-videos-explaining-byod-for.html
Bring Your Own Device/Technology is an initiative meant to increase students learning opportunities through technology.
10 +1 Excellent platforms to create your class website
10 Excellent platforms to create your class website
- Wix
- Google Sites
- Weebly for Education
- Yola
- SchoolRack
- Blogger
- WordPress
- Edublog
- KidBlog
- Glogster Edu
Should Coding be the “New Foreign Language” Requirement?
categories: programming languages
http://www.edutopia.org/blog/coding-new-foreign-language-requirement-helen-mowers
Coding, Cognition and Communication
In terms of cognitive advantages, learning a system of signs, symbols and rules used to communicate — that is, language study — improves thinking by challenging the brain to recognize, negotiate meaning and master different language patterns. Coding does the same thing. Students who speak English and Mandarin are better multitaskers because they’re used to switching between language structures. Coding, likewise, involves understanding and working within structures.
Foreign language instruction today emphasizes practical communication — what students can do with the language. Similarly, coding is practical, empowering and critical to the daily life of everyone living in the 21st century.
Coding is Ubiquitous
Programming is the global language, more common than spoken languages like English, Chinese or Spanish.
5 Reasons Why You Should Teach Kids to Code ~ Educational Technology and Mobile Learning
http://www.educatorstechnology.com/2013/10/5-reasons-why-you-should-teach-kids-to.html
Why We’re Learning about Coding in Our 6th Grade Writing Class
http://www.middleweb.com/11559/learning-coding-in-writing-class/
Should coding replace foreign language requirements?
http://www.educationdive.com/news/should-coding-replace-foreign-language-requirements/361398/
Washington state and Kentucky have both proposed legislation that mirrors this trend, with Washington asking that students be allowed to count two years of computer science courses as two years of foreign language studies.
In an October post, Washington Post columnist Valerie Strauss wrote that coding is something like “cursive 2.0” — a practice that will soon become compulsory in schools across the nation.
Howard Gardner: ‘Multiple intelligences’ are not ‘learning styles’
categories: learning styles, Multiple intelligences
Gardner now teaches at the Harvard Graduate School of Education. He is the author of numerous books on intelligence and creativity. His new book ”The App Generation,” co-authored with Katie Davis, explains how life for young people today is different than before the dawn of the digital age, and will be published on Oct. 22 by Yale University Press.
Gardner’s theory initially listed seven intelligences which work together: linguistic, logical-mathematical, musical, bodily-kinesthetic, spatial, interpersonal and intrapersonal; he later added an eighth, naturalist intelligence and says there may be a few more.
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Excerpts from the blog entries under the article
Emily Sedlock
The idea that multiple intelligences and learning styles have become interrelated is so true. Learning about all the different types of intelligences and learning, it can be hard to keep them all straight. This article was helpful in pointing out the differences. Educators should be aware of these differences, so that they might be able to better teach their students.
GRoo
1) Learning
The basis:
– how how human capacities are represented in the brain,
Multiple Intelligences:
– a number of relatively independent mental faculties
– a number of relatively autonomous computers—[that compute] … information
A strong intelligence:
– an area where the person has considerable computational power
What matters
– the power of the mental computer, the intelligence, that acts upon that sensory information, once picked up
So “learning” = us[ing … (different) cognitive faculties?
Q1: Is that ok to assume and say?
Q2: What of “dimensions” – cognitive processing (higher order thinking) and knowledge (concrete to abstract) and sense of self, or affect[ive]?
2) Teaching
– Individualize your teaching
– Pluralize your teaching. Teach important materials in several ways, …reach students who learn in different ways… [present] materials in various ways