OER are teaching, learning, and research resources that reside in the public domain or have been released under an intellectual property license that permits sharing, accessing, repurposing—including for commercial purposes—and collaborating with others. They include educational materials, such as lesson plans, games, textbooks, tests, audio, and video. In addition to being free, these no-cost teaching and learning materials are available online for anyone to use, modify or share with others.This use, reuse, and remixing of instructional materials is a powerful way to gain and share knowledge. Because OER are customizable and flexible, they can be used very effectively to support students to achieve their learning goals.
OER Commons is a digital library where educators can find resources to develop, support and amplify their maker space practices. The site is searchable by subject, grade level or standard. Users can also filter results to include topics, such as activities and labs, games, videos, lesson plans, and interactive tools.
In one of his first major speeches as acting U.S. secretary of education, John King apologized to teachers for the role that the federal government has played in creating a climate in which teachers feel “attacked and unfairly blamed.”
The 2015 Innovating Pedagogy Report proposes ten innovations that explore ways of teaching, learning, and assessment for an interactive, engaged world.
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.
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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.
February 11, 2016 Pixar in A Box is a free online course created out of a partnership between Khan Academy and Pixar Animation Studios. The course introduces learners to the fundamentals of the art of animation. More specifically, learners get to experience first-hand knowledge of the techniques and methods Pixar engineers use to create movies and animations.
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.
