Ed Tech Terminology and Concepts Teachers Should Know About

September 1, 2014Educational technology is a dynamic field of research and study. This dynamism stems mainly from the constant flow of new educational web technologies and the emergence of novel Ed Tech concepts that provide theoretical underpinnings for these technologies. The challenge for teachers is not only in keeping up with this fast moving trend but also with understanding the basic foundational concepts without which any talk about Ed Tech...

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24 Questions to Enhance Students Reflective and Critical Thinking Skills

August 31, 2014Reflection is a fundamental skill from which is branched out all other thinking skills. Reflection is a form of meta-thinking, a process of deep contemplation and pondering. It is also the basis of critical thinking for we can not raise critical thinkers if we do not have good 'reflectors'. When students are taught the art of reflecting, they become independent learners who are engaged in a constant process of assessment and re-assessment...

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Everything Teachers Need to Know about Chromebooks (9 Tutorials)

August, 2014Chromebooks are making gigantic inroads in the education sector. Several school districts here in Canada and the States are adopting them as teaching tools within classrooms. Their growing popularity among the education community is attributable not only to their reasonably cheap price but also to a host of excellent features that you can not find in other devices. Chromebooks are easier to handle, faster and more secure. They are also...

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7 Tips on how to Drive Students Motivation

August 30, 2014Here is another awesome back-to-school  resource. This is basically a graphic from ASCD featuring seven reminders on how to drive motivation. These reminders are quotes from popular thinkers which provide some smart tips on how to ignite learners motivation. Below is a round-up of these 7 reminders and you can download this free poster from this link.Students pose two fundamental questions that relate to motivation to learn: Does...

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New Bloom's Taxonomy Poster for Teachers

August 29, 2014Bloom's taxonomy is one of the most popular learning taxonomies ever. Since its release in the last half of the 20th century, it has been widely adopted within the education sector and was used extensively  to design and create learning materials and curriculum content. Bloom's taxonomy maps out learning skills along a thinking continuum that starts with lower order thinking skills in one end  (e.g. remembering and understanding)...

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A Good Visual Featuring 7 Ways to Be More Creative

August, 2014Creativity, according to Albert Einstein, is intelligence having fun and for most neuro-cognitive scientists creativity is something that is inherently born with us and the proof is kids. All kids draw on their sharp sense of creativity to discover and explore the world around them. They can easily adapt their behaviour to new situations, develop new thinking skills and are constantly engaged in trying out "new ways of doing stuff". Sir...

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New Poster on How to Cite Digital Images

August, 2014Here is a great visual from Langwitches on how to properly cite images on your blog. If you are planning to start a classroom blog or website then this could be a great material to share with students to help them learn about the different ways they can use to cite images. Langwithces featured here four kinds of images ( copyright images, Creative Commons licensed images, public domain images and images used under fair use) with explanations...

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Some Useful Educational iPad Games for Your Students

August 28, 2014A fun game can be a great way to deliver instruction, especially during a break from school. It can make education more engaging for even the most recalcitrant student. And sometimes they can be pretty fun for adults too. Tesseract The game consists of rolling a golden sphere to each surface of a hypercube. This is done by touching a door to pass through which in turn rotates the tesseract four dimensionally and brings the sphere...

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A Treasure Trove of Excellent Resources on Project Based Learning

August 28, 2014Are you planning to integrate project based learning in your teaching pedagogy? Are you in need of some helpful resources to get you going? Here is an excellent resourceful page where you can access various materials on project based learning. This page is compiled by Cybraryman whose works have been repeatedly featured in this blog. Similar to the Critical Thinking page I shared earlier, this is also a work in progress and is updated...

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Google Slides for iPad is Finally Out

August 28, 2014Google Slides for iPad is finally out. As is the case with its precedents Google Sheets and Google Docs, Slides is now available for free download from iTunes app store.Google Slides app allows you to easily create presentations, edit slides, and collaborate with others on presentations right from your iPad. Other interesting features provided by Google Slides include: Create new presentations or edit any that were created on...

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Tons of Resources for Teaching Critical Thinking to Your Students

August 28, 2014Somebody asked me today about resources for teaching critical thinking to students.The first thing that comes to my mind is Cybraryman's wonderful platform where he collects and shares educational websites and links.His Critical Thinking page features a wide variety of resources on problem-based learning and critical thinking. You might want to bookmark his page and keep checking on it as it is a work in progress and he keeps adding...

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5 Good Extensions to Enhance Your Google Drive Productivity

August 27, 2014Since the time Google made it possible for third party developers to create extensions and add-ons compatible with Chrome and the Chrome app store is teeming with all kinds of apps. If you have a look at the Drive section in the Chrome store you will notice a multitude of apps provided there for free , however, many of these apps are not really worth installing. In this regard and if you are looking for powerful Drive extensions to...

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Two Great Periodic Tables of Educational iPad Apps

August 27, 2014Today as I was wading through my Twitter feeds I came across a link to the periodic table of iPad apps created by ICTEvangelist.Upon checking this work I learned that it is inspired by a relatively similar work done by Sean Junkins which I have featured in an earlier post in this blog. Different as they are, both of these periodic tables provide an interesting collection of educational iPad apps you could probably consider using with...

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Enhance Students Productivity with These Web Tools

August 26, 2014There is a growing number of tools for students offering benefits from organizing assignments to creating study groups to taking notes. Here are some notable options for your students to consider. ClassOwl ClassOwl was founded by a group of Stanford sophomores wanting to improve the hectic academic experience. Teachers and students are constantly faced with the challenge of staying organized and up-to-date with assignments and...

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Back to School Activities to Try in Your Class

August 25, 2014In the series of posts I am sharing here on the back-to-school event, today I uncovered from my archive two awesome posters created by Busy Teacher outlining some interesting ideas for teachers to try in the first week of the new school year. These ideas span a wide variety of classroom activities  to get your students into the 'learning mode' required for debuting a new academic year full of success and productive work.Here are...

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30+ Resources for Students to Learn about Coding Languages

August 25, 2014Learning coding is becoming a necessary skill that kids needs to master in order to thrive in tomorrow's job market. There is now a growing trend in schools and educational cirlces towards bringing coding skills and computer programming to the forefront of the educational agendas. Several public figures including business leaders ( Bill Gates, Mark Zuckerberg), politicians ( Algore, Obama), and educators such as the deans of Standford...

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