New Visual: 25 Success Features Characterizing 21st Century Teachers

2:08 PM  ,  

December 9, 2014
Here is a good visual that features some of the things successful teachers do differently. This infgraphic is based on an article written by Julie DeNeen which I would refer you to for more details on each of the 25 ideas included below. Read the list and see the ones that resonate with you and also identify the ones missing in your teaching pedagogy.



Here is a quick round-up of the 25 things successful teachers do differently:
  • Successful teachers have clear objectives
  • Successful teachers have a sense of purpose
  • Successful teachers are able to live without immediate feedback
  • Successful teachers know when to listen to students and when to ignore them
  • Successful teachers have a positive attitude
  • Successful teachers expect their students to succeed
  • Successful teachers have a sense of humor
  • Successful teachers use praise authentically
  • Successful teachers know how to take risks
  • Successful teachers are consistent
  • Successful teachers are reflective
  • Successful teachers seek out mentors of their own
  • Successful teachers communicate with parents
  • Successful teachers enjoy their work
  • Successful teachers adapt to student needs
  • Successful teachers welcome change in the classroom
  • Successful teachers take time to explore new tools
  • Successful teachers give their students emotional support
  • Successful teachers are comfortable with the unknown
  • Successful teachers are not threatened by parent advocacy
  • Successful teachers bring fun into the classroom
  • Successful teachers teach holistically
  • Successful teachers never stop learning
  • Successful teachers break out of the box
  • Successful teachers are masters of their subject



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4 Powerful Apps for Creating Mind Maps on Chromebooks

11:31 AM  ,  

December 9, 2014
Here is a list I curated over the last weekend. The list features some of the best web tools teachers can use to create mind maps on Chromebooks. I have only included the ones I think are too simple and easy to use so any teacher can use them without any advanced technology knowledge. As I was trying these apps on my Chromebook, I discovered some glitches in the popular apps : blubber.us and Text to Mindmap so I did not include them, but you can try them out in your device if you want.

1- Lucid Chart

Lucidchart is an HTML5-based visual collaboration tool that makes drawing diagrams fast and easy. Work together with an unlimited number of others to create and edit diagrams in real time, with changes merged and synced instantaneously -- great for team collaboration.

2- MindMeister

MindMeister is another good app for creating mind maps.MindMeister is deeply integrated into Google Drive, allowing users to open and edit many mind map formats. Some of the things you can do with MindMeister include:

  •  Create, share and collaboratively edit mind maps
  • Import from Text, MindManager and Freemind
  • Export to Word, PowerPoint, PDF, image, MindManager and Freemind
  • Add icons, images, notes, links and attachments
  • Integrated live chat
  • Publish and embed maps
  • Task management and notifications


3- Mindomo

Mindomo allows you to visually outline complex concepts, tasks, ideas, and other related information in a structured form. Some of its features include:
  • Real-time collaboration
  •  Embedded video and audio files 
  •  Presentation Mode 
  •  Multiple layouts (mind map, concept map, org chart, tree org chart) 
  • Great variety of Import/Export formats 
  • Map customization by adding icons, colors, styles and map themes 
  •  Full map history, undo and redo functions 
  • Password protected mind maps 
  •  Comments and voting enabled on topics 
  • Multilevel numbering 
  •  Desktop version that enables users to work offline

Free online mind mapping web site, with realtime collaboration and cloud storage: Make a mind map online, free, and keep it in the cloud with Google Drive, Dropbox, GitHub and our free anonymous storage. MindMup is available everywhere: you can access your maps with a browser or a mobile device, and cloud storage ensures you have access to your data where ever you are, and the application works nicely with both desktop, tablet and mobile browsers.

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Critical Digital Literacy Explained for Teachers

10:24 PM    

December, 2014
Critical digital literacy is one of the essential required competencies for the 21st century educator. In an era of unprecedented personal publishing, infobesity (information obesity) becomes a real issue. Teachers need to be able to critically  assess and evaluate the materials and knowledge they come across. This could be done through adopting a critical thinking lens to filter things that could otherwise unconsciously affect one's stance and interpretation of  a given meaning.

Juliet Hinrichsen and Antony Coombs from University of Greenwich developed this excellent framework to help you understand the concept of critical digital literacy. This framework is made up of 5 dimensions:

Source: http://goo.gl/fBdraV


1- Decoding:
"Learners need to develop familiarity with the structures and conventions of digital media, sensitivity to the different modes at work within digital artefacts and confident use of the operational frameworks within which they exist."

2- Meaning making
"This recognizes the agency of the learner as a participant in the construction of a text. Making meaning is a reflexive process in which the content, style and purpose of the text is in dialogue with the prior experience, knowledge and responses of the reader. Making meaning implies both understanding and interpretation".

3- Analysing
"Learners to develop the ability to make informed judgements and choices in the digital domain.They also need to be able to apply critical, aesthetic and ethical perspectives to the production and consumption of digitized material."

4- Persona
"Sensitivity to the issues of reputation, identity and membership within different digital contexts. The purposeful management and calibration of one's online persona. Developing a sense of belonging and a confident participant role."

5- Using
"Learners need to develop the ability to deploy digital tools appropriately and effectively for the task in hand. They also need to be able to solve practical problems dynamically and flexibly as they arise, using a range of methods and approaches, both individually and as part of communities."

Courtesy of Teachthought where I learned about this work.


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The Digital Learning Wheel

10:25 AM    

December, 2014
Ring of Technologies is a beautiful visual wheel that displays a host of learning goals together with some examples of web tools to achieve them. To me this work  (created and shared by UAF eLearning Faculty Resources) represents the core of digitally-based learning. It also chimes in with what we have said about purposeful use of technology in instruction. Having clear goals about what you want to target in your teaching using technology will definitely help your learners make the best of that technology.
Here is an example of one of the readings of the different components of the wheel. For instance as a teacher keen on enhancing my professional development (goal), I can make use of social bookmarking websites or blogging platforms (tools ) to reach my purpose. Check out the other goals and web tools mentioned in this wheel and share with us what you think of it.

This wheel is also available for free download in PDF format from this link.

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These Are The 4 Concepts Shaping 21st Century Learning

8:18 PM    

December, 2014
Today's learning landscape is enriched with a variety of new concepts that were to the recent past foreign  to many. Of course learning is a dynamic field and it will always keep developing as human knowledge progresses. But the last two to three decades in particular have witnessed the outburst of several new conceptions and theoretical frameworks that, among other things, attempt to capture the latest developments in learning . This cheat sheet features a number of these concepts.

I am also sharing with you the visual below which highlights three more concepts shaping the 21st century learning. To these I added the concept of Andragogy.

Source: http://goo.gl/MBwZfp

1- Andragogy
Andragogy is a teaching strategy developed for adult learners. Andragogy has been around for more than a century but it gained more momentum and came up to the surface in educational literature particularly with the work of Malcom Knowles. Andragogy marks a clear departure from the traditional pedagogy informing child learning in that it is predicated upon 5 assumptions related to the characterstics of adult learners :

  • 1. Self-concept: As a person matures his self concept moves from one of being a dependent personality toward one of being a self-directed human being
  • 2. Experience: As a person matures he accumulates a growing reservoir of experience that becomes an increasing resource for learning.
  • 3. Readiness to learn. As a person matures his readiness to learn becomes oriented increasingly to the developmental tasks of his social roles.
  • 4. Orientation to learning. As a person matures his time perspective changes from one of postponed application of knowledge to immediacy of application, and accordingly his orientation toward learning shifts from one of subject-centeredness to one of problem centredness.
  • 5. Motivation to learn: As a person matures the motivation to learn is internal (Knowles 1984:12)

Check out this page to learn more about Andragogy: 

                                        Related : Pedagogy Vs Andragogy

2-Heutagogy
Heutagogy is the study of self-directed learning and self- determined learning. While some think about Heutagogy as a separate methodology from Andragogy, several other scholars view it as an extension of Andragogy. Heutagogy is all about teaching learners how to learn. In this respect,  "heutagogy looks to the future in which knowing how to learn will be a fundamental skill given the pace of innovation and the changing structure of communities and workplaces.”
Here is a PDF document to learn more about Heutagogy.

3- Peeragogy
As for peeragogy, here are some definitions cited by Arenastudies:
“Peeragogy (which he refers to as “paragogy”), is a collection of “the best practices of effective peer learning.”
“It is also a theory of peer-to-peer learning and teaching that addresses the challenge of peer-producing a useful and supportive context for self-directed learning”.Charles Jeffrey Danoff .

Check out this post to learn more about Peeragogy.

4- Cybergogy
This is a completely novel concept to me and as I searched further on its meaning I came across this entry from Edutech Wiki:
One of the central elements of cybergogy is the intent to combine fundamentals of both pedagogy and andragogy to arrive at a new approach to learning (Carrier & Moulds, 2003). Cybergogy focuses on helping adults and young people to learn by facilitating and technologically enabling learner-centered autonomous and collaborative learning in a virtual environment. At the core of cybergogy is awareness that strategies used for face-to-face learning may not be the same used in the virtual environment.

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Great Teacher-tested Games to Engage Your Students

10:41 PM    

December 7, 2014
Games can be fun and addicting. Well-designed educational games can make the act of learning just as fun and addicting. Here are some teacher-tested games to engage your learners and get them craving more. Parents may like these for holiday enrichment too.



Mathtopia
 Addictive like Candy Crush, but nutritious Math Facts for the brain.
 Learning organic chemistry is tough, but this teacher-created app makes a difficult subject much easier to understand.
A simple grammar game from Grammar Girl, who you may have seen on the Oprah Winfrey Show or Reader's Digest.
 A teacher-created puzzle-solving game to help develop mathematical conceptual thinking skills.

A collection of simple learning games and digital storybooks for kids 2 to 7, from ABCs to tracing to addition.


Want more? Check out these collections of tools.

Game-Based Learning - Math 
This is  curated by fifth grade teacher Monique Haug.
This is Curated by middle school language arts teacher Cary Fields.

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Excellent Apps and Tools to Enhance Math Understanding

10:32 PM    

December, 2014
Technology offers a myriad of ways to learn, practice, and understand math. Math manipulatives, videos, games, interactive simulations, physical activities - all can help reinforce a deep conceptual understanding.


Understanding Math 
 Teaches children fluency in multiplication and division from 1 to 100.­ Start working with this great tool today!
 A whole lot of videos about numbers, from pi to googolplex to Graham's number.
 A whole lot of math games, organized by grades, skills, and Common Core State Standards.
 Play with interactive math and science simulations to gain a visual understanding of these concepts.
Create and print cardboard templates that can be folded into figures and objects.

Want more? Check out these collections of tools.
Apps to Promote Mathematical Thinking 
This is curated by elementary school teacher Glenda Stewart-Smith.
This one is curated by assistant technology coordinator Gwen Johnson.

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This Is How to Create A Library in Google Scholar

10:50 PM    

December 6, 2014
We have recently started a series of posts on Google Scholar. The purpose of these posts is to help teachers and students make the best of this educational search engine through introducing them to the hidden gems within this platform. If you have missed the previous posts, you can access them here.

Today's tip is on how to create a library on Google Scholar. This library can be used to organize and collect all articles you find on Scholar."You can save articles right from the search page, organize them by topic, and use the power of Scholar's full-text search & ranking to quickly find just the one you want - at any time and from anywhere.".

Here is how you can create library on Google Scholar:
1- After you have conducted your search query on Scholar and found the article you want to add to your library, click on "Save" below the article to save it to your library.



2- Click on "My Library" to see all the articles in your library and search their full text. You can also organize your articles by using labels.

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An Excellent New Tool for Creating Multimedia Timelines for Your Class

10:14 PM    

December 6, 2014
HSTRY is a very good web tool for creating multimedia timelines in class. The process is very simple and easy. Just sign up either as a teacher or a student, choose the timeline you want to work on and start adding your events. You can add images, videos, and audio. The great thing about HSTRY is that it allows teachers to create a classroom and invite students to join it. Within this classroom, teachers will be able to share timelines with their students and view the ones they create. Teachers can also make their timelines interactive by adding questions for students to answer.



HSTRY works on different devices including Chromebooks and iPads.

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Over 20 Good Apps to Use in BYOD Classroom

10:26 PM    

December 5, 2014
BYOD (Bring Your Own Device) is not only about students bringing their own  devices to class and using them for educational purposes. It is much  more than just a problem of hardware but is rather a question of what "learningware" students need to install and use with their devices. Most of the discussions on BYOD center around the accessibility and availability of devices together with  the fact that students are experts of their own devices. Sounds good but not enough!

Students need to be provided  powerful educational apps to galvanize the learning gen inside of them. They need to be shown what apps work with which.  Below is a Symbalo board featuring a wide variety of powerful web tools and apps perfect for BYOD classrooms. Click on the image below to access the interactive version of this board where you can access the links of each of these apps.



Here is a round-up of these apps as provided by Edudemic.
  • Skitch
  • Evernote
  • Today’s Meet
  • Infuse Learning
  • Zondle
  • Socrative
  • Gaggle
  • Vimeo
  • Brain Pop
  • Live Binders
  • Edmodo
  • Whiteboard
  • Class Dojo
  • Quizlet
  • Khan Academy
  • Bit.ly
  • Twitter
  • Popplet
  • Sliderocket
  • Wikispaces
  • Poll Everywhere
  • VoiceThready
  • Studyblue
  • QR Stuff
  • Code Academy
  • Scratch (MIT)
  • Tynker
  • EasyBib
  • Discovery
  • Padlet
  • Atomic Learning
  • The App Builder

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11 Effective Ways to Use Twitter in Education

10:04 PM    

November, 2014
Twitter is a social network of huge importance for us in education. We have posted several articles about it here inEducational Technology and Mobile Learning and here is a resourceful  section where you can access all the educational tools, tips, and ideas to help you to effectively leverage Twitter in your teaching and learning.

There are several ways we can use Twitter in education and here is a brief overview of some of them.
  • Hold after class discussions
  • Create an online community of students
  • Ask questions relevant to course materials
  • Start backchannel talks 
  • Create a classroom hashtag
  • Use it for class announcements
  • Get feedback from students
  • Share interesting online materials
  • Pass on information about events
  • Have a Twitter account for each class
  • Reward participation
  • Integrate Twitter into Syllabus
I am also sharing with you this interesting visual from Pam Jimison which features 11 ways to use Twitter in education. Check if out from this Link.


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A New Wonderful Google Forms Cheat Sheet for Teachers

9:11 PM    

December 4, 2014
Google Forms is one of the powerful tools you want to make sure you have in your teaching toolkit.There are different ways you can use it with your students in class. You can, for instance, use it to create quizzes, polls, questionnaires, and surveys. You can also use it to design permission forms, absence slips, classroom events forms…you name it. The great thing about Google Forms, besides being free and easy to use, is the fact that it is integrated with Google Drive which means that any form you create is automatically saved in your Drive and you can access it anywhere you go with Internet connection.

In today's post, I am sharing with you this wonderful Google Forms cheat sheet created by Shake Up Learning. This document is particularly useful for beginner users. It provides a lot of tips on how to do a wide variety of task on Forms including how to create a form, change and customize the theme of your forms, add collaborators, and many more.This cheat sheet is also available for free download in PDF format from this link. Enjoy



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A Great Chart Explaining The Flipped Classroom Concept

4:00 PM    

December 3, 2014
Flipped classroom or flipped learning is a methodology, an approach to learning in which technology is employed to reverse the traditional role of classroom time. If in the past, classroom time is spent at lecturing to students , now in a flipped model, this time is utilized to encourage individualized learning and provide one-on-one help to students, and also to improve student-teacher interaction. While the instructional or teachable content is still available in class, however this content is mainly designed in such a way to be accessed outside class which is a great way for struggling students to learn at their own pace.

  Together with the resources I have been sharing with you on Flipped learning, the resource I have for you today is especially helpful in that it provides a very simple step by step explanation of flipped learning works. This chart is created and shared by the Blended Learning wiki. The page also provides some very good video tutorials on flipped classroom. I invite you to check out those resources and share with us what you think of them. Enjoy.

Check out the original chart HERE.


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Enhance Kids Reading Skills with These iPad Interactive Stories

9:24 PM    

December 3, 2014
Below are three great iPad apps to enhance your kids reading skills through the use of interactive digital storytelling. The apps allow kids to interact with the stories they read using a variety of tools such as colouring, moving items in the story, changing sounds and many more.

1- Story Time for Kids


Story Time is an interactive story telling app that is bundled with beautifully illustrated story books for children. Each story is bundled with original colourful illustrations, narrations and sound effects! With Story Time, reading is so much fun. All the stories highlight the text as its read along. Children not only read but also learn how to read and pronounce the words clearly.



Kids play and interact with Harry as he struggles to find out what’s wrong with his new monster. The multiple games are intertwined with the story so that the player can help push the action forward. Kids sail a pirate sea, target-shoot soup into a monster's mouth, help get Harry and Zub though a maze and more - plus, every screen has hidden activities and surprises!
3- Monster Moogle


Monster Moogle develops creative thinking, artistic ability and skill in children. This app has an interactive storybook and collage maker that inspires kids to engage with their imagination by creating unique characters and short stories.



Education doesn’t have to be boring. It should be fun! Pickatale was made to improve children’s reading skills, to help them learn about animals, cultures, historical figures and more, and to have fun learning through reading storybooks. The app currently has 200+ interactive stories in English!
 

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A Great iPad App to Turn Physical Notes into Digital Notes

9:02 PM    

November, 2014
Post-it Plus is a great iPad app that you can use to digitize your physical sticky notes. The way it works is pretty simple: install the app in your iPad and then use it to snap an image of the physical notes you have. Post-it Plus will then digitize these notes in a format that will allow you to edit, arrange, refine and organize them into different boards.


This is a great app to use when attending a PD session or a conference or even use it in class with students to capture ideas and render physical notes accessible online. Posit-it Plus is also great for organizing your different notes into easily accessible categories and boards. You can group your ideas by thought or simply organize them on a grid. You can also combine notes from different sessions into one single board. And if you work with a team of collaborators, they can also help with the editing, arranging and adding of new notes and ideas.

Post-it Plus also allows you to share your digitized notes in PDF format or to your favourite applications like Dropbox.


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A Handy Google Drive App to Edit, Annotate and Sign PDFs

12:19 PM  ,  

November 2, 2014
PDFzen is a great free web tool that allows you to edit and sign your PDFs online. This app is integrated with Google Drive which means that you can easily edit the PDFs you have in your Drive. When you are done, you can save your edits back to Drive or download the document as a PDF or generate a link to share via email or social media websites.



Some other things you can do with PDFzen include: filling out DF forms, signing documents, highlighting text, leaving comments, and drawing on PDFs. PDFzen is also available for both iPad and iPhone.

"PDFzen is great for when you need to fill out a PDF form, but you are nowhere near a printer. Or if you don't think you should spend hundreds of dollars on PDF software just to use it one time. Or if you need to send your edited document as a fax and your local copy shop charges by the page.

Have PDFs on your desktop that you want to upload to PDFzen? The free deskPDF Reader integrates directly with PDFzen, so its just 1 click to immediately open your PDFs in PDFzen for quick editing & sharing. This is great for quickly publishing to the web, and collaborating with others. (deskPDF Reader is available for Windows & Mac, with Linux coming soon.)"

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Three Powerful Note-taking Apps for Chromebooks

9:37 PM  ,  

November 2, 2014
I received a couple of emails asking about app recommendations to use for note-taking on Chromebook. So I decided to pull up this list and share it with all of you here. The three apps I highly recommend are listed below. I have come across a few other titles but I did not find them really worth sharing here. Have a look and as always share with us what you think of them.

1- Google Keep


Google Keep is an excellent tool to use for creating digital sticky notes. You can use both text and images to capture and share your notes.  You can also use it   to create to-do lists and bookmark content from the web.It has an intuitive and user friendly interface that makes it way simpler to navigate and control than is the case with several other note-taking apps out there.

2- Evernote

This is definitely one of the must have apps for taking notes and recording ideas. Evernote allows you to save all your notes and bookmarks into one single place that you can access across different devices. You can also use it to create task lists and to-dos, attach images and audio to your notes and many more.

3- Quick Note

This is another wonderful note taking app that is specifically designed for lightweight note-taking. There are different ways you can use this tool. You can for instance use it as a simple notepad, scratchpad, or clipboard. Quick Note offers some good features such as the ability to easily search your notes and access them with one click. You can also sync all your notes to the cloud and access them anywhere.

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Great Coding and 3D Design Apps Are now Free

9:08 PM    

November 2, 2014
Autodesk has some very good news to you today. in a statement released earlier, Autodesk announced that it is providing its suite of apps for free for students and teachers  from all around the world. Of course the use of these apps is restricted to only educational purposes and not commercial.


Now both teachers and students will be able to access and use Autodesk's powerful coding and design making apps for free. According to Autodesk, more than 680 million students and educators from over 800,000 secondary and post-secondary schools in 188 countries can take advantage of free access to Autodesk’s professional software and services for use in classrooms, labs, and at home.

Some of the popular apps that students can now use for free to create 3D designs, games, movies, buildings, and many more are :

1- 3ds Max
3D modeling software for games, film, and video content.

2- AutoCad
CAD design, drafting, modeling, drawing, and engineering software.

3- Fusion 360 Ultimate
Integrated tool for collaborative product development.

4- Maya
Innovative tools for 3D modeling, animation, effects, and rendering.

5- Inventor Professional
3D mechanical CAD, visualization, and documentation software.

Check out the education community in Autodesk to learn more about the free software to use with students.

Courtesy of TNW.

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Some Good Primary Source Guides and Resources for Teachers

10:02 AM    

December 01, 2014
Library of Congress is one of the best websites where you can search for and access primary source documents to use with your students in class. It also features an entire section specifically designed for teachers. The teachers' page on Library of Congress contains a plethora of important resources to help teachers make the best use of primary sources. These resources include:



1- Why use primary sources?
In this page you will get to learn about what primary sources are and how they are different from secondary sources. You will also be provided with some tips and ideas on how to engage students with primary sources, promote student inquiry, and assess how students apply critical thinking and analysis skills to primary sources.

2- Citing primary source
This is where you get to learn about how to cite primary sources through some useful examples in both MLA and Chicago styles.

3- Finding primary sources
This section features some quick starting points to help you in your search for primary sources in library of Congress.

4- Teachers' guides and analysis tool


This a great resource featuring a number of useful guides and analysis tools that teachers can use when using primary sources in classroom. All of these guides are available for free download in PDF format.

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