5 Effective Questions You Should Be Able to Ask Your Students

September 3, 2014
After learning about the five tips to help you provide students with effective feedback, today I am sharing with you some equally important tips for formulating good learning-inducing questions in class. The art of question asking usually takes some years of practice and experience  to master. However, developing an early awareness of the importance of good questions in classroom teaching is the first step towards building an inquiry-based learning environment where students are encouraged to ask questions and engage in dialogical exchange of information.

So what are the "good" questions that lead to effective learning? In fact, there is no absolute answer to this question as it depends on  your teaching/learning situation but holistically speaking, there is a fundamental set of questions that pave the way for reflective, critical and deep learning. These are the strategic questions every teacher should be aware of and should use intermittently during class instruction. The purpose of these questions is twofold: first they can lead students in their learning journey and second, they help them pause and reflect and formulate questions of their own.

Rebecca Alber, from Edutopia, has recently published a great read in this direction. Her article "5 powerful questions teachers can ask students" provides some enlightening tips on the type of questions ideal for leading an inquiry-based learning classroom. Below is an excellent graphic that features these five questions.
The five questions Rebecca talked about are:

  • What do you think?
  • Why do you think that ?
  • How do know this?
  • Can you tell me more?
  • What questions do you still have?
Thanks to Lance Fuhrer for creating this poster and for Edutopia's Facebook page for featuring it.




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5 Tips for Providing Effective Feedback to Students

September, 2014
In a recent post published by Edutopia entitled " 5 research-based tips for providing students with meaningful feedback", Stenger made a strong case for the importance of feedback in students learning. She backed her argument with a plethora of scientific studies and came up with some useful suggestions for teachers to consider when giving feedback to students. The article is really worth reading and you should also check the links of the studies mentioned in it especially the one that looked at delayed versus immediate feedback. In a nutshell, here are the 5 suggested tips together with an interesting sketchnote from Rebeca Zuniga that was featured in Edutopia's Facebook page.

1- Be as specific as possible
2- The sooner the better
3- Address the learner's advancement toward a goal
4- Present feedback carefully
5- Involve learners in the process



Over 2 Million Historical Pictures Are Now Available on Flickr

September 2, 2014
Internet Archive Book Images features over 2 millions historical pictures on Flickr. This tremendous work has been done by Kalev Leetaru from Georgetown University. The pictures and drawings included in this resource are extracted from over 600 million library book pages scanned in by the Internet Archive organization.



Recognizing the fact that the digitization of the human knowledge has overlooked the presence of pictures in most of the books and works that were turned into PDF formats, Kalev took it upon him to source the pictures that are buried within these digitized books and arrange them in a format that can be easily searched and accessed. Kalev's project is sponsored by Yahoo, the owner of Flickr.
"For all these years all the libraries have been digitising their books, but they have been putting them up as PDFs or text searchable works," he told the BBC.
Kalev has uploaded over 2.6 millions pictures that range from the year 1500 to 1922. This data mine of pictures is easily searchable using tags that have been automatically added to them. As a teacher, youprobably could draw on this resource to look for CC licensed pictures to use with students in class. Give it a try and see if you like it.

Courtesy of BBC

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A New Excellent Interactive SAMR Visual for Teachers

September 2, 2014
Here is a new wonderful interactive SAMR visual for teachers. I just came across it while I was going through my Google Plus feeds and thought you may want to have a look as well. For those of you not yet familiar with what SAMR model is all about , here is a refresher for you:
 SAMR model  is a framework through which you can assess and evaluate the technology you use in your classroom. This framework is made up of 4 levels:Substitution



Substitution
This is the stage where you use technology to substitute what you could have done with pen and paper. one popular example of this is using word processor to type a story instead of handwriting it.

Augmentation
This is where technology is used to carry out learning tasks in relatively more efficient ways. the technology here only adds value to the assignment and does not transform how it is done, examples of this include using spell checker, grammar checker or electronic dictionary. This one introduces small noticeable improvement.

Modification
This is the level where technology is being used more effectively not to do the same task using different tools but to redesign new parts of the task and transform students learning. An example of this is using the commenting service in Google Docs, for instance, to collaborate and share feedback on a given task task.

Redefinition
If you are to place this level in Blooms revised taxonomy pyramid, it would probably correspond to synthesis and evaluation as being the highest order thinking skills. Redefinition means that students use technology to create imperceptibly new tasks. Redefinition is "when students connect to a classroom across the world where they would each write a narrative of the same historical event using the chat and comment section to discuss the differences, and they use the voice comments to discuss the differences they noticed and then embed this in the class website".



Grab This Good Comic Creation App That is Free Today

August, 201
Halftone is now available for free for a limited time in the iTunes app store (at least here in Canada and the United States). Halftome is ideal for comic creation. It enables you to turn photos and pictures into vintage comics using a wide variety of tools including: speech balloons, different fonts, captions and many more. Users can also select from the various paper styles to add to their comics before they share their final work with others.

If you are planning to use comics with your students then you should definitely grab this app and try it out. Here are more features Halftone provides for users:

  • Open images directly from your photo album and from Facebook
  •  Send real, physical postcards through the mail
  •  iOS face detection for automatic balloon placement
  • Tight integration with Camera+ for improved image capture
  • Upload images directly to Dropbox
  • Save final images to the photo album, print them, or send them to friends via Facebook, Twitter, Flickr, and e-mail
  •  Share images with apps like Instagram, Camera+, Color Splash, and many more
  • Full size image editing, including: auto enhance, special effects, cropping, rotation, brightness, contrast, saturation, sharpness, redeye, whiten, and blemish
  • More than 25 paper styles, from crisp and clean to distressed and aged
  • Multiple caption styles
  • Six speech and thought balloon shapes
  • More than 25 stamps (BLAM!, Arrrggh!, etc.) with customizable colors
  • A customizable stamp that can use images from the photo library (including transparent PNGs)
  • Nine unique layouts, including layouts without any captions or borders
  • The ability to use any installed font at Small, Medium, and Large sizes
  • Three licensed fonts: Digital Strip, Alter Ego, and Billy the Flying Robot
  • Two of the licensed fonts include international characters (Alter Ego and Billy the Flying Robot)
  • Support for a front-facing camera, flash modes, zoom, and tap-to-focus
  • Settings screen for lots of additional customization, including halftone dot size, strength, and gain
  • Support for full size images

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Teachers Handbook on Creative Commons and Copyright

September 1, 2014
Integrating technology in your classroom is not only about knowing the technicalities part of the process, it is also, most importantly, about knowing how and what to do with that technology. Issues of copyright and  proper use of digital materials always comes to the forefront in such discussions and teachers usually face serious problems concerning the legality of the digital materials they use from the net. To clear out some of the confusion surrounding copyright in education, I created a section entitled " Copyright Resources for Teachers" where teachers can have access to a wide variety of copyright tutorials, guides, tips and tools.


Today, I am adding another excellent resource on copyright. This is a handbook created by Emily Puckett and Kristin Fontichiaro entitled " Shared Creations: making Use of Creative Commons". In this handbook, you will get to learn:

  •  the meaning of copyright
  •  the different licenses of CC and how to choose each
  •  how to give credit when you use digital materials
  •  how to find Creative Commons materials for your class.

I learned about this resource from  "What is Creative Commons and Why Does It Matter?". This handbook is available in free PDF format from this link.

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Notability App is Now Available for Mac Users

September 1, 2014
Notability, one of my favourite note taking app out there, is now available for Mac users. I have been using it on my Windows computer for sometime now and I must say that I like it better than Evernote. Some of the features Notability offers to its Mac users include:



  •  Quickly create notes by dragging documents, photos, or audio recordings from the desktop and dropping onto the library.
  • Enhance notes by dragging photos, audio recordings, and PDFs from the desktop and dropping onto a note.
  • Get more done with smart keyboard shortcuts.
  • Handwriting and sketches can be scaled, transformed, free and constrained rotated, nudged (with arrow keys), and restyled.
  • Notes look the same on Mac, iPad, and iPhone.
  • Sketch and write using a variety of colors, line widths, and styles.
  • Record audio during lectures and meetings to capture more detail. 
  • Import audio recordings from other sources.
  • Import and annotate lecture slides, meeting agendas and PDFs.
  • Fill out and sign forms.
  • Use all the tools to mark up photos, maps, schematics, and more.
  • Organize your notes by subject. 
  • Backup your notes to Dropbox and Google Drive automatically.
  • Share your notes with study groups and colleagues via email, Airdrop, Dropbox and Google Drive.

Notability for Mac is not free.It costs $9.99

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