Imported from Diigo
Multimedia Learning » Compliance Poetry
Have boring content you want to make more interesting and memorable? What about putting it in poetry form? This is a creative use of poetry to create memorable summaries of copyright law. If intellectual property law can be made simpler to understand and remember, can't your content too?
Infinite Thinking Machine: Friday Five: Create, Express, Learn with Primary Source Material
Five sites to find and use online primary source content with students, focusing on sites that encourage students to remix and share multimedia content. Some of the sites provide tools for production and publication.
State Project
Example project from the Developing 21st Century Literacy Skills course. The assignment is to develop a project where students will develop and demonstrate 21st century literacy skills. In this project, students create a multimedia presentation with information about their state as if they are working in the visitor's bureau and trying to convince tourists to visit.
Using threaded comments to build a writing community in your classroom | Reflections on Teaching
A 6th grade teacher talks about the advantage of threaded blog comments for building a writing community. This encourages much more of students talking to each other and makes it easier to follow blog conversations.
One of those is threaded comments. This is rapidly bringing my blogs to the level I had always hoped to acheive–one where the students are talking to each other and not just talking to me.
Web Accessibility for Cognitive and Learning Disabilities: A Review of Research-Based Evidence in the Literature
Literature review on research related to accessibility specifically for cognitive disabilities. One conclusion from this review is that there's very little research actually out there to draw from; most guidelines and recommendations aren't grounded in much evidence.
Multimedia Serves Youths' Desire to Express Themselves | Edutopia
High school students in California find their voice through multimedia and learn to make a difference through what they create and share
"Media is the language of kids," Torres adds, saying that students who may not take to learning by reading a textbook or listening to a lecture often jump at the chance to understand complex concepts by presenting finished products in the form of a film or a Web documentary or a Microsoft PowerPoint presentation.
Writing in the 21st Century
Report from the National Council of Teachers of English with a call to action to teach writing appropriately for the 21st century. Writing now often happens outside school in social spaces where people learn informally through their peers. Includes an overview of how writing has been viewed historically and how that has affected how we teach writing.
"Writing has never been accorded the cultural respect or the support that reading has enjoyed, in part because through reading, society could control its citizens, whereas through writing, citizens might exercise their own control."
"Writing has historically and inextricably been linked to testing."
"In much of this new composing, we are writing to share, yes; to encourage dialogue, perhaps; but mostly, I think, to participate."
"First, we have moved beyond a pyramid-like, sequential model of literacy development in which print literacy comes first and digital literacy comes second and networked literacy practices, if they come at all, come third and last."
10 Privacy Settings Every Facebook User Should Know
If you're using Facebook, especially if you use it with multiple groups of people (friends, family, professional contacts, bloggers), friend lists are highly recommended. This is also a good article to pass along to people who are resistant. To some extent, I figure all the privacy is illusory; people can still share what they know, after all. But it's at least some protection.
Weblogg-ed » Personalizing Education for Teachers, Too
An argument against standardizing professional development for teachers. Will we ever transform education if we expect every teacher to learn the same things at the same time in the same way? If we personalize their learning and tap into their passions, we might be able to create some real change in education though.
Teachers are learners. If they’re not, they shouldn’t be teachers.
2¢ Worth » Working for Value
David Warlick shares stories of authentic assignments and how they motivate learners. Writing & creating for an authentic audience is different from creating content just for a teacher.
<p>When writing, let’s say, to the teacher, you are communicated to be evaluated. Assessment is the outcome, based on some set of expectations involving skills and/or knowledge. </p>
<p>However, when writing to an authentic audience, what you are trying to earn is not an evaluation (though there may be one coming in the process). What you are writing for is a <span style="font-weight: bold; font-style: italic;">response</span>, and that response will be directed toward what you have invested in the work, not just the facts you have included or the skills you have demonstrated.</p>
sciencegeekgirl » The burden of proof: What does education research really tell us?
Looking at the resistance to change in education even when research supports certain strategies (like active learning). Educators resist using new teaching methods when they don't feel the research matches up with their personal experience. Education research isn't the same as pure scientific research in a lab where everything can be controlled, but if there is some repeatability in multiple contexts, isn't that educational research onto something?
Link & Learn Taxes, linking volunteers to quality e-learning
Example of (theoretically) accessible e-learning Section 508 created for the IRS. Publicly available. Lots of little errors though; spaces in alt tags, paragraph tags with formatting instead of header styles, etc. Given as an example in a discussion in a LinkedIn group.
Handbook of Emerging Technologies for Learning - Emerging Technologies for Learning
George Siemens and Peter Tittenberger have created this wiki handbook for educators who want to incorporate technology into learning. Looks at how and why change is happening in education and how technology can help meet the educational needs of a changing world.
VoiceThread as a Digital Portfolio | Teaching Sagittarian
Step by step how one teacher used VoiceThread to create digital portfolios for student-led conferences. One nice touch is that ESL students could use both English and their native language, since after all they were communicating with family members who might have trouble understanding English. Two examples are included, plus reflections on what the teacher learned from the project.
In the Middle of the Curve: Wendy W - Knowledge Gardener
Tony Karrer suggested we might be known as "management consultants" in the future, but I like Wendy's "Knowledge Gardener" much better
Thinking about the tools I'm building and the programs I'm developing - that seems more akin to the way I want my job to evolve. As a "knowledge gardener."
So I've decided that my next 5 years will be spent as a "knowledge gardener." Helping people get the information they need. Encouraging people within my organization to talk to each other and share what they know. Facilitating learning when they need and want it (preferrably in much smaller chunks than they are getting now).
Whatever You Do, Don’t Drop Practice | Tom Werner
Summary of research which compared courses with the same content but with specific elements of Gagne's instructional events removed. The strongest correlation with student performance and satisfaction was with practice with feedback. (This is an old post, but it's moved since I originally bookmarked it.)
The only instructional element that really matters is practice with feedback.