InstaGrok-ing: Mining the Web for Meaning What if you could conduct an online search and instead of a list of results returned based on Google’s ranking metrics, your browser displayed a semantic map of the concept you searched for and a list of relevant, educational resources? A tool like this would help you "to understand thoroughly and intuitively," or grok your subject. This is exactly what the website instaGrok does. What is Grok-ing? The graph space also contains a tab that lets you open a journal to type notes and quickly add elements from the sidebar with just the click of a button. Unfortunately the semantic engine used to generate the quizzes still needs some major work. Grok-ing in the Classroom As a first step in conducting Web-based research at any level, instaGrok is excellent. This Web app would be perfect for students at any level who are fluent readers, including those in college. Concerns/Limitations The things that instaGrok can do are amazing.
Managing Technology Use in Your Classroom : TEACH Magazine TEACH Magazine | Jun 16, 2011 | Comments 0 Managing Technology Use in Your Classroom By Karen Hume Don’t let classroom management concerns prevent you from making effective use of technology in your classroom! Help students recognize that technology in the classroom has to serve a learning purpose. Filed Under: Blog Tags: Karen Hume • Teaching with Technology
Students Believe in Mobile Devices Technology is transforming education and nine in ten students agree it’s changing the way they learn. According to a Harris Interactive study completed on behalf of Pearson, students understand mobile devices will change their education experience, make learning more fun and want to see more of devices used in their classrooms. The study surveyed students fourth grade through college level across the country. “This year’s study findings provide guidance to schools and districts around the country as they plan to integrate mobile technology into teaching and learning,” said Seth Reichlin, Ph.D., Pearson’s Senior Vice President of Market Research. “”Since the majority of students want to use mobile devices in the classroom, and because so many now own mobile devices, BYOD (bring your own device) programs and the challenge of universal access will remain a compelling topic of discussion for education leaders.” For more information on the survey see the press release below. About Pearson
10 Fun Tools To Easily Make Your Own Infographics People love to learn by examining visual representations of data. That’s been proven time and time again by the popularity of both infographics and Pinterest. So what if you could make your own infographics ? Below are my two favorite infographic-making web 2.0 tools that I highly recommend. Click the name of each tool to learn more! Visual.ly One of the more popular ways to discover infographics, Visual.ly actually just launched a design overhaul of their website. Dipity Want to get a beautifully simply visualization of data over time? Easel.ly I absolutely love Easel.ly. Venngage Venngage (likely named for Venn diagrams) is a double threat. Infogr.am One of the most simple tools, Infogr.am lets you actually import data right into the site and then translate it all into useful visualizations. Tableau Public Made for Windows, Tableau Public lets you (like Infogr.am) bring your actual data into the world of visualzation. Photo Stats This one’s an iPhone app that’s worth trying out. Gliffy
My 4 to 1 beats your 1 to 1 everytime When educators get together to talk about what makes a good ratio of students to computers, the big talk is always about 1 to 1, or in other words; one computer for every student. So much so, that any other ratio that might be mentioned is immediately shot down. “It’s one to one or bust!” Hold on cowboy, perhaps there is better ratio than one to one… Okay, now that you have decided that I am evil for even suggesting this, please read on to see the method to my madness. The ratio that I have come to use and get success with is… drum roll please… four to one. Let’s take a look at a few different pieces of school technology used with the four to one ratio: USB Microscopes: (8 Digital Blue USB Microscopes $800) Digital microscopes are great, you plug one of these suckers into a laptop and you can do so much cooler things compared to just a regular lab microscope. Flip Video Cameras: (8 Flip Ultra Video Cameras $1200) Digital Cameras: (8 Digital Cameras $1200) Microphones: (8 USB Microphones $80)
11 Characteristics of Meaningful Work Managers cannot make work meaningful for employees. Managers, however, can shape the workplace environment to let meaningful work become possible for employees. With a context set to let meaning be experienced, employees can leverage the environment to derive meaning from their work. Meaningful work is vague. What exactly is it? For work to be meaningful, it is the employee who must label it so To explain what meaningful work is, let’s look at its characteristics. Basic needs are met Think Maslow’s hierarchy of needs. Strengths are leveraged Don’t confuse strengths with competency. Don’t confuse strengths with competency Pull personal satisfaction from work Employees’ perceive their work to be fulfilling. Being in on things Employees believe they are trusted with important, inside knowledge. Treated with respect by peers and managers This doesn’t say liked, but respected. See how one’s work fits into the bigger picture Really, what hasn’t been said or written about this. Image by Shawn Murphy
Graduating with Technology | LearnStuff Technology has become an integral part of our daily lives: we use it to learn, to shop, to pay bills, and to entertain ourselves. Not surprisingly, younger generations are heavily influenced by computers in a way that changes the way they retain information and the ways they develop opinions about culture. Today 70% of children between the ages of 2-5 can operate a computer mouse, but only 11% of them can tie their own shoes. At the start of the 21st century only half of all school classrooms had Internet access, compared to 98% today. Graduating with Technology by LearnStuff.com is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.Based on a work at
The Role Of Technology In America’s Classrooms (Infographic) What is the appropriate role of technology in America’s classrooms? About 87 percent of parents say that the effective implementation of technology is important to their child’s success. Half of all parents label it as extremely important, 64 percent say that their child’s school is doing a good job of using technology to enhance student achievement. A full 92 percent of AP and NWP educators say the Internet has a major impact on teachers’ ability to access content, resources, and materials; 62 percent feel their school does a “good job” supporting teachers’ efforts to bring digital tools into the learning process. About half of school district administrators say their education budgets for technology have decreased in the past three years. It’s unfortunate that low income students seem to have limited access to technology in the classroom.
Infographics I love infographics! As a visual learner myself, I really like the way a vast amount of information can be presented in these cool graphics. I’ve decided to post infographics on my blog that I really like. Two websites that I am using to enable my students to create their own infographics Piktochart - can create a professional looking infographic for free Ionz - can create a nice looking infographic after answering some simple questions – click on the Union Flag in top right hand corner to get started Thanks to @ICTEvangelist @TeamTait and @57Mason for their help on this – cheers guys! This amazing infographic is from the brilliant Martin Said @saidthemac – it can be found on his blog here This amazing infographic is from the brilliant Martin Said @saidthemac Like this: Like Loading...
Augmented Reality Is Going Mobile--and Coming to a Classroom Near You 21st Century Curriculum | April 2013 Digital Edition Augmented Reality Is Going Mobile--and Coming to a Classroom Near You By Jennifer Demski04/23/13 Among the many technologies poised to reshape the way we communicate and interact with the world around us, few evoke the same sense of excitement and curiosity as augmented reality. But AR's promise is enormous. "The early adopters in K-12 are all over augmented reality," remarks NMC CEO Larry Johnson. Reality 2.0 Augmented reality would hardly crack the consciousness of the average educator if not for the ubiquity of mobile devices, which provide fast access to the technology in a variety of settings. With visual-based augmented reality, a user launches an AR app on a mobile device and then points the device's video camera at a subject. Location-aware augmented reality apps, on the other hand, use mobile devices' GPS capabilities to display information based on a user's coordinates.
88 Best iOS Apps For Mobile Learning Do you ever stop to think about how you gathered information before the Internet? If you needed to find an answer about anything, what did you do to find it? I don’t really remember, but I think we called people on the phone, asked our parents or looked it up in an encyclopedia. No wonder learning was kind of boring back then. Unlike our computers, the human brain has an unlimited amount of storage space to hold everything we put in it (thank goodness). Last month, edudemic (a website dedicated to online and mobile learning) put together a comprehensive list of the 100 Best iOS Apps For Mobile Learning. These apps cover a wide variety of mobile learning topics including brain exercises, productivity, math, science and more. (Click Infographic To Enlarge) Via: [Online Universities] Header Image Credit: [Elite Daily]