12 Virtual Field Trips You Don't Want To Miss! – Create-abilities Schools are so lucky these days. We have millions of dollars to use, para-educators in every classroom, the most up to date technology and full parent support. Wait....I'm being told that none of what I just typed is true. Hmmm... so now what? If you were like my school, money was tight, parental support was limited, and technology was a foreign word. Because of tight funds and the inability to fly my students across the country to view some of the things we learn about, I really liked the idea of virtual field trips. The 7 Wonders of the World: panoramic views that you can click and drag for 360 degree views. Google Art Collections: Google has taken 1,000's of art pieces from 17 museums around the world and compiled them into one place. Google Sky: A really fun one! Smithsonian: Museum of Natural History: I LOVE, LOVE, LOVE the Smithsonian Museums! Inside the White House: A fun way to look inside the White House. The First Thanksgiving by Scholastic: A timely one for this time of year.
8 Things To Look For In Today's Classroom - 8 Things To Look For In Today’s Classroom by TeachThought Staff What are the kinds of things you should look for in today’s classroom? The common response often begins and ends with technology, but as we’ve discussed often, it’s not about the technology. We’ve added some related tools or opportunities for further reading to each item. 1. Students should learn from others and then share their learning. See also: 13 Different Tools To Help Students Find Their Voice 2. Strength-based learning. 3. Everyone (teachers, administrators, students) should write about and reflect on what is being learned. See also: Helping Students Reflect On Their Learning 4. Example: Build a hovercraft from a YouTube video. 5. Ask questions and challenge what you see. See also: 25 Resources For Critical Thinking 6. Give students tough challenges and let them find innovative solutions. See also: A Diagram Of 21st Century Pedagogy 7. Important that students know how to do this. 8. 8 Things To Look For In Today’s Classroom
Control Alt Achieve: 4 Fun Literacy Activities with Google Docs Google Docs is a great word processor, but is much more than just that. Although we can certainly use it to type up a report, take notes, or write a story, we can also get creative with the features and functions built into the program to make some fun learning activities. Recently I did a video training webinar where I took a look at four creative ways to use regular Google Docs features in new fun ways to practice and develop literacy skills. The highlighting tool for the activity "Improve Reading Comprehension with Google Docs Black Out"The special characters tool for the activity "Emoji Learning Activities with Google Docs"The word count tool for the activity "Have Students Write Better by Writing Less with Google Docs"The header tool and hyperlink tool for the activity "Choose Your Own Adventure Stories with Google Docs" See below for the full 1-hour training video, as well as resources, ideas, and templates for each of the four activities.Training Video (1 hour)
A Big List of 50 Must-Try Online Teaching Tools Having a database of useful online teaching tools is a great practice for every teacher. After all, you can’t do everything on your own and there are many developers out there who want to help you. The tools below were made for educators—and in many cases by educators—to help them with many aspects of classroom teaching. Now we bring them to you. 8 Teaching Tools for Lesson Planning Lesson planning can be tough, so why not make it easier? 10 Teaching Tools for Assessment Effective assessment means a student has a task or activity that gives them the chance to receive quality feedback from themselves, peers or the teacher to enhance and support their learning. 6 Teaching Tools for Classroom Gaming Gaming in the classroom is a popular practice with many a modern teacher. 8 Teaching Tools for Coding STEM learning is really starting to cement its place in education, and with good reason. 9 Teaching Tools for Flipped Learning 9 Teaching Tools for Collaboration
Teaching Content Curation and 20 Resources to Help You Do It - InformED At St. Edward’s University in Austin, Texas, Dr. Corinne Weisgerber is teaching a class on social and interactive media. In addition to building a Personal Learning Network of online mentors and experts they can use to supplement their Google searches, her students are required to “curate” the information they gather for projects the same way a museum curator would curate an art exhibit. “I told them they would need to comb through the resources received through their PLN to discover the significant and relevant, bundle those ideas together, contextualise them for their audience, repackage them and share them through a social media platform,” says Weisgerber. “In essence, I tasked students with creating the ultimate resource on a particular topic and to share it with the world.” Weisgerber also mentioned that the project has been, without a doubt, one of her most rewarding to grade. It also provides us with a potential way to measure creativity. But Weisgerber is ahead of the curve.
22 Ways To Use Twitter For Learning Based On Bloom's Taxonomy 22 Ways To Use Twitter For Learning Based On Bloom’s Taxonomy by TeachThought Staff In 2012, one of the first posts we created was a “twitter spectrum,” an image that clarified different ways that twitter could be used in the classroom in (hopefully) authentic ways. TeachBytes has followed that up with an excellent graphic of their own that uses a pure Bloom’s Taxonomy approach. The specific ideas range from “remix trending tweets with video and music” to creating concept maps showing the relationship between tweets. We must admit to going back and forth over the exact fit of a social media platform like twitter in a formal (or informal) learning environment. Unless you’re using it as a cultural survey of sorts. As with all things, sweet spot matters.
STEM & Maker Space - Virtual Library The Power of the Maker Movement Piktochart infographic created by Heather Lister. References and further readingBritton, L. (2012). The Makings of Maker Spaces, Part 1: Space for Creation, Not Just Consumption. How Technology Can Address Maslow’s Hierarchy Of Needs | TeachThought How Thoughtful Technology Integration Can Address Maslow’s Hierarchy Of Needs by Jackie Gerstein For specific training and professional development around technology integration, contact TeachThought Professional Development to bring Jackie Gerstein and other TeachThought professionals to your school today. A major criticism I have of most educational institutions is that their primary focus is on students’ intellectual and cognitive development. Applying Abraham Maslow’s theory of a pyramid-shaped hierarchy — physiological needs, personal safety, social affiliation, self-esteem and self-actualization — to education is an ideal way to assess lesson plans, courses and educational programs. Technology is way too often given a bad rap by administrators and educators as a distraction or a hazard for students. What follows is an Infographic that proposes some of the technology integration strategies that can be used to addressed the different levels of Maslow’s needs.
6 Digital Tools To Engage Students - 6 Digital Tools To Engage Students by Rachelle Poth Are you looking for some new ways to keep students engaged through the end of the school year? Here are 6 tools that I have found to be quite helpful as this school year winds down. Recap 2.0 Recap 2.0 is a Question and Answer platform available on Chromebooks, iPads, iPhones and Android devices, which can be implemented right away and is easy to use. Students can submit questions and receive direct feedback from the teacher, parents can receive feedback by email through Recap, and there are many other features available for assessment and classroom management. In a Recap Journey, teachers create a multi-step path for students. In my experience with the Journeys, I had students explore Spanish-speaking countries and included different links for them to explore more based on their own interests. It was very easy to create my own Journey and there are also many Journeys available to try through the Recap Discover. Flipgrid Kahoot! Kahoot!
23 Things for Digital Knowledge | START ANY TIME. DO AS MUCH AS YOU LIKE This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License. 2017 Charles Sturt University CRICOS 00005F Bringing It All Together: Literacy, ICT and the 21st Century Skills By Stephen Pinel Literacy, 21st century skills, ICT and a common pedagogical framework – these four seem to be flavours of the month in many schools, including mine. What is not evident, however, is how schools blend all of these disparate strategies together into one framework. Too often, the professional development (PD) delivered for each of these strategies is delivered separately, in a piecemeal approach, and in ways that can contradict each other. This article shares a framework that integrates these four important strategies, so that units of work can be prepared that take students from learning basic skills directly from teacher modelling, right through to collaborative application of these skills against real-world, authentic problems. ICT and 21st Century Skills The 21st century skills have been hashed over by quite a few different groups over the last 20 or so years. • collaboration • knowledge construction • self-regulation • real-world problem solving and innovation 1. 2. 3. 4.
A List of More Than 30 Useful Digital Citizenship Resources Chances are you’ve heard a lot about digital citizenship by now. Many reputable and respectable organizations have devoted their life’s work to developing digital citizenship resources to promote its values in educators and learners worldwide. We at the Global Digital Citizen Foundation are proud to be among them. We all know the world is different now. We’re all globally connected by technology, so making the world a better place by fostering a compassionate and mindful citizenry isn’t just the responsibility of a chosen few. You are in the perfect position to be the best source of digital citizenship development any student could hope for. This post features some useful digital citizenship resources that cover these important categories: Digital Footprints/People SearchingCiting SourcesCyberbullyingDetecting PlagiarismPersonal ResponsibilityGlobal and Cultural Awareness Go forth in confidence, using these digital citizenship resources that every educator can use in their classrooms.
The Padagogy Wheel developed by Allan Carrington It Is Not About the Apps, It Is About The Pedagogy The Padagogy Wheel is designed to help educators think – systematically, coherently and with a view to long-term, big-picture outcomes – about how they use mobile apps in their teaching. The Padagogy Wheel is all about mindsets; it is a way of thinking about digital-age education that meshes together concerns about mobile app features, learning transformation, motivation, cognitive development and long-term learning objectives. The Padagogy Wheel is not rocket science. It is an everyday device that can be readily used by everyday teachers; it can be applied to everything from curriculum planning and development, to writing learning objectives and designing student-centred activities. The underlying principle of the Padagogy Wheel is that it is the pedagogy that should determine the educational use of apps. How Does the Padagogy Wheel Work? The Five Grids Graduate attributes and capabilities Motivation Bloom’s taxonomy Technology enhancement