Top 100 Tools for the Twittering Teacher Posted on Thursday April 2, 2009 by Staff Writers By Donna Scott Twitter has become a powerful tool for community organizers, marketers, and others who want to share and receive information in a fast, friendly environment. It’s no wonder, then, that some of the best online colleges teachers have also found success on Twitter, using the tool to connect with students, share information with parents, and find useful resources. Note: We’ve updated this list for 2012 with even more useful, up-to-date tools for savvy educators. Managing Twitter These tools will help make managing your Twitter account just a bit easier. Finding Friends Connect with other teachers, people in your local community, and more by finding followers through these tools. Sharing Make Twitter a sharing tool for photos, video, and more with these resources. Games These tools offer a way for you and your students to learn through Twitter gaming. News & Research
8 Social Media Strategies for Your Classroom - Getting Smart by Adam Renfro - PLN, social media in education Are you ready to bring social networking to your classroom? If you’re looking to make your classroom more relevant, connected, and meaningful to your students, it’s the best place to start. Study after study has confirmed the benefits of networking. Before we delve into strategies, though, let’s look at some reasons why we should connect with students in this manner. First, we have to acknowledge the ubiquity of social networking. Besides the ubiquity factor, so much of social networking is free. Engagement is another important reason to use social networking. Lastly, social networking lets you incorporate real-world experiences into your classroom. Now for some strategy. Keep in mind that this is a social networking strategy, so there’s going to be interactivity involved. Twitter – If you have a personal account, create a second one for connecting with your students. Facebook – If you’ve not already done so, create a Facebook Page to connect with students.
Interesting Online Tools That You Probably Don't Know About - 33 Items 30 Share CevherShare Share 30 There are certain online tools which could be useful to you but you haven’t heard of cause they’re just start-ups for the moment and haven’t started advertising their services on every single online zone so you will get the chance to see them. Geckoboard Geckoboard is a status board for your business’s vital signs. Because it’s a web service Geckoboard is available anywhere there’s internet, whether it’s a 60″ monitor in your office or on your smart phone. Mobilastic Create beautiful, responsive websites that look great on all screens: mobile phones, tablets and desktops. Mobilastic is a mix of a website builder and a hosted CMS, having mobile and responsiveness at its core. HotGloo Good software doesn’t need to be complex. Motache: The easiest and fastest way for your business to GoMobile Dropmark Invite colleagues to view and collaborate privately. Skills Floom Tired of counting your money in few currencies? Flourish Flourish lives in the browser. Snapjoy ifttt Prevue
Social Media for School Leaders When the World Wide Web made global computer-to-computer connections possible, the ability to link people together in true social networks was not far behind. The first popular “social circle” network, SixDegrees, went online in 1997. In 2002, Friendster appeared and is often referred to as the granddaddy of websites that were truly “social.” In 2004, MySpace was created and allowed users to post information about themselves including pictures and videos. Shortly thereafter, Twitter and Facebook rocketed to global popularity. The enormous popularity of social networking today leaves little doubt that while the form is sure to evolve, the desire for social connectivity is here to stay. My awareness of what it might mean to be “missing out” if you are not connected to any social media site hit home when I was asked by an exasperated educator: “Do you Twitter and why should I, as an educator, use this type of thing?” At the end of the conversation, I had a new Twitter user in my midst!
The Best Places To Create (And Find) Internet Scavenger Hunts & Webquests There seems to be a fair amount of confusion about the definition of a “Webquest.” Bernie Dodge, who originated the model in 1995, described it like this in a comment on this blog last year: “A critical attribute of a WebQuest is that it engages higher level thinking, the upper part of Bloom’s taxonomy. Things like creativity, analysis, synthesis. judgment…. A WebQuest is also wrapped around a single challenging task, not a sequence of separate activities A WebQuest isn’t a scavenger hunt and it isn’t a worksheet with links.” Here’s an additional helpful comment Bernie added to this post: “A WebQuest is centered around a challenging, doable and (ideally) authentic task. Obviously there’s a place for both WebQuests and scavenger hunts, but they are different places with very different goals.” I can empathize with his desire to make the distinction clear between a scavenger hunt and a webquest. Given that, however, we all live in the real world where ambiguity reigns supreme. Related
Social Media Parenting: Raising the Digital Generation Who are your kids friending on Facebook? What are they really texting to their classmates? How much online time is too much? Too often, parents who are misinformed about the social web (willfully or otherwise) will shut their kids out of it completely, only to find they are logging in anyway. If you're not taking an active role in your child's online life, you may be missing important opportunities to ensure they are on the path toward "digital citizenship," and protected from inappropriate content and people. To help shrink the tech-culture divide between parents and their kids, we sought advice from the experts, who draw not only from their own research, but their family experiences as well. Take an Active Role, and Do Your Homework For kids, social media can no longer be dismissed as a time-waster or distraction. So how do you grant kids the freedom to explore while still keeping an eye on their safety? "Parents can't just decide to keep their kids at a distance from all of this.
Find and View Panoramic Images Thanks to developments in camera and web technology it has become quite easy to capture panoramic imagery. Panoramic imagery provides viewers of a better sense of the view one experiences when standing in a location. For example, a panorama of the Grand Canyon is more informative than a standard image view. Here are some great places where you can find panoramic imagery online. AirPano offers dozens of spectacular 360 panoramas of famous landmarks and cities around the world. Panoguide is a site on which users can browse through galleries geolocated on a Google Map. Patrimonium-mundi.org is undertaking an ambitious project to capture and share 360 degree panoramas of all of the UNESCO World Heritage sites. Tours from Above hosts panoramic aerial imagery of cities and landmarks around the world. Vista Zoo is a Google Map featuring 3D panoramic tours of more than 1400 locations around the globe. 360 Cities provides extremely clear panoramic imagery of places around the world.
Engaging Without Restrictions Engaging Without Restrictions Restrictive approaches to social media in the classroom are hurting K-12 districts that expect their teachers to successfully guide students into the new media world, according to Steven Anderson. By Bridget McCrea11/28/12 Steven Anderson is shocked by some of the social media policies instituted by K-12 schools and districts nationwide. "It completely boggles my mind," said Anderson, director of instructional technology at Winston-Salem/Forsyth County Schools. From there, Anderson said it's up to the district to figure out how those mistakes are going to be addressed. Anderson will share more of his insights on the use of social media and technology for learning at the FETC conference in 2013, where he will offer two different sessions on the topic. As his district's director of instructional technology, Anderson helps guide a technology program for over 53,000 students in Winston-Salem, NC.
Microsoft Free Teacher Guides A Great Resource for Educators Microsoft, The multinational corporation that develops, licenses and suports computer materials and software, has a great section for teachers and students. Microsft has created Teacher Guides where it provides free teaching tips and step by step guides for popular teacher tasks. These guides are supposed to help teachers and educators learn and explore better ways to inspire students and integrate technology in class. Here are the main categories you find in Teacher Guides Critical Thinking It provides lesson plans and student handouts that teachers can use to improve their students critical thinking skills particulary when doing a research. Free Tools in The classroom Microsoft offers some of its free tools to teachers to help them get their students engaged, energize their lesson plans, and save time. Digital Storytelling This section provides resources and materials for teachers to use with their students in storytelling. Microsoft Office in The Classroom Microsoft Office Web Apps
A School's Guide to Social Media Etiquette | SchoolAdmin Blog The Admissions Director's School’s Guide to Social Media Etiquette With everyone entering the social media market and it being the status quo to host links to your Facebook and Twitter accounts on your website and in emails, it’s important to remember that there is an unwritten code of conduct. It’s actually been written a number of times in a number of ways however, a lot of what you’ll read about in searching for social media etiquette is aimed at the casual user (and abuser) of Twitter and Facebook as well as some businesses. But what about schools? Here are some best practices for how you as a school should conduct your social media business that will help boost your online presence.Keep Posting The most important thing for an Admissions Director to do is build an audience of people who are both interested in being part of the school as well as interested in hearing what’s going on with the school. 1. Keep Engaging Try and always respond to those who reach out to you on social media.
Eight Free tools for Teachers to Make Awesome Infographics 1- Easel.ly This is a great tool that allows users to create visually rich infographics from pre-designed themes. It is very easy to use and only drag and drop. It actually supports Chrome, Firefox, and Safari. 2- Stat Planet This one here allows users to create amazing visualisations and share them with others. 3- Hohli This is an awesome chart maker. 4- Creately This is also a great tool in creating diagrams and flow charts. 5- Many Eyes This is one of the easiest of them all. 6- Wordle This is a text based visualisation tool. 7- Tableau This works just on Windows. 8- Inkspace This is also a free infographic creation tool.