6 Great Videos on Teaching Critical Thinking Critical thinking is a skill that we can teach to our students through exercise and practice. It is particularly a skill that contains a plethora of other skills inside it. Critical thinking in its basic definition refers" to a diverse range of intellectual skills and activities concerned with evaluating information as well as evaluating our thought in a disciplined way ". All of our students think in a way or another but the question is , do they really think critically ? are they able to evaluate the information they come across ? are they capable of going beyond the surface thinking layer ?
What Does The Desk Say? — One Of The Stranger ELL Lessons I’m Going To Try I’ve just heard about a Conservation International series of short videos featuring famous actors giving voice to elements of the environment — Mother Nature, Soil, Redwood Trees, Water, etc. You can see the entire playlist here, and it’s very impressive line-up. I’ve embedded two of them below — Edward Norton as The Soil and Julie Roberts as Mother Nature (you can read part of their scripts here). They’re neat videos, and they got me thinking — one of the reasons ESL teachers like me have students use puppets (see The Best Resources For Using Puppets In Class) is because it makes students more willing to speak in English because it’s the “puppet” speaking not “them.” Why not, I got to thinking, try having students pick an inanimate object and have them try to articulate what it would say if it could talk?
PSPP - GNU Project GNU PSPP is a program for statistical analysis of sampled data. It is a Free replacement for the proprietary program SPSS, and appears very similar to it with a few exceptions. The most important of these exceptions are, that there are no “time bombs”; your copy of PSPP will not “expire” or deliberately stop working in the future. Neither are there any artificial limits on the number of cases or variables which you can use. There are no additional packages to purchase in order to get “advanced” functions; all functionality that PSPP currently supports is in the core package.
Primary Source Sets Teachers Abraham Lincoln: Rise to National Prominence Speeches, correspondence, campaign materials and a map documenting the free and slave states in 1856 chronicle Lincoln’s rise to national prominence Alexander Hamilton Manuscripts, images, and historic newspapers document the life and accomplishments of Alexander Hamilton American Authors in the Nineteenth Century: Whitman, Dickinson, Longfellow, Stowe, and Poe A selection of Library of Congress primary sources exploring the topic of American authors in the nineteenth century, including Walt Whitman, Emily Dickinson, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Harriet Beecher Stowe, and Edgar Allan Poe. Top
10 Interactive Lessons By Google On Digital Citizenship 10 Interactive Lessons By Google On Digital Citizenship Added by Jeff Dunn on 2012-07-22 YouTube has a firm place in the current classroom. From Khan Academy’s videos to YouTube EDU and beyond, there’s a reason all these videos are finding a home in schools. free statistical software click here to return to methods page click here to return to social change page This page lists primarily statistical software, along with mapping, spreadsheets, database, stuff to do data analysis or management. All of the packages are free to use, that is: there is no charge for individuals to use them. Many of the websites say that individuals are free to download and use the packages. Gooru Supported file types: .doc/.docx, .xls/.xlsx, .ppt/.pptx, .pdf, .jpg, .jpeg, .png, .gif, .bmp Max file size: 25 MB Supported thumbnail types: .jpg/.jpeg, .png, .gif, .bmpMax upload size: 500 kB You completed:SearchEngines For All Learners Next up: Continue »
Ten Terrific Mind Mapping and Brainstorming Tools Today, I am running a workshop about using mind mapping and brainstorming tools to help students meet some of the Common Core standards in English Language Arts. Below are some of the tools that we will be using today. On a related note, if you're interested in having me come to your school or facilitate a virtual workshop, please click here for more information. Popplet is a great service that combines the best of online sticky note services like Wallwisher with collaborative mind mapping functions. Popplet allows you to create a wall of multimedia sticky notes that you can share with others. Your stickies can include videos and images that you pull from other online services.
A Good & Simple Collaborative Storytelling Lesson As regular readers know, I’ve been thinking more about collaborative storytelling and how to use it more effectively in my Intermediate English class. Last week, in fact, I published The Best Sites For Collaborative Storytelling. I also recently ordered a game I read about called Story Cubes that I thought might be useful, but once I received it concluded it wasn’t very helpful in a class with English Language Learners. However, all those ideas got my brain going, and I came up with what turned-out to be an excellent lesson in my Intermediate English class yesterday.
Top 10 Spreadsheet Secrets From A Nonprofit Data Nerd Note from Beth: I made a personal goal for myself to get past my dislike of spreadsheets and become more fluent. First I had to “Stop Fearing the Spreadsheet” and then started to interview nonprofit data nerds about their Excel secrets. Why get good at Excel? Even if you are using a paid tool measure your results, knowing how to use a spreadsheet well will be invaluable to your measurement program. While writing the “Measuring the Networked Nonprofit,” and now teaching workshops on strategy and measurement for networked nonprofits, I realize that knowing how to use excel to set up and automate a dashboard, integrate data from exported from different programs, get insights, and make it visual are basic data literacy skills. And, knowing a few secrets will help you save time.
How To Make Students Better Online Researchers I recently came across an article in Wired Magazine called “ Why Kids Can’t Search “. I’m always interested in this particular topic, because it’s something I struggle with in my middle and high school classes constantly, and I know I’m not alone in my frustrations. Getting kids to really focus on what exactly they are searching for, and then be able to further distill idea into a few key specific search terms is a skill that we must teach students, and we have to do it over and over again. 5 Fascinating Sites for Seeing and Exploring the Universe Space. The final frontier. If you love gazing at the stars, and beautiful pictures of galaxies, the Internet has a lot to offer. We’ve shown you apps for star-gazers before; today we’re going to talk about five more websites that let you learn about the universe. We’ll start close to earth and work our way out, okay? Let’s get started.
Five-Minute Film Festival: Teaching Digital Citizenship "Digital citizenship" is an umbrella term that covers a whole host of important issues. Broadly, it's the guidelines for responsible, appropriate behavior when one is using technology. But specifically, it can cover anything from "netiquette" to cyberbullying; technology access and the digital divide; online safety and privacy; copyright, plagiarism, and digital law, and more. In fact, some programs that teach digital citizenship have outlined no less than nine elements that intersect to inform a well-equipped digital citizen.