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How To Integrate Education Technology With Scaffolding

Imagine asking students to write a research paper without teaching them how to write an introduction, body and conclusion first. How about writing the equation of the quadratic formula on the board, and just giving students a set of problems to start solving with no prior instruction? These types of tasks are nearly impossible for students if teachers do not break up the learning process into small chunks aimed at meeting the students where they are and then building on them to create new knowledge, otherwise known as scaffolding. Meeting with several teachers recently calls to mind a couple of instances that serve as a useful reminder why scaffolding not only applies to teaching content, but is also imperative to employ when introducing new technology into the classroom. I want to share experiences from two teachers that I work with and demonstrate how scaffolding would apply to each situation. Teacher Experiences In turn, the students resorted to the old paper and pencil route. Related:  digital skills

Learning, lurking and language teaching – An interview with Beyza Yilmaz « TESOL Greece Blog Beyza Yılmaz I am very happy to present you with a great educator in Turkey, Beyza Yılmaz, who will also be presenting at the 34th TESOL Greece Annual International Convention. Over to Beyza, who has given us an amazing interview! Vicky: Beyza, many thanks for accepting to do this interview for our TESOL Greece blog, a little over a month before our Annual Conference. Beyza: You are very welcome, dear Vicky. Vicky: For those of our readers who meet you for the first time, can you introduce yourself and tell us about your work in education as well? Beyza: My name is Beyza Yılmaz and I work as an EFL instructor at Özyeğin University in Turkey and as a teacher trainer at Pilgrims Teacher Training in the UK. Vicky: How did you decide to become involved in education? Beyza: Actually I have always been involved in education. Vicky: Can you share one of the highlights in your teaching career so far? Vicky: Now let’s talk about the conference. Vicky: What gave you the inspiration for this topic?

Hosting a TeachMeet – The Noob’s Perspective | talesfromthecastironshore Even though the idea of the TeachMeet seems to have been growing apace, with events being held all over the country, they had seemingly evaded my particular corner of the West Midlands, until the fantastic Dan Harvey organised TeachMeetBrum. I went along with my good friend Mike Gunn, and in for a penny, in for a pound, we (sort-of) contributed to it and certainly both thoroughly enjoyed it. By the time we returned home, we had both decided that TeachMeet had to come to Coventry. (Our planning on the car journey home reminded me of the over-excited and wildly far-fetched post-gig conversations the teenage me would have with friends about forming a band..) We knew we would need some help so after convincing our brilliant Deputy Head @plestered that it was a good idea, #TMCov was green lit.. What follows is a short overview of what we did – our take on a TeachMeet – and how three TeachMeet-organising-noobs tackled it. 1) Decide on a TM format that works for you 2) Ticketing 9) Just do it…

20 Top Video Explanations to Help Teachers Become Tech Savvy Finally I finished reading The Art of Explanation: Making your Ideas, Products, and Services Easier to Understand , I am the kind of readers who love to read from cover to cover and I hate scanning and this is probably why it took me almost three weeks to finish it of course taking into account the time for my MAED studies and the time for my work. The Art of Explanation is a book written by the phenomenal Lefever in which he lays flat the secrets of making engaging video explanations. I highly recommend this book for every teacher and educator . LeFever is the founder of Common Craft, a company known around the world for making complex ideas easy to understand in the form of video explanations. Through multiple awards, tens of millions of online views and work with brands like LEGO, Google and Ford Motors, Lee and his wife Sachi have built a reputation for excellence in explanation. 1- Augmented reality explained 2- What are Apps ? 3-What is a Blog ? 4- What is BigTorrent ? 11- Podcasting

Why I had to unfollow you | Kirsty Marrins Today I unfollowed a charity on Twitter. I’m usually in the habit of following charities, not unfollowing them but it is the manner in which this charity tweets that compelled me to part ways with them. This time is was a case of ‘It’s not me, it is you’. I unfollowed them (and tweeted about it) and was just going to leave it at that. Then Ian Griggs, journalist at Third Sector magazine, said I should explain to them why I had unfollowed them. This was met with lots of agreement, from charity people and even charities themselves, as constructive criticism should help them improve. I’ve thought about it further though and these are the three cardinal Twitter sins this charity has committed: 1. 2. 3. As Leo Birch, Digital Marketing Coordinator at British Heart Foundation, so eloquently put it, this charity is committing “social media bad practice bingo!”. Any other examples you’d care to add that would compel you to unfollow an account? Like this: Like Loading...

Digital by Default Service Standard — Government Service Design Manual The Digital Service Standard has changed from 26 points to a more concise 18. From 1 June 2015 all transactional services will be assessed on the new 18 points. The Service Standard ensures digital teams build high quality government services. A transactional service must meet each criteria to pass the Government Digital Service assessment. Assisted digital support is an integral part of any service, helping users who can't complete the service on their own. Understand user needs.

How to Deal with Information Overload I have recently read a great book by Clay Johnson called The Information Diet: A Case for Conscious Consumption . In this book Clay talked about the information overload we are subject to and he suggested many strategies to overcome this problem. I mentioned The Information Diet because while I was going through my feeds I came across the infographic below ( created by Krissy ) that embodies more or less similar ideas from that book. Building a personal learning network | Teaching using web 2 Why building a personal learning network is important Lately I have been thinking a lot about personal learning networks and why they are important. Since writing a book with my class I have actively used my own personal network to promote the book and get attention. It has been great to have a vast and diverse list of educators as my Twitter and Facebook contacts. PLN-3 (Photo credit: cbucky) A personal learning network is just like the network of teachers you work with at your school every day. Follow others as they follow you I’m letting you in on a secret here: some educators you follow will never follow you back. Extract from book, more to be found here: Like this: Like Loading... Categories: Did you know?

Social Media: Why This Matters To Everyone In Education August 12, 2012 in Volume 2 HETL Note: We are pleased to present “Social Media: Why It Matters to Everyone in Education” – an opinion article by Daniel Clark. The article explores social media and the use of social media in an educational context applying a staged model proposed by the author. Daniel Clark views social media as an immediate challenge with the potential to introduce major changes to educational approaches and paradigms. You may submit your own article on the topic or you may submit a “letter to the editor” of less than 500 words (see the Submissions page on this portal for submission requirements). Author Bio: Daniel Clark, M. Patrick Blessinger and Krassie Petrova Social Media: Why This Matters To Everyone In Education Daniel Clark, BPP Business School, UK My son, who is eight, is a fanatical Pokémon gamer. Put another way, in ten or fifteen years’ time, students may expect to find educational nuggets on demand whenever they need them. Is this scary? Mr. Social Networking

DL staff development materials ssional development materials emerging from the JISC Developing Digital Literacies (DDL) programme. All are freely available for use and reuse under a Creative Commons license and many can also be edited and adapted for your own needs. Jisc Resources A core set of staff development resources for curriculum development Institutional resources mainly for curriculum teams (developing programmes of study to incorporate digital literacies) Mapping spaces, tasks and tools - from the Institute of Education and the University of the Arts London projects - is a suite of resources to support discussion of appropriate learning tasks and tools for different settings Cardiff (Digidol) version of the Literacies Framework with five sets of cards to prompt discussion The Bath Pride project worked with staff to develop faculty-specific digital literacy statements which are now being used to support curriculum design. Curriculum development materials from the DIAL project include:

Teaching Twitter: The ‘Lo-Tech’ way I spend a lot of time, particularly at the start of the academic year, introducing students and teachers to the power of sharing via social networks. I tell them the story of how social media has defined my career, share some amazing case studies, and placate their fears by discussing anonymity and ways to ‘own’ their digital footprints. Many get involved enthusiastically, but when presented with the ‘sign up’ screen or a flurry of 140 character tweets for the first time, a good number still don’t see the point of mastering this often confusing world. This week I stumbled across a great idea, built on from the excellent ‘Gamestorming‘ book (I really am giving away my kryptonite here…); the ‘low tech social network’. I tried this with one of my social networking classes today, instead of sending them straight to a screen I asked them to put their names and three interests on a post it and then link themselves to others in as many ways as possible. Related posts:

Twitter Lists and why you should be using them Lilach Lilach is the founder and driving force behind Socialable, and highly regarded on the world speaker circuit. Forbes and Number 10 Downing Street have even been graced by her presence! In a nutshell, she’s a hugely connected and highly influential serial entrepreneur – the embodiment of Digitelligence.Listed in Forbes as one of the top 20 women social media power influencers and likewise as one of the top social media power influencers, she is one of the most dynamic personalities in the social media market, she actively leverages ethical online marketing for her clients and for Socialable. After launching her first business within three years of becoming a mother, her financial success was recognised by being a finalist at the Best MumPreneur of the Year Awards, presented at 10 Downing Street. When Lilach isn’t working she enjoys spending time with her family and is an avid fan of Zumba.

World Languages, Facebook, Pinterest, Culture & Literacy Learning and teaching opportunities for languages sometimes occur in unexpected places. As exam pressure was starting to get unbearable for some of my classes, I discovered this summer how visuals from Facebook and Pinterest could be used to motivate students in my French and Spanish lessons as well as support their literacy in general. When I mention #Facebook as a source of language resources, I often have a lot of explaining to do. Facebook is still viewed with a lot of suspicion by my colleagues in the UK and although it seems to be more readily used by my fellow language teachers in the US, I feel it is still very under-used as a professional development tool and source of educational materials by world languages educators worldwide. #Pinterest is not as well-known, or just known as a tool to swap a limited range of ideas on fashion, for instance. So, what are effective visuals for language learning? My favourite sources of visuals from Facebook are: So, how are the posts used?

Why the disenchantment with Twitter? | Technology | The Observer By any standards, Twitter is one of the wonders of the digital world. A service that didn't exist seven years ago has somehow become a central part of our media ecosystem, old and new: I can't remember when I last heard a radio programme that didn't invite me to "follow" it on Twitter, while at the opening of every conference I attend nowadays, after the obligatory notices about the location of the fire exits, there is the unveiling of the event's Twitter hashtag. So Twitter is huge. It has more than 500 million active users who send 340m tweets on an average day, and is consistently one of the top 10 websites in the world. Two-thirds of the world's top companies have an active Twitter profile. And yet when it first appeared in July 2006, it provided instant corroboration of Naughton's First Law of Innovation, which says that if the Daily Mail is baffled and/or infuriated by a new piece of technology, then the odds are that it is a really significant development.

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