Best Twitter Chat Tools
With the sale of TweetChat – formerly the most popular, and the first, Twitter chat tool – to Internet Media Labs, the Twitter chat market is a bit of a Wild West these days. People are still engaging in these hour-or-so long live chats on Twitter, but the tools they’re using are quite fractured. Tweet chats popped up on Twitter around the same time the community created the hashtag, with people gathering for short periods of time to chat about business, hobbies, politics and much more using a single hashtag to organize the conversation. Today, you’d be hard pressed to find a topic that doesn’t have a weekly or monthly tweet chat. In fact, there are over 600 recurring chats listed on this community-curated Google Doc, and that doesn’t even include the hundreds of one-time chats that pop up every week featuring sports stars, celebrities, brands and more. Tweet Chats Today The Tools Still, tweet chats have remained relatively fringe in the Twitter-sphere. What Twitter Chats Are Still Missing
Using Twitter to provide some quick and interesting lesson starters
I am a big fan of using multimedia as a way of stimulating children in discussions and writing. As the saying goes, 'a picture is worth a thousand words,' and using pictures and videos can really help children develop ideas and give them a purpose and focus for their writing. One website which is great for providing videos, pictures and other media that can be used in Literacy is the Literacy Shed. Started by @Redgierob, this amazing resource provides so many amazing resources to cover every aspect of the Literacy curriculum.Click here to read more about using videos and pictures in Literacy. Many teachers are now starting to realise the massive benefits of using twitter as a way of building a learning network, sharing ideas, connecting with other great teachers and learning how to improve as a teacher to enhance the learning in their classroom. Most teachers will follow other educators however I want to share some other types of accounts which are great to use as a focus in class.
Communicate, Collect & Collaborate with Sticky Notes
Transcript This is the Learning in Hand podcast. I'm Tony Vincent and this is the show where I share tips, how-tos, and ideas for using today's digital tools for teaching and learning. Episode 26: Communicate, Collect & Collaborate with Sticky Notes, recorded May 2013, happens now! I like digital tools that work on many different kinds of devices. So, have you ever given each student a Post-It note to stick to a wall to gather ideas? For example, Steve Kirkpatrick's elementary students in Salford, U.K. posted to their Dinosaur Question Wall. Kathleen McGready's second grade students contributed to a wall to share what they learned after their dinosaur unit. And, Mr. Padlet calls the virtual bulletin board a wall. I'll talk about setting up your own wall or canvas shortly, but here's how a student contributes to one. Digital sticky notes don't have to be limited to text. And, in addition to being text or a video, a note can have a hyperlink. Here are some of them….
The Lost Art of Nurturing Sparks | Classroom creativity!
Behind every new idea, article or resource we do is usually something that inspired or provoked us into action. Our CPD posters were inspired by a poster idea we were sent by @paulyb37 on Twitter. The ‘M’ Files were provoked by a question we saw in a SATs paper and our ensuing annoyance! And our inspiration for Caution! Minds at work came from the work of a New York urban artist. Recently we saw something that motivated us once again. Our new resource is called SHINE! Standardised testing has a lot to answer for in terms of dampening sparks in young people. The second is a Twitter profile description that struck a chord when we saw it recently: In the above video, Peter Benson talks about a developmental study he had made about the things that make young people thrive. It’s not a long talk and well worth investing twenty minutes in. 1.
iPad in the Classroom – Can we make it simpler? | dedwards.me
With many educational institutions choosing to use tablets for learning, it can be quite intimidating for teachers when faced with so many applications. The diagram below serves to illustrate that less than 20 core apps can play a significant part in the learning process and hopefully temper any trepidation. (with thanks to Greg Hughes @deepexperience1 for his ideas and input) The apps indicated serve to enhance or modify existing practice with scope to be transformational. Twitter and Skype are part of many students’ lives, with immediate contact and communication a must. A PDF annotator and Skitch (with the ability to annotate images) might take a little more getting used to, but are invaluable to the educator with tablets in the classroom. Perhaps the most important collaborative tool however is GoogleDrive. (with thanks to dc12norfolk) As the video illustrates, GoogleDrive is a very powerful learning tool with transformational possibilities for students and educators alike. Like this:
Inkflow – A Great iPad App for Visual Thinkers
Inkflow is the perfect app for people like me who like to sketch out their ideas before sharing them in presentations, in writing, or in video productions. Inkflow is also great for people who like to take notes in a free-hand format in which they can easily include little sketches and diagrams along with their written words. Inkflow is an iPad app that can be used to sketch mind maps, draw pictures, write free hand, and just about anything else you might do with a pencil and paper. All of the pages that you sketch on and write on can be organized into little books that include page-turning effects. There is a free version and a paid version of Inkflow. Tags: Drawing Apps, free app, free apps, free ipad apps, mind mapping, sketching apps
ThingLinkToolkit
iPads in the classroom: embedding technology in the primary curriculum | Teacher Network | Guardian Professional
Last year David Andrews wrote for us about how he was using one-to-one devices in the classroom in the hugely popular blog post: An Apple for the teacher: are iPads the future in class? Here, he updates us on his progress and shares some of his favourite technology-led learning ideas. Since the start of September 2012 myself and a colleague, Chris Williams, have been trying to maximise the use of handheld technology (iPads and iPods) in year 6 in all areas of the curriculum. The potential for enhancing teaching and learning through technology has been particularly interesting: we've developed a range of apps using both iPads and iPods to engage, motivate and inspire pupils' learning in the classroom. The school's 'Apple journey' began in June 2012. Once the year 6 SATs were finished, we gave both our year 6 classes a two-week project to build a controllable vehicle. Allowing the children to work in this manner shifted the learning from teacher-centred to child-centred.
