50 Things You Probably Didn't Know About Languages Learning another language is important. And even in the United States (where learning non-native language has typically been lagging a bit behind many other countries), nearly all students are studying another language. Languages are a part of everyday life – whether you speak one or more, they are one of the main keys of communication. There are about 7,000 languages in the world.There are 50,000 characters in the Chinese language. Tech with Jen: Interactive Reading Notebooks Interactive Reading Notebooks seem to be all of the rage. Its no wonder because Common Core State Standards require students to read, examine, and discuss a variety of texts. The reading notebook is a tool to aide comprehension, write about thinking, and provide evidence from text. Now don't get me wrong, I believe in the reciprocal nature of reading and writing. First, begin by aiding comprehension through the use of graphic organizers. Once students have created their page, I like to have students share. Click on the link to see a presentation I did for the Schools Without Walls Conference that has several student examples. Be sure to open the link from a device. If you would like to learn how to create your own Interactive Reading Notebooks check out the videos below: (Sorry for the long videos.) UPDATE: I've had a lot of people request more information about the graphic organizers I use for the Interactive Reading Logs. What do you think about this idea?
How To Gamify Your Classroom In my last post, Following the Oregon Trail: Why Gaming Prevails in Education, I discussed the rationale for including games in pedagogy. Games are engaging, promote retention, and provide students with a fail-safe environment in which to learn and grow, to name a few benefits. It is becoming common knowledge that games are an effective instructional tool. Still, many educators are intimidated. For those wanting to incorporate games or gamification into their classrooms, there are project and design components to consider. Game DesignersProgrammersGraphic ArtistsSound EngineersCopy EditorsProject ManagersTesters Game production can be particularly intimidating for educators who are already juggling lesson planning, grading, classroom management, professional development and all the other important responsibilities of teaching. Luckily, there is a vast toolbox at your disposal; just a quick Google search of “educational games” produces over 180 million hits! Level 1: Begin at the End
25 Sites For Creating Interesting Quote Images If you’ve used Pinterest, Facebook, Instagram, or just about any other social network then you’ve probably seen some interesting quotes presented in the form of a splashy and colorful image. You may have thought “I wish I had the time and graphic design expertise to create something nifty like that! My students and friends would love it.” Well, the long wait is over. For example, you can have students find a favorite quote, create an innovative image out of that quote, and then stand up and explain why that quote matters to them. An example I made on PicMonkey for this post: However you use your quotes, check out this fabulous list from Denise Wakeman and try out some of them for yourself.
Medium: A powerful web tool you're going to be using next year Apps Web Tools Medium: A powerful web tool you’re going to be using next year Facebook Tweet Pinterest Email I like to write. [quote_right]I’d say Medium will be a popular tool for teachers and students alike next year. What Is Medium.com? Medium, on the other hand, encourages you to write until your hands bleed. There is a community aspect, of course. If you’re like me, all the noise of the web can distract you to the point of not accomplishing anything. That’s why it’s perfect for the classroom and for education in general. How To Use Medium In The Classroom Medium could be a powerful ally for any student in need of breaking through writer’s block. The formatting tools available on Medium I have just stumbled across Medium and am only getting started with it now. Medium is still in the very early stages right now. This post was actually written on Medium.
5 Tools for Quickly Building Simple Announcement Pages School websites and classroom blogs are excellent tools for distributing information to parents and students. But sometimes you might want to make your announcements stand-out from the rest of the cyber noise that parents and students experience on a daily basis. Or perhaps you want your students to create their own webpages to showcase their best work or to announce an upcoming school event. Striking.ly is a service that can be used to create one page websites to show off your best digital work or to advertise an event. Page O Rama is a free service for quickly creating stand alone webpages. Pagefin is a free service for creating simple webpages without the need to register for an account. Smore is a service for quickly creating great-looking webpages. Populr is a service for creating simple webpages to advertise events and promotions.
Ten Most Popular Educational YouTube Videos in 2013 Uncategorized Check out YouTube’s top trending educational videos in 2013. 1. Which Came First – The Chicken or the Egg? via AsapSCIENCE 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10. Related Explore: video, videos, YouTube For Students, Why the Question is More Important Than the Answer Thinkstock In a traditional classroom, the teacher is the center of attention, the owner of knowledge and information. Teachers often ask questions of their students to gauge comprehension, but it’s a passive model that relies on students to absorb information they need to reproduce on tests. What would happen if the roles were flipped and students asked the questions? That’s the premise of the Right Question Institute and a new book by its co-directors Dan Rothstein and Luz Santana. Coming up with the right question involves vigorously thinking through the problem, investigating it from various angles, turning closed questions into open-ended ones and prioritizing which are the most important questions to get at the heart of the matter. “We’ve been underestimating how well our kids can think.” “We’ve been underestimating how well our kids can think.” On the teacher’s part, the role becomes more a facilitator than an instructor. It’s a bit like the Socratic method flipped on its head.
Magisto for Chrome - Magical Video Editing Magisto is a video editing service whose mobile apps I've featured in the past. This morning I tried tried their free Chrome App. The Magisto Chrome App makes it easy to stitch together video clips and pictures to create short videos. The Magisto Chrome App allows you to quickly drag videos and images from your desktop to your Magisto account. On the Magisto website you can create albums of your videos. Applications for Education The Magisto Chrome App is a good option for teachers who would like a simple video creation tool that offers a little bit more than Animoto in terms of sharing and length of videos that their students can create.
How Deductive Thinking Can Drive Student-Designed Research How Deductive Thinking Can Drive Student-Designed Research by Jane Healey, Ph.D. I specialize in an odd subject—research. I teach students to select a subject area, pick a topic, craft a question, design a prospectus, follow through on the plans, adapt to obstacles and “interesting” findings, organize results, and create an appropriate outcome that matches the content and methodology of the project. In two previous posts, I shared advice I give to colleagues who want students to research in the classroom and need a refresher about the process and effective ways of teaching it. Recently, a colleague claimed that I skipped steps of independent research for students: how do they create their own questions? Many of us sincerely wish students would follow their passions, but many of them, especially the younger ones, sincerely don’t know what that is. Step 1: Subject The deductive thinking starts big and narrows as more is learned. Not done, yet. Step 2: Topic Step 3: Questions
How Columbus Sailed Into U.S. History, Thanks To Italians : Code Switch hide captionThough he sailed in 1492, Christopher Columbus was not widely known among Americans until the mid-1700s. Spencer Arnold/Getty Images Though he sailed in 1492, Christopher Columbus was not widely known among Americans until the mid-1700s. It's been 521 years since the Italian explorer Christopher Columbus "sailed the ocean blue/in fourteen hundred and ninety-two." But the question remains, how did a man who never set foot on North America get a federal holiday in his name? This is in contrast to Juan Ponce de Leon (who arrived in Florida in 1513), Alonso Alvarez de Pineda (whose ships arrived in what's now known as Corpus Christi Bay in Texas in 1519) and fellow Italian Giovanni da Verrazzano, who reached New York Harbor in 1524. So why Columbus Day? Writer Washington Irving's A History of the Life and Voyages of Christopher Columbus, published in 1828, is the source of much of the glorification and myth-making related to Columbus today and is considered highly fictionalized.
The Teacher's Quick Guide To Digital Scavenger Hunts If you’ve got a smartphone or a tablet in your classroom, you’re ready for the adventure to begin! By adventure I mean, of course, the world of active learning through digital scavenger hunts. In this hunt, students are tasked with finding a particular physical object, person, or place and have to use technology to track it down. Note: an ‘online scavenger hunt’ usually implies that you’re hunting around online and not physically with classmates. For the purpose of this article, I’m focusing on the physical version I’ve dubbed ‘digital scavenger hunts’. The Simple Goal So now that you’re all ready to start your very first scavenger hunt, let’s figure out what the goals are. Finding The Technology Like the movie National Treasure, students will need a lot of ingenuity and tools to help them uncover the mysteries you’ve laid out before them. In an effort to get your scavenger hunt jump-started, here are a few useful tech tools that might be of use. Finding An Objective A Quick Note
Plant a Question… Grow an “Answer Garden” Need a digital scribble space? Then be sure to experiment with AnswerGarden, a web-based polling/survey tool that allows users to create and publish a question. Once visitors submit answers, they are immediately displayed as tags in a basic word cloud. Data can also be exported to Wordle or Tagxedo to create a more visually appealing word cloud. What’s more—a QR code is generated for each AnswerGarden. AnswerGardens can even be embedded into web sites, wikis, blogs and/or social networks. In order to determine what technology project this year’s Language Arts students enjoyed the most, I utilized an AnswerGarden. FYI: A typical AnswerGarden is displayed in black and white. The same results—but exported to Wordle. More results—this time from Tagxedo. Classroom Connection: With AnswerGarden, creative brainstorming and collecting feedback has never been easier!
How to Make Posts Sticky in WordPress, Kidblog, and Edublogs When you're using blogs in your classroom there may be some posts that you want to keep at the top of the page rather than letting them get pushed down by new entries. For example, if you're students are contributing to a group blog, you might want to keep the instructions post pinned to the top of the list of posts. Or you might want to keep a reminder about an upcoming due date posted at the top of the page. These kinds of posts are called "sticky" posts and they're easy to create on WordPress.com, Kidblog, Edublogs, or any other blog running on the WordPress.org software. To create a sticky post in any of the aforementioned services follow these steps. 1. Write your post as you normally do. 2. To make an existing post a sticky post follow these steps. 1.