Kaizena · Give Great Feedback Overwhelmed by size, underwhelmed by quality: A review of EdTech’s largest show, BETT 2018 The BETT show is emblematic of much that EdTech gets wrong. No show captures the hype of educational technology quite like the world’s largest education trade show. This week marked my fifth visit to BETT at London’s Excel arena. True to form, my two days at the show left me feeling overwhelmed with the number of products now available in the EdTech market, yet utterly underwhelmed with the educational value on offer. Spare a thought for the educator who steps into BETT in search of a solution. Upon entering the exhibition hall, they are immediately struck by the sheer size of the event. Your senses are assaulted on multiple fronts as products of all shapes, sizes and colours compete for your attention (add to this the lure of free chocolate). Virtual reality has crept up in recent years and now enjoys a prominence that almost places it in league with those interactive whiteboards. The robots seem to rise each year at BETT. · What is your pedagogy?
Runic alphabets / Runes / Futhark Little is known about the origins of the Runic alphabet, which is traditionally known as futhark after the first six letters. In Old Norse the word rune means 'letter', 'text' or 'inscription'. The word also means 'mystery' or 'secret' in Old Germanic languages and runes had a important role in ritual and magic. Here are some theories about the origins of runes: The alphabet was probably created independently rather than evolving from another alphabet. The earliest known Runic inscriptions date from the 1st century AD, but the vast majority of Runic inscriptions date from the 11th century. Notable features The direction of writing in early Runic inscriptions is variable. Types of runic inscriptions include: 'Hrolf was here' type inscriptions on cliff walls, large rocks and buildings grave stone inscriptions, often with who carved the runes and who was buried, and also who made sure the stone was raised. There are a number of different Runic alphabets including: Elder Futhark Notes Links
21 Tools for Conducting Digital Formative Assessments Conducting simple formative assessments is one way to measure what your students do or do not understand from the lessons that you have taught. There are many ways to conduct formative assessments. They can be in the form of fun games, in a video format, or in a quick quiz. The following tools all provide a means through which you can conduct formative assessments.Google Forms Almost as soon as my school went 1:1 with netbooks, I started using Google Forms to collect responses from students. Padlet I started using Padlet back when it was called WallWisher. Quick Key - For classrooms that aren't 1:1Quick Key is an excellent platform for creating and conducting formative assessments. Plickers - For classrooms that aren't 1:1 If not every student in your classroom has a laptop or tablet to use, then you need to check out Plickers as a student response system. FormativeFormative provides you with a place to create online classrooms. Add questions to your slides
Draw, choose, write or say: Fantastic formative assessments Formative assessment can be fantastic! Here are options for letting students draw, choose, write and say as a formative assessment tool. (Flickr / Devon Christopher Adams) Formative assessment can be drudgery. Or formative assessment can be fantastic. Teachers use formative assessments to get the pulse of the class, to see how students are progressing. Plenty of digital tools exist to help teachers mix things up. Need some ideas? When you’re done reading, please add your favorite formative assessment tools in a comment at the end of the post! Formative (goformative.com) — Formative lets teachers ask a question (or questions) to students through the students’ devices. Paper by FiftyThree (fiftythree.com/paper) — Paper is a sketching app. Google Drawings (drive.google.com) — Google Drawings lets students add elements to a blank canvas, including text, images, shapes and lines. Kahoot! Plickers (plickers.com) — Don’t have devices for every student? Related
The horror of the Bett Show | Doug Belshaw's Thought Shrapnel I’ve been to the Bett Show (formely known as BETT, which is how the author refers to it in this article) in many different guises. I’ve been as a classroom teacher, school senior leader, researcher in Higher Education, when I was working in different roles at Mozilla, as a consultant, and now in my role at Moodle. I go because it’s free, and because it’s a good place to meet up with people I see rarely. The BETT show is emblematic of much that EdTech gets wrong. It’s laughable, it really is. One senses from these shows that exhibitors are floating from one fad to the next, desperately hoping to attach their technological innovations to education. But of course. I like the questions Mubeen comes up with. In the meantime, there are four simple questions every self-professed education innovator should demand of themselves:What is your pedagogy? Source: Junaid Mubeen Related Reading the web on your own terms 26 January 2018 In "Life online" Anxiety is the price of convenience 25 January 2018
Earth's magnetic song recorded for the first time during a solar storm Data from ESA's Cluster mission has provided a recording of the eerie "song" that Earth sings when it is hit by a solar storm. The song comes from waves that are generated in the Earth's magnetic field by the collision of the storm. The storm itself is the eruption of electrically charged particles from the sun's atmosphere. A team led by Lucile Turc, a former ESA research fellow who is now based at the University of Helsinki, Finland, made the discovery after analyzing data from the Cluster Science Archive. The archive provides access to all data obtained during Cluster's ongoing mission over almost two decades. Cluster consists of four spacecraft that orbit Earth in formation, investigating our planet's magnetic environment and its interaction with the solar wind—a constant flow of particles released by the sun into the Solar System. The new analysis shows that, during the collision, the foreshock is driven to release magnetic waves that are much more complex than first thought.
Upgrade your KWL Chart to the 21st Century One of the take aways from the Curriculum Mapping Institute this past week was that it brought an upgrade to THE trusted KWL (Know, What to Know and Learned) Chart to the forefront. It seems a no brainer…one of those things… “I should have thought about it”… So what is this upgrade all about? An “H” snuck into the Acronym! What does this “H” stand for”?Why is this an upgrade for the 21st century? I started out by searching Google, which immediately wanted to correct my search term and showed me the traditional “KWL chart” results. The top search results turned out mostly downloadable files for templates, which was quiet interesting as there were several explanations in these tutorials what the “H” could stand for: HOW can we find the answers to these questions? In direct relation to our quest to bring Information literacy in the 21st century to our teachers and students, the “HOW will we find the information” sticks out right away for me. Related 12. In "Featured Carousel" 8. 29.
quizziz.com - quizziz.com Eliminate render-blocking JavaScript and CSS in above-the-fold content Your page has 2 blocking script resources and 1 blocking CSS resources. This causes a delay in rendering your page. Leverage browser caching Setting an expiry date or a maximum age in the HTTP headers for static resources instructs the browser to load previously downloaded resources from local disk rather than over the network. (expiration not specified) Enable compression Compressing resources with gzip or deflate can reduce the number of bytes sent over the network. Compressing could save 4.5KiB (73% reduction). Is Technology Addictive? 4 min read I was supposed to speak to a reporter today about iPhones and addiction, but the interview fell through. I jotted down some of my thoughts in preparation for the call, and I thought I’d post them here in case it’s a topic I decide to return to and flesh out more in the future… I am hesitant to make any clinical diagnosis about technology and addiction – I’m not a medical professional. But I’ll readily make some cultural observations, first and foremost, about how our notions of “addiction” have changed over time. Now, this “constantly checking their phones” behavior certainly looks like a compulsive behavior. Apps are being engineered for “engagement” and built for “clicks” – behavioral design. I think we’re starting to realize – or I hope we’re starting to realize – that those metrics might conflict with other values. I bring up “free will” here because one of the best known behaviorists, Harvard psychology professor B.
Why are astronomers interested in gravitational waves? (Intermediate) - Curious About Astronomy? Ask an Astronomer When you look up at the night sky, you see a very particular view of the Universe. You see electromagnetic radiation, light, at optical wavelengths from objects like stars. If your eyes could see radio waves, which are another wavelength of light, they would see a very different picture of the Universe. The sources of radio light are different than the sources of optical light. For almost the entire history of astronomy, we viewed the Universe through an electromagnetic window. On February 11th, 2016, the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory (LIGO) collaboration announced the detection of gravitational waves from a black hole binary.
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