Integrating Infographics into the iClassroom So TechChef4U has caught the Infographics Influenza! Being a bit of a Pinterest fanatic, I have found an easy way to support and feed my Infographics Habit. Continuing to stock pile Educational Infographics on my Pinterest board, I waited until I found an app-ortunity to share these resources with one of my teachers and create a delectable lesson. During my stint as an 8th Math tutor, I had a few of the teachers approach me about engaging math lessons that they could utilize with 8th Math after the STAAR test. I mentioned the topic of infographics and shared a few of the ones I had collected. Pinterest: Educational Infographics “Common Core Standards: Interpret information presented visually, orally, or quantitatively (e.g., in charts, graphs, diagrams, time lines, animations, or interactive elements on Web pages) and explain how the information contributes to an understanding of the text in which it appears” What is an Infographic? Via: OnlineEducation.net
TeachMeetMelbourne - home 100 Twitter Tips For Teachers Twitter may have started off as a fun social media site for keeping up with friends and sharing updates about daily life, but it’s become much more than that for many users over the past few years as the site has evolved and grown. These days, Twitter is a powerhouse for marketing, communication, business, and even education, letting people from around the world work together, share ideas, and gain exposure. It has become a staple at many online colleges and campuses as well, leaving many academics wondering just how and if they should be using Twitter both in the classroom and in their professional lives. You have to start somewhere and these tips will help ensure that your first foray in Twitter is a great experience. Organize your Twitter. The Internet may be a virtual Wild West but there are some unspoken rules of engagement you should know before adding your two cents into the mix. Keep private conversations private. They don’t call it a social network just for fun. Ask questions.
TodaysMeet A Life Our Students Will Never Know Posted by Mrs Kathleen Morris on Tuesday, April 10th 2012 Over the holidays, while attempting to be less “connected”, I’ve been thinking about how much technology seems to be increasingly infused into our day-to-day lives. With laptops, smart phones, iPads, iPods and other portable devices becoming so common place, gadgets are no longer something we go to, they come with us. This clearly brings about many pros and cons. Sometimes it’s fun to think back and remember how you did things pre internet/mobile/computer. Meeting someone for lunch/a movie/a walk/any event outside the house and not being able to let them know if you’re running late, lost or if your plans have changed.Researching a holiday destination by reading a book. While these tasks seem inefficient now, I don’t remember questioning them. If the pace of the world is fast, connected and dynamic, then surely the networked, nimble, multitaskers will be those who will succeed now and in the future? What do you think?
The Complete Guide To Twitter Hashtags In Education What is a hashtag? A word or phrase preceded by a “#.” How do hashtags work? Twitter can be a busy place with lots of tweets–and thus lots of “noise.” A #hashtag is a way to aggregate tweets that are appended with a hashtag. Who can use hashtags? Anyone. What else do I need to know? Don’t hashtag spam–if your tweet doesn’t add to that hashtag’s topic, discussion, or user base, don’t add the hashtag.Use more than one hashtag if it applies to more than one topic, but choose wisely. Meeting Times Many of the hashtags have “meeting times” where educators agree to “meet and tweet”–that is, send out messages on a topic at a certain time on a certain day. If you do participate at the agreed upon time, you’ll see the tweets stream in live and participate in said conversation (via twitter) in what is nearly real-time. Note, this list of hashtags will be updated periodically, including reorganization, functional linking on all hashtags, and the addition of meeting times and focus areas. Popular Hashtags
10 Awesome Free Tools To Make Infographics Advertisement Who can resist a colourful, thoughtful venn diagram anyway? In terms of blogging success, infographics are far more likely to be shared than your average blog post. This means more eyeballs on your important information, more people rallying for your cause, more backlinks and more visits to your blog. In short, a quality infographic done well could be what your blog needs right now. Designing An Infographic Some great tips for designing infographics: Keep it simple! Ideas for infographic formats include: Timelines;Flow charts;Annotated maps;Graphs;Venn diagrams;Size comparisons;Showing familiar objects or similar size or value. Here are some great tutorials on infographic creation: Creating Your Infographic Plan and research.If required, use free software to create simple graphs and visualisations of data.Use vector graphic software to bring these visualisations into the one graphic. Free Online Tools For Creating Infographics Stat Planet Hohli Creately New York Times Many Eyes Wordle
Kevin’s Meandering Mind « If you don’t live it, it won’t come out of your horn. ~ Charlie Parker It’s Official: Using Twitter Makes Students More Engaged Further affirming what you probably already know, Twitter is evidently one of the best tools for learning and becoming an engaged student. We’ve covered the benefits of the social network ad nauseum for teachers and administrators over the past few years … but a new study solidifies the worth of Twitter for students. Assistant Professor of Education at Michigan State University, Christine Greenhow, conducted a study titled “ Twitteracy: Tweeting is a New Literary Practice. ” In it, she found that college students who tweet as part of their instruction are more engaged with the course content, the teacher, other students, and they have higher grades. “Tweeting can be thought of as a new literary practice,” said Greenhow, who also studies the growing use of social media among high-schoolers.
Helping students interpret visual representations of information Update: Feb. 29, 2012 Please note: The original video we used for this post was a video podcast by Gestalten TV in which New York Times Graphics Director Steven Duenes and Graphics Editor Archie Tse describe how their team works with breaking news to create clear, concise visualizations of data for readers. Since that has now been taken down, we have substituted a classic TED talk by David McCandless that we refer to in the post. We’re declaring this week Infographics Week on The Learning Network because we know how important it is for students to be able to read and interpret visual representations of information — and because The New York Times consistently creates useful and elegant examples that we think teachers across the curriculum should know about. Not only do charts, graphs and maps show up on standardized tests of all kinds, but whiteboard technology has made the graphic depiction of information that much more useful and ubiquitous in classrooms. Infographics in General:
Pandora | Drawing inspiration with words... Over 100 ideas for using Twitter in the Classroom This handful of resources provide about 100 different ideas for, and examples of, using Twitter in the classroom. It’s been almost 8 months since I published the post, “6 Examples of Using Twitter in the Classroom”, about uses of the popular micro-blogging tool in the instructional setting. This post generated a lot of traffic, and continues to attract hundreds of viewers every week. Since that brief posting, I’ve come across a lot of articles containing examples and suggestions for using Twitter in instructional applications. I’ve combed through many of these and tried to boil down the redundancies to create a rich set of idea-laden resources. While there’s still going to be some overlap in the concepts presented in these articles, they clearly meet the goal of providing a thorough set of ideas and examples for leveraging Twitter in the educational process. Here are the original “6 Examples” from last June’s post: About Kelly Walsh Print This Post