Three Trends That Define the Future of Teaching and Learning Culture Digital Tools Teaching Strategies This week, we feature the most popular posts of the year on MindShift. In today’s dynamic classrooms, the teaching and learning process is becoming more nuanced, more seamless, and it flows back and forth from students to teachers. Here’s a look at current trends in teaching and learning, their implications, and changes to watch for. The Three Key Trends 1. If Web 2.0 has taught us anything, it’s to play nicely together. Lenny Gonzales Sharing information and connecting with others — whether we know them personally or not — has proven to be a powerful tool in education. They’re finding each other on their own kid-specific social networking sites, on their blogs, on schools’ sites, and of course on Facebook and Twitter. Educators Unite But social networking is not just for teens, as evidenced by the 500 million-plus Facebook users. 2. Flickr:Randy Pertiet Creating media is another noteworthy tech-driven initiative in education. 3. Lenny Gonzalez
Building Good Search Skills: What Students Need to Know Getty The Internet has made researching subjects deceptively effortless for students — or so it may seem to them at first. Truth is, students who haven’t been taught the skills to conduct good research will invariably come up short. That’s part of the argument made by Wheaton College Professor Alan Jacobs in The Atlantic, who says the ease of search and user interface of fee-based databases have failed to keep up with those of free search engines. His article is responding to a larger, ongoing conversation about whether the ubiquity of Web search is good or bad for serious research. So what are the hallmarks of a good online search education? SKILL-BUILDING CURRICULUM. A THOROUGH, MULTI-STEP APPROACH. but not all — types of primary sources substantially easier than it’s been in the past, and knowing which are available online and which must be sought in other collections is critical to students’ success. TOOLS FOR UNDERSTANDING SOURCES. TECHNICAL SKILLS FOR ADVANCED SEARCH. Related
Successful School Leaders Today Need to Harness Technology & Social Media School leadership is complex. It’s often an enigma. It is simultaneously invigorating and exhausting. School and system leaders are pulled in hundreds of directions by hundreds of constituents every second of the day. I had the opportunity to review William Sterrett’s recent publication, Insights into Action: Successful School Leaders Share What Works, published by ASCD. It was with great interest that I read this new book, curious if and how the author would encourage his readers to become connected learners and leaders — to harness technology and social media tools to enhance communication, collaboration, and learning opportunities for those in the organization and school community. Connected learning & leadership While the author provided insights and practical ways to get started in each of the key components of this text, I found it, on the whole, to be quite lacking in encouraging school leaders to use technology to enhance teaching and learning in their organizations.
Search tools and filters - Web Search Help - Web Search Help Depending on the type of place you searched, you could see some of these filters: Your past visits: Narrow results to places you have or haven't visited. Rating: Filter by the rating given by other people who use Google. Cuisine: See results based on the type of food served. Add or remove places you've visited To get better search results, you can tell Google whether you have or haven't been to a place. On your phone: Under "Overview," tap You visited here __ days/weeks/years ago. Note: To filter by places you've visited, turn on Location History on your Android device or iPhone or iPad, and turn on Web and App Activity.
The Dyslexic Professor I’ve seen this posted on many of my friend’s Facebook pages the last several weeks. I’m unsure of the origin or I would give the original author credit. All I know is that this is a reminder to all of us to be in the moment and to always be present. I struggle with this balancing act. Image Credit Dear Mom On the iPhone, I see you over there on the bench, messing on your iPhone. But Momma, let me tell you what you don’t see right now….. Your little girl is spinning round and round, making her dress twirl. You aren’t. Your little boy keeps shouting, “Mom, MOM watch this!” He sees that too. Now you are pushing your baby in the swing. Talk to her. Put your eyes back on your prize…Your kids. Show them that they are the priority. Play time at the park will be over before you know it. The childhood of your children will be gone before you know it. They won’t always want to come to the park with you, Mommy. Because they know… I know that’s not true, Mommy. I know your heart says differently. Like this:
Search operators - Web Search Help - Web Search Help You can use symbols or words in your search to make your search results more precise. Google Search usually ignores punctuation that isn’t part of a search operator. Don’t put spaces between the symbol or word and your search term. A search for site:nytimes.com will work, but site: nytimes.com won’t. Refine image searches Overall Advanced Search Go to Advanced Image Search. Search for an exact image size Right after the word you're looking for, add the text imagesize:widthxheight. Example: imagesize:500x400 Common search techniques Search social media Put @ in front of a word to search social media. Search for a price Put $ in front of a number. Search hashtags Put # in front of a word. Exclude words from your search Put - in front of a word you want to leave out. Search for an exact match Put a word or phrase inside quotes. Search within a range of numbers Put .. between two numbers. Combine searches Put "OR" between each search query. Search for a specific site Search for related sites
KinectEDucation Search by Color? A Little-Known Trick to Find the Right Image Digital Tools Flickr: Richard Morton By Tasha Bergson-Michelson At its heart, clever searching lies at the intersection of critical thinking, imagination, and the savvy use of technical tools. Google Search Educator Tasha Bergson-Michelson begins a series of guest posts about innovative ways to approach finding information and the problems we can solve when we bring together technology, creativity, and education. It’s right before bedtime on Sunday night, and your child just announced that she has a report due in the morning about heroes. When searching for the New England Patriots, you get a variety of images–but many of them logos, or fan created photo montages on a background of the team colors. Looking at this first screen of results, considering what to do next, a savvy searcher asks what pictures of people actually playing football would all have in common. One picture above immediately catches the eye: the green photo in the third row. Let’s take another example. Give it a try!
Lessons and Legacies from Stanford’s Free Online Classes Digital Tools Teaching Strategies Stanford Artificial Intelligence Class By Steve Henn Last year, Stanford University computer science professor Sebastian Thrun — also known as the fellow who helped build Google’s self-driving car — got together with a small group of Stanford colleagues and they impulsively decided to open their classes to the world. They would allow anyone, anywhere to attend online, take quizzes, ask questions and even get grades for free. “Within hours, we had 5,000 students signed up,” Thrun says. You can only imagine what those meetings must have been like, with professors telling the school they wanted to teach free, graded online classes for which students could receive a certificate of completion. “I think the impact will be large and it will be widespread.” For decades, technology has promised to remake education — and it may finally be about to deliver. “We are still having conversations about that,” says James Plummer, dean of Stanford’s School of Engineering.