Welcome back! I'd like to begin our Memorial Day post by sharing my gratefulness for all the courageous men and women who have given their lives in service; and to all those who have served in the armed forces and/or continue to do so, you have my gratitude. And for those teachers who would like some great resources on teaching about Memorial Day in the classroom, here is a good place to start.
And we'll continue today's Round Up with an incredibly interesting dialogue that is evolving between Audrey Watters of Hack Education and Marie Bjerede at Getting Smart over the recent Clayton Christensen Report entitled, "Is K-12 Blended Learning Disruptive?" In short, they are discussing the idea of Disruptive Innovation, the role of technology in education, the importance of metaphors, and a whole lot more. If you're feeling philosophical or a tad existential today, I'd recommend heading in this direction.
Getting Smart also has a write-up on "Ten Reasons Online Learning Matters." The article covers some good points and ends with the statement that "Nearly every student will learn online in whatever postsecondary setting they choose... It's time to improve the quality of online learning opportunities." Getting Smart is working on a paper with iNACOL about the benefits and myths of online learning, so more on this soon!
Hybrid Pedagogy has a new article, "Push, Pull, Fork: GitHub for Academics." GitHub was originally created as an online host for software code, to let developers easily share and exchange ideas. The idea behind bringing GitHub to education is that educators could begin to do the same: easily share, discuss, and distribute materials and lessons in a centralized online location.
Next up, Edudemic has a post and infographic discussing how a "New Study Uncovers What Teens Actually Share on Social Media." The new study from Pew uncovers a ton of interesting statistics about the digital lives of today's teenagers. For example, 92% share their real name, 91% post photos of themselves, 71% post their school name and their home town, and 53% post their email addresses. For me, these stats mean that educators must remain focused on teaching teens about the dangers of openly sharing so much of their lives online.
Setting up a classroom blog can be an amazing classroom tool. Students can engage in online discussions, create multimedia rich reports, and it's much easier to share everyone's work. If you've ever considered starting a classroom blog, Educational Technology's, "Teacher's Visual Guide to Setting up a Classroom Blog" is a really good place to start (the guide is for Blogger)
Teach Thought has a new analysis up, "Examining Blended Learning Models: Student-to-Technology Interaction." This 6 part series takes a thorough look at all aspects of the blended learning model. If you're familiar with the basics of blended learning and are ready to dive into the deep end, here's a good place to do it.
Free Tech for Teachers opens with "5 Tools Students Can Use to Create Alternative Book Reports." The article covers Animoto, WeVideo, Pixntell, Narrable, and Wideo. These are all excellent tools and worth checking out, and personally I would recommend looking at Pixton and Domo Animate as well.
Free Tech also has a post on "Problem Attic Expands Again - more Practice Problems than Ever." If you've never visited Problem Attic, it's a free service that allows you to create flashcards and practice tests for science, math, social studies, and language arts. And, they've just expanded to include 4600 new practice questions and 1700 new math challenges! It's an excellent site for building practice tests and helping students to study outside of class.
Free Tech also has a post on "Problem Attic Expands Again - more Practice Problems than Ever." If you've never visited Problem Attic, it's a free service that allows you to create flashcards and practice tests for science, math, social studies, and language arts. And, they've just expanded to include 4600 new practice questions and 1700 new math challenges! It's an excellent site for building practice tests and helping students to study outside of class.
The Speed of Creativity has a new and disturbing post entitled, "Controversy Surrounds OKCPS Transfer Rejections for ClassenSAS" In the wake of the horrible tragedy in Oklahoma, the OK City Public School Board has been making some questionable and possibly discriminatory decisions in regards to student transfers. The entire article is definitely worth reading...
The Lightning Round...
- Teach Thought reviews 9 Learning Tools Every 21st Century Teacher Should be Able to Use
- Teach Thought also covers 43 Great Free Tools for Teachers from Edshelf
- Learn Dash outlines 19 Kick-Butt Tools for eLearning
- Educational Technology discusses 10 Good iPad Apps for Learning English
- Free Tech tells us about Make Beliefs Comix offering 300+ Printable Comic Templates
And to close out the Round Up today , we'll end with a great Ted Talk that Edudemic just posted about Creating Classrooms in the Clouds (... not the literal ones ... )
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