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Instructional. Video. Search.
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Universities are finding that plagiarism has become widespread and that many students seem not to believe that copying content without giving credit is a serious academic integrity violation. Do you think the digital age has caused confusion over acceptable practices, or is the notion of original authorship being redefined?
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Resources to help teach Visual-Spatial Learners
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A Better System for Schools: Developing, Supporting and Retaining Effective Teachers
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Biodiversity resources – birds, animals, plants, fish, and more.
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CourseSmart For iPad: Free App With 90 Percent Of ‘Core Textbooks’ Available
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When to use i.e. or e.g in a sentence
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Whether you’re a personal blogger, business blogger, article marketer, copywriter, novelist, poet, student writing an essay or any other form of writer, social networks provide a vast array of ways to get inspired to write.
Monthly Archives: August 2010
Motivated Learning
For years now, Ron Millar has been bragging to me about the efforts of Waterloo Region to support teacher learning in the use of technology in the class through a unique offering that they call CATC Camp by the Water. It’s always sounded like an interesting concept and yet despite his repeated invitations to join them, I’ve never been available to do so.
Until this year.
My full week at OSAPAC was cut short so that I could make the trek to the incredible Kempenfelt Conference Centre to join the group this year. Yesterday was Day 1 and I got to experience the unique learning environment first hand. The entire three days is based upon the Open Space philosophy of learning that puts the onus on the attendees to get the most from the opportunities that are available.
I was invited there to wander about the room that they had devoted to explorations into Web 2.0 and it was a real hoot. I had the honour of meeting some really interesting folks. I have had some connections with the Waterloo group over the years so it wasn’t like being parachuted into a strange land. There was Ken, Rebecca, Anita, Mark, Tina, Ian, Harry, Kim, Ron and others who were all there to learn and facilitate. I finally got a chance to meet Miss Charlotte that Mark speaks so glowingly about.
Even with the concepts of Open Space, there are still logistics that need attention and this is handled by “Newstime” where the 140 campers and facilitators squish into a room that would comfortably handle 30-40. There is a culture that has been developed here and everyone made these sessions for the first day. Introductions and logistics and, oh, door prizes which you need to be present for ensure full attendance. The room is alive with buzz, excitement, and anticipation of learning with colleagues. It’s times like this that make you feel so proud to be an educator.
But, dig a little deeper and look at the professionalism. It’s the middle of August. In a few weeks, the holidays are over and they’re back at it. From this, so many have stepped away from golf, trips, and home repairs to PAY and attend three intensive days of learning. I don’t use the work intensive lightly – on Day 1, I witnessed the entire group just wanting to get to it. Once they got to it, they stuck with it. While I was doing some serious facilitating myself, I did have a chance to wander around a bit and there was so much happening. It really was quite impressive.
After supper and another round of door prizes where my name was drawn on Harry’s make shift SMART Board, I had a chance to give a presentation to the entire group about Web applications. It was an enviable time slot. I was wedged between supper and a social that promised us a chance to look at the Perseid meteor shower. I wasn’t lucky enough to see that which was disappointing. I did see a number of airplanes though! Since some of the folks in the group were sitting at computers for my presentation, we were able to generate a bit of a back channel which is available here.
I know that Ron is waiting in anticipation for this updated graphic so…
The logistics behind an event like this don’t happen on a whim. In addition to the in-house Kempenfelt wireless network, a city of servers, workstations, routers, and media was brought in and supported by just a handful of people. Throughout the day, you’d see them running around but from my perspective and needs everything that I needed was handle so smoothly. Kudos have to be given to the folks that just make stuff work.
Day 1, I’m sure, just seeds the group for more intensive and productive learning. I can’t wait to get involved with Day 2.
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links for 2010-08-12
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General Google resources
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Below is a list of weekly tips and tricks designed for new Google Apps end-users. Read Getting Started with Google Apps Tips and Tricks for information on how to setup, copy and distribute the weekly tips and tricks to users in your domain.
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wrttnbeta is a simple and powerful notepad with many useful features
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Pick a font – any font!
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Your plans become your stories
Tripline is a great way to plan your trips ahead of time, and when you're back home, you can share your story with a single click.
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VoiceThread as a Digital Portfolio
I’ve been twittering the past several weeks about using VoiceThread as a digital portfolio for our Student-Led Conferences this semester.
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10 Ways to Use The New York Times for Teaching Literature
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A collection of Cyberguides for literature Grades 9-12
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21st Century Syllabus – PDF file to download
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Proving that a high quality education can indeed be 100% free
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Free online high school courses – "all things gifted"
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EASE History is a rich online environment that supports the learning and teaching of US History. Hundreds of historical videos and photographs are currently available in EASE History.
links for 2010-08-11
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Broadcast live to your Twitter audience
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The best filters and curators on the web
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Here at Live Labs we’re all about experiments, and Pivot is our most ambitious to date. Pivot makes it easier to interact with massive amounts of data in ways that are powerful, informative, and fun.
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Create your own. Just give us the link to an image on the web.
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Scroll around to find the RGB or HEX for your desired colour.
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DokuWiki is a standards compliant, simple to use Wiki, mainly aimed at creating documentation of any kind. It is targeted at developer teams, workgroups and small companies. It has a simple but powerful syntax which makes sure the datafiles remain readable outside the Wiki and eases the creation of structured texts. All data is stored in plain text files – no database is required.
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Although YouTube has been blocked from many/most schools, for obvious reasons and not so obvious ones. YouTube does provide great resources and content for teachers and students. View the list of the Top 100 Videos for Teachers. This list is provided by SmartTeaching.org, a leading online resource for current teachers, and aspiring education students and student teachers.
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StarOffice.com is the only independent portal dedicated to StarOffice users.
Along with free support, we provide our registered users a number of free web tools so they can meet, share, and store personal information related to StarOffice™.
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How to Write an Effective E-Mail. Get to the point, keep it short, and assume it’s public, say the experts.
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This is the Open Source Software in Education website, developed by the EC sponsored SIGOSSEE and JOIN projects. The projects aim to provide information, advice, guidance and research on the use of open source software in education for the education community, for policy makers and planners and for educational software developers.
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Twisty Noodle has thousands of free coloring pages and handwriting practice worksheets that you can customize and print. They work with top illustrators, artists, and licensed image libraries to offer the most unique selection of coloring pages and handwriting practice worksheets on the internet.
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A new program at an Alberta elementary school will see children as young as seven placed in classes according to their interests, giving them a kind of childhood “major.”
My First HDR
Since I had seen Peter Been’s entry into the Worldwide Photo walk, I’ve been reading and anticipating how I was able to learn how to use the technique of High Dynamic Range Imaging. Surprisingly patient for me. Finally, today, during a coffee break at the OSAPAC meeting, I had my chance.
The cloudy weather had gone for a minute and there was a bright sun lighting up the courtyard. I grabbed my camera and thankfully, I had my portable tripod, and I was off. The portable tripod is always a challenge with a heavy camera on it and when the patio table had little holes in its surface, I had to balance this precariously and focused towards the fence at the back.
I set the camera to bracketing with three exposure levels and took my picture. I really liked Peter’s black and white effort and so decided that would be my first attempt. As you can see in the three images, the first is normal, the second has a bit more brightness, and the third a little less. I’ve got to do some reading to know what it is that I’m talking about technically but there’s no time for that. I’m too excited to see how this might work.
I am absolutely, positively, the first person to admit that I’m a rookie in this realm. Not aware of the technical details or even the words used in context yet. That will come
Original Image
Lighter Image (more exposure)
Darker Image (less exposure)
Then, it comes the time to construct the final image. I’m exploring this technique on my Windows computer and so go looking for a free program to get me started. I find a neat piece of software called Picturenaut. On the simple, it does the technique for me. There are a great deal of adjustments and that will come as part of my learning. For the first one, I just want to get the job done.
And, here it is – done !
Final
I’m really liking the concept. You can obviously over exaggerate the technique and I’m sure that there will come a time when I want to do that. For the moment, I just want to enhance my efforts. I like it.
And, my first colour effort using the planter to the right.
Original
Lighter
Darker
Final
I think that this technique will serve me well. I’m not one to do a lot of pictures of people. I spend the time with landscapes and objects. It seems like a great way to enhance what I’m doing.
Peter – you may have created a monster by giving me an insight to this technique! Thanks so much.
links for 2010-08-10
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Here are 11 devices – some you'd expect and some you might not – that are still roaming the streets but facing rapid extinction.
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Tracking eye movement is more than just a great way to test website usability. It's also a way to help the disabled, to remotely drive cars and to reinvent multimedia reading.
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We hope you enjoy these numerous lesson plans for Kindergarten through 6th grade teachers.
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Today, we’re happy to announce that you can now convert files already uploaded to your documents list into a Google Docs format. Previously, this option was only available on upload.
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CChat stands for 'Conference Chat' and it's the backchannel application I have been using since 2007. I first used it at two conferences in California, Brandon Hall in San Jose and AECT in Anaheim. You can see the backchannel in action in the video of my talk at George Mason in Fairfax.
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Come join us in each of these communities and have your voice and your stories heard in The State of Now. We’ll be having breakfasts, lunches, dinners and events including the opportunity to sign up for test-drives of Buick cars. We’ll have t-shirts, give-aways, and few more surprises along the way.
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Turabian 7th edition citation maker.
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The Citation Generator (or Citation Tool) is a powerful engine designed to create style-specific citations based on information that you give to it. After making a citation, you then have the opportunity to add it to your Citation Page, which can then be downloaded to your computer for printing.
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MORE has been updated! New features on the left menu include a Collaboration Center and a link to Contact a Trainer in your area. You'll also notice that a couple of pages look different, but they still work the same.
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Schools need to consider a great deal of information as they plan to offer online courses for their students. This planning ranges from understanding what online courses are, incorporating them into their curriculum, developing policies and procedures, locating quality courses, identifying best practices and developing student and educator support.
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They may have been dubbed the "Internet generation," but young people are more interested in their real-world friends than Facebook. New research shows that the majority of children and teenagers are not the Web-savvy digital natives of legend. In fact, many of them don't even know how to google properly.
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Tom Wujec presents some surprisingly deep research into the "marshmallow problem" — a simple team-building exercise that involves dry spaghetti, one yard of tape and a marshmallow. Who can build the tallest tower with these ingredients? And why does a surprising group always beat the average?
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Epic photos is the photoblog of Chris Harvey, parts of the site are currently under construction. Please leave a comment on the images, I would appreciate your opinion regardless of whether its criticism or enjoyment. I hope to share things of art and beauty with you through my photos. If youre involved in a free cultural works project or education and would like to use my images please just ask.
links for 2010-08-09
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Your profile picture made from all your friends
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Online Safety 3.0 – on and off the fixed and mobile Internet
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Second Life Community Convention
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Create an animated Tomato
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TED Talks as of July 30, 2010 in Google Spreadsheet format
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How to Setup Multiple Twitter Accounts with One Email Address
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You know you're a 21st century librarian when…
My Date with Paul
Guest Blogger – The Boy
Somehow a facebook status of ‘Awesome concert last night!’ seemed grossly inadequate.
Exhausted from the drive home, and with my ears still ringing from the show, I will now attempt to sum up my experience from last night: The Paul McCartney concert.
When my dear friend B-Potts told me he was able to score tickets to this sold out show, my reaction was simply ‘yup’. It didn’t matter where, didn’t matter when or how much tickets were, I was GOING.
At 67 years old, this man has more swagger in his pinky finger than most musicians can hope to attain in their entire life. The show was about as flawless as a live show could be. No opening acts, no intermissions, just 3 hours of pure nostalgic GOLD.
He played EVERYTHING: The set list was a gorgeous mashup of classic Beatles hits, Wings songs, and more obscure tracks from a few of his solo albums.
The show was seamless, and song transitions were quick and well thought out. As one song ended, the anticipation for the next gem began to build: BAM “Live and let die” BAM “Drive my car” BAM “Yesterday”. The hits kept coming.
He PLAYED everything: Paul started with his signature right handed Hofner bass, but quickly switched to acoustic guitar, then piano, mandolin, electric, ukulele and organ. He brought out the original 1960 something guitar used on the track ‘Day Tripper’, and rocked it out for a while.
At one point he brought out a ridiculous pink electric for a tribute to his friend ‘Jimi’, and told us great stories of Hendrix, Clapton, and a Russian defense minister.
He joked at one point “If you’re wondering why we change up guitars so much… We just like showing off.” Oh Paul…
A couple highlights:
- He messed up the lyrics to ‘Blackbird’, but didn’t skip a beat. He said after the song that he was distracted by all the hand made signs that fans in the front rows were holding up. He joked “Ok Paul, focus, what are the lyrics to this next verse.. Wait, what does that sign say?”
He then read a few out loud: “Paul, teach me piano!” and “My dad drove me 2000kms to hug a Beatle!” He would later invite the young girl with the 2000km sign up on stage for a big hug.
- When the man talks, people listen. I’ve always heard that Beatles concerts were annoying, and that screaming fans drown out the sound of the music. However, in between songs when Paul was telling a story, you could have heard a pin drop. People hung on every word he said, and I couldn’t fight this goofy smile on my face as I listened.
- Paul spoke fondly about his ‘dear friend John’, and paid tribute to the fallen Beatle: “Let’s hear it for John!” I wept.
- He then brought a ukulele on stage, told us this great story of George Harrison, and played his song ‘Something’.
No mention of Ringo at all.
It was the show of a lifetime and has effectively ruined live music for me. I will forever be chasing that ‘high’ like a heroin addict after his first hit.
If you are in the Toronto area, I HIGHLY recommend you walk, drive, fly, swim, hitchhike, to the ACC tonight for the second sold out show. Find a scalper and experience this show for yourself.
You’ll be glad you did.
One Summer Thing
There have been a number of discussions and ideas generated lately about how to get to know your students in September. That’s always a challenge when you have a new group of students or a new mix of students or a new school or…
As I thought about the concept, it reminded me of a post that @mrspal had made a while back about "One Thing". I can’t think of a thing more revealing about a person than what they keep, either physically or in your stack of memories. My immediate thought would be around a show and tell of one thing that the students "kept" as a result of their summer activities.
But, then I thought a little deeper about this and thought that perhaps this could be extended digitally. What if the students had to share one digital photo of something that they would keep. Not only would that reveal something about them, but it would be a chance to do a little pretest of their computer skills to determine what they can do, what they forgot over the summer, or even better, what new skills they have learned over the summer! You might be pleasantly surprised.
But, the discussion always turns to one of equity. "What do you do with the student who doesn’t have a digital camera?" It’s a good question and one that does need consideration. Of course, they might also have a camera in their cell phone….
But, this was Megan Palevich, after all. She had really run with the concept of "My Childhood Community" and "A Multimedia Childhood Tour". As I think about this, it isn’t too big a leap to to think of the concept of "Our Class’ Summer Highlights". All that’s needed is access to Google Maps Streetview and a fond memory of some place that was significant from the summer. It could be something as simple a putting together a movie using Animoto for the younger students to an introductory activity to your class wiki where the image is put on a page and the students write to explain what’s in the picture. If you’re going to be blogging as a writing activity, wouldn’t this make an inspiring and engaging first post?
Right now, the outstanding memory for me was visiting and presenting at the Google facility for the CSTA Symposium and I did already blog about it!
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links for 2010-08-08
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Tap into the largest source repository in the world with over 80,000 mainstreet and expert sources who will respond directly to your query on your terms. No more flipping through your rolodex; searching out-of-date databases, or being bothered by unsolicited sources with off-topic pitches. Submit your query and let HARO deliver the perfect sources right to your inbox.
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shorten sentences for use on Twitter
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search for educators
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What do I need to know about the use of social media tools for learning
in a productive and effective way
without spending an enormous time in learning about the tool
or becoming a social media guru? -
Get on the social networking bandwagon with a cutting-edge notepad! The wireless miracle of pen and paper will have you expressing your mundane, or even pressing, thoughts anytime, anywhere!
