ePals has the potential to be a powerful collaboration tool. It has the ability to break distance and language barriers to allow educators and students to collaborate on a variety of projects. These projects can be content specific, or can be goal specific. If your goal for using ePals is to provide content collaboration with teachers and students from around the world there are built in tools to help you locate a participating classroom to engage in the project. Similarly if your teaching goals are not content specific, meaning that you want to provide opportunities for collaboration, and are not particular about the content, there are also a variety of built in tools to help you connect to a classroom.
The ePals portal is designed to make it easy to find classrooms, teachers, and projects that fit your needs. With the goals of 21st century skills emphasizing collaboration, communication, and creativity ePals provides a great opportunity to enhance those skills. Students have the ability to participate in a project that can also serve as a format to teach about digital footprints, and digital citizenship. The unique connection of ePals, is that it is easy to connect with students and teachers from around the world. It requires a bit of organization by the teacher to make initial connections and arrange a collaboration opportunity. It appears as though once things are underway, the collaboration opportunities are seamless and simple. Even if the teacher is unsuccessful at creating a connection with a specific classroom, the projects are visible to other ePals users, and allows you to explore how the project was completed.
With appropriate planning and organization, the connection with global classrooms can be made prior to the start of your project to ensure that all the pieces are in place by the time you want students to start collaborating. The other issue I ran into, which may vary from school to school, was that ePals was blocked by the school firewall. It was deemed a social networking site and therefore blocked. I would imagine that upon request, access to the website could be granted for use with students. Again, using this program would require some planning and organization prior to the use with students. However ePals has the potential to provide a wonderful experience to the students to collaborate on a global scale.
Saturday, August 24, 2013
Saturday, August 17, 2013
Embedding Digital Texts
"Education is the most fundamental public resource."(Bonk, 2009). The availability of information has significantly increased. There are so many ways to access content through the use of technology, and many of this access is free. Open course-ware, digital text, and other e-learning opportunities are a very useful tools for educators and provide resources at minimal costs. Similarly, these resources are easy to share with students.
With the increasing availability of materials online, the fees and costs for materials are decreasing A single textbook for a typical math class may hit the budget for around $100. With the availability of digital texts, that price could be zero. All that is required is some creativity from the teacher and some some online searching through online courses, digital texts, and other open source learning environments .
There are other resources available to help teachers create a virtual learning environment. Some of these resources will allow the teacher to create and manage a virtual classroom. These tools provide opportunities for learning without being in the traditional setting (Lakhan, 2008) These virtual classrooms can be built using open source tools like Moodle, Claroline, .LRN (dotlearn), Dokeos. Another realm of creating a virtual classroom is through the use of some Web 2.0 tools. A free tool like Edmodo will allow a teacher to create a virtual learning environment, be able to manage assignments, grades, and participation.
Digtial texts, e-learning, and open course software are changing the face of education. There are so many resources available where teachers can enhance the curriculum with 21st century learning opportunities. To be able to include these materials requires the teacher to know where to look, or know how to search for the materials they want, and be able to share those materials with the classroom. These materials have the potential to change education and create a global community where resources are easily shared and accessed. Education is a free resource in many countries, and technology is allowing educators and students more opportunities to connect and share information. Using the tools and information available online will help education save money on software licenses, and other fees (Lakhan, 2008). In the end, this will allow for money to be better spent and provide quality 21st century education for students
Here is a quick list of some popular places to obtain free resources for education.
Free software for education
https://schoolforge.net/
Free online classes and content materials
http://ocw.mit.edu/index.htm
https://www.udacity.com/
https://www.coursera.org/
http://www.ocwconsortium.org/
http://oli.cmu.edu/
http://academicearth.org/
http://en.wikiversity.org/wiki/Wikiversity:Main_Page
http://www.curriki.org/
http://cnx.org/
Free textbooks
http://www.textbookrevolution.org/index.php/Main_Page
Make your own course with these tools:
https://code.google.com/p/course-builder/
http://www.apple.com/education/itunes-u/ (the downside with this one is you need to have iOS tablet or laptop, it just doens't run well on a pc or linux)
With the increasing availability of materials online, the fees and costs for materials are decreasing A single textbook for a typical math class may hit the budget for around $100. With the availability of digital texts, that price could be zero. All that is required is some creativity from the teacher and some some online searching through online courses, digital texts, and other open source learning environments .
There are other resources available to help teachers create a virtual learning environment. Some of these resources will allow the teacher to create and manage a virtual classroom. These tools provide opportunities for learning without being in the traditional setting (Lakhan, 2008) These virtual classrooms can be built using open source tools like Moodle, Claroline, .LRN (dotlearn), Dokeos. Another realm of creating a virtual classroom is through the use of some Web 2.0 tools. A free tool like Edmodo will allow a teacher to create a virtual learning environment, be able to manage assignments, grades, and participation.
Digtial texts, e-learning, and open course software are changing the face of education. There are so many resources available where teachers can enhance the curriculum with 21st century learning opportunities. To be able to include these materials requires the teacher to know where to look, or know how to search for the materials they want, and be able to share those materials with the classroom. These materials have the potential to change education and create a global community where resources are easily shared and accessed. Education is a free resource in many countries, and technology is allowing educators and students more opportunities to connect and share information. Using the tools and information available online will help education save money on software licenses, and other fees (Lakhan, 2008). In the end, this will allow for money to be better spent and provide quality 21st century education for students
Here is a quick list of some popular places to obtain free resources for education.
Free software for education
https://schoolforge.net/
Free online classes and content materials
http://ocw.mit.edu/index.htm
https://www.udacity.com/
https://www.coursera.org/
http://www.ocwconsortium.org/
http://oli.cmu.edu/
http://academicearth.org/
http://en.wikiversity.org/wiki/Wikiversity:Main_Page
http://www.curriki.org/
http://cnx.org/
Free textbooks
http://www.textbookrevolution.org/index.php/Main_Page
Make your own course with these tools:
https://code.google.com/p/course-builder/
http://www.apple.com/education/itunes-u/ (the downside with this one is you need to have iOS tablet or laptop, it just doens't run well on a pc or linux)
Friday, August 9, 2013
Building Media Literacy
Media literacy is an important skill to obtain through school, and will help students become lifelong learners. Media Literacy is providing the skills to learn how to be critical thinkers through inquiry, communication, and research. In the 21st century, this means that students need to be able to use technology tools safely, to gather information that is valid, cross reference information from a variety of formats and be able to effectively communicate and collaborate through social media and other collaboration tools. I like this definition provided by NAMLE "The ability to ACCESS, ANALYZE, EVALUATE, and COMMUNICATE information in a variety of forms-is interdisciplinary by nature"
The goal for media literacy is to provide students with the skills they need to effectively gather information online, and be able to successfully communicate to share that information. These skills will help provide an understanding that not all information they can obtain is accurate. Information needs to be cross-referenced and verify among a variety of resources.
Media literacy starts with inquiry, or curiosity to have the desire to answer some question or obtain some information. Knowing how to use search tools like Google to gather relevant resources is a necessary skill. Basic research skills are needed to be able to validate credible resources, appropriately cite resources, and be confident that the information you are sharing is accurate. Students need to verify resources, use multiple locations, and use multiple types of media to verify information. Finally, the most important piece is learning how to cite resources, and provide credit to those who provided the information. Learning these skills will allow students to be an effective digital citizen to successfully collaborate online, and be able to accurately obtain and share valuable information.
The goal for media literacy is to provide students with the skills they need to effectively gather information online, and be able to successfully communicate to share that information. These skills will help provide an understanding that not all information they can obtain is accurate. Information needs to be cross-referenced and verify among a variety of resources. Media literacy starts with inquiry, or curiosity to have the desire to answer some question or obtain some information. Knowing how to use search tools like Google to gather relevant resources is a necessary skill. Basic research skills are needed to be able to validate credible resources, appropriately cite resources, and be confident that the information you are sharing is accurate. Students need to verify resources, use multiple locations, and use multiple types of media to verify information. Finally, the most important piece is learning how to cite resources, and provide credit to those who provided the information. Learning these skills will allow students to be an effective digital citizen to successfully collaborate online, and be able to accurately obtain and share valuable information.
Resources
National Association for Media Literacy Education (NAMLE). 2013. Retrieved from http://namle.net/publications/media-literacy-definitions/
Partnership for 21st century skills (P21). 2012. http://www.p21.org/overview/skills-framework/349
EAVI EN - A Journey to Media Literacy. 2013. Retrieved from http://youtu.be/CmY_H5DjSEM
Center For Media Literacy, 2002-2011. Retreived from http://www.medialit.org/media-literacy-definition-and-more
Image created from the text in this blog post on Tagxedo.
Image created from the text in this blog post on Tagxedo.
Sunday, August 4, 2013
Web 2.0 Tools
In my own teaching I use a variety of Web 2.0 tools to enhance learning. My school has a Google Apps domain where all teachers and students are able to use most of the Google Apps. These tools are a great way for students to create authentic assessments collaborate, and be creative to demonstrate understanding. The Web 2.0 tools I use the most with my students are Google apps (Google sites, documents, spreadsheets, forms, maps, presentations), Prezi, Edmodo, Diigo, Glogster, Flipboard, Edcanvas, livebinder, TED, and YouTube I prefer to use tools that allow students to store information in the cloud. This helps to reduce the chances of a student losing their work. I also tend to try and use tools where the teacher can create accounts for the students to always keep track of student user names and passwords. Students often have so much other things on their mind that adding yet another username and password to their online life may be quickly lost.
In the future I plan to use Evernote with my students to take notes digitally and make digital study guides. This tool is a bit easier to organize, navigate, and is available through a variety of platforms. The tool also allows students to clip webpages, images, video, and audio.Similarly, students and teachers can link the tool to their Google accounts to add easier opportunities for collaboration It has more accessibility options for students who may struggle with writing or typing They can record audio and transcribe it to text. The tool has a variety of opportunities I use the tool for my own personal organization of class lesson plans, and reflections about lesson success and challenges. I have found this tool very useful for my own use, and believe that students could also benefit from using the tool. Many students have their own technology tools that they could use in a classroom setting, yet there are still some who do not. To overcome this obstacle, I plan to obtain a classroom set of Chromebooks through the aid of DonorsChoose to be able to provide students access to online tools while they are in my classroom.
Web 2.0 tools offer huge potential for learning. The free tools often have storage in the cloud and allow for students to access their work anywhere. It helps to provide a different approach to traditional assignments, and provide students with opportunities to be more creative and utilize their learning styles. The use of Web 2.0 tools combined with place-based, hands on learning, and realistic application of technology tools will create a student who is a well rounded learner. Students will gain an understanding of how to use a variety of tools to enhance their own learning, to become life long learners.
In the future I plan to use Evernote with my students to take notes digitally and make digital study guides. This tool is a bit easier to organize, navigate, and is available through a variety of platforms. The tool also allows students to clip webpages, images, video, and audio.Similarly, students and teachers can link the tool to their Google accounts to add easier opportunities for collaboration It has more accessibility options for students who may struggle with writing or typing They can record audio and transcribe it to text. The tool has a variety of opportunities I use the tool for my own personal organization of class lesson plans, and reflections about lesson success and challenges. I have found this tool very useful for my own use, and believe that students could also benefit from using the tool. Many students have their own technology tools that they could use in a classroom setting, yet there are still some who do not. To overcome this obstacle, I plan to obtain a classroom set of Chromebooks through the aid of DonorsChoose to be able to provide students access to online tools while they are in my classroom.
Web 2.0 tools offer huge potential for learning. The free tools often have storage in the cloud and allow for students to access their work anywhere. It helps to provide a different approach to traditional assignments, and provide students with opportunities to be more creative and utilize their learning styles. The use of Web 2.0 tools combined with place-based, hands on learning, and realistic application of technology tools will create a student who is a well rounded learner. Students will gain an understanding of how to use a variety of tools to enhance their own learning, to become life long learners.
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