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When talking about learning and learning resources, I don’t throw around the phrase “veritable cornucopia” very often. Granted, I may be prone to over-using “treasure trove,” but I save “veritable cornucopia” for only the best of the best. Keep that in mind when I say this…EdSurge is a veritable cornucopia of knowledge and information for teachers on all ends of the ed tech know-how spectrum. Whether you’re just starting to dabble in tech integration or you’ve been innovating in your classroom for decades,EdSurge is something you’ve just got to know about.
My friend Jessy (who, let’s be honest, is pretty much a walking veritable cornucopia herself and is pretty much both the unofficial 3rd member of the Engaging Ed team as well as our Fan Club’s president pro tem) introduced me toEdSurge, literally and figuratively, at ISTE last year.
What isEdSurge? Here’s how they describe themselves (too modestly in my opinion):
EdSurge is an independent information resource and community for everyone involved in education technology. We aim to help educators discover the best products and how to use them and to inspire developers to build what educators and learners need.
EdSurge offers two weekly newsletters which provide links and information that are always brilliantly informative. The original EdSurge newsletter focuses on the world of Educational Technology on the business, research, and development side. It’s great for teachers like me, who like to nerd out on that sort of thing.
The newsletter tech-minded educators will really appreciate, though, is EdSurge Instruct. In EdSurge Instruct you get links to recent EdSurge articles as well as links to articles from around the web about teachers teaching with technology, innovative schools, current educational research, upcoming educational events, and more. Trust me, you will not be disappointed with EdSurge Instruct. Sign up for this newsletter or the original one HERE.
Just as an example, here are some of the great things I learned about in this week’s edition, which came out today:
- An article about a “Maker Dad,” who encourages parents to not just build robots with their kids, but rather help their kids become true Makers themselves.
- A blog post (from a blog that’s new to me…score!) about a school that decided the best way to help another school learn how to do PBL was to travel there and engage in a day-long project.
- A report out of Stanford that explains that it’s possible our nation’s test scores lag behind other countries because America has so many socio-economically disadvantaged students.
- A blog post (from ANOTHER new to me blog!) about how kids in Japan learn to multiply.
- A link to an amazing site you’ve just got to see, Google Treks.
Love it! Trust me…this is just the tip of the iceberg. You’ll find that you need to carve out a good number of minutes each week to explore EdSurge Instruct. On top of that, it’s an easy read. Their conversational tone really makes the info easy to digest and fun to read. You can tell that theEdSurge team loves their work and loves helping people learn.
The EdSurge website is also pretty cool to explore, too. It features information about products, a collection of education news articles, and resources and information organized by topic.
If EdSurge is new to you, check it out today. If you want to follow along with us, too, be sure to subscribe to our blog and follow us on Twitter and Facebook. Oh, and Pinterest, too!
Image: ‘Cornucopia‘
http://www.flickr.com/photos/51035555243@N01/4971119478
Found on flickrcc.net
You know you like a site when it sucks you in–you visit just to check it out after reading about it somewhere or after a colleague recommends it and the next thing you know, it’s three hours later, you forgot to have dinner, and (best of all) you’ve learned some incredible things. That’s kind of what Teaching Channel is like.
Teaching Channel features a video library of amazing teaching practices, from examples to model lessons. They’re all professionally filmed, and they are categorized by grade level and topic, making the content you want quite easy to locate. AND, they feature videos for all grades K-12 and for topics ranging from Common Core Standards to assessment to differentiation and many more. If you’re looking to improve your own practice or you’re an administrator or coach who needs content to demonstrate great practices, look no further than Teaching Channel.
If you’re interested in more blog posts about great resources or posts that feature stellar insight and analysis (in our opinion), please consider subscribing to our blog!
The Learning Network is an amazing free resource to support learning with The New York Times. It’s free and you don’t need a subscription to the Times to take advantage of it. It’s a great way to engage students in a meaningful exploration of current events.
Every day, The Learning Network is posting highly useful content, such as “6 Q’s About the News,” six questions about a current and relevant news topic. Here’s a great example called “Linsanity at Home and Abroad” about New York Knicks phenom point guard Jeremy Lin. It breaks down the story into six questions and includes links to places where you can find the answers.
Other features include a daily student opinion post, where they encourage students (13 and older please!) to leave comments with their opinions. What a great way to practice social media and blogging etiquette. Oh, and that challenging-to-teach topic of writing as well!
There are also posts about this day in history, current events quizzes, a word of the day, and current events-related lesson plans. The lesson plans, in fact, are one of The Learning Network‘s most impressive features. There are scads of them, organized by category. They’ve also got tips on how to use the Times to teach Common Core Standards! And much, much more.
It’s a pretty impressive venture, for sure, and one you’ll want to spend time exploring, especially if you teach middle or high school ELA or Social Studies.
Check it out and let us know what you think. And if you found this article useful, please consider subscribing to our blog!
Ever wished there was a place where educational videos were organized and cataloged for free? Tired of sifting through YouTube videos looking for ones that are appropriate for student use? Wish there was a way to view videos without arguing with your administrators about filters? Interested in launching a flipped classroom?
Enter WatchKnowLearn, a site that helps provide educational videos to educators and students…and a site that’s growing every day.
WatchKnowLearn features over 20,000 videos that are kid-safe, educational, and organized into over 3,000 categories. They allow you to search by age-level, grade, content area, and more. There is a ton of content to explore at WatchKnowLearn, and from what I can see something for teachers of all subjects and grade levels.
But wait, there’s more. WatchKnowLearn functions as a wiki, which allows all registered users to contribute and embed videos. Have you made a great tutorial in your classroom? You can add it to WatchKnowLearn so it can be viewed by teachers and students around the world.
I asked WatchKnowLearn‘s Director of Training and Senior Editor Kerry Matthews some questions about the site. She made it clear that WatchKnowLearn is designed to be “a website for teachers BY teachers.” Here are a couple of other things we talked about:
EE: What are the best reasons for teachers to use WatchKnowLearn?
Kerry: The first thing that comes to my mind is that it’s FREE! We all know, with our economy and recent budget cuts, that teachers and districts have very little money to spend on resources for their students. Teachers are constantly digging through the lint in their own pocket and spending their own money on things for their students. Why? Because they are passionate about getting their kids what they want and NEED. WatchKnowLearn understands their pain and relieves some of that stress by offering our resource without any cost. For that very reason, it will ALWAYS be free. No strings attached.
There are TWO things that teachers are lacking: money and TIME. WatchKnowLearn.org helps in both of these areas. As a classroom teacher, prior to WKL, I was spending hours at night going to all of the various websites searching for quality videos. WatchKnowLearn has cut out the search time for a teacher and has put them all into ONE location – from sources all over the internet. Most of the videos are not created by WatchKnowLearn, but have been found from other resources and put into one large, organized directory. Free, easy access, with less search time.
EE: So what’s in store for 2012?
Kerry: Our CEO, Dr. Joe Thomas, is currently on a nationwide bus tour to help promote the website. He will be in Florida and Texas in the early months and then will head up the east coast, providing free professional development about the website for those that are interested in having him stop by their school.
We will also be launching a new, front page design in January that is a bit cleaner and even more teacher-friendly than the one we currently have. Although we currently have Common Core classrooms for grades K-2 on our site, 2012 will see the addition of grades 3-12 in both the areas of ELA and Mathematics. And you will also see our online classroom feature (think favorites on steroids) as an easy, free platform for many schools and teachers who are beginning to “flip their classroom.” Here’s an example of one of our online classrooms.
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A huge thanks goes out to Kerry Matthews for taking time during the holidays for an email interview. Be sure to check out WatchKnowLearn for yourself and let us know what you think!
I haven’t taught my fifth graders proper search skills yet, and I feel a little guilty about that. It’s been incredibly busy this year, and I just haven’t been able to squeeze in this very important (dare I say “vital”) skill.
In the meantime, I still want to assign them activities and projects that involve exploration and research. But “letting them loose” on the vast expanse of the internet with only a vague understanding of how best to use Google will not help their productivity in any way. Enter Google Custom Search.
Google Custom Search is a tool that allows you to create your own search engine. This customized search tool will only search the sites you specify. You can then create a link to your custom search or embed it in a website.
I’ve used a Google Custom Search on several occasions with my own students. I like how it “separates the wheat from the chaff,” getting them to useful sites faster than regular old Googling would. This month, students are exploring a topic of their choice during our exploration of the solar system. I created a custom search to aid them in their research.
It really has helped speed up the research phase. The only thing I’m not too keen on are the ads that show up when you search. It’s a sacrifice I’m willing to make, but I had to explicitly show students the ads and teach them that they weren’t part of the search results. But perhaps ignoring ads is a beneficial “skill” to teach, too!
Hopefully you can find some use for Google Custom Search. If your students are Googling information on a regular basis, I really think Google Custom Search could help you. Let us know your thoughts and be sure to subscribe to our blog for future “Sites We Like.”
Voicethread has been around awhile. And while it had always been on my radar, I never really made it a part of my digital toolkit. As ed tech tools go, it was a benchwarmer, waiting dutifully for its chance to crack the starting lineup. Well, thankfully, I’ve rectified that situation and have now used Voicethread with my students. I’m extremely glad, too, because it’s incredibly easy to use and an immensely valuable and engaging tool.
Voicethread accurately describes itself as a way of holding “group conversations around images, documents, and videos.” All you do is upload these items to create a slideshow. But this slideshow is unlike any other because then it becomes a collaborative multimedia smorgasbord of awesomeness. Folks can then comment on each slide in five different ways–microphone, audio file, webcam, text, or phone. You can even “doodle” on top of slides as you comment to add an extra dimension. Voicethreads are easy to embed and share and they work on mobile devices. AND as owner of your Voicethreads, you have the ability to moderate comments and decide which ones show up with the slideshow.
There are tons of great examples, but since I don’t have permission to embed them here I’ll encourage you to explore their public gallery. I can show you the two we’ve made in my classroom, though (I have permission for that!).
This one was for our online book club, which involved sharing our interpretations of a particular part of a book we were reading with several other classrooms around the country. It was a rudimentary approach on my part–I didn’t take advantage of the commenting features, but it gives you a good idea of what’s possible with Voicethread:
Our second attempt worked much better. It was for a group that was reading Number the Stars by Lois Lowry. I uploaded some historical images to help them demonstrate what they learned about World War II and the Holocaust while reading this book. I’m definitely proud of their work:
With all these features, I wish I started using Voicethreads much earlier than I did! I definitely recommend it. Everything about Voicethread is extremely easy. And it’s free for educators! I think you and your students will love it.
If you need any guidance, ideas or inspiration about getting started with Voicethread in your classroom, contact us today. And if you’d like more posts like this one delivered directly to you, please activate a subscription to our blog.
Okay, Evernote isn’t exactly a site. It’s a download. But it does offer extensions for all your favorite web browsers. Most importantly, though, it’s an insanely helpful tool that you should really consider using. Especially if you are “organizationally challenged” from time to time, like me.
Evernote allows you to capture all your ideas, thoughts, notes, and more…all in one place. And all for free. And you can access Evernote even when you’re offline. And from your phone. And their web clipper lets you annotate directly from the web. Impressed yet?
I’m not sure why I dragged my feet getting started with Evernote. That’s probably one of the warning signs that you need Evernote, actually. All I know is that I’m using it now. A lot. And now that I’m using it. I like it. A lot.
When I need to take notes in a meeting. When I’m taking notes at a conference or workshop. When I find a site I want to blog about. When I get an idea for a classroom project. I can create notebooks to keep everything organized and notebooks within those notebooks, too. And I can tag items, as well.
Evernote is VERY well-designed. And very easy to get the hang of. I’m pretty sure once you start using it, you’ll be glad that you did. You might not be able to use Evernote to literally “remember everything,” but you’ll come close!
sunrise across 34th street, manhattan
Photo Source: http://www.flickr.com/photos/30201239@N00/3116951494
We try to be stewards of digital citizenship. When we tweet a resource, we share where we found it. When we blog about a site we (try to) give credit to the person/blog who first introduced it to us. And when we use an image, not only do we share the link where it can be found, but we do our best to only use images that are licensed for re-use.
I certainly cannot claim to have always followed the “rules” mentioned above. I can sincerely say I’ve never passed off someone else’s work as my own, but I wasn’t always the best at citing sources and giving credit where credit is due when it comes to digital content. However, as an educator I recognize the importance of teaching digital citizenship skills–and in modeling them myself. (One of my proudest moments as a teacher came when my students were adding a “Photo Source” caption to images they were adding to a slideshow…without me reminding them to do so!)
One of the skills I stress is using images with permission. Thanks to Creative Commons licensing, it’s pretty easy to identify images that viewers are permitted to reuse and remix. But you have to go beyond what’s easiest…a search of Google Images just won’t get these kinds of images to you. That’s why I like flickrCC.
flickrCC provides a means for searching high quality images that are licensed for reuse. You search by tag and you get a ton of results. It provides you with a link to the flickr page the image came from, allowing for easy source citation. They’ve even made some pretty awesome upgrades lately, allowing for much easier sharing of the images you find.
flickrCC is definitely a Site We Like. We encourage you to check out our other posts about using images and also to subscribe to our blog so you never miss another post!
The Engaging Educators’ “Sites We Like” club is an exclusive group. Not only do you have to be completely awesome to earn a membership card, you’ve got to be useful to teachers. Open Culture meets all the requirements and then some.
Open Culture is a virtual warehouse of cultural and educational media. They find content from all over the web–movies, audiobooks, online courses, eBooks, language tutorials, and more–and post it all in one place. For free.
The movies they share are particularly amazing. This week alone, among other things, they posted these:
- Artist Anselm Kiefer at work–a behind the scenes look at the creation of a massive work of art
- Archive of 9/11 video–featuring over 3,000 hours of coverage
- Biblioburro–the story of a Colombian man who travels by donkey to deliver library books
As you can see, there’s something for everyone. So check out Open Culture today. Hopefully it’ll make your own “Sites I Like” list, too.
When it comes to teaching technology, whether to children or adults, there may not be a more useful tool than a screencast. Screencasts are great because if you’re demonstrating how to use a website, for example, the screencast can be saved and accessed at a later time. And while there are several very good options available for creating your own screencasts, one that we’ve used and really like for a number of reasons is Screencast-o-matic.
In just one click with Screencast-o-matic, you can start recording your screen. It works on Windows, Mac, and Linux operating systems, requires no download, and it’s free (free version has a 15 minute maximum)bb! You can use it to make screencasts without even registering, too. Although, when you register you are then allowed to create a “channel” for your videos, similar to a YouTube channel.
Another thing I really like is that it adds animations by highlighting your mouse arrow and your mouse clicks, making it easy for viewers to follow along and learn what you’re demonstrating. Here’s a video we made using Screencast-o-matic that shows you how helpful these features can be:
So if you need to demonstrate to your students, or to fellow teachers, how to use a particular web page or program, consider making a tutorial video using Screencast-o-matic. Let us know how it turns out!
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