The Innovative Educator: Classes a la carte - I like this!

The Innovative Educator: Classes a la carte - I like this!

21 Free Web Tools for Educators

out this list!
#1 - Wallwisher
#2 - Self-grading Quizzes
#3 - Bitstrips for Schools
#4 - Classtools.net
#5 - Edmodo
#6 - DoInk
#7 - Kerpoof
#8 - Glogster
#9 - ToonDoo
#10 - Wordle
#11 - Skype
#12 - Animoto
#13 - VoiceThreads
#14 - PhotoFiltre
#15 - Livebinders
#16 - WeeBehave
#17 - DropBox
#18 - Jing
#19 - Audacity
#20 - LearnBoost
#21 - Wetoku

Word Clouds

Top 10 Sites for Creating Word Clouds
1. Wordle - Probably the oldest and most popular of the word cloud creators. Word clouds can then be edited w/ different fonts, colors, and layouts, and even shared w/ others online.
2. Tagxedo - A great way to make word clouds from sites, different social networks, and then change shape to meet your needs (ie, star).
3. Tagul - Similar to Tagxedo, a very easy to use site to create different shaped word clouds.
4. Worditout - A nice site for making word clouds by just copying/pasting text.
5. Word Sift - A excellent site for making word clouds and then editing them by altering the criteria in how it's created. Pictures are also generated to best represent your word cloud.
6. VocabGrabber - A wonderful site similar to Word Sift in making word clouds. However, the clouds generated are color coded for best displaying clouds.
7. Tag Galaxy - An innovative site that visually represents words in a galaxy style format. A must see!!!
8. Tag Crowd - A simple to use site for creating word clouds by pasting in text or a web page URL.
9. Quintura - Is a visual search engine where results are returned in a word cloud style format.
10. TwitterSheep - A fun site that generates it results by keywords found in bios from a user's followers.

Digital learning is a great equalizer that crosses all boundaries from demographics, social and economic levels and abilities.

10 Free Online Surveys

Funding is an issue for many administrators. Why not use open source and free web based tools whenever possible?

Here are 10 sites for creating surveys:

Struffa: Contests, polls that can be moderated before publishing

Rubpolis: Create a poll by dragging and dropping

Flisti: Share your poll in a social network such as Facebook or MySpace

Obsurvey: Survey that works like a wiki

Survey Monkey: Comprehensive online site for creating surveys

PollDaddy: Can be integrated into mobile devices

Vorbeo: Embeddable onto your website or blog

Text the Mob: Good for large audiences can be used with mobile devices

Insightify: Great for collaboration

Yarp: Good for simple surveys. Generates unique url.

Tech and Learning magazine September 2010 issue.

Wifitti

Wifitti creates screens that allow you to display messages from many feeds, pulls info with specific tags and allows contributors to comment via text.

The Connected Principal

It is important for leaders, especially school principals, to share their knowledge around 21st Century learning and how to transform their schools into collaborative spaces that used technology integration as a seamless tool. George Couros, a 21st century principal, created a blog where principals can share best practices, trials and tribulations, technology integration and more. Take a look at the Connected Principal http://www.connectedprincipals.com/

Graphic Novels

Here's an interesting post on how Comic Life is being used to create graphic novels.

Bloom's Taxonomy Blooms Digitally

Here's a great article on how Bloom's Taxonomy is related to the digital world.

ADDIE

ADDIE refers to an instructional design model:
Analyze
Design
Develop
Implement
Evaluate

Why should we focus on Instructional Design (ID) in eLearning?
Many classroom activities do not leave a "trail" that can be viewed by others.
Online learning is more transparent - content, discussions, interactions can be viewed by persons other than the instructor.
Classroom discussions are archived - whereas, every aspect of eLearning can be used as a resources for subsequent courses.
ID is to serve the learning needs and success of students through effective presentation of content and fostering of interaction.
Click for more information:

When using Moodle, the designer develops a clear understanding of the "gaps" between the desired outcomes or behaviors, and the learner's existing knowledge and skills. the designer should also analyze the various learner profiles of the participants.

Learner Profile Components
1. Cultural identity - gender, first language spoken, race and ethnicity, family ties, immigration status provides valuable information.

2) Prior learning history - review of transcripts can assess academic rigor and achievements, social adjustment, extra curricular activities and attendance.

3) Goals, Interests & Motivation - an examination of the internal processes, why, where, and how your direct your energies.

4) Learning Styles - how you learn best. Some things to consider are: Are you visual, auditory, tactile, late night or early person?

5) Multiple Intelligences - how do you express your "smartness" as stated by Dr. Howard Gardner.

6) Personality - your pattern of thinking, feeling and acting is your personality.

7) Action Plan - knowing the above will help understand and formulate the best learning plan and strategic steps for success.

Analyze
You can use for following to conduct an analysis:
Assignment
Chat
Choice
Database
Forum
HotPot
Lesson
Quiz
Survey
Feedback
Questionaire

Design
The design phase specific units of learning or chunks based on the learner profiles of the participants.

Once the design phase is intact actual creation of learning materials is completed in the development phase.Tools such as "add a resource" or Add a block, book or glossary.

Implement your course by adding assignments to your workshops.

Evaluation of training includes the integration of assignment, chat, choice, database, glossary, forum, lesson, quiz, survey and wiki.

Twitter, Facebook and Cellphones

Clay Shirky's message is right on the money. Professionals are NO longer the producers of content and information. Clay gives astounding examples of how Twitter and Cellphones were used during the horrific earthquake in China, how the Internet was used during the presidential election and how our culture has changed in the way we receive and share information.
Notable points
a) Tech transfer from Nigeria to US.
b) Media landscape: Communication evolved from one to one; one to many; many to many.
c) Internet is the digital carrier for all media.
d) Consumers can now be producers.

See the video here:

Better Twitter for Educators Guide

Twitter

Twitter Handbook for Teachers

Publish at Scribd or explore others: How-to-Guides & Manu human twitter

I'm Back!

After being away for so long, I have decided that this is something that I must be disciplined about and post at a minimum once a week.

Convo with Teenage Daughter

Driving with your teenage daughter in the car for 4 hours is always an enlightening experience. Here's an excerpt of a conversation that we had:

Daughter: Alex told me that he didn't want to be caught driving dirty while in college. So I asked if he knew what "driving dirty" meant because I knew he didn't know what he was talking about.

Me: Driving dirty???

Daughter: Yeah, so Alex said he didn't want to be caught in the car while making out with a girl.

Me: Isn't that what it means?

Daughter: No! I told him to go to www.urbandictionary.com to check out what it really means.

The internet has opened up a whole new world for the "old" trying the keep up with the "young".

Blog Day

I just found out that today was Blog Day.

Here's a little blurb from the creator of Blog Day.

"Hi, I'm Nir Ofir. blogDay initiator.
Did you know that the majority of blog Readers read a very small number of top blogs? Is this social media?
I initiated the blogDay in 2005 with the belief that bloggers should have one day which will be dedicated to discover new blogs and expose them to the world. Celebrate with is in August 31st.
Contact me: nir.ofir (at) gmail (dot) com"

What a great concept! I haven't had time to discover a new blog today but whenever I do, I always post them to my blog. I currently have 20 RSS blogs that I ready regularly, or whenever I get a chance.

I must admit that the amount that I read now has doubled or tripled due to the Internet and Blogs. There are so many talented people who are willing to share their information and findings with the rest of the world that a contagious sense of online kindred spirits is evident and felt through blogs.

I think that Blog Day is a great concept. I will certainly share this with my colleagues and be sure this is on my 2008 calendar.

Heschl's Gyrus

Did you have trouble learning a foreign language in school? Your problem could be the size of your Heschl's gyrus. Sounds terrible doesn't it? Like anything else, the smaller it is the harder it is it for you to learn another language.

Research now shows that a region in your brain called Heschl's gyrus is responsible for your ability or inability to quickly learn a foreign language. Read the NYTimes article.

Hacker Future

I find it incredible that Centricell offered a car and 3 more iPhones to the kid genius George Hotz for his iPhone. Read the article.

George is certainly one with integrity. He is giving an iPhone to each of his collaborators. What a guy.

The blog didn't mention the year of the Nissan 300 Z. I hope it is at least a 2007.

The future is in the hands of our youngsters.

What can educators/leaders do to guide them?

The first thing is to admit that they are smarter than we are! Once classroom teachers can admit to the fact that they don't know everything - things will change.

The 5 Dyfunctions of a Team

I recently received the book titled The Five Dysfunctions of a Team written by Patrick Lencioni. It was given to us during one of our meetings in order to help us function better as a team. We were assigned homework and were asked to answer the following questions for our next meeting:

1. Who do you most identify with?

Jan because she seems to be engaged and to be a part of the team from the beginning.

2. Who do you think people identify you with?

This is a difficult question and I must use the process of elimination to get to this answer. I don't think that I am viewed as Martin because of his lack of social skills, Mikey who is sarcastic, aloof and negative, JR who never bought into the team or Kathryn who is leading the group.

I am inclined to think that people would say that I am more like Carlos or perhaps Nick.

3. Who would you like to be?

Kathryn or Nick. Both exhibited leadership skills and were not afraid to admit when they were wrong. Also both shared their vulnerabilities to establish the trust factor with the team. Kathryn shared her when she was fired. Nick apologize in an open forum and shared his frustrations openly.

4. What are your thoughts around the five dysfunctions?

Very on target. The trust factor is the crux of where it all begins. I think that most people do not know how to clearly state what they are thinking so that it doesn't come out like an attack. Kathryn was an effective as the leader where she clearly stated her goals, made everyone feel like they matter and yet made those hard decisions when she had to.

I do see how these dysfunctions clearly affect the way that we operate as a team. In my opinion, I believe that we still have to work on some issues regarding the trust factor and are in the midst of the fear of conflict.

5. Is this a good book for your staff?

This book is a must read for all members of a team. Team members will gain the insight and lessons from the fable to help them understand the dysfunctions and actions to avoid them. The author takes the reader through the lens of being a fly on the wall.

It is definitely a self help/self improvement book.

So what are the five dysfunctions you ask? See poster.

• Inattention to Results (Status and Ego)
• Avoidance of Accountability (Low Standards)
• Lack of Commitment (Ambiguity)
• Fear of Conflict (Arfticial Harmony)
• Absence of Trust (Invulnerability)

While reading, I can relate to almost each character as I sometimes behave differently in each team. This is something I will have to revisit and explore.

Cast of characters:

Kathryn - New CEO that must bring the team together.

Carlos - Customer Support - Open-minded, reserved and hesitant to share thoughts.

Jan - CFO - Open-minded and disciplinedJeff - Former CEO - offered another job (nicely removed from the position)

JR - Sales

Mikey - PR executive / Marketing - Continually passes sarcastic remarks under her breath.

Martin - Chief Technologist or Engineer - Arrogant and challenges authority

Nick - COO

By the way, I am still reading The Tipping Point by Malcolm Gladwell.

The Principal's Blog

I recently subscribed to The Principal's Blog, published by Melinda Miller, an elementary school principal in real life. She is refreshing, forward thinking and is an inspiration to all leaders. She has also mastered the art of podcasting and also produces regular segments. It is a must read for all leaders!

You can sign up for your own by going to http://www.podomatic.com/.