Audiria.com - listening-based learning of Spanish

Audiria is a new online tool which supports student learning of Spanish, offering multimedia audiofiles to increase knowledge of the language. And it's free:

Audiria.com - a listening-based learning

A Whole New Mind Book Club

Maybe you've been in a book group: a group of people who get together to discuss a book they've all read. Here's an online book club discussion about Dan Pink's A Whole New Mind. There are four pages of posts, in reverse chronological order (most recent first). The link below takes you to the top of the first page. Scroll to the bottom to see the first post.

Read how other teachers reacted to A Whole New Mind:

Book Clubs at TeacherPlaces : A Whole New Mind with Pat Bassett

Frontline Shows Available for Free Online

From Frontline's web site: "Since 1983, FRONTLINE has served as American public television's flagship public affairs series. Hailed upon its debut on PBS as "the last best hope for broadcast documentaries," FRONTLINE's stature over 25 seasons is reaffirmed each week through incisive documentaries covering the scope and complexity of the human experience."

We used to have to order and purchase Frontline videos. Now you can watch them online for free.

Checklist for Teachers

Are your students learning the skills that they need to become fearless learners prepared to function effectively in the 21st Century? Alan November compiled this list of what he believes all schools should teach their students.

From the introduction:

It seems as if there is an onslaught of new tools coming to us via the Internet on a daily basis. What does this mean for school leaders who are striving to develop an educationally sound program? Here, we will cut through the hype and focus on essential questions. The list of questions below is our attempt to get you to look critically at your school’s program and begin measuring its effectiveness in teaching skills to today’s teachers and students that will outlast tomorrow’s changes in technology.

What are your thoughts on this list?

More Clips from Alan November Talks

Here are a few more excerpts from his talks, in addition to what you can find on iTunes.

In this he describes three (3) key skills that parents and educators need to teach students for success in today's world:



Appearances can be deceiving! Do your students know who owns the websites that they're retrieving information from? Do you? Do you know how to get the information? In this short video Alan November discloses how:

Alan November shares some ideas for using technology in teaching

I saw Alan November at the NYSAIS assistant heads conference in New Paltz. Alan is a whirlwind of big ideas and provocative questions. He thrives on confirming and challenging educators’ thoughts about what’s possible in the world of teaching and learning.



For more Alan November videos, launch iTunes, go to iTunes Store, then iTunes U, then on that screen there is a box titled Beyond Campus, click on PBS, then go to Thirteen-WNET, and then finally access Teaching and Learning Celebration ... Items #2, 4, 5, 12 feature videos ranging fro 1-8 minutes long. Thanks to David "Hock" Hochschartner for giving me the heads up about those iTunes resources.

A Vision of Students Today

A short video summarizing some of the most important characteristics of students today - how they learn, what they need to learn, their goals, hopes, dreams, what their lives will be like, and what kinds of changes they will experience in their lifetime. Created by Michael Wesch in collaboration with 200 students at Kansas State University.

A Whole New Mind in the Classroom: Right-Brained Future

Brian, Peter and I attended this workshop at the NAIS conference. It illustrates some ways teachers can use some of the concepts described in A Whole New Mind.

From the NAIS web site:

This PowerPoint presents the theme of "right-brained" creativity, rooted in Daniel Pink's A Whole New Mind, exploring the implications for teaching and learning in 21st Century schools. It examines the six core competencies of our right-brained future and illustrates exercises related to each: design, story, symphony, empathy, play, and meaning.

**PLEASE NOTE -- This is a rather large file (49 MB). For a more efficient viewing experience, please right-click on the link to save a copy to your desktop.

Sir Ken Robinson: Do schools kill creativity?

Sir Ken Robinson was a featured speaker at the NAIS conference I attended in NYC this winter with Peter, Kelly and Brain. In this talk, which is very similar to the talk we saw, Robinson makes an entertaining (and profoundly moving) case for creating an education system that nurtures creativity, rather than undermining it. With ample anecdotes and witty asides, Robinson points out the many ways our schools fail to recognize -- much less cultivate -- the talents of many brilliant people. "We are educating people out of their creativity," Robinson says. The universality of his message is evidenced by its rampant popularity online. A typical review: "If you have not yet seen Sir Ken Robinson's TED talk, please stop whatever you're doing and watch it now."

It's Not on the Test

Am I the only teacher who cringes when a student asks, "Is this going to be on the test?"

Robot Games, the Need for Engineers, and a Whole New Mind

I listened to this story on NPR today on the way home from work. It's a quick look at a robotics competition in Georgia and how teams from high schools in Michigan dominate these events, thanks to the significant support from the auto industry there.

As the story was airing I was thinking about Dan Pink's A Whole New Mind. He emphasized over and over again that left brain, spreadsheet, SAT thinking was no longer sufficient for success in the post-information age, yet these future engineers were being touted as the desperately needed future. Then a student spoke about his work, saying what was great was the group working together to innovate and create new ideas. What's most important isn't so much the science, although that's certainly important (a robot that doesn't work isn't a robot), but rather the collaboration and creativity the students exercised to build the robots.

I think about the 20 major global problems that humanity faces in the coming decades and each will require unprecedented collaboration, empathy, meaning-making and creativity - in addition to the left-brain skills.

How to get a $3,000 interactive whiteboard for about $75

Interactive white boards, like the Smart Board, cost thousands of dollars, but you can get nearly everything a Smart Board offers (and even more, believe it or not) for less than the cost of a tank of gas.

Using infrared (IR) light pens and the Wii Remote, it is possible to create very low-cost multi-point interactive whiteboards and multi-point tablet displays. Johnny Chung Lee, a student at Carnegie Mellon University, created the software to turn your Wii remote into a highly functional interactive white board, and his YouTube videos have been widely watched. The software can be downloaded at http://johnnylee.net. Check out his video explanation below. You can bet I'm going to try to make this work this spring in my classroom.



Here's his TedTalk on the topic:

WikiEducator

WikiEducator is a fledgling collection of teaching resources and community education projects. It has an ambitious goal of providing a complete education curriculum by 2015. You can upload teaching resources or browse for resources you can use in your classes.

First check out the page on using WikiEducator.

OER Commons

I recently came across and now highly recommend OER (Open Educational Resources) Commons, a teaching and learning network, from K-12 lesson plans to college courseware, from algebra to zoology, open to everyone to use and add to. Take a few topics you teach and search for resources on those topics and I bet you'll find something that could improve your teaching.

OER Commons is the first comprehensive open learning network where teachers and professors (from pre-K to graduate school) can access their colleagues’ course materials, share their own, and collaborate on affecting today’s classrooms. It uses Web 2.0 features (tags, ratings, comments, reviews, and social networking) to create an online experience that engages educators in sharing their best teaching and learning practices.

The mission of OER Commons is to expand educational opportunities by increasing access to high-quality Open Educational Resources (OER), and facilitating the creation, use, and re-use of OER, for instructors, students, and self-learners.

Find them at http://www.oercommons.org/.

A list of topics (called a tag cloud) on OER Commons is also available.

Nearly 2,000 Courses Online for Free

As I noted in a previous post, MIT's OpenCourseWare is a great innovation. From their web site:

MIT is committed to advancing education and discovery through knowledge open to everyone.

OCW shares free lecture notes, exams, and other resources from more than 1800 courses spanning MIT's entire curriculum.

I was looking for good resources for our foreign language teachers recently and found this section on foreign languages at MIT.

As the Christian Science Monitor noted, you can now go to MIT for free.

Research Resources

On my web site, http://www.readwritethinkspeak.com, I've collected resources for writing a research paper, including:

• How to write a research paper
• Finding Sources
• Making the Most of Google
• Evaluating Sources
• Avoiding Plagiarism
• Citing Sources and MLA Style

"It's a rather good collection of resources," he said modestly. I've had several alumni say they go back to it in college when faced with a research assignment.

Library of Congress Teacher Site

You have access to the largest library in the world, including ten million primary sources. Not bad for a little school in remote Lake Placid:

For Teachers (Library of Congress)

The online catalog is a good place to start your search.

Finding Good Video Content

I haven't specifically addressed the question of where to get good video content for your teaching. iTunes is one of the first places to go (see previous post).

Other placed to check out:

• YouTube is the ubiquitous video sharing service. Much of what's on there is probably useless for your teaching, but a quick search on your topic is likely to yield some results. For example: you're teaching the quadratic equation; search quadratic equation and you'll find dozens of video lessons other teachers have posted. Find the best and you can team teach with teachers from around the world.

• TeacherTube is YouTube for teachers. You'll probably get more results from YouTube, but what all you'll get from TeacherTube is educational material (not as much junk to sort through).

• GoogleVideo is a search engine of videos on the web. It searches YouTube and most of YouTube's competitors.

• and don't forget iTunes U.
  

MIT Launches Web Site for High School Students

Massachusetts Institute of Technology recently announced the launch of a new Web site, Highlights for High School, that will provide resources to improve science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) instruction at the high school level.

The Web site builds on the success of MIT's revolutionary OpenCourseWare (OCW) initiative, launched in 2001 with the goal of making all MIT course materials available for free over the World Wide Web. It is designed to help inspire the next generation of engineers and scientists and to be a valuable tool for high school teachers.

"Strength in K-12 math and science will be increasingly important for America if the nation is to continue to lead in today's innovation economy," said MIT President Susan Hockfield. "Highlights for High School will provide students and teachers with innovative tools to supplement their math and science studies. We hope it will inspire students to reach beyond their required classwork to explore more advanced material and might also encourage them to pursue careers in science and engineering."

Read the full announcement.

Go to Highlights for High Schools at MIT.

No more dead links. See web page histories.

The Internet Archive (IA) is a non-profit organization dedicated to maintaining an on-line library and archive of Web and multimedia resources. The Wayback Machine is a digital time capsule created by the Internet Archive. It is maintained with content from Alexa Internet. This service allows users to see archived versions of web pages across time—what the Archive calls a "three dimensional index."

Ever click on a link and find the destination page no longer there? Use the Wayback Machine to see what that page looked like last month or five years ago.

Curious about the history of a web page? Use the Wayback Machine.

For example, you could use the Wayback Machine to see what the Faculty page on NSA's web site looked like last year and five years ago:

And here's the result. You can click on a link to see what the page looked like at that time.

getCITED: Academic research, citation reports and discussion lists

getCited is a database of academic research of all kinds. It requires a free membership to join.

getCITED: Academic research, citation reports and discussion lists

CiteSeer for research in computer and information science

CiteSeer is a scientific literature digital library and search engine that focuses primarily on the literature in computer and information science. CiteSeer aims to improve the dissemination and feedback of the scientific literature and to provide improvements in functionality, usability, availability, cost, comprehensiveness, efficiency, and timeliness in the access of scientific and scholarly knowledge.

Computer and Information Science Papers CiteSeer Publications ResearchIndex

Scirus - search for scientific information

Scirus claims to be the most comprehensive scientific research tool on the web. With over 450 million scientific items indexed at last count, it allows researchers to search for not only journal content but also scientists' homepages, courseware, pre-print server material, patents and institutional repository and website information.

Scirus - search for scientific information

Google Scholar for Academic Research

What is Google Scholar?
Google Scholar (http://scholar.google.com) provides a simple way to broadly search for scholarly literature. From one place, you can search across many disciplines and sources: peer-reviewed papers, theses, books, abstracts and articles, from academic publishers, professional societies, preprint repositories, universities and other scholarly organizations. Google Scholar helps you identify the most relevant research across the world of scholarly research.

Features of Google Scholar

• Search diverse sources from one convenient place
• Find papers, abstracts and citations
• Locate the complete paper through your library or on the web
• Learn about key papers in any area of research

Here is a screen shot of a GoogleScholar search for the Bay of Pigs. You see the first two results are books, which gives a good summary of the book (leading you to find it at a library, maybe) and other full text entries of articles from periodicals:


Here are some GoogleScholar advanced search tips.

Making the most of your Google search: 10 Tips

I used to do it, too. I'd complain that when posed with a research question my students would go to Google, type a few words and hit "search." But what I know now is the problem isn't the students go to Google. The problem is students don't know how to best use Google to sort through the billions of resources on the Internet, find information that's reliable and relevant and move on.

Here are some ways you and your students can use Google differently. Don't just type a few words and hit search. What are your favorite Google search tricks? Leave them in the comments section.

Here's a poster for your classroom highlighting some of these tips.

1. Site: search terms

Here is a Google search on the Jazz Age, but it limits the search to .edu web sites, which are US colleges and universities. Note all the results come from US colleges and universities:


Here is the same search, but restricted to web sites published in Italy. Your students can find country codes with this directory.

Here is a search for Jazz Age limited to academic web sites outside the United States. Web pages ending in .ac are non-US academic sites. It's the international equivalent of .edu:


2. Use Quotes
Include quotes around your search phrase and your results will be only pages that include that exact phrase. Incidentally, you can combine all of these tips. My site:ac search above would have better better in I searched for "Jazz Age"


3. filetype:search terms

Here your student can search for specific types of files, including PowerPoint (ppt), Word (doc), portable document format (pdf), spreadsheet (xls), etc. Here's an extensive list of file types. This search revealed only PowerPoint presentations related to the Jazz Age:


4. Use Boolean Search Terms (AND OR NOT)

The search below yields resources related to recycling steel OR iron. You could say steel and iron and steel but not iron:


5. Use - and + symbols (similar to Boolean)

Imagine you're searching for good salsa recipes but keep getting salsa dance steps. Here's how to eliminate the dance moves:


6. Search for synonyms
So you're doing a search for a term that has many synonyms, like cattle. Use the tilde (~) before the term and the search results will include cattle and its synonyms. Again, combine this with other search operators and you've got some powerful tools.


7. related:website
Use this search when you found a site you like and want to find other related sites. I like Consumer Reports and this search yielded 26 similar web sites:


8. Use an asterisk (*) as a wild card to match one or more words in a phrase:


9. link:website

This search query returns a list of web sites that link the the site you queried. It can be useful to verify the site as a source: "So who refers people to this web site?"


10. Define:word

Everyone knows about the dictionary web sites out there, but you can use Google as a dictionary, too:


There's More!

These are just some of my favorite ways to make the most of Google. There are many more. Here are a few web sites that catalog Google tips:

• http://www.googleguide.com/advanced_operators_reference.html
• http://www.wolf-howl.com/google/google-search-tricks-tips-and-hints/
• http://biomed.ucsd.edu/GoogleTips.pdf

What are your favorite Google search tricks? Leave them in the comments section.

Take the Information Literacy Quiz

The American Library Association's (ALA) Presidential Committee on Information Literacy, Final Report states that, "To be information literate, a person must be able to recognize when information is needed and have the ability to locate, evaluate, and use effectively the needed information"

Where educating students in the midst of the information age. What's you level of information literacy?

Take this quiz (answers and explanations follow), brought to you by Alan November.

Curriculum Resources from Alan November

I saw Alan November speak at the NYSAIS assistant heads conference. Alan is a whirlwind of big ideas and provocative questions. He thrives on confirming and challenging educators’ thoughts about what’s possible in the world of teaching and learning. More than anything, he is a teacher at heart, with a wealth of experience teaching students at all levels.

Here are some curriculum resources he recommends:

• DiscoverySchool: Discover lessons, online tools and discussion groups with this rich resource.

• Education World: Packed with lesson plans for all levels and subject areas. Lessons are submitted by teachers from across the country.

• Iearn.org: If you are interested in finding some global projects for your students, this is a great place to start.

• Intercultural Email Classroom Connections: Another site dedicated to teachers looking for global projects.

• National Archives: Access authentic primary resources about community, family or local history. Visit the National Archives for various ideas and resources on all facets of American history.

• TakingITGlobal: TakingITGlobal.org is a global online community, providing youth with inspiration to make a difference, a source of information on issues, opportunities to take action, and a bridge to get involved locally, nationally and globally.

• ThinkQuest: See some amazing work done by students working together around the world.

• WebQuest: WebQuests are well organized online assignments designed by teachers and students. They are available for all levels and subjects.

• Webquest UK: If you like Webquests, be sure to check out the UK site.

Teaching Grammar and English Usage (not just for English teachers)

Grammar Girl provides short, friendly tips to improve your writing. Covering the grammar rules and word choice guidelines that can confound even the best writers, Grammar Girl makes complex grammar questions simple with memory tricks to help you recall and apply those troublesome grammar rules. Whether English is your first language or second language, Grammar Girl’s punctuation, style, and business tips will make you a better and more successful writer:

Also check out Common Errors in English, the web site of Washington State University English professor Paul Brians. Common Errors in English, which explains nearly every usage error, is a widely used and exceptionally good web site.

Do you teach or educate?

Thanks to David "Hock" Hochschartner, the head of North Country School and Camp Treetops for showing me this video.

Facebook for Independent School Teachers

It may look and feel like Facebook, but in reality the NAIS Discussion Network is a community of serious independent school educators who want to share best practices and become better independent school teachers and leaders.

Sign up, join a group, browse the discussion forums. I've found Classrooms of the Future and Stories of Excellence to both be valuable, and I bet you'll find something to help you improve your teaching.

Choose Your Own Web 2.0 Adventure

The link below will take you to the NAIS Classrooms of the Future Hands-On Station Adventures. Take a quick overview of them then pick one to focus on. Look for how you can best improve your practice and pick the adventures that will help you use this technology with your students to create knowledge. There is a lot here so take time to digest the adventures. I look forward to any comments you have along your adventures as you journey through the creative world of the digital native.

NAIS CoF- Hands-on Index Page

Web 2.0 Resources from the NAIS Conference

Peter, Brian, Kelly and I went to the NAIS annual conference in late February. There was a great track called Classrooms of the Future, which had a lot of workshops on Web 2.0. What is Web 2.0? From Wikipedia:

Web 2.0 is a trend in the use of World Wide Web technology and web design that aims to facilitate creativity, information sharing, and, most notably, collaboration among users. These concepts have led to the development and evolution of web-based communities and hosted services, such as social-networking sites, wikis, blogs, and folksonomies...Although the term suggests a new version of the World Wide Web, it does not refer to an update to any technical specifications, but to changes in the ways software developers and end-users use webs.

Web 2.0 is notable in education because it makes collaboration much easier. You can now share information with millions of people with little to know technical knowledge. It's also a great way to gain an audience for your students. Not only should students create a video, but also they should post it on YouTube, and GoogleVideo, sharing their work with the world.

Here's a collection of resources from all of the conferences workshops on Web 2.0.

You simply must have iTunes

I've often thought eventually I'll leave the Adirondacks for a college town, because in a college town you have access to all the intellectual and creative stimulation of a vibrant learning community. I'm re-thinking that because in the last month or so I've enjoyed talks by Thomas Friedman, Steve Jobs, Elie Wiesel, Bill McKibbon, Mike Krzyzewski, and William Sloan Coffin. I saw these talks via my laptop while sitting in my favorite chair in my living room. The talks were, respectively, at MIT, Stanford, The US Holocaust Museum, Wellesley College, Duke, and Yale. This is like TED to the tenth degree.

If you don't have iTunes yet, you must get it now. Go here and download it for free. You can use it to download music and audio books, as you probably know. After you download and launch the program go to the iTunes store and then iTunesU. There you'll find hundreds of resources you can use immediately in your course.

You can explore resources uploaded by many universities. Many colleges and universities place their course lectures online, in audio and/or video format. Say you're teaching chemistry. You can go to UC Berkeley's Chem 101 class and play for your students the lecture on the topic your studying. Maybe it'll supplement your teaching. If nothing else, it'll give you and your students a sense of what a college chemistry course will demand of its students. With iTunes you can team teach your course with tenured professors at some of the best known universities.

Better still are the resources in the Beyond Campus section (bottom right). The Holocaust Museum, PBS, the National Science Digital Library, and much more, are all there for you - free of charge.

Maybe you can start with a Power Search (top right). Type the topic your studying now (Huck Finn, atomic mass, climate change, etc.) or the general topic of your course (American Literature, chemistry, environmental science, etc.) and see what you get. I know you'll find something you can use to improve your teaching.

Use the comments section to share ideas for using iTunes. Happy browsing.

Finding Online Science Sources

From Education Week:

Whether they’re seeking to polish teaching skills, strengthen their shaky grasp of a topic, or transform a tedious classroom lesson into a lively one, science educators are turning to the Web for a variety of needs that can’t be met as easily through conferences, textbooks, and other means.

Online sites offer curricula, lesson plans, and hands-on activities, sorted by science topic and grade level, in written form and through audio, video, and interactive lessons. In fact, the biggest challenge for many teachers isn’t simply finding scientific information online, but picking out reliable and useful information amid more suspect material.

Read more online...

Education Week's Digital Directions: Finding Online Science Sources

Creating a Video is Telling a Story

Asking students to make an original video is an excellent assignment. The assignment encourages creativity, it's fun, and when done well helps students understand the importance of design and story telling.

Don't assume your students know how to make a video. I've seen it in my classes: they're excited about the assignment, run off to get started and quickly realize it's much harder than they thought. Before having them dive in, teach them about the story board, which is basically a shot-by shot master plan for the video. Before they record their first shot, have them show you the story board and give them some suggestions and encouragement.

There's a lot more to making an original video, of course, but I think having a clear plan (story board) before you start is critical. Here are some resources on story boards:

• Lesson: Making Movie Story Boards

• Story Board Organizer

• Thinking through visual story telling

• Sample Story Boards

What other lessons have you learned about making videos? Post them in the comments section, as well as links to other resources.

Free Online File Conversion

Colin Delaney showed me Zamzar the other day. It's a web page that allows you to convert all types of files from one format to another.

Have you ever wanted to turn that Word (or Publisher) document into a .pdf file? You can do it with Zamzar.

This is a great tool, especially if you're creating podcasts, audio or video for your class, and want to post to various web sites that take only certain file formats. Check out Zamzar for your file conversion needs.

Do you have other free resources for file converting? Share them in the comments section. Happy file converting.

Spreading Ideas with the Talk of their Lives

TED stands for Technology, Entertainment, Design. It started out (in 1984) as a conference bringing together people from those three worlds. Since then its scope has become ever broader.

The annual conference now brings together the world's most fascinating thinkers and doers, who are challenged to give the talk of their lives (in 18 minutes).

Their site makes the best talks and performances from TED available to the public, for free. Almost 200 talks from its archive are now available, with more added each week. It's mission: spreading ideas.

TED is where I discovered Hans Rosling. It's also where Al Gore gave his famous PowerPoint presentation, well before anyone was talking about inconvenient truths.

Where do you go (online or off) for inspiration for your teaching? Make suggestions in the comments section.

Making Music with Statistics

Demographic statistics, according to scientist Hans Rosling, are like music. Showing someone the numbers is like showing someone the sheet music of a brilliant symphony: hardly anyone can appreciate the beauty of the raw numbers. But collect the best musicians with the best instruments and have them play the music and you will certainly appreciate the work's beauty.

"Nocturne, of Chopin, so beautiful music. But few people will appreciate the music if I just show them the notes. Most of us need to listen to the music to understand how beautiful it is.

But often that's how we present statistics; we just show the notes we don't play the music."

- Hans Rosling

If you teach about developing countries or industrialized countries, or ever compare one country to another, you'll want to use this resource in your teaching. The same goes if you teach statistics.

• Gap Casts: Short Lessons on Specific Statistics

• Longer lectures

• Gapminder World: you choose the x and y axes and watch the world change right there on your computer

Here's Hans Rosling's TED Talk from March 2007

Mathematics WebCasts

The McDonough School in Maryland has an archive of video lessons for most of its mathematics classes. Why not team teach your course with one of their teachers, allowing students multiple ways to access the information? See the lessons online here:

http://video.mcdonogh.org/math/Upper%20School/