Sweet Discourse: Lilnks for 12-23-2013 to 12-29-2-13

• 25 Reading Strategies That Work In Every Content Area

• Enhance Project-Based Learning with These 10 Powerful Tools

• Consider Brennan’s Hierarchy of Imagination (via...
  

• Smartphone as Mentor: How Tech Could Change Behavior
  

• Dream Courses: My students write 7 course descriptions for ideal courses, and critique their teacher's attempts |
  

• 5 Online Games That Teach Kids the Art of Persuasion | MindShift

• Wappwolf, Home To IFTTT-Like Automation Tools, Launches iBeam.it For Sharing Content Across Online Services | TechCrunch

• Fall 2013: The Headless ds106 Syllabus

• Headless ds106ers, Stand Proudly! Some Disjointed Thoughts and Puny Data - CogDogBlog

Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.

 

Tacit knowledge, abundant examples, and deliberate practice | Jon Udell

http://blog.jonudell.net/2013/08/26/tacit-knowledge-abundant-examples-and-deliberate-practice/

• 3 Things That People With Good Habits Do Differently

  • 3 Things That People With Good Habits Do Differently

     by James Clear
  • 1. They start with a habit that is so easy they can’t say no.
  • 2. They understand exactly what is holding them back.
  • 3. They have a plan for when they fail.

Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.

Gatekeepers of a Different Kind: Virgil not NSA

http://coffeeforthebrain.blogspot.com/2013/08/teachers-stop-acting-like-gatekeepers.html?utm_content=buffer52866&utm_source=buffer&utm_medium=twitter&utm_campaign=Buffer

http://gatekeepingtheory.weebly.com/

 

• Sometimes I think that we need to ask this question because it is at the root of so much of what learning is all about:  who has the power?  Our learners, young or old, are in a state of wanting the power they think we have when they need to be tapping what they already have to get more of what they need.  And what is this power?  First, each of us is the product of millions of years of sometimes brutal natural selection and our DNA is the tightly helixed core of that power both instinctive and conscious.  Second, our system of government while highly in need of perfection has created learning pathways, some highly formalized (degree granting) and others highly informalized (#clmooc, public libraries, shared experience). These are dynamos for sharing The Knowledge as London cabbies call it.
  
  Teachers are in fact gatekeepers for good, for sharing, and for knowledge but you rightly flatten the hierarchy.  I prefer to think of them as gatekeepers of another kind.  They open doors to every single person and they make sure that there is equitable access to the dozen adjacent possible doors of power beyond them.  We are also the Virgil to their Dante at times, concierge to the hell that is the status quo for some of them.  Ideally, we want to be their Beatrice guiding to the gates of heaven. That kind of gatekeeping is not likely.
  
  My feelings about gatekeeper function are mixed.  I do not entirely agree that we don't need to be gatekeepers, but I agree that we don't want to be like God in her heaven parsing out the sheep from the goats like we do now.  Learning and knowledge are not scarce resources.  Let's not treat them as such.

Perhaps we can think of ourselves as 'gatekeep-peers'?

Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.

Toyhacking and connected learning | Language Publics

A very fine blog post below by Saskia Still that prompted more questions from her reflections.  Very valuable.

 

Toyhacking and connected learning | Language Publics

• • Takeaway #1: We now have a pool of tools for hacking, but I have a query: 

    Were your children taking something and questioning its assumptions and changing the toy to match their beliefs? I think hacking is a natural way to learn much like walking and talking, probably not overtly analytical like Chad's adult definition of hacking. Are your kids showning you that hacking is just a larger form of pattern making. That is what the brain does so very well.

• • Takeaway #2: We need to hack our children's idea of play. Is that a make or a hack?   

 

too mny devices

too mny devices, a photo by Tellio on Flickr.

Tellio's Cell Blog Mark sample intrusive scaffolding

Posted via email from tellio's posterous

My Word for 2013

• Please share your words today. #slice2013 « TWO WRITING TEACHERS

  Connect–I spent August connecting with other teachers nationwide. When August was over, I stopped. I miss it terribly and realize that while I am not great at connecting generally, I am good at being helpful. I will connect with those I already know through the channels I already have. I will connect with those I don’t know but follow. I will be helpful and grateful as my primary tools for connecting.

Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.

James Howard Kunstler on Why Technology Won't Save Us | Jeff Goodell | Politics News | Rolling Stone

Once again stuff from outside one's domain can be a serious kick to the head.  This one comes from uber-curmudgeon James Howard Kunstler.   He addresses an issue I smash up against in education circles--disagreement.  When I disagree, I am branded as negative at best and ignored at worst.  I get pretty bent when I get treated like a troll and all I want is a conversation.  His remarks here are a nearly perfect echo to that frustration.

I don’t like talking about "solutions."  I prefer talking about intelligent responses.  My beef with the whole "solutions" thing comes from my travels around the country, talking on college campuses and such; there is this whole clamor for "solutions."  The idea is, if you’re not optimistic enough, you should shut up.  But there are subtexts to all these things.  And the subtext to that particular meme is, "Give us the solutions that will allow us to keep running our stuff the same way we’re running it now, except by other means."  They don’t really want to hear about other arrangements.  They want to keep on running all the cars, only differently.  You know, like hybrid electric cars, or electric cars, or cars that run on algae secretions.  But they don’t get that we’re done with that way of life.  The mandates of reality are telling us something very different.  They are telling us we have to inhabit the landscape and move around in it very differently in the future. 

You gotta love it:  mandates of reality, the prevailing subtext, and 'done with that way of life'.   Read the whole article and hope he is wrong.  I don't think he is.

 

•  

James Howard Kunstler on Why Technology Won't Save Us | Jeff Goodell | Politics News | Rolling Stone

Using Catch Notes

Okiedokie

Sent from Catch Notes on iPhone

Sent from my iPod

Posted via email from tellio's posterous

Authentic Learning Group Diigo (weekly)

• JogNog | Top 100 World Dates

  Tags: dates, JogNog, social, studies, world

Posted from Diigo. The rest of Authentic Learning group favorite links are here.

Untitled

Sent from my iPad

Posted via email from tellio's posterous

Authentic Learning Group Diigo (weekly)

• Busting the Myths of Digital Learning

  Results of JogNog Digital Learning Survey

  Tags: digital, learning, JogNog

  • - By Cara Whitehead

• Busting the Myths of Digital Learning

  Survey from JogNog reveals schools unprepared to support digital learning - EdTech Times

  Tags: digital, learning, JogNog

  • - By Cara Whitehead

Posted from Diigo. The rest of Authentic Learning group favorite links are here.

New World of Informal/Unstructured Training

• Take off those rose coloured glasses | Harold Jarche

  tags: ifttt delicious diigo

  • The new reality is that, at least implicitly, business units are realizing that work is learning and that they need to empower workers to learn and solve problems collaboratively.

  • What will your training role be in the future? The author describes four future roles:

     
     
    1. Design & Create Courses
    2. Enable Learning
    3. Support Learning
    4. Be a change agent for development
  • The future will not be L&D 2.0 but rather a new organizational learning approach, where learning is integrated into the workflow.

Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.

Jenna Wortham: What I Read - Entertainment - The Atlantic Wire

• Jenna Wortham: What I Read - Entertainment - The Atlantic Wire

  • I wake up around 7 or 7:30 a.m. and check the news on my iPhone. I usually sleep with my laptop nearby, but the phone is quicker.
  • I've set a few select Twitter feeds to push their tweets to my phone via SMS from 7 in the morning till 2 at night.
  • I listen to music while I get dressed. I’ve done that since high school. It prepares me for the long day ahead.
  • During the ten minutes it takes me to walk to the train, I’ll quickly check Twitter for the news of the day, Tumblr for reactions to the news and Instagram for social news, to see if anything is heating up that might make for a good daily story or blog post -- a big news event, a backlash to something, a particularly timely meme, viral video or some other important topic.
  • During the first half of my commute, I listen to podcasts on my ride into the city. I use a terrific app called Instacast to keep track of the ones I like
  • I also read most of the New York Times through our iPhone app on my commute in.
  • I try to absorb at least an article a day.
  • For the second leg, I start preparing myself for the office. I reply to as many emails as I can in the last 15-20 minutes of my ride.
  • Once I get to work, around 10, I open Twitter and Facebook -- these stay open throughout the day and I stick my head back into them repeatedly to keep an eye out for any news that might be bubbling up.
  • I’ve got several secret Twitter lists that I use to help filter the news. The two that are the most useful contains all the founders, investors and start-ups that I'm keeping a close eye on and the other is full of reporters, tech and beyond, whose work I admire, so that I can see what they're tweeting about and linking to.
  • I favorite about 50 things (or more) a day on Twitter -- articles to read, ideas I liked, books to read, songs. I use ifttt recipe to send my Twitter faves to my Gmail inbox so I can sift through them later.
  • I have breakfast and skim my trades -- Hacker News, Reddit, GigaOm, The Verge, Gizmodo, BetaBeat, BuzzFeed FWD, TechCrunch, Techmeme, All Things D and The Atlantic Wire.
  • While I skim, I take notes the old-fashioned way: With a fine-point Sharpie and a stack Post-it notes. I do a lot of pattern matching -- emerging themes among new start-ups, the types of companies that are getting funded, a VC or entrepreneur catches my eye -- and make a note or a list, and I keep these in a row on my desk for easy reference.
  • For my beat, I need to see what new service or app is bubbling up and pay attention to how people are using the web, their mobile devices and new technologies, but it can often take awhile for things to catch on, so I'm constantly monitoring for that groundswell when a new service or behavior breaks out beyond my professional and social circle and starts to catch on in a bigger way.
  • often take photos of these handwritten notes and file them in a separate folder on my iPhone for easy perusal later.
  • I keep a fresh Steno notebook for each cluster of stories and blog posts I’m working on each week, and I always keep a graph-paper Rhodia notebook on me for longer to-do lists, general observations, story ideas. I avoiding spending a lot of time in my inbox -- it’s the equivalent quicksand -- so instead, I keep an eye on the emails to address anything urgent that comes in and make a list of people to reply to via email during a late-afternoon coffee break or before bed at the end of the night.
  • f there's no breaking news that requires immediate attention, I'll file a blog post or two and then transition into interviews and reporting for the features I'm working on that week and calls and meetings with sources that last until late afternoon, when I have lunch. Then, I’ll go back to those same sites and see what I’ve missed.
  • During lunch, I check in on my favorite writers. In my regular rotation each week: Willa Paskin at Salon, Mary H.K. Choi at MTV and Wired, Edith and everyone at The Hairpin, Mat Honan at Gizmodo, Parislemon, Amanda Peyton on Tumblr, Robin Sloan’s blog, Shortform blog, Chris Dixon, Silicon Filter, Anil Dash, Waxy.org, Liz and Peter at All Things D, Guernica, The New Inquiry, Jonah Lerer, Clive Thompson, Vulture’s Mad Men and Game of Thrones recaps, The New Yorker’s Culture Desk, the picks of Longform, Rembert Browne and Jay Caspian King at Grantland, Anthony de Rosa at Reuters, David Carr and Brian Stelter, RConversation, Daring Fireball, Farhad Manjoo, Fred Wilson, Matt Buchanan and John Herrman at BuzzFeed FWD, Matt Stopera, Whitney Jefferson and Katie Notopoulos at BuzzFeed, Alexis Madrigal at The Atlantic, Rebecca Greenfield at The Atlantic Wire, Tim Carmody at Wired, Kashmir Hill at Forbes, to name a few
  • I really admire iPad apps like Longform and Percolate. Lately, I use Pocket or Flipboard to see if I can unearth any new content that I should be paying attention to, although between Twitter, Tumblr and Facebook, I get sent down enough unusual and satisfying rabbit holes to keep me awash in new content.
  • At the end of the day, I crave time away from the screen. I’ll go on a run, or to a show, or a tech event or a drinks thing to catch up with friends -

Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.

Open course in digital storytelling enjoys modest success | Inside Higher Ed

Open course in digital storytelling enjoys modest success | Inside Higher Ed

MOOC stands for 'massively open online course' And the emphasis is on massive. One at Stanford University had had enrollment upwards of 200,000.On the smaller side,Jim Groom's MOOC, DS 106-digital storytelling, had only a few hundred. But it definitely is something new under the pedagogical sun.  It is all about imagination, folksonomy, and creative chaos.  Reminiscent of the Occupy Movement, these courses represent a case study in leaderless, emergent organization.

 

The characteristics of this 'new new thing'  include: no textbook, no lectures, and a student-driven course design where  F2F attendance is optional. Students are free to design and re-design the course on the fly. Remix is encouraged and social upvoting of others' works a la Reddit and Digg is built in. Weekly assignments are student created. F2F students are required to create assignments and tutorials for skills need to complete them. Groom points out that there are over 1300 learners are online who get no course credit yet they produce the majority of the assignments.

 

Jim Groom has lofty hopes for this revolutionary course model, "The goal of DS106 is to teach students how to be creative, capable Internet citizens, able to consciously shape their own identities and narratives online. Minus the modicum of structure and authority exerted by the instructors, the course operates much as the Web does." Or as he calls them the three C's: community, collaboration, and coordination.

Canadian MOOC pioneer George Siemens remarks that Grooms course is different from the Stanford model. "The MOOCs at Stanford and Udacity are instructivist,” says Siemens. “Learners largely duplicate the knowledge base of the educator or designer.” In other words students are following in the instructor's learning footsteps much like the silhouettes of shoes in old dance studios showed learners the steps. What Groom and company are doing is to create an environment for learners to construct their own steps.

Is there a place at Western for such a course? Is anyone out there willing to facilitate? Is there something in your discipline that you have been dying to collaborate on in a similar open environment? I would love to work with someone to do this. You can get in touch with me at terry dot elliott at gmail dot com.

 

 

Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.

Authentic Learning Group Diigo (weekly)

• Free Printable Worksheets

  Tags: Printables, vocabulary, spelling

Posted from Diigo. The rest of Authentic Learning group favorite links are here.

Authentic Learning Group Diigo (weekly)

• Science Vocabulary

  Tags: science, vocabulary

Posted from Diigo. The rest of Authentic Learning group favorite links are here.

Authentic Learning Group Diigo (weekly)

• I2Mag - Internet & Design Inspiration Magazine

  Tags: safety, history, research, blogging

  • - By Karan Chopra

Posted from Diigo. The rest of Authentic Learning group favorite links are here.

Authentic Learning Group Diigo (weekly)

• 3. 4 Promote dialogue as a means of learning

  Tags: learning, dialogue, teaching

Posted from Diigo. The rest of Authentic Learning group favorite links are here.

I’m not a participant, I participate! « In dubio

Terrific implications for "teaching".  For example, if I am teaching how to summarize how can I get them to tell me about summarizing?  Gget them to do it in class then draw inferences from what they have learned, have them research it, ask them to do it for unlikely objects then draw inferences. And how can get them to provide feedback on what they do?  Do paired work, small group work, and large group work on how well a text has been summarized from the point of view of the audience-reader.  Might start with a roughly annotated article and get them to read the original article. At that point they can judge what needs to be left out, changed, or put in.

 

I’m not a participant, I participate! « In dubio

teaching in china - Google Search

• teaching in china - Google Search

  I used the blog search.

  tags: teaching china blog

• 7 Things to Know about Teaching in China | Certification Map

  I looked at the first thing that looked good on the first page--skim quickly.

  tags: china teaching certification

• teaching in china - Google Search

  Go seven pages in just to break through the ice of the first page.

  tags: china teaching

Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.

Authentic Learning Group Diigo (weekly)

• Understanding-Virtual-Pedagogies_CKC_ideasLAB

  Tags: pedagogy, elearning, research, professional_learning

Posted from Diigo. The rest of Authentic Learning group favorite links are here.

Authentic Learning Group Diigo (weekly)

• Sample PBL Cards

  These “recipe cards” for Project/Problem Based Learning are intended for teachers to use with K12 students in groups, as well as individual students.Each card creates student learning categorized as TimeTravelers, Artists & Inventors, Historian Challenges, StoryTellers, ProblemSolvers, Scientist Challenges, Career & Tech Ed.The cards are meant to help teachers integrate core content and deeply embed creativity, problem-solving, and collaborative learning in each student, with or without the use of technology tools.The core content pieces are the basic ingredients with which teachers can cook delicious content for their hungry learners.Teachers are able to customize the driving questions in each of the content areas to fit the unique needs of their learners. The cards guide teachers through the basic steps of the project, with ideas and suggestions for best practice.The tips & tricks help establish a safe and respectful learning environment every single day of the year.

  Tags: ProjectBasedLearning, project based learning, LifePractice, pbl

  • - By Ginger TPLC

Posted from Diigo. The rest of Authentic Learning group favorite links are here.

Friday Links of Note

Friday Links of Note

 

 

• Ten Things You're Not Allowed to Say at Davos - Umair Haque - Harvard Business Review

  I think many of the bullet points that Haque applies to Davos are applicable to all the conferences that  educators occupy themselves with.  I especially think the one about 'insiders rarely topple the status quo' is dead on.  If you have time to go to these self-congratulatory fetes, then you are probably part of the powers that be.  I could change my mind on this.

  • Talk is cheap (and the more talk there is, the cheaper it gets). Corporations booking record profits as cities, states, and countries go broke have little (read: zero) incentive to actually do much get people, communities, and society out of this mess. The most powerful and influential folks at Davos — the titans of the global economy — probably won't do anything to heal the world, for the simple reason that because, as things stand, they "profit" most from its suffering. Want fries with that unsafe drinking water, bottom billion?
  • You can't solve a problem on the level it was created (as Einstein's reputed to have said). This great crisis is in our economy — and so it might be of our society, culture, and polity.
  • Insiders rarely topple the status quo.
  • Moral vacuums tend to empower the amoral. Self-explanatory: take a look at these accounts of bankers vigorously defending what at this point my pet hamster knows is basically indefensible. It's like a self-parody — except it's not. Economists aren't exactly renowned for having a moral compass, yet without one, it's impossible to take on the fundamentally ethical challenge of rebooting prosperity.
  • You need a whole brain to be a human. 21st century intelligence is not just analytical — it's ethical, emotional, and creative.

• Addictive UX: Why Pinterest Is So Dang Amazing | Design Shack

  Why we love Pinterest.  And I do love it.  I am looking for a spinach recipe right now from there.  I am planning on demonstrating to my students what a Google 20% project might consist of for our Intro to College Writing Class next week.  This article will be my framework for that.

  tags: Google 20% pinterest design

• Best Education Books of 2011 - The Huffington Post

  Stager is an interesting character/curmudgeon and this is a worthy short list.  No nonsense.  Real teachers and real learning.  Any one of these books could set a match to the tinder that is K-12 public and private education in this country.
  
  • Changing Lives
  • Teaching Minds
  • The Hundred Languages of Children
  • Wasting Minds                

• No More Résumés, Say Some Firms - WSJ.com

  This article does more than suggest that you have an alternative to a CV or a resume, it also suggests that you live a completely different professional life, one dominated by demonstrable 'doing'.  This means that project-based constructivist-connectivist learning will have to take the lead from K-20 and beyond. 

  tags: résumés

• Udacity - Educating the 21st Century

• With Udacity, Former Stanford Professor Goes All-In on Online Learning - Education - GOOD

  tags: online learning

  There is a different mode of learning afoot.  It is what Howard Rheingold calls peeragogy.  Combine participatory, peer-based learning with super-large online course taught by real practitioners (Udacity) and you will begin to see the glimmerings of a new type of learning that is both formal and informal.  It is a new way

• Audiobooks.com lets you fill your ears for $25 per month | VentureBeat

• A Way To Think About Online Courses (By Apple, For Example) | Easily Distracted

  Etextbooks are rising in the edu-zeitgeist.  Steve Jobs' last legacy was a desire to totally disrupt the textbook market with electronic texts.  This article looks beyond the hype of Apple's recent media blitz, but more importantly points to the possibility that etextbooks might not be recognizeable as textbooks at all.  Etextbooks might mark the end of the idea of textbooks. 

Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.

Authentic Learning Group Diigo (weekly)

• January: Martin Luther King Jr. Day

  Tags: MLK

Posted from Diigo. The rest of Authentic Learning group favorite links are here.

ipadio: Terry's phlog - 41st phonecast

Posted via email from tellio's posterous

Newspeak Reminders from "A Word a Day"

From: Henry Willis (hmw ssdslaw.com)
Subject: Newspeak and Papier Deutsch

Before the Bush Administration gave us the phrase "enhanced interrogation" another administration used "collateral damage" to refer to the killing of civilians -- who had, by some process of word magic, lost their identity as humans to become merely "damage", like a broken window or a fallen tree. The Nazis did the same thing on a far more barbaric scale with terms such as die Endlösung, which turned mass murder into a bloodless impersonal noun.

This is not just another example of the bureaucratic degradation of language, although that is certainly part of it. As Orwell said in his great essay on politics and the English language:
"In our time, political speech and writing are largely the defense of the indefensible.... Thus political language has to consist largely of euphemism, question-begging, and sheer cloudy vagueness.... Such phraseology is needed if one wants to name things without calling up mental pictures of them."

Or if you want to go back further, then we can quote the words that Tacitus put in the mouth of the Celtic chieftain Galgacus:

"To robbery, slaughter, plunder, they give the lying name of empire; they make a desert and call it peace."

Henry Willis, Los Angeles, California

Authentic Learning Group Diigo (weekly)

• The Awesome Science of Mindmapping | Visual.ly

  Tags: mindmapping

• The Power of Infographics | Visual.ly

  Tags: infographics

• Why A Teen Who Talks Back May Have A Bright Future : Shots - Health Blog : NPR

  Tags: TeenTalks, TeenDevelopment

Posted from Diigo. The rest of Authentic Learning group favorite links are here.

Authentic Learning Group Diigo (weekly)

• Lessons from a Public School Turnaround | Edutopia

  Once the eighth lowest-performing middle school in the state, Cochrane Collegiate reversed course and is swiftly raising student achievement by investing in research-based teaching strategies, enhancing teacher excellence, and fostering strong relationships. Read the article. [Interactive Video Player: Look for downloadable PDF worksheets and other resource links to appear under the player as you watch the video.]

  Tags: education, edu_trends, bestpractices, school, edutopia, Learning, risks, public school, collaboration

  • - By edutopia .org

• Carol Dweck: Brain exercise boosts motivation - SFGate

  Tags: exercise, Learning, training, Brainwork, motivation

Posted from Diigo. The rest of Authentic Learning group favorite links are here.

Authentic Learning Group Diigo (weekly)

• British Spelling

  To accommodate differences, Vocabulary and SpellingCity had added several lists of British spelling words and their corresponding US words.

  Tags: british, spelling

  • - By Cara Whitehead

Posted from Diigo. The rest of Authentic Learning group favorite links are here.

Authentic Learning Group Diigo (weekly)

• Crossword

  Tags: crossword, spelling

Posted from Diigo. The rest of Authentic Learning group favorite links are here.

Authentic Learning Group Diigo (weekly)

• Spelling TestMe

  Never grade another spelling test again! Let SpellingCity do it for you!

  Tags: spelling, test

  • - By Cara Whitehead

Posted from Diigo. The rest of Authentic Learning group favorite links are here.

Untitled

Posted via email from tellio's posterous

Dark magic

Posted via email from tellio's posterous

Authentic Learning Group Diigo (weekly)

• Sound Alikes

  Free, fun online practice for homophones

  Tags: homophones

  • - By Cara Whitehead

Posted from Diigo. The rest of Authentic Learning group favorite links are here.

Authentic Learning Group Diigo (weekly)

• Word Abbreviations

  Free online games and printable resources

  Tags: abb, abbreviations

  • - By Cara Whitehead

Posted from Diigo. The rest of Authentic Learning group favorite links are here.

Authentic Learning Group Diigo (weekly)

• The Role of Mistakes in the Classroom | Edutopia

  Journalist Alina Tugend finds that mistakes in the classroom should not only be tolerated, but encouraged.

  Tags: education, learning, risks, teaching, resources, edutopia, mistakes

  • - By edutopia .org

Posted from Diigo. The rest of Authentic Learning group favorite links are here.

Textbooks Are Killing Me!

Things I Know 217 of 365: Textbooks are killing me at Autodizactic

There is a constant struggle as a student to afford school while at the same time all around him teachers and textbook publishers seem to conspire against the simple motive of saving money.  Zac Chase of Autodizactic has a nice workflow for being a frugal triumphalist in the battle against the 'man'.

 

I’ve been thinking of how we might shape a new model of for texts that might lower the materials cost of higher education and thereby make it more accessible who find it cost prohibitive. Certainly, I realize tuition far out-paces course materials as an item on students’ higher ed budgets. Still, every bit helps.

Some steps I took:

 
• I downloaded Amazon’s student app and used it in the COOP to scan course texts for their Amazon.com partners. Where the Amazon texts were less expensive, I added them to my cart. (This was the case in all but two instances.)
• When I got home, I compared the items in my Amazon cart with used versions available through amazon. Whenever possible, I chose the used version.
• I took advantage of amazon’s offer of 6 months of free Amazon Prime membership for students. This secures free 2-day shipping and other as of yet unknown “deals.” (When selecting used texts, I only purchased those qualifying for Amazon Prime.)
• When it was possible, I purchased the Kindle version of texts. I’ll be reading them on my iPad, but I’d take advantage of the new Kindle Cloud feature if I didn’t have a Kindle or iPad.
• I opted against texts that were recommended but not required (with the exception of the APA style guide).
 

As a result, my possible costs of $600 ended up at around $450. That’s a chunk of rent or more than a month’s worth of groceries.

Give it a try next semester and then lobby your friendly, neighborhood academic departments to work with students to help in every way they can. 

What's the Fuss with Google "Suggested Users"

There has been quite a bit of discussion about Google+'s "suggested users" list.  Seems to me as just another pretty much accepted way to populate an otherwise empty social network until you get the chance to fill in the blanks, but others have pointed out that many of the suggested users have empty streams.  Why suggest empty streams, Google?  Seems a bit half-assed or beta-assed if you will. Maybe somebody at Google realizes if you can't do something useful then do something that appears useful.

Audrey Watters remarks, "I’m not on it [the suggested lists], and I bet you aren’t either, particularly if you’re an educator — because, well, there aren’t any educators on the list."  But she also points out that Twitter's suggested user list has few if any educators.

She also points out that

Google’s Bradley Horowitz — de-facto spokesperson for the new list — does recognize that there isn’t an “extreme knitters” group. In a post yesterday, he says he wants to assure extreme knitters — along with everyone else who isn’t a tech or pop culture celebrity — that the fact that Google doesn’t recognize your interest group is “a bug.”

Don't get mad just make your own list.  Isn't that what the Circles are?  I have a circle for my CoopCatalyst folks.  I curate my own list of folks for #edchat and for a freshman comp class I am teaching this fall.  Do like Audrey Watters "suggests"-- curate your own circles. 

In Facebook you might be using 'Pages' (although I think that whole edifice rides on the shaky ground of having been first out of the gate).  In Twitter you can create your own lists although they haven't been all that handy for me to use regularly.  So what's the dealio about raking Google+ over the coals?  Keeps 'em honest, I guess.  

Authentic Learning Group Diigo (weekly)

• Learning Games For Kids

  Free educational games and songs games for kids

  Tags: interactive, elementary, resources

  • - By Cara Whitehead

Posted from Diigo. The rest of Authentic Learning group favorite links are here.

Authentic Learning Group Diigo (weekly)

• Contractions

  Tags: vocabulary, Contractions

  • - By Cara Whitehead
  • Contractions are formed when two words are contracted or put together and an apostrophe is added to replace the omitted letters.
  • Contractions are formed when two words are contracted or put together
  • Contractions are formed when two words are contracted or put together
  • together
  • Contractions are formed when two words are contracted or put

     
  • Contractions are formed when two words are contracted or put

     
  • Contractions are formed when two words are contracted or put

     
  • Contractions are formed when two words are contracted or put

     
  • put

     
  • Contractions are formed when two words are contracted or put
  • Contractions are formed when two words are contracted or put

     
  • Contractions
  • are formed
  • Contractions

  • Word Lists

    Analogies - New!
    Capitonyms
    Compound Words - New!
    

     

    Contractions
    Dolch - Sight Words
    Geography Lists
    Homophones, Homonyms, etc.
    Literature Based Word Lists
    Math Vocabulary - Most Popular!
    Monthly Holiday Lists
    Multiple Meaning Words - New!
    Phonics & Sight Word Curriculum
    Possessive Nouns
    Sample Lists By Grade
    Science Vocabulary - New!
    Sequential Spelling Program
    Sound Alike Words
    Syllables - New!
    Word Abbreviations

    Help and Information

    FAQs - Frequently Asked Questions
    Printables
    Our Educational Awards
    Testmonials- New!
    

    when two words
  • are contracted or
  • are contracted
  • are contracted or put
  • are contracted or put
  • Contractions

     
  • Contractions
  • Contractions
  • are contracted or put

     
  • Contractions
  • Contractions

     
  • Contractions

  • Word Lists

    Analogies - New!
    Capitonyms
    Compound Words - New!
    

     

     

    Contractions
    Dolch - Sight Words
    Geography Lists
    Homophones, Homonyms, etc.
    Literature Based Word Lists
    Math Vocabulary - Most Popular!
    Monthly Holiday Lists
    Multiple Meaning Words - New!
    Phonics & Sight Word Curriculum
    Possessive Nouns
    Sample Lists By Grade
    Science Vocabulary - New!
    Sequential Spelling Program
    Sound Alike Words
    Syllables - New!
    Word Abbreviations

    Help and Information

    FAQs - Frequently Asked Questions
    Printables
    

    tractions
  • Contraction
  • Contractions
  • Contractions

     

    are
  • are contracted or put

     
  • Contractions

     

    are formed

     

    when two words are contracted or put

     

    together
  • are contracted or put

     

    together
  • are
  • are contracted or put
  • Contractions

     

    are formed

     

    when two words are contracted or put

     

    together
  • are contracted or
  • are contracted
  • are contracted
  • are contracted or
  • are contracted or
  • are
  • are
  • contracted or
  • are contracted or
  • are contracted or
  • are contracted
  • are contracted
  • are contracted or
  • are contracted
  • when two words are contracted or put

Posted from Diigo. The rest of Authentic Learning group favorite links are here.

ipadio: Terry's phlog - 40th phonecast

Posted via email from tellio's posterous

Tech Tidbits: Kim Cofino's Disruptive PD Technology

Tech Tidbits: Increasing Teachers’ Digital Efficiency | always learning

Just finished a pedagogically provocative post on crowdsourcing "tech tidbits".  Kim Cofino gets a handle on what is needed in training now--something short, something cheap, something that builds tech capacity--to help us get the most out of the limited time we have to learn. And, neatest of all, she flies in under the radar with a truly subversive learning framework.

 

Who can argue that simple tools like using 'CMD+F' or 'CTL+F' to find something on a webpage or in a pdf is not important?  No one. In fact, in the short time horizon we will be generating a zettabyte of data in one year.  Any filtering tool that might help us dig through that midden mound is a very happy one. 

 

Cofino runs these PD sessions like "a fair". 

 

1.Fifteen teacher/trainers are seated waiting to teach one 'tidbit' listed below:

 

• Creating labels in Gmail
• Creating e-mail lists in Contacts
• Install Google Notifier to set up web Gmail as your default email client (this has saved me hours of work)
• Creating collections in Google Docs and organizing your files
• Making a copy of a document & saving for yourself (to edit)
• Sharing a collection with a group (made in your Contacts list) or a colleague
• Make a Google Doc public, for linking on your class blog
• Check the revision history in a Google Doc
• Creating events in Google Calendar and setting automatic reminders via e-mail
• Creating repeating events in Google Calendar
• Importing the school’s calendar into your own Google Calendar
• Creating a Google Reader account and subscribing to feeds
• Create a bundle of feeds in Reader for each class you teach
• Adding feeds to folders in Reader
• Recording screencasts in QuickTime

2. Everyone (trainers and learners alike) has access to a shared Google Doc with the day's training agenda (topics and trainer contact info).

 

3. Teacher pair up with teachers in a cafeteria style.  Cofino compares this to speed dating only she calls it "speed geeking".

4. The teachers then become the trainers and new learner/teachers rotate in from the other "dates'. Reminds me of a tactic I used in middle school called "the wheel" where you have an inner core of teachers and an outer core of learners.  It really is a clever modification of jigsawing.  

5.  If one of the trainees felt they could teach one of the tidbits then they would put their name down on the Google Doc.  I am reminded of Ivan Illich's Deschooling Society and Sugata Mitra's 'child-driven learning'

I hope Cofino realizes how utterly subversive this pedagogy is.  What's good for the teachers is good for the students, n'est ce pas?  And doesn't this model fit the world we live in better than the dead institution walking that passes for schools today?

 

6.  When you are done you have two very important results:  learners got to control what they wanted to learn (to a limited degree), learners got to share what they learned, and learners got a list of those with expertise to call upon.  The shared Google Doc would also serve as a place to add future learning needs and perhaps to share with parents and administrators and staff who might want to be a part of that learning community. 

 

Kim Cofino should get a big shout and a happy one, too.  This is a great PD framework as well as a model for what should be happening in our schools every day.  Perhaps this is just the trojan mouse we need to leverage the tipping point needed to turn our schools from bridges to nowhere (the 20th Century) to bridges to somewhere (the emerging future).  Or as Illich puts it, "Our present educational institutions are at the service of the teacher's goals. The relational structures we need are those which will enable each man to define himself by learning and by contributing to the learning of others." 

(Illich, Ivan. Deschooling society. Calder and Boyars, 1971. Print.)