Learning Solutions

Great techniques from Chris Biffle for keeping students on task and attentive:

Over 4,000 K-14 educators representing over 150,000 students have attended free Power Teaching conferences. What is the secret of this remarkable, new classroom management system? Watch this video and discover six of Power Teaching’s most effective techniques. For more information, contact Chris Biffle at CBiffle@AOL.com.

This technique can be used from Kindergarten to College level.

I am intrigued with the idea of “micro-lecturing”, deliver up to 30 seconds of information before checking for comprehension. Talk about a Next-Gen concept!

More info at Power Teachers

I came across this interesting Web 2.0 game, and began thinking that this type of social collaboration could enhance a WebQuest’s design. I wonder if Bernie Dodge is a member?

PMOG is a game built on individual network histories, transforming web surfing into ongoing social play. By installing the Firefox add-on, players can bomb each other, wage war over web sites, and lead other users on web missions. Ordinary web sites become caches for items and currency.

PMOG stands for Passively Multiplayer Online Game. Players play without playing; clicking around the internet turns into experience points and currency.

This unconventional massively multiplayer online game merges your web life with an alternate, hidden reality. The mundane takes on a layer of fantastic achievement. Player behavior generates characters and alliances, triggers interactions in the environment, and earns the player points to spend online beefing up their inventory. Suddenly the internet is not a series of untouchable exhibits, but a hackable, rewarding environment.

I have been playing for a few days, and have learned quite a bit from other user’s missions. Missions are built using lightposts, which lead the participant through different web sites, describing what the site is, and possibly revealing hidden treasure. You can earn points by completing a mission and when someone takes one of your missions.

Badges can be earned by performing certain tasks, such as visiting a particular site for five consecutive days.

Suggested uses in the classroom would be to incorporate the missions to guide students to different resources in a prescribed manner.  Students could create their own missions to demonstrate comprehension of a particular subject.

I have not come across a way to create a private group, so use caution when introducing it to students.

Teaching Media Literacy in this day and age is a moving target. As soon as your curriculum’s scope and sequence is ready, technologies shift and so must your objectives. A few years ago, I conducted a media literacy workshop which focused on adverstising, print media, and movies. Now, you need to focus more on online social networks, and Web 2.0 technologies, since that is where most of the students are spending their time. With the advent of the DVR, commercials are irrelevant.

So, it was with great pleasure that I came across NBC’s iCue (Immerse, Connect, Understand, Excel).

From the FAQs:

iCue is a free, online, collaborative learning environment for students ages 13 and up. It includes discussion forums, games and activities, and hundreds of current and historic videos from NBC News.

On May 1, 2008, iCue rolls out with a politically-themed collection of games and activities highlighting Decision ‘08. Join in political debate and challenge your knowledge of the candidates, political process and issues in this election and in past elections. Over the course of the summer of 2008, iCue will be rolling out course collections to support students learning U.S. History, U.S. Government and Politics, and English Language and Composition. These courses have been modeled on the Advanced Placement course outlines, but all students taking these courses in high school or college will find lots of resources to support their classroom instruction.

Hopefully, this tool will find its way into the classroom. However, teachers and students must evaluate the content to determine if there is any bias in the presentation of the material.

Twitter is a micro-blogging application that enables you to send text messages to people that have chosen to follow you. My group consists of other like-minded individuals, and I have learned quite a bit from their postings. Sometimes the information is mundane, as people like to post life happenings, and not necessarily information that enlightens.

However, I was not prepared for the drama that unfolded last week. One of the people I follow was on a campus that had to be locked down because of a suspicious person walking around. He would send Twitter updates, letting us know what was going on. We responded with good vibes and helped form a supportive community around the anxiety that he was feeling. Fortunately, the episode did not turn tragic, and everyone was safe.

Twitter is being used in schools to foster communication, and create an on-going dialog between instructor and student, a conversation that leverages the immediacy and moderation of text messaging. And now, it has been shown to be a tool for emotional support as well.

UPDATE:

Twitter saga ends in jailed translator going free

If you want an great way to view photos, try the PicLens add-on for the Firefox browser. All you have to do is hover over a picture or album and click. Your screen is filled with the photos in a fluid , 3D-like environment, allowing you to scroll through your pictures in a non-linear fashion. Whether you are viewing photos on Flickr or a Google image search, your screen becomes a virtual gallery.

I will be presenting a workshop for the Education Service Center Region XV entitled, “This is…PowerPoint Jeopardy! Creating Interactive Learning Modules”. One of the outcomes of the session is that teachers will have a completed review module in which to use in their classes.

I am a firm believer in keeping the learning dialogue going, even after the face-to-face training is over. Many times I have participated in a great day of training and networking, only to lose track of the facilitator and other participants. Exchanging e-mail addresses is okay, but it does not truly create a collaborative atmosphere.

So, I set out to figure out how to provide a shared learning environment for the teachers who would be giving me a day’s worth of their time and effort. I looked at various discussion board tools, groupware, blogs, wikis, etc. Nothing stood out as a way to get everything in one place that was easily managed. Then, I met Moodle.

Moodle is a nice tool to create online learning opportunities in structured and open-ended ways. And, my hosting service Siteground includes a tool called Fantastico, which installs it in about three minutes.

Long story short, I have created a Moodle course for participants to upload their completed projects into a searchable database. This will allow other participants the opportunity to use these review modules with their classes. Hopefully, it will be a valuable tool.