Ted Ed makes flipping the classroom a great deal easier! Often times teachers mention (and I know what they mean!) that it is time consuming to produce their own videos for students to engage students before class. Well, Ted Ed makes this a whole lot easier. They offer an increasing number of the insprirational and informative TED videos as engaging interactive lessons for students. Selected videos are animated, cartoonized, or made more visual in sume manner.. The video lesson includes a follow up questionaire and additional resources.
The best thing about Ted Ed flipping?Well, it has to be the ability to flip ANY YouTube video. Ted Ed allows the user to to apply your own titles, your own questions, your own resources, and provide your own link to any YouTube video lesson you customize-not just the ones on their site.
Quite a few classes in elementary school here at ISM are using twitter as another way to communicate with the world. The classes that are tweeting are using one joint class twitter account and allowing the students in the class to take turns writing tweets throughout the day. The tweets focus on the learning happening both in the homeroom class and the learning that happens in specialists classes. Parents and others interested can follow the class tweets on twitter or by visiting the blog, where there is a twitter feed placed in the sideboard. see image below
We are finding that the students want to write on twitter because they know their words will be on the web for others to see. Having a real audience gives writing a purpose and gives the students a voice.
Some thoughts:
-students write tweets, teachers handle the social aspect of following other tweeters
-gives teachers many teachable moments on appropriate language, spelling and grammar. We are also learning when and how to use ‘text speak’.
-many reluctant writers find writing on twitter less intimidating so they are willing to take risks with their writing
-we are beginning to connect with other tweeters across the school and across the world, including other classes & authors
1. Get feedback on school trips.
2. Gather resources collectively.
3. Student responses to presentations, media,questions, etc.
4. Generate brainstorming ideas.
5. think of your own…
How to set it up?
1. Go to Wallwisher.com
2. Choose build a wall.
3. Choose a URL name.
4. Enter name and email.
5. Choose a picture
6. Choose public or private.
6. Share by giving out address or embed into a blog post.
7. Start adding Sticky notes.
Notes:
notes limited to 160 characters
can embed pics and video links into posts
Dropbox is currently offering 5GB of free space for beta testers to test their new camera upload feature.
I tried it this morning at home and am letting it run all day and
confirm that it’s working properly. For every 500mb of pics / videos
uploaded, you’ll get 500mb free up to 5GB. Not a bad deal if you’re a Dropbox user.
After perusing all the teacher blogs in Middle School, a few things stand out: 1. Teachers have increased the frequency of their posts. 2. The diversity of topics covered has increased
and the focus for this post.. 3. many posts lack an engaging look and feel
7 Tips to Add Some Punch and Zing to Your Blog Posts
1. Insert a picture per post. Too many posts are large black blob of text. Using a picture sets the tone for your blog post. Be sure to use and show attribution of the Creative Commons photos you use. Two easy way sot do this are by using Compfight and Google Advanced image search.
2. Chunk it. Draw the eye and create a smooth flow for the reader by chunking your text into short(er) paragraphs.
3. Add scanning points. Utilize the bold and text color options to emphasis key words and ideas to your reader.
4. Make lists. Readers like lists. They …
draw attention to the most important step
emphasis key ideas
make it easy to scan
5. Awesome titles and subtitles. Be a student for a second- would you be more likely to click Meet the FlyGuy! or Class Animation Projects.
6. Crisp links. Link the site name itself or a catchy word rather than linking a long ugly URL.
7. Engage your students. Get the students involved by asking a question, creating a contest, requesting a headline to a funny pictur, etc. and encouraging them to respond. Here is a good example of a teacher site that encourages dialogue.
To make learning and communication as easy as possible for HS students, I and David Collett developed the “HS Student Portal“. It serves as a one-stop location for viewing their teachers’ websites, teachers’ calendars they subscribe to, their Google Docs, and important information from the HS Office, CAS, ATAC and ISSBA – all in one location.
Additionally, we built in the functionality to view the ISM Portal, library resources, and even Powerschool.
Simple, effective, fun.
Below you can view the screencast that I created for students and teachers.
The best thing about Ted Ed flipping? Well, it has to be the ability to flip ANY YouTube video. Ted Ed allows the user to to apply your own titles, your own questions, your own resources, and provide your own link to any YouTube video lesson you customize-not just the ones on their site.
Mr. Chadwick
Mr. Brandon Hoover
Mr. McCallum
Mr. Sturgeon
nerdherd