Medals, newspaper clippings, video, letters, and the story of an American flag created by Clarance Bramley, a survivor of the Bataan Death March—all this and more can be found in an online exhibit, “Remembering World War II: Pearl Harbor and Beyond.”
The online collection features items and stories selected from a collection of World War II materials housed at the Lee Library at Brigham Young University.
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Released last week to much fanfare, the Encyclopedia of Life (EOL) is a "comprehensive, collaborative, ever-growing...ecosystem of websites that makes all key information about all life on Earth accessible to anyone, anywhere in the world."
While anyone will be able to contribute and share their knowledge with the EOL community, each species has it's own "curator" (knowledge expert or authenticator) who will validate the information contained on that species page. Most of the content in the EOL is available for re-use under a Creative Commons license.
The EOL is an incredible resource for students, teachers and educators. You can join the EOL project by volunteering to be a species curator, contributing species-related content (photos, drawings, text, video, etc.), or supporting the EOL as a financial contributor.
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Beyond Penguins and Polar Bears is a new online professional development resource for elementary teachers which focuses on preparing teachers to teach polar science concepts by integrating inquiry-based science with literacy teaching.
Research has shown that this integrated approach can increase
students' science knowledge,academic language, reading comprehension,
and written and oral discourse abilities.
This program is funded by the National Science Foundation
Research on Learning in Formal and Informal Settings (DRL). Kimberly
Lightle, Principal Investigator for the NSDL Middle School Portal, is the lead specialist on the project and is adapting and contextualizing existing content from the NSDL repository.
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Atomic Learning has a new tutorial, Video Storytelling Guide, that is a really fantastic resource for anyone just beginning to shoot video or even regular movie-makers who want to brush up on skills.
The free guide offers tips and tutorials on camera shots, composition, editing, types of cameras and more. This resource will be free for everyone from December 17 to January 15, so feel free to spread the word!
And don't forget that you can find free video editing, remixing and video upload tools over on Jumpcut. Don't forget to share your video stories with other educators in the Yahoo! For Teachers group on Jumpcut!
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TechSmith is giving away free copies of two of its most popular products: SnagIt and Camtasia Studio. These are really great, and in my opinion, indispensable "must have" tools for educators.
I use SnagIt on almost a daily basis. It's the easiest tool I've found to grab screen shots and easily insert them into my Word and Powerpoint documents. SnagIt also has a handy plugin which makes it fast and easy to upload your screen shot into Flickr or blog.
SnagIt
Click here to download SnagIt 7.2.5 (English)
Click here to download SnagIt 7.2.5 (German)
Click here to download SnagIt 7.2.5 (French)
Click here for a key to register SnagIt 7.2.5 demo as a fully licensed version.
Camtasia Studio 3.1
Click here for a key to register SnagIt 7.2.5 demo as a fully licensed version.
Click here to download Camtasia Studio 3.1.3.
Click here to request a software key to register Camtasia Studio 3.1.3 as a fully licensed version.
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Last week I attended the National Council for the Social Studies (NCSS) conference in San Diego. The theme of the conference was "Crossing Borders, Building Bridges." Given the current state of the world, I think this shift towards a more world view is particularly important and relevant.
Even the unusually rainy weather outside wasn't able to quell the excitement of the enthusiastic bunch of social studies teachers from around the country who gathered in the convention center. As a self-professed C-SPAN geek, I was particularly happy to see the big C-SPAN bus in the convention center.
While there were tons of great resources and tools being shared at the conference, here's my list of my favorite resources for the social studies classroom.
So, in no particular order, here they are:
C-SPAN Classroom: Okay. I know I'm biased (see above!), but C-SPAN Classroom is chock full of fantastic resources for students and teachers. They have Campaign 2008 video clips, a fantastic site on Alexis deTocqueville, and other curriculum resources to support U.S. Government and Civics education.
Country Reports: This site is an incredible treasure trove of historical, statistical and cultural information on every country in the world. While this is a subscription-based site, there is still a great deal of free content available for students and teachers. Take a look at this country report for Iran.
The Choices Program: This was, hands down, my most favorite discovery at NCSS 2008. The Choices Program is a national education initiative based at Brown University's Watson Institute for International Studies. The goal of the program is to "empower young people with the skills, knowledge, and
participatory habits to be engaged citizens who are capable of
addressing international issues through thoughtful public discourse and
informed decision making."
The resources are a mix of fee-based and free lesson plans, resources and video clips. Another really useful program is the Teaching with the News, which provides educators with a vast array of resources based around current events. A great example is "U.S. and Iran: Confronting Policy Alternatives" module which provides resources, links and related curriculum units.
Flocabulary: Shakespeare is Hip-Hop! Yep. You heard that correctly. And the folks over at Flocabulary have figured out a way to blend hip-hop, multimedia and school together into an award winning program designed to engage students, foster literacy and boost their academic experience. Flocabulary has tons of great audio and other resources available including standards-based lesson plans. So go check em out, yo! (groan)
Saudi Aramco World: A free publication focused on Middle East issues, politics and culture. Each issue has a free lesson plans for educators. An all around beautiful publication. The images are stunning.
Outreach World: A comprehensive one-stop resource for teaching international and area
studies and foreign languages in the classroom. This is an incredible repository of resources, lesson plans and other teaching materials. Think of this as a clearinghouse of the best of the best area studies content on the web. Here's a recent curriculum unit that focuses on Muslim culture that includes an instructors guide (pdf).
Originally uploaded by jimmy0010 on YouTube.
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The European Library is non-commercial portal site. This free service of Conference of European National Librarians (CENL) gives access to the resources of Europe's national libraries.
Resources can be both digital or bibliographical (books, posters, maps, sound recordings, videos, etc.).
Currently The European Library gives access to 150 million entries across Europe. The amount of referenced digital collections is constantly increasing. Quality and reliability are guaranteed by the 47 collaborating national libraries of Europe.
The European Digital Library - encompassing not only libraries, but also museums, archives and other cultural institutions - will be built upon The European Library.
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You already know that PBwiki is the easiest and best wiki platform out there. But did you know that Atomic Learning has FREE tutorials on PBwiki?
These tutorials will help you learn step-by-step how to create a PBwiki. Hurry, the tutorials are only available for a short time!
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"Technology & Learning invites K-12 students to participate in the sixth annual digital photography contest.
The competition, open to all K-12 students, challenges you to capture - and share - your unique vision of the world in a "Digital Diary -Through My Lens."
If you have an artistic side, you also have the option to digitally enhance your photos with your favorite imaging software.
The best digitally enhanced photo wins a special prize from Adobe. Other prizes include a digital camera, Adobe Photoshop Elements, and more!"
More Info
I recently had the privilege of attending the American Federation of Teachers (AFT) conference in Washington D.C. where my colleague Karon Weber and I had the opportunity to present Yahoo! for Teachers at a workshop being held at the 2007 AFT QuEST Conference.
One thing that really struck me was how progressive the AFT is in their approach to teaching as well as their positions on social issues. There were several booths that centered around what the AFT membership could do to support AIDS Advocacy, Genocide Awareness in Darfur, and Democracy in Africa.
"As men and women of conscience and as educators committed to the dignity and worth of all humanity, we have a responsibility to speak out against injustice on behalf of vulnerable and disenfranchised peoples across the globe." ~ 2006 AFT resolution on Opposition to the Genocide in Darfur
The AFT-Africa AIDS Campaign is a multi-country campaign in partnership with African teacher unions to provide resources to fight the spread of this disease. The impact of AIDS in the teaching community is staggering.
"This year in South Africa, more than 1,000 teachers will die of AIDS. In Zimbabwe more than 30 percent of the country's teachers carry the HIV virus. Many school age children have lost a parent to the epidemic. Throughout Africa, the statisics tell a similar story--teachers' lives lost and whole education systems endangered (Source: AFT-Africa AIDS Campaign)."
Here are some of the excellent resources complied by the AFT to help teachers educate their students on issues related to Africa, HIV and AIDS.
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This is a great introduction to Creative Commons. I learned about this video from one of the amazing teachers attending the Yahoo! Teachers workshop in New York City a few weeks ago. Thanks Mr. Circe!
Resources
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Thanks to edublogger Ken Pruitt, I discovered the PopCast series from the PopTech Conference. This is a fantastic resource for high school and college civics/economics/ classes.
Here's the scoop on PopCast:
"Pop!Casts are available free of charge. And they’re published under a Creative Commons license—meaning you can distribute, translate and edit them as you wish for noncommercial use.
Sharing Pop!Casts with peers is one of the ways you can inspire collective thinking and action around the topics you’re most interested in.
New segments will be posted every few weeks courtesy of Yahoo!, so check back often or subscribe to our RSS feed. Download. Discover. Do your part to create positive change in the world!"
And be sure to listen to the vodcast featuring Tom "The Flat World" Friedman. His message? Think Green.
Thanks Ken!
The George Lucas Educational Foundation (GLEF) has long been an advocate of helping teachers use technology to support instruction and student learning in the classroom. This month's edition of Edutopia, their online community and print magazine, has a feature article on using Flickr in the classroom.
The article, written by Amy Standen, features interviews with Tim Lauer, Flickr Community Manager Heather Champ and several other educators on how they use Flickr in their classroom.
At the end of the article, Amy lists several education oriented groups created in Flickr. These groups (and there are quite a few!) are an excellent way to find out how your colleagues are using Flickr in their classrooms. So read the article, check out and join a Flickr education group today!
Also worth noting:
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Wikimapedia is a Google Maps/wiki mash-up that your students can use to explore geographic features like the Great Salt Lake, illustrate where the Battle of Gettysburg was fought, get a birds eye view of the Great Pyramids in Giza, look down into an active shield volcano in Hawaii, or give students learning French a virtual tour of the City of Lights!
You can even embed a Wikimapedia snapshot into your own class blog or website. It's easy peasy! Thanks to Noel Jenkins for the heads up on this fantastic resource!
This is a fantastic tutorial on using del.icio.us in the classroom! Social bookmarking tools like del.icio.us or MyWeb 2 are a great and easy way to find those hidden threads of community knowledge. Give it a try--soon you'll wonder how you lived on the web with out it!
Video originally uploaded on YouTube by jutecht on March 8, 2006.
The Simple English Wikipedia is an online encyclopedia for students in grade school, EFL/ESL classes, or anyone else learning to read and comprehend the English language.
Simple English? Sounds like an oxymoron to me!
Web Resources
Here's a short article I ran across in a past issue of Fast Company titled Give Yourself A Chance. It made some excellent points and I thought it was worth passing on...
As I read it it had me thinking about why we become afraid or hesitant to "bricolage" with anything new: technology, learning, or teaching styles. Perhaps it has something to do with comfort zones.....
I also thought this was a good example of leadership on the part of the professor and how he was was able to help the author step back and recognize the self-limiting comments and assumptions he was making about himself.
Anyhow, when working with new technologies be sure to remember two things:
Harvard University's Open Collections Program has launched " Immigration to the United States, 1789-1930," a web-based collection of approximately 1,800 books and pamphlets, 6,000 photographs, 200 maps, and 13,000 pages from manuscript and archival collections selected from Harvard's library, archives and museums.The Center for Technology in Learning at SRI International is pleased to announce the beta release of Group Scribbles, a new cross-platform collaborative tool that enables educators to rapidly design new group learning activities without the need for programming.
Group Scribbles introduces a networked representational paradigm that enables collaborative improvement of ideas based upon individual efforts and social sharing of notes in graphical and textual form ("scribbles").
With Group Scribbles, users mark up "scribble sheets" in their personal work area, or "private board", and share their ideas by dragging their sheets to a "public board" that is synchronized to all devices. Users can arbitrarily rearrange sheets and stick them strategically to a background image or to other sheets.
Such simple actions support emergent collaborative activity across multiple connected machines in a lightweight, flexible manner. The Group Scribbles application runs on Windows, Mac OS X, and mobile devices.
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Big news! JumpCut is joining Flickr and del.icio.us as the newest member of the Yahoo! family of social media and community tools! Yay!
If you aren't familiar with JumpCut, it's like a web based version of iMovie, with easy (and free) video editing tools and a healthy dose of sharing, tags, and community thrown in to make it extra fun.
This is a great tool for teachers and students alike. And since it's web-based, students can work on their projects at school or home. Pretty cool, eh?
You can create movies from pictures (using the Flickr uploader tool), audio, or video. You can even grab video from other members of the JumpCut community and remix it into your own original production.
But don't worry, just like Flickr and MyWeb, you set the privacy level of who can see or use your creation. So go ahead and try JumpCut in your classroom!
Web Resources
Pics4Learning is a copyright-friendly image library for teachers and students. The library consists of thousands of images that have been donated by students, teachers, and amateur photographers.
Unlike other sites, permission has been granted for teachers and students to use all of the images donated to the Pics4Learning collection.
Need a photo for that lesson on California Mission, sloth, or dinosaur fossils? Then Pics4Learning is the place for you! Members of the education community can upload and share their photos in the Pics4Learning photo archive for other educators to use. In addition to photographs, Pics4Learning has lesson plans created by and for the teaching community.
Pics4Learning is a partnership between Orange County Public Schools Technology Development Unit of Orlando, Florida, and Tech4Learning, Inc.
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The Center for History and New Media (CHNM) at George Mason University is developing an open-source package of tools under the name Project SmartFox.
"Due for beta release in Summer 2006, Firefox Scholar will help teachers, students, and scholars organize and cite materials they have found online.
Comprised of a set of browser extensions, Firefox Scholar will allow researchers...collect documents, images, and citations from the web; and allow those materials to be sorted, annotated, and searched--all directly within their web browser window.
Like the Firefox browser itself, Firefox Scholar will be open and extensible, allowing others who are building digital tools for researchers to expand on the platform."
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Museum of the African Diaspora: "Slave Narratives contains dramatic and powerful first-person stories from those who have suffered under slavery.
Narrated by Maya Angelou and other acclaimed actors, the narratives originated from people across the globe, from the 1700s to the modern day.
Slave Narratives will be live on the MoAD website at www.moadsf.org on August 23."
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iProcrastinate is a nifty calendaring app designed to help "lazy students keep track of their homework, big projects, etc." Right now iProcrastinate is only available to Mac users and requires Mac OS 10.4 or greater.
The first day of school is just around the corner, so this might be the perfect time to start using iProcrastinate--you know--while you're still ahead of the assignment curve!
Oh yeah....it's free
Mobile Learning is a fantastic new blog focused on mobile learning strategies authored by Leonard Low, Online Campus Manager and Educational Technology Strategist at the Canberra Institute of Technology (CIT).
In addition to an impressive corpus of resources, Leonard offers his keen insight on the design, development, delivery, and management of flexible, interactive learning, mobile, and Web 2.0 learning applications.
This is a must read for anyone interested in the burgeoning wave of mobile media and technologies being introduced to the education ecosystem. Brilliant work Leonard!
A couple months ago, I blogged about the recent Google Book Search release of the complete works of William Shakespeare. After reading her post, a member of the debaird.net community, directed my attention to an alternative to Google Books.
Bookyards is an open content eBook and Digital Library portal with "10,101 books, 22,141 web links, 3,941 news & blogs links and access to hundreds of online libraries (200,000 eBooks) for your reading pleasure."
In his comment on my blog, Victor points out that Bookyards also has a digital collection of Shakespeare's writings. It's great to see that there is such a growing interest in digital libraries.
And I for one am very supportive of any movement that opens content, knowledge and education to as many people as possible. I also acknowledge and appreciate people like Victor (and the Google Books team) who put in the hard work of creating digital library portals and digitize books.
I'd also encourage Google to work through some of their issues and find a way to work in a collaborative matter with organizations like Microsoft, Yahoo!, The Open Content Alliance (OCA), The Center for Open and Sustainable Learning (COSL), and Bookyards in creating a truly open and equitable solution for creating a Digital Library on the web.
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via Yahoo! Widgets: "Spelling Bee is a nifty stand alone tool for people who like to use big words. Just type in a word, and if it's not a word in the dictionary, the Spelling Bee widget will make some suggestions.
It also features auto-copy, auto-checking, and a couple different visual styles. You can use Spelling Bee with many different languages."
What a fantastic, fun, and engaging way to help students expand their vocabulary! Spelling Bee is a great widget for students and teachers alike!
When I'm working on my research articles, I've been known to give Spelling Bee a whirl! And you know what? It's really handy!
But don't stop with just spelling. The Yahoo! Widgets community have created handy tools to help kids with math, music, and history. And more and more widgets are being added every day.
So, take a walk on the wild side: try, or create and share your own, educational Yahoo! Widget today!
via the Hive: "We have been hard at work on a version of BuddyBuzz that has dynamic menus that will eventually allow you to completely customize the content that you read with BuddyBuzz.
We're happy to announce that this version is ready to be downloaded! We have some more great ideas in the works, and need your help to continue to improve BuddyBuzz."
BuddyBuzz has several mLearning applications, including the ability to serve as a content delivery system. Instructors can upload articles directly to their BuzzBox and then share them with students in their BuddyBuzz community.
Best of all, since BuddyBuzz is a mobile based technology, it allows students to have anytime, anywhere, customized, on-demand learning opportunities.
As mobile technologies and mLearning become more ubiquitous, applications like BuddyBuzz may be the catalyst needed to expand learning opportunities for tech savvy students via mobile phones, or other web-enabled handheld devices.
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As the first generation to be raised with the Internet, Gen Y has an intuitive ability to use ICT as a means to foster, support, discuss and explore new ideas. As a result, a multi-faceted approach that blends current learning theory, social technologies, and web-enabled mobile devices are the most effective in designing online learning environments.
For example, students can utilize mobile and/or social networking technologies to contribute using related stories, personal experiences, anecdotes and questions to reflect and actively encourage others to contribute as well.
The interactive, collaborative, engaging social activities, combined with the ability to self-publish and remix content on the web, enable students to use technology as a vehicle for presenting and sharing their own work as well as provide feedback on contributions made by other students.
Moreover, due to the wide variety and availability of social software, students are able to choose from multiple formats including text, video, audio, or photos to find the tools that best support their own learning style, interests, and goals.
A recent study by the Irish National Teachers Organization (INTO) found that students are using their mobile phones for just about everything--except making phone calls. According to INTO, only 20% of the 671 students surveyed report using their mobiles to make phone calls, whereas 81% report using their mobile to communicate via text or IM messages.
The INTO survey seems to dovetail with the results of a 2005 Pew Internet and American Life study on teens and technology. Like their peers in Ireland, American youth preferring using IM or TM for everyday conversations with friends.
Other key findings from the Irish National Teachers Organization survey:
Recognizing the growing connection between mobile media and youth, the popular social networking community MySpace has teamed with Helio to provide a mobile version that includes access to Yahoo! Mail, Yahoo! Messenger, and various Yahoo! services.
The combination of social interaction with opportunities for peer support and collaboration creates an interesting, engaging, stimulating, and intuitive learning environment for students. Effective course design will need to blend traditional pedagogy with the reality of the media multitasking Gen Y learner.
Clearly, the nearly ubiquitous use of portable media devices on the college campus has provided instructors with a unique opportunity to design mobile learning environments and new innovative pedagogical approaches built around the increasingly mobile landscape.
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To those unfamiliar with the social dynamics of virtual learning environments (vle), the online classroom may seem like a neutral environment devoid of human interaction, structure, or emotion.
Despite these assumptions, online instructors and course designers should be aware that students will develop an identity within an online learning community that is both individual and collective.
As students collaborate they form social ties, which in turn, motivates them to establish an identity within the group via active participation and contributions to the collective knowledge pool.
While it may run counter to traditional learning enivronments, teachers in the online space must learn to "step back" and provide students with the "breathing room" required for them to create and form bonds within the online learning community.
In doing so, it allows students to learn in social setting with peers, remain engaged in the topic, receive interaction feedback from peers, and also meets their need for feedback.
In addition, collaborative and interactive projects undertaken in a community structure allow students to interact with other members of the class, identify who has a particular skill or expertise they want to acquire, and provides opportunities for them to model and scaffold this knowledge with their peers.
According to Papert, these types of virtual learning environments allow students to explore and negotiate their understanding of the course content and find ways for the learning to develop a sense of intellectual identity. Through this process learners become motivated on an individual level, as well as fostering a sense of accountability to the group to continue to participate.
The learner in an online community is constructing a base of knowledge on both and individual and group level. As their personal understanding of the subject deepens learners are motivated to contribute to the collective understanding and receive positive feedback from the group.
Anthropologist Lori Kendall, who spent almost two years researching the dynamics of online social identity and community, concluded that members of virtual environments have "intact social systems, and highly charged social relations."
However, unlike the electronic window of television, Kendall found that members of an online community feel that when they connect to an online forum, they enter a social, if not physical space (Kendall, 1999).
In this new digital age, we need to redefine our concept of what constitutes a legitimate “social system” or “social interaction.” In many ways, the effective use of social media to support instruction provides the same or better quality of socialization than a traditional classroom.
If we are truly to expand educational opportunities via online or distance learning programs, we will need to recognize and validate the existence of online communities, relationships, and interaction.
Skillswise is an online literacy program developed by the BBC to help adult learners improve their reading, math and writing skills.
The Skillwise program features Factsheets, worksheets, interactive quizzes and games to help improve their English and communication skills. Adult learners can use the online community forum to find additional peer support.
But what about the teachers? Never fear! Skillwise has lots of professional development and resources available for teacher too!
The Skillswise Tutors Page provides instructors with their own community board, ICT resources, and newsletter.
The online community is an excellent place to meet and collaborate with other teachers and discover new and innovative ways of teaching and helping adult learners. The reading and writing lessons would also be an excellent resource for teaching ESL/EFL.
This is an excellent resource and one that many adult learners around the globe will find very useful! Kudos to the BBC on another fantastic learning and teaching tool!
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