Daily Education and Technology News for Schools 01/03/2013
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Post Reflection Post - Flat Classroom Project
This is an excellent post-reflective post from a fantastic student. You can see that she drafted in a word processor and pasted it in and then embedded the videos. Knowing how to use features of various programs in tandem is part of being fluent in software. Not just can they use one program or another but can they use them together to become more efficient and effective in the task at hand.
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Flat Classroom Project 12-2 - M&U Current News B - History
If you look at this editing tab, you can see that GrantG did a great job in his comments of documenting what he did. If we can get more students documenting their work as they edit, it makes the process of collaborative writing more powerful and faster as well as the ability to see what happened where. ""I wrote an introductory paragraph for our section. I asked my teacher and she said that because our topic has to do with current news, we can organize it in a way that includes introduction and conclusion paragraphs with a more list-like format in the middle. This is the reason I added a section for examples. Feel free to add relevant current news information as you find it!""
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Flat Classroom Project 12-2 - Changes
There is a fantastic feature on wikispaces that lets you drill down by student and see what work they've done. If you click on "recent changes" and then type in the userid and date, you can see the work. I now have students turn in their work on a google checklist - when they edit over a period of time, they type in their id and the dates and paste the link and I can grade with one click. This saves so much time and gives me a digital dashboard of all of the work they've done on a project.
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Comment Thread with Professor Terry Smith and Vicki Davis - Flat Classroom Project
I want to point out Terry Smith, a judge for Flat Classroom this past 8 weeks, and what he did as he did his judging. He used the process of judging to see what the students were saying about edtech and current trends as well as to have current information to share his students, but he also modeled excellent feedback by leaving messages for the students he judged. It is the words that communicate presence and the students who received messages from him came to me with excitement. While many of our amazing volunteer judges do this, I wanted to point it out because he did it so well. This is the link to the thread where we talked about what he did but you can also click on his name and see the kinds of comments he left and the videos he reviewed. This is the kind of "flattening" that creates mutually beneficial symbiotic learning relationships but also gives us good feedback for improving what we're doing with the students. You can volunteer to judge projects on this website as well.
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Dictionary, Thesaurus | term.ly
term.ly is the companion website for the terminology app for the ipad/ iphone. You can also shorten and share definitions. The main problem I had is if you use a diigo box, the search box tries to take over the words. Nice clean dictionary.
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IF you tweet or share a to a lot of apps, this app, Drafts will connect to just about anything. Type it, then decide where to send it, or you can save your most inspirational items to tweet, Facebook, or wherever later. It links with evernote, twitter, facebook, app.net, email, messages, calendars, dropbox, evernote, bufferapp, toodledoo and more (as well as ifttt.com integration.) I'm still learning about all the ways to use this handy tool. The only thing I wish it did is that I could add to it from the web and then see it on my ipad.
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Mentions in Blogger - Blogger Help
You can now tag people in blogger blog posts with Google plus circles. Google has just added a very powerful tool to their blogging platform and one that may actually get me to stay there. I've contemplated moving to wordpress quite a few times. "Mentioning someone is an effective way to let them know that you're referring to them in your blog post. You can mention a person, or a Google+ page, even if they don't follow you. Depending on how they've configured their Google+ settings, they might receive a notification about your mention after you publish the post. How to mention others To use this feature, just type "+" or "@" followed by the name or page. As you’re typing, you'll see a list of names appear below. You can click to select the person or page that you'd like to mention."
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An interactive encyclopedia of courts and judges editing in a wikipedia-like format but with a commitment to be unbiased - it will be interesting to see how this works, but the traffic is very respectable and the aim is a great one, if they can pull it off.
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Ballotpedia:About - Ballotpedia
"Ballotpedia is a nonprofit and nonpartisan collaborative encyclopedia designed to connect people to politics. Topics include: elections, congress, state executive officials, state legislatures, recall elections and ballot measures. You can find a full list of projects here. Ballotpedia's staff and volunteers particularly focus on the so-called "down-ballot" candidates and ballot measures that typically receive less attention. Ballotpedia is a wiki, which means anyone can improve it. By adding your knowledge and fixing mistakes, the quality and depth of Ballotpedia's information improves over time. Why we do it We believe in the power of information to transform lives and politics, and we're committed to making the most knowledge available to the greatest number of people. In addition to Ballotpedia, the Lucy Burns Institute hosts Judgepedia to collect information on our judiciary. The more informed we are as voters, the better our government becomes. Ballotpedia isn't a part of any political party and we don't support candidates. We're simply a community of users dedicated to fairness and openness in politics, on both sides of the aisle. Our users welcome responsible, knowledge-building contributions from anyone who wants to participate. How it works Ballotpedia was originally formed by the Citizens in Charge Foundation on May 30, 2007. In March of 2008, the Sam Adams Alliance became Ballotpedia's sponsor, continuing their mission of using online media to promote access to government."
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If you have something on the ballot in your state and want to have more information, go to ballot pedia which explains the initiative and lets you know who is paying for and against this. This is another method of wikis and collaborative writing playing a role in more open government and transparency. Students could run a student version of this sort of site, or -pedia sites on all kinds of things.
