chapter 5

Desktop publishing - InDesign and PageMaker by Adobe, Microsoft publisher

Test generators and rubric generators - www.testshop.com, www.centronsoftware.com, www.easytestmaker.com, landmark-project.com/rubric_builder/index.php, rubistar.4teachers.org, teach-nology.com/web_tools/rubrics/general

Worksheet and puzzle generators - puzzlemaker.discoveryeducatio.com/, school.discoveryeducation.com, centronsoftware.com, www.teach-nology.com/web_tools/crossword/

IEP generators - www.schoolmax.net/, www.xperts.com/products/educational-product-suite/iep-online.aspx, www.publicconsultinggroup.com/educational/technology/easyiep/

Graphic doc maker - prinshop 23 deluxe, www.teach-nology.com/web_tools/certificates

www.smartdraw.com

pdf and form makers - www.adobe.com, www.colorpilot.com/pdfmaker/html, www.quask.com/survey/procucts.asp

Always us rules for effective desktop publishing

Electronic gradebooks - www.classactiongradebook.com

Student response systems - all students answer ? at same time and system summarizes, displays results immed. - to engage students and check comprehension - Qwizdom.com, www.h-itt.com

Draw/paint program - kid pix, adobe illustrator

Image editing  - adobe photoshop, gimp.org

Charting and graphing tools - www.teachtsp.com, www.serpik.com, www.visualmining.com

Clip art, animation, sound, video and font collections - teachingheart.net

microsoft cipart, flamingtext.com, animationfactory.com

Outlining and concept mapping software - www.inspiration.com, soso.so.u, story weaver

Lesson planners - teacher planet

Scheduling and time management tools - www.handshigh.com, www.thecalendarplanner.com

reading tools - www.readabilityformulas.com, www.renlearn.com/ar/

TI graphing calc - education.ti.com/

SS software - www.gps4fun.com, www.census.gov/geo/www.maps, google earth, www.esri.com/software/arcview

Web 2.0

Effective e-learning through collaboration

It’s hard to miss the fact that e-Learning provides learning resources in interesting electronic media and makes them available ‘anywhere, anytime’. 

Such media provides enhanced impact, improved accessibility, can be re-purposed for new uses and also help improve differentiation. 

Tim Rylands’ (http://timrylands.com/) use of the Myst computer games in literacy classes, resulting in impressive improvements in descriptive writing, especially from boys.

In ordinary, classroom teaching, we now enjoy a range of approaches that improve on the traditional ‘talk and chalk’ method used on its own. These embrace a social, interactive and constructionist approach to whole class teaching.

Many students find that their learning is most effective when they actively construct knowledge during group social interaction and collaboration - social constructivism

because the technology acts as a levelling force, in which all may collaborate as equal partners, students who might not ordinarily contribute, perhaps as a result of a disability or shyness, can now join in activities as equals

This allows students and teachers to fit in with busy schedules, meets the needs of those with a range of learning styles, provides flexible class timetabling, and means that class sessions can 

concentrate on key social interaction, with assessed activities left till later. In addition to flexibility in timing, there is flexibility in geographic location

posting a blog - needing corrections - students log in and make corrections

RSS

really simple syndication

internet users to subscribe to websites that have provided RSS feeds; these are typically sites that change or add content regularly.

user is in control of info coming to them with a filter

web blogs and news sites - good examples

www.weblogged.com - get started guide for setting one up for teachers

when you’re ready, you open the aggregator to read the individual 

stories, file them for later use, click through to the site itself, or delete them if 

they’re not relevant. In other words, you check one site instead of 30… not a 

bad trade-off for a typically busy teacher

able to feel closer to leading edge of info by staying up to date

Uses - professional development, up to the minute content info, time saving, Teachers and their students could subscribe to feeds from different parts of the 

news world about a current event in the news to compare and contrast the 

information and/or to check to see if there were any biases, can share info with other teachers via blog or webpage rss feed

Power of blogging

one of many tools that pioneering teachers are using to 

empower students to take more responsibility of managing their own work and 

adding value to the world.

it’s imperative that we be able to teach our kids 

how to use the tools effectively and appropriately because right now they have 

no models to follow

post student work for authentic review

need to teach students how to blog - i.e. what is appropriate

Photo sharing and clip art

http://www.flickr.com

students gain interest in blogging because not so much like writing with a lot of rules, more like communicating

not just writing what teachers want, writing to a bigger audience

It is my contention that a blogger prompt is different than a journal prompt due 

to its interactive nature. A blogger prompt has to encourage participants to 

address issues from multiple perspectives. Whereas, most journal prompts do 

not encourage multiple perspectives and lead to a monocular thesis, which are 

often as 2D as the paper it’s written on.  

students need help knowing how to deal with the variety of viewpoints that others may post

need to set rules for class blog

web 2.0 is all about collaboration

any comments on blogs should be polite and useful

http://www.bloglines.com

http://www.techlearning.com/blog/main/ 

http://www.elgg.net), which is open- 

source blogging software for education, but far more besides

www.edublogs.org

http://www.shambles.net/pages/learning/infolit/edupodcast/ 

Wikis

Hawaiian word meaning “quick”. 

web page collagoration

wiki lends itself to having short 

amounts of text connected by hyperlinks, rather than a lot of text.

http://www.pbwiki.com/ - to set up wiki