eLearning Blog

We use Blackboard Collaborate for our online student sessions.  The top video above shows how to use the most recent application of it.  If you are still using the older version, the video below will be helpful to you. 

With so much knowledge at our fingertips we should be changing the way we educate our children to use their minds to solve problems rather than to regurgitate information that can readily be found online. But how to find information is a skill that can be taught.  Watch the video explanation above and then look at these lesson plans to teach to search, understand the results, narrow one's research, look for evidence and to understand how credible a resource is. Thanks to Alice Keeler for the tip on the resource. 

Google Classroom allows you to use apps alongside your work with your students.  For example if you go here you will see Kahoot (which allows you to play review games), Khan Academy (which has thousands of video tutorials), Class Dojo (which is a management tool for your classes) and so much more.  

= Above is a great video on how to use Google Classroom which is one way (Google Drive - see post below) to have students turn in their work.   Google Classroom allows teachers to create folders for their students, set completion dates, allow students to see graded work, send messages. It even now has a series of apps that you can utilize to help work with your students. 

If you are looking for an interesting overview of the development of learning and now, online learning, the graphic is a quick way to do it. Source: Online Schools Center.com

Today I am going to be getting to Austin to attend the South by Southwest Education conference.  I am going to be spending some of my time there with TES (more on them later).  They recently purchased Blendspace which allows teacher to use a variety of resources to build digital lessons for their students such as the one I did above which I call " Predicting the Electoral College ."  You can go to Blendspace and build your own very easily.  

Tomorrow I am helping a friend who is working with teachers at a school. So I am starting with the video above. One thing I would suggest is looking at this tutorial that I used this past summer.  It starts with a rationale and then goes into how teachers can use Google Drive, create videos and even where to find flipped videos.