Powerful New Citelighter Tools (Plus An Edudemic Giveaway!)

Do you guys remember Citelighter? We mention it here from time to time because we think it is a pretty awesome tool that can be useful in many of your classrooms. They started out as a pretty simple tool to help students build bibliographies. Then they added Cognitive Prints to help teachers analyze students’ research and writing process.

Well, they’re still going at it – they continue to build on their already-great tool and add more features.

Today, they’re announcing a new teacher template creator, student outlining tools, and a teacher assessment platform.

A Freebie?! Yes, Please!

Not only that, but because the guys over at Citelighter know that Edudemic readers are at the top of their teaching game, they’re offering a freebie to Edudemic readers only!

The first 50 teachers that email team@citelighter.com with subject line ‘I heart Edudemic’ will receive free access to theentire suite of student and teacher tools until the end of year for free.

Citelighter will spend an hour with you showing you how to set-up your classes, and even show you what they are building over the summer. So you don’t have to have used Citelighter’s tools in the past to make this work in your classroom -they’ll help you! Give them a shout and try it out!

Today’s News From Citelighter

Citelighter knows how important it is for students to learn how to organize and effectively communicate their ideas. It is the cornerstone of 21st Century skills. They also understand the struggles associated with teaching students how to write well, especially considering the complexity of new writing standards. After spending thousands of hours with teachers and students, Citelighter is excited to release their newest installment of student and teachers tools.  This new all-purpose writing platform adds even more to an already impressive six-time award-winning research and writing tool.

The team doesn’t view writing instruction as a set of discrete processes, but rather a continuum where teachers must engage with students at the moment they are struggling. The new platform supports teachers and students alike with tools to create, draft, and edit writing tasks, which provides guidance, a sense of transparency, and collaborative opportunities throughout the entire writing process. This makes Citelighter the most comprehensive assessment platform available. The new tool includes:

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Data Is the Key to Successful Course Redesign

By LindsayH

For years, it has been no secret that many students who start post-secondary education programs drop out early. To address this issue, many schools and institutions decide to redesign their courses with the hope that students might gain a greater feeling of success, continue with their chosen program and graduate.

When considering courses for redesign, many questions are asked but the most important is this: “What data should be considered to ensure our course redesign efforts are successful?” Data metrics like grades, attendance or participation rates are obvious considerations. These can be reliable metrics in driving decision-making. However, I recommend also considering student feedback, faculty load, student experience, and assessment performance as additional data points which can better inform decisions that directly impact the course redesign process.

Let’s look at each of these to see their value as data metrics in the course redesign process.

Student Feedback

Student feedback can be a rich source of data to take into consideration before investing in a course redesign project. Most course surveys ask about the instructor’s performance, however, student feedback should not be targeted or limited to the course in question. It should encompass the entire student learning experience. It is important to understand where the students stop learning and where they fail to make connections with the content. The typical approach to improving the student learning experience has been simply creating add-ons to the existing course. However the effectiveness of add-ons without thoughtful integration is questionable. We must avoid the philosophy of ‘do something, do anything’ and focus redesign efforts on activities that are both sound and rational.

When reviewing student feedback we should focus our analysis through three lenses: the content lens, the assessment lens and the learning activity or practice lens. While course redesign focuses on the sum of the parts, each of these three lenses give curriculum developers a comprehensive picture on how students put their knowledge into practice, if at all.

Here are a few suggested data points to explore when considering student feedback:

• What learning activities did students find to be the most engaging?

• What learning activities helped students connect to the content directly?

• What did the students expect to learn prior to the start of the course?

Faculty Load

Educators are continually asked to do more with less. Frequently that extends to requiring faculty to teach more students with no additional resources. Faculty load can have an influence on student success. Students may not receive adequate or authentic feedback from instructors with a heavy student load because those instructors have fewer touch points with their students. By knowing the number of enrollments to an individual faculty member, course redesign experts can make additional recommendations for support services. Additionally, faculty load may influence a different approach to content presentations, activities, assessments, and other student services.

Here are a few suggestions to explore when considering faculty load:

• How often throughout a high enrollment course is a faculty member able to offer individualized attention to students?

• When a faculty member offers individualized attention, is it to clarify a student’s understanding of the content, provide intervention, or offer genuine feedback on activities and assessments?

• What are the student’s perceptions of the faculty member’s presence within a course?

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Geo-literacy Explained For Teachers

Geo literacy is an important concept that is not squarely addressed in our teaching curricula. We are mostly concerned with preparing our kids for future job markets and in so doing we deprive them of the understanding pivotal for their future decision making. Whether  making decisions about where to live or what precautions to take for natural hazards, our kids need to learn how to be able to use geographic reasoning and geographic understanding to better connect with their environment.

source: snapshot from natgeographic video

I am sharing with you these two wonderful videos from National Geographic Education to help you better  instruct your kids about the concept of geo-literacy. Below are some of the notes I highlighted from it:

What is Geo-literacy ?

It is preparation for decision making in the 21st century. It is all about helping people make decisions that they need to make to involve understanding and reading about their world.

Read Full Article Here....

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Important Skills For 21st Century Students

Below is a graphic I have created a few months ago in which I featured a host of important skills to grope for in today's education. I have divided these skills into three major areas : digital skills. thinking skills, and learning skills. Of course all of these skills are interrelated with each other and are applicable in more than one area. for instance , we can use the digital skill of online searching to cultivate a learning skill which is finding information...etc

I invite you to have a look and share with us what you think of it. You can also use it the way you it. Enjoy

Post Source : http://www.educatorstechnology.com/2013/11/25-important-skills-for-21st-century.html

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It’s Important To Take Risks While Learning

By Katie Lepi on April 8, 2014

Sometimes the process of learning something in order to be able to do it seems daunting. You know you want to get from point A to point B so that you can do C, but you really just want to be able to do C without a long wait. As teachers, you want your students to get there quickly and efficiently, too. While patience is a virtue, sometimes patience will get you nowhere fast. 

The handy infographic below looks at the idea of how to learn fast. It uses the idea of travel time to support the concept of learning by doing – arguably one of the quickest methods of learning something. Instead of taking the time to stop at every learning opportunity, do background research, and file yourself through all of the traditional methods, sometimes just jumping in will help you learn faster. How can you apply these concepts in your classroom or in your own professional development? Get involved in the conversation by leaving a note in the comments!

How Fast Can You Learn?

• The graphic below compares the speed of learning to speed of travel from San Francisco, CA to London, UK.
• Learning by reading: 3mph – Chances of getting there: low
• Learning through school: 15mph - Chances of getting there: low
• Learning with a mentor:  65mph - Chances of getting there: 50/50
• Learning by doing: 500mph - Chances of getting there: high
• Learning by taking big risks: 10,000mph  - Chances of getting there: high

Post Source : http://www.edudemic.com/take-risks-while-learning/

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Professional Development Tips For Schools Going

By Albert Galeas

As our 1:1 initiative moves forward, I see that there are three kinds of teachers that are part of the process:

1. The teachers who are ready for change (!!)

2. The teachers who are willing to change

3. The teachers who just want to get by

I wish someone would have told me about this! But, I’m glad I had the chance to be a teacher before becoming an Instructional Technologist. That background has led me to approach the teachers as students first & teachers second. I pondered and pondered how 1:1 should be implemented (after I had also read some literature on it). I came up with the idea that because I target three different groups of teachers, my sessions need to be differentiated to meet their needs.

So, here are my recommendations for implementing 1:1 from a professional developmentstandpoint:

1. Create a self-paced online course

Make sure that it utilizes the LMS that will become the avenue of classroom instruction. This will help the teachers learn on their own pace because we all know they are busy people! Editor’s Note: Here are some options for online courses that might help: GEDB Courses, Udemy, Intel Teach Elements, and PBS TeacherLine

2. Create one-on-one sessions

This is where teachers can get their concerns out (their voice matters), have more of a hands on approach to the products being implemented differentiated at different levels (beginners, intermediate, and advanced).

3. Create whole group sessions

These will be to target teachers at the beginner, intermediate & advanced levels. This will also give them a chance to share ideas on classroom instructional methods that can be used!

From the Instructional Technologist point of view, this approach is a lot of work, but the benefits outweigh the (effort) cost. All three groups are taken care of and will be ready when the time comes. In addition, our 1:1 is focused around Chromebooks & Schoology; therefore, the professional development revolves around learning the ecosystems of both products and instructional methods. Remember, without supporting the teachers, our efforts to go 1:1 can quickly fail.

Post Source : http://www.edudemic.com/professional-development-tips/

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What Does Learning Look Like? A Look At Physical And Digital Spaces

By Tom Daccord

I would like you to concentrate on the first image that comes to mind. Ready? Here is the question:What does learning look like?

Did you picture a classroom? Was there a teacher? What were students doing? Were they working quietly and individually? Or were they noisily collaborating? Were they sitting passively and listening? Or were they actively constructing something?

When I pose this question to groups of educators, I’m struck by the diversity of learning visions. For some, there is no teacher with the students, and the students are learning entirely on their own. For others, there is not even a classroom and students are helping students. In a world of ubiquitous mobile devices, where we can connect with information and people anywhere and any time, limiting student learning to a traditional classroom environment seems increasingly shortsighted.

Visit to the “Future School”

In the winter of 2012, I spent time at the Jarong “Future School” in Singapore. One of only sixFuture Schools in this city-state of 5 million people, the school’s mission is to lead in the integration of technology into the curriculum and pursue a “novel” problem-based approach to school design. More specifically, it aims to help students with critical problem-solving skills, often by taking them out of the classroom, to conduct first-hand observation, research and analyses. As for technology, the school features computer design labs, desktop and mobile devices, and even a video production lab. Standing in a classroom devoid of technology, however, the school’s IT Director articulated the school’s mission and the role of technology in one word: collaboration.

The Director and other administrators at the school had a vision of what learning should look like. In that vision, students would be working with each other, interacting and collaborating in small groups. Together, they would solve problems. To facilitate collaboration, administrators bought mobile, pie-shaped classroom desks that form a circle when pushed together. Tilted vertically, the desks are easily pushed to the side and out of the way. In other words, administrators designed a physical space that made it easy for students to interact with each other so that they could collaborate.

Similarly, curriculum specialists designed collaborative digital spaces. Students and teachers were brought together on platforms such as Google Drive that facilitate both live and asynchronous collaboration. The school technology leader had not simply concentrated on a device or a technology. Together, with other admins, he created integrated learning environments that could be modified in order to realize a vision of collaborative learning.

Experimental Schools – Using The “Writing On The Wall”

Not every school can afford mobile desks, but every school can develop a vision for learning. Recently, I was at a fledgling, experimental school outside of Vancouver, British Columbia. It is a small, public school with very little technology – some desktop computers and a handful of mobile devices. In the morning, students follow a traditional curriculum, but in the afternoon, they’re developing a presentation based on something they’ve written on a wall.

On that wall lies topics that interest each student. Every afternoon, for a period of two-three weeks, a teacher-mentor works individually with a student to craft an essential question about their topic and then answer it. The teacher helps the student research the topic, and consults the student on formulating a presentation about his or her research. David Truss, the principal, succinctly articulated the goal of this school: help students find and pursue their passions.

David reconstructed the curriculum and a physical space to nurture this vision, and as students worked online – both at school and at home – they were developing the critical-thinking and digital skills necessary to tackle their hand-written ideas. The mobility of the physical classrooms in the Singaporean Future School complemented the digital learning activities and reinforced a holistic vision of collaborative learning. The school in Vancouver created a physical “idea wall,” and then brought students online to flush out their ideas.

In answering “What does learning look like?” we need comprehensive and integrated learning spaces. We need to think about how the physical and digital spaces compliment and reinforce each other. If we can align physical and digital activities around learning goals, we can ultimately progress towards our learning vision.

Post Source : http://www.edudemic.com/learning-look-like-look-physical-digital-spaces/

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Use QR Codes For Language Learning

By Colleen Lee

Cross Posted From - http://www.edudemic.com/qr-codes-for-language-learning/

As smartphone use/ownership among students rises – so has the use of the QR codes. I add them to unit packages for links for Quizlet sites or my YouTube channel – hoping that the ubiquitous phone in the teenagers hand will help them find support outside of class time. Some educators use them as a required part of the lesson. I know that not all of my kids have smartphones capable of reading codes so I don’t require them. Even when I provide them for support I also provide a shortened link to the same material. In a previous post I wrote about a number of practical ways to use them but I didn’t really focus on another reason to use them in your teaching.

To me, the fact that they are a visual, and don’t come with any ‘words’ attached also means that we can use them to reward the curious. This year I am trying an ‘experiment’ in my room – just to see who is curious enough, or aware enough to want to know more. I won’t be giving out extra marks for this, but I will wait to see if any students comment on what I have done.

On The Door

I used an app called “Tellagami” to create a short animated video introducing who I am and what I teach. Then using a free QR code creator I generated a. It’s on window of my door – right where students might notice. If they are curious they will find out a bit about who I am. Almost as important to me is the message it sends “We try new things in here!”

On A Bulletin Board

One of the reasons that I like QR codes is that they don’t come with any words attached. This semester I set up a bulletin board with areas in Japan – outside of the major cities. I dug up some older picture cards I had and put them on the bulletin board together with a map. The only information provided is a arrow to a part of the map and a QR code. The code links to a page for the city or region. This bulletin board will come into play later in my grade 12 course but for now I notice kids looking, pointing and sometimes scanning.

A ‘What is This’?

I receive a magazine a few times a year and one of its pages features objects/items that are photo(2)unique to Japan. In this case I have the picture/explanation but I remove the title (and black out the word in the text if needed). Instead I substitute an audio QR code. They are easy to make via the qrvoice website and available for many languages. Students can read about the object but won’t know what it is until they scan and hear the word.

If you need a code reader on your phone – search your appropriate app store – there are a lot of free ones there. Making QR codes is easy too – there are several sources out there including:

kaywa – make sure you select “static” not dynamic for the easy creation

goo.gl – it will shorten a url and, if you click on ‘details’ create a QR code

qrvoice – type your text, select your language and the code is generated

I’m hoping that the lack of information, and the ease of scanning the code, will reward the curious. And curious learners will, I hope, be more willing to risk in my classroom.

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