Discover, Use, and Share Tools, Apps, and Websites with GRAPHITE

Common Sense Media, a leading nonprofit organization that provides trustworthy information for kids and families to thrive in the world of media and technology, has produced Graphite, a great website for teachers to discover, use, and share tools, apps, games, website, and digital curricula for their students. All resources are rated and reviewed by their trustworthy community of teachers. As a user, you can also suggest a product for review to get an honest professional advice from Graphite’s teacher community.

Graphite is useful for teachers to explore more in depth the worthiness of a tool or website and possible ways they might be used in the classroom. Graphite is still in its first year of launch but has great potentials to grow its stock of reviews.

Also, do not forget to check out their Common Sense Media for Educators.

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Have You Ever Died of PowerPoint Presentations?

Today I had the privilege to attend a so-called workshop on Teacher Anger Management. The presenter holds a PhD in educational psychology and has been conducting workshops and training sessions for many years. What made the workshop unusually tedious and droning was how the presenter used PowerPoint as a tool to replace him. I mean, here is a PhD holder in educational psychology and an experienced teacher trainer, yet he does not have any clue on effective presentation, regardless of the presence of a visual aid such as the PowerPoint. He clearly didn’t have a clue on the basics of multimedia theories and practices. If he had ever read anything in terms of working memory and long term memory and the effect of the verbal and visual channels on the attendees’ minds, he would’ve definitely revamped his presentation and restructured his workshop. At the end of the workshop, teachers said that they learned one important thing from the workshop: Not to use this type of PowerPoi...

Moodle 2 Interactive Tool Guide for Teachers

Moodle has been at the forefront of online learning for learning institutions. And, since it is open source, and free for all, it is common that the community that benefit from Moodle to give back in various ways. One such help comes in Moodle Tool Guide for Teachers. It was first done by Joyce Seitzinger , and then adapted to Moodle 2 by Sue Harper. I have added the feature of interactivity to the guide however. By adding videos to the tool, anyone who wants to learn how to use any tool can just click on the interactive layer and watch the video. I surely hope this helps teachers learn Moodle tools easily and know how each tool affords different learning outcome. I will hopefully later add more interactivity in terms of instructional design, such as Bloom's taxonomy, assessing learning etc.

The 4 E model for Pedagogical Technology

If you look at the image on the left, you will notice the four key components of technology integration, what Collis & moonen (2002) refer to as key components of “flexible learning in a digital world”. The components ( institution, implementation, pedagogy, and technology ) are nested in each other, which means that each depends on and feeds from the other. The approach for the flexible learning can be seen in a top-down, that institution-wide to technological aspect, or in a bottom-up, that is from the technological aspect all the way up to the institution. The 4 E Model as a Guide: Collis & Moonen suggest a 4 E model that will guide anyone who wants to integrate flexible learning in each and all key components E ase of use E nvironment Personal E ngagement E ducational E ffectiveness Now, I will not go into details of the activity-flexibility abstract framework and its U pedagogical approach. All I want to focus on here is how the 4 E model would guide th...

Technology-Enhanced Learning

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