Click here to find a variety of on-line resources that have been linked to learning goals.
Tag Archives: Internet
Social Media in Learning and Education
More than 100 teachers from across Europe participated in the SMILE (Social Media in Learning and Education) programme, exploring the challenges and opportunities involved when using social media in education.
The outcomes of the project have been published in a digital handbook. The handbook contains materials and resources along with many valuable reflections and suggestions on some critical aspects of the use of social media in schools.
The handbook will help you to make effective use of social media in your classroom as w ell as helping you to make best use of them for your own professional development.
GoClass for Android
How many pupils in your class bring Android devices into school, whether they be Smartphones or Tablets? Have you considered making use of these devices to enhance the teaching and learning in your classroom? There is an increasing number of apps being developed for Android devices to support pupils and teachers. One such app is GoClass.
GoClass is a free application for creating short lessons and delivering them to your pupils. The lessons can include annotated images, free hand sketches, text and video. You also have the option to ask questions and poll your pupils. After the pupils’ responses have been gathered you can project those responses without showing the names of individual pupils.
Click here for further information.
Twitter hashtags #
Click here to find out how to make use of Twitter hashtags with your class.
Pupils will be familiar with using Internet search engines to find information to support their learning, but how many of them make full use of the power of the search engine? Most pupils will just type a word into the search bar and click search. Pupils need to be provided with information about the full range of tools available in search engines to help them find the information that they are looking for. The more tools that the pupils use the more likely they are to source quality information that is relevant to the work that they are doing.
Click here to find a summary of the tools that are available on the Google search engine. Why don’t you set your class some challenges to encourage them to refine their Internet searches?
Smartphones
“Children’s access to the internet is not restricted to PCs or laptops. Those aged 12-15 are more likely than last year to go online using their mobile phones and are more likely to say that this is the device they would miss the most.
Since 2011, there has been a 50% rise in 12-15 year olds owning smartphone devices. Almost two thirds (62%) of this age group now has one – up from 41% the previous year. This is significantly higher than the UK average for adults of 45%.
Mobile phones are more important to this age group than any other device, even TV. Two fifths (39%) of 12-15 year olds now say they would miss their mobile phone more than any other device, up from just over a quarter (28%) in 2011. Only one in five (20%) said that they would miss TV the most.” (Ofcom October 2012 http://tinyurl.com/cqfp4k9)
Are you making the best use of the processing power that is sitting in the schoolbags of the majority of pupils in your classroom? Click here to read about how you can use your pupils’ smartphones to support the delivery of the curriculum.
YouTube Tools
Make full use of the tools in the YouTube tool box to create your own video and slide show presentations to use with your class. Click here to read about some of the tools that are available.
Interactive Whiteboard
Interactive whiteboards are now common items of equipment in our classrooms. Teachers now consider them an indispensable tool in teaching and learning.
The software that comes with the whiteboard has a wealth of features to help class teachers in their work. Make sure that you are gaining the full benefit from the software that comes with your whiteboard. Promethean has published a variety of resources on their website for you to use in your classroom. they also offer on line training. Click here to visit the Promethean website and explore what the program has to offer.
Sharing web links
It is good to share information about useful websites that you come across. Sometimes the web addresses (URL) of sites, or particular pages on a site, are rather long and contain a variety of strange looking characters. Even when you cut and paste the link into an email, when the recipient of the email receives the link the formatting has been broken and the link does not work.
There are a number of websites where you can paste in the web address of a site and it is converted into a much shorter address which makes it easier to share with others.
One such service is glo.li which not only shortens the URL but also produces a QR code. A QR code is an easy way for Smartphones to pick up the address for a website. Click here to visit the site.
The short URL for this blog, using glo.li, is:
Copy and paste this URL into the address bar of your web browser.
The QR code for this blog is:
If you have a Smartphone with QR software, try scanning the above.
Another URL shortening service is TinyURL. Click here for further information about this service.
Internet Safety
CEOP, Child Exploitation and Online Protection Centre, provides training and education resources for practitioners to use with children and young people to increase their understanding of online safety. The “Thinkuknow” website provides comprehensive and up to date Internet safety information and resources. You will find local, national and international resources covering a range of Internet safety issues; including cyberbullying, grooming and at social networking.
Click here to visit the Thinkuknow website.
