By Terry Loftus
The 2013 CUE conference was a real hit this year. With CUE's best attendance in 10 years, an abundance of great sessions and some incredible keynote speakers (including Sir Ken Robinson) this year was one of the best. Now that all of us are back to our sites, and settled in to our campus routine, it's a good time to look back on the exciting information and best practices learned during the conference. I made it to 11 informative sessions this year, our packed IA-CUE affiliate meeting and was in the second row, center for Sir Ken's keynote. What a trip. Though all the sessions provided their own morsels of great information I thought I would share 4 that stuck with me in different ways. Hopefully all of you were able to attend CUE this year and made it to some of these sessions. If not, here is a quick overview with some notes and takeaways:
InstaGrok Visual Search Engine & Interactive Learning Tool
I myself am a visual learner and therefore loved that this great website was showcased in a session. InstaGrok is "an intelligent visual search engine and interactive learning tool that collects educational content and displays it in the form of a cloud of related words". This website was demonstrated by teachers who use it's interface to enhance student research. Searched items are presented in an engaging visual map which can be clicked on to then drill down into more detail. The information is also displayed in the form of text, images, videos and web links. Quiz questions are also included for the student to complete or for teachers to cherry-pick and use in other formats. One of the interesting features that made this site stand out for me was the built-in 'Difficulty Slider' which allows for the information to be presented at different levels of sophistication. An easy way for a teacher to tailor the content to their level of learners.
-Text and Images courtesy of www.subtext.com
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Digital Citizenship Skills & Inspire Creativity with Creative Commons
Resource Sites:
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Teach students the basics:
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- Creative Commons: It's simply a refinement or alternative to Copyright. Creative Commons helps teachers and students share their creativity with the world by allowing others to use (and in some cases augment) creative work.
- Students and teachers should understand that copyright is AUTOMATIC and happens as soon as something is created (a photo is taken, a picture is painted, a song is written, etc)
- Copyright lasts a LONG time (author's lifetime + 70 years)…but not forever
Why do I care (teachers and students)?
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Because we are all becoming creators and publishers of digital works. It's a different world now for students and teachers. Creative Commons licensed works make using and sharing creativity easier.
Quick tips for modeling good digital citizenship:
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A good digital citizen gives credit to everything (even Public Domain content, which does not require it). Also, students and teachers should credit themselves for their content (photos they took, audio created, etc) when creating presentations as it helps make this process second nature.
Videos:
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Creative Commons overview: http://creativecommons.org/videos/wanna-work-together
Here is the link to the full Prezi presentation from CUE this year: http://prezi.com/_ewnpdztkqju/build-digital-citizenship-skills-inspire-creativity-with-creative-commons/
-Images courtesy of www.subtext.com
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Subtext iPad App
In an exploding environment of educational apps for iOS and Android there seem to be more 'average' apps than anything else. I initially stopped by this CUE session when I noticed it was being delivered by my cousin's wife from the Poway school district in San Diego. I had not heard of Subtext but thought it a good opportunity to say hello. It turns out that the app she and her colleague were presenting was incredibly interesting. This app offers the most feature-rich reading group reading experiences I have yet seen for the iPad.
I'll start by sharing the brief description of Subtext from their site:
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"Subtext adds new dimension to digital books in the classroom. We make it easy for classes to explore a text together and for students to close the loop from reading to analysis to writing. Our unique features give teachers the tools they need to tailor the learning experience to each student—and maximize results for every class."
"Subtext is the only reading service focused exclusively on K12 classrooms. From closed reading groups to helpful teacher controls, we’ve created every element of Subtext to make it easy (and fun) for you and your class to read together and exchange ideas."
Click here for the video overview: http://vimeo.com/39460409
What it can do:
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Add notes, discussion prompts, quizzes, images, maps and more to the digital books your students are reading. The students are made part of a private reading group that the teacher can manage. The app even provides built-in reporting to provide relevant feedback to the teacher.
-Text and images courtesy of www.subtext.com
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Blended Learning
What is a blended learning classroom?
As an administrator I've asked myself this very question. In today's environment there seems to be a growing number of definitions related to blended learning. By definition 'blended' is a mix of some values or components so it's easy to see how like-minded educators may have different views on what blended learning really is. To confuse the topic some definitions use 'hybrid' and 'blended'
synonymously while others use keywords such as 'e-learning' and 'web-enhanced' to describe the learning continuum. While there may never be concrete agreement on these definitions this CUE presentation provided a clear and approachable framework. It was interesting to see that even classrooms within my single K-12 environment could be classified very differently (though none fall into the online classification). I will use this document in the future when having discussions on this topic and to share with fellow staff.
Linked here is a PDF of the framework created by Dr. Rob Darrow. Take a look and see where your classroom, team, site or district falls within this structure:
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