Think.com - An Online Community for Learning

A password-protected learning community, Think.com "turns students into multimedia authors for a global community and allows peers to think and learn together. ...Experience a new level of collaboration with Think.com Projects. Identify a topic of interest, assign your students, and allow others locally or across the globe to join. ...Free service without any advertising for accredited primary and secondary schools. Think.com provides interactive learning tools to thousands of schools around the world in 8 languages."

EduNation - Second Life in Education

"...the first private island simulator in Second Life dedicated to online training seminars and conferences, and the use of Second Life in Education. EduNation is a 65,000m2 island in the Second Life virtual world with seminar, powerpoint, audio and videocast facilities. Use of the seminar facilities is free. It also features small land and accommodation rentals for other educators to rent and use on a weekly basis."

My Second Life - An Educator's comments

Educause Connect: a post by Jeff VanDrimmelen, which Stephen Downes describes as a "description of a teacher's experimental forays into Second Life." A short but interesting read if you're an educator who is either new to Second Life or haven't yet experienced it.

Distance Learning Programs

A free guide for researching, evaluating and applying for online college degrees and online university programs from online universities worldwide. Undergraduate and Master’s programs plus trades. Thousands of distance learning options.

With so many online universities to choose from and so many online college degree programs, we felt there needed to be a top-notch, easy to use free online resource to help people learn about these distance learning programs and to get more information from the ones that they are interested in.

The OWL at Purdue

A fantastic resource site: "Free writing help and teaching resources, open 24/7" Here are some of their categories:

The Writing Process; Professional, Technical, and Scientific Writing; Job Search Writing; General Academic Writing; Research & Citation; ESL; Literary Analysis & Criticism; Writing in the Social Sciences; Writing in Engineering; Creative Writing; Teaching Writing.

-- and each one has many sub-menu items. I can't describe it; you'll just have to check it out for yourself!

Learning with Handheld Technologies

"This handbook on learning with handheld technologies arises from a two year study by the Graduate School of Education, University of Bristol... . This study comprised observations and interviews with some of the leading practitioners of handheld learning in the UK, and desk-based research to identify other developing projects in this area. In the course of the project, a number of key recommendations and observations emerged which have been distilled by the researchers on the project in this publication." The handbook includes recommendations on:

• planning and implementation
• outreach
• professional development
• technology provision and support
• teaching & learning

Teacher Created Rubrics for Assessment

From the Online Professional Development for K-12 Teachers - University of Wisconsin: Rubrics for various subjects at various levels:

Cooperative Learning Rubrics
Research Report Rubrics
Writing Rubrics
Math, Art, Science Rubrics
Oral Presentation Rubrics
Rubrics for Primary Grades
Web Page and ePortfolio Rubrics
Video and Multimedia Project Rubrics
...plus a section on Creating Your Rubrics

Ready for Internet Explorer 7?

Maybe you already have it, if your settings are for automatic updates. If not, here are two helpful sites.

Internet Explorer 7 checklists
"Whether you're a consumer, developer, or IT professional, we've created the checklists to make sure Internet Explorer 7 is compatible with your favorite websites and applications."

Internet Explorer 7 Readiness Toolkit from Microsoft.

BLOGORRHEA

Logorrhoea is my personal word of the day, found accidentally at Answers.com

Logorrhoea or logorrhea (Greek λογορροια, logorrhoia, “word-flux”) is defined as an “excessive flow of words” and, when used medically, refers to incoherent talkativeness that occurs in certain kinds of mental illness, such as mania. The spoken form of logorrhoea (in the non-medical sense) is a kind of verbosity that uses superfluous or fancy words to disguise a useless or simple message as useful or intellectual, and is commonly known as “verbal diarrhea.”

So I told my partner and he's just coined a new word (in the title of this post). Take it, use it, spread it around, but link to this blog post when you do, ok?

Practical Uses of Math And Science (PUMAS)

Ralph Kahn, author, describes the site as

"...a collection of one-page examples of how math and science topics taught in K-12 classes can be used in interesting settings, including everyday life. The examples are written primarily by scientists and engineers, and are available to teachers, students, and other interested parties via the PUMAS Web Site. Our goal is to capture, for the benefit of pre-college education, the flavor of the vast experience that working scientists have with interesting and practical uses of math and science."

10 Academic Resources Daily

"Our main purpose is to provide valuable solutions for students and young researchers; disseminate additional knowledge, skills and attitudes that are useful in their youth work; communicate within the academic community of scholars, professionals and students from all branches. We share information about scholarships, grants, conferences, study abroad opportunities, exchange and professional training programs and internships all over the world."

The Teachers' Lounge - lesson plan resources

Lesson plan resources. A wiki site. Rob Lucas, author, explains:

"...my first year of teaching, I spent many late nights planning lessons for the following day. During those nights, a single thought gnawed at me: Thousands of other teachers across the country were doing just as I was, and thousands more had done so every year for decades. Yet there was no way for me to fully benefit from the experience of all those who had come before. I’ve created this website to change that....any registered user...can post lesson plans, links, handouts, PowerPoint presentations—virtually anything! And you don’t even have to know HTML. Editing a page is as easy as using a word processor. My vision is that over time, we can develop an extensive library of creative, finely-tuned, engaging, exciting lessons."

E-Learning Concepts and Techniques E-Book

"This e-book, E-Learning Concepts and Techniques, is the result of a collaborative effort by students in the Bloomsburg University, Department of Instructional Design spring 2006 E-Learning Concepts and Techniques online class as well as several guest authors and contributors from around the world." Headings include: What is E-Learning? Instructional Design Models for E-Learning; E-Learning Tools; Instructional Strategies; Development; Delivering; Evaluation; Web Standards.

Folklinks: Folk and Fairy-Tale Sites

A colleague sent me this link and said, "I came across this great web site as I searched for short short stories that can be used in English classes. 2 great things about it: 1) it includes folktales from all over the world and 2) it is categorized by subject or topic or theme. Enjoy."

WikiBooks and WikiSource

WikiBooks and WikiSource: Wikipedia's Free collections of textbooks. "Wikibooks went online on 10 July 2003, and there are 22,403 modules currently on the site." ..."Wikibooks differs from Wikisource because content on Wikibooks is expected to be significantly changed by participants. Raw source documents such as the original text of Shakespearian plays is hosted on Wikisource instead."..."Wikisource collects and stores in digital format previously published texts; including novels, non-fiction works, letters, speeches, constitutional and historical documents, laws and a range of other documents. All texts collected are free of copyright, either because this has expired or because the text has been released under a GNU Free Documentation License."

Free Academic Podcasts

This site has a list of 145 (to date) links. Says the site author: "About a year ago, I put together a listing 30 or 40 free podcasts of lectures from Universities. When I started putting together another list, I was amazed at how many more lectures are available. The lectures in this list are all free and don't require any type of authentication--you don't have to be a student to download them. The links are to the rss feed of class lectures. If you copy the URL and in iTunes click on Advanced > Subscribe to Podcast it will automatically download the lectures and new ones as they become available."

Skypecasts Academic Potential

This article describes the latest offering from Skype, Skypecasting, and discusses its potential for education.

"Skypecasts as “large, hosted calls on Skype.” Sound pretty simple. Basically you can create or join a large online conference call with UP TO 100 people. Skypecasts are scheduled to begin and end at a certain time and usually have a certain topic of discussion. The users must download and use Skype in order to join the Skypecast."

"There are many programs out there that already allow users to create online classes, but those cost thousands, and even tens of thousands of dollars to implement. This option is FREE. That price tag is always a big plus for education and their limited resources."

"Overall, I was very impressed with Skypecasts and the potential it possesses in education. Above all else mentioned above, I think it is absolutely necessary to help students understand cultures beyond their own. This technology opens up the way for them to do that, not only through other people’s Skypecasts, but by having students create their own."

Podcasting in Education

The author explains podcasting, links to articles that show it works well in education, links to working examples, provides some ideas for you. A section entitled 'How to go about it: Curriculum and Class Management'. A technical section with info about applications, plus some downloads and resource links.

APA addendum for citing ONLINE SOURCES

This guide is from SFU librarian Jamie Anderson, August 1, 2006. "The APA Manual should be your main source of information for citing sources, but this addendum was put together to cover several types of electronic sources which are not covered by the APA. Here’s what the guide covers: Webpages, Blogs, Online Journal Articles, Online Encyclopedias and Dictionaries, Email, Online Images, The TECH 100 text Teamwork and Communication."

Writing Guides from SFU Library

This is a very helpful site. Includes STYLE guides, WRITING guides, and other tools. Includes style guides I hadn't heard of until now -- CBE (for biologists), IEEE (for engineers), and MUCH more...check it out.