How to Archive and Catalogue Tweets
Whoa. When I plug into TweetDeck or HootSuite through my edusomnia twitter account I really have to get ready for an information superhighway. I will monitor maybe 6-7 twitter hashes for an hour and I will have squirreled away from 100-200 ideas and 20-30 new resources. For the longest time I wondered why I should plug in if I can't somehow archive and catalogue all the tweets that I found helpful and interesting. Recently I found a way! Here's the skinny on how to archive and catalogue information from twitter streams. Here's what you need, a Twitter account, a Delicious account and a connection between the two using Packrati.us. Load up your favorite Twitter streaming engine (HootSuite or Tweetdeck are my favs) and set up a column where you can see your own twitter tweets or retweets. Now you're ready to label and archive. Let's say I find a fantastic site from EdTech on iPads. I want to archive and save this forever! So I immediately retweet it and in the retweet dialogue, make sure I like the title, and then remove any unwanted @ or # tags. Finally and most importantly I add my own # tag like #ipad and then I send it. Now I wait a few seconds for it to refresh on my tweet/retweet column and then add it to my favorites. Packrati.us automatically uses the #tag to create a Delicious tag with my resource now safely stored for reading or accessing when I have more time. Hope this was helpful. Edusomnia.
Build a Technology Course that Doesn't Focus on Technology?
Sounds crazy I know. Build a technology course that doesn't focus on technology? What’s the rationale? Too often schools and services have invested exorbitant amounts of resources on technology but don’t really know how to effectively implement its use. It has happened so often, in fact, that our critics have labeled technology integration as a “gimmick”. Have you started to see this trend as well?
Technology disuse or misuse usually comes from instructors focusing primarily on software and hardware, whereas they should be working to improve a student’s skill in solving tasks or problems through the use various forms of technology. Schools and teachers shouldn’t tie themselves to a particular piece of software or platform; rather they should be designing challenges where the only requirement is that students solve the problem. Whether the student used PowerPoint or Keynote is irrelevant to how well the challenge was met, and at what level did the student design their presentation. Question, “If we can’t measure a student’s technology competence with how they use software, then how can we measure for success?” Answer, “A measurement of learning skills.” How do you measure student's success with technology at your school?
An excellent example would be ISTE/NETS on “Communication and Collaboration”. “Students use digital media and environments to communicate and work collaboratively, including at a distance, to support individual learning and contribute to the learning of others, specifically to interact, collaborate, and publish with peers, experts, or others employing a variety of digital environments and media.” This learning objective can manifest through a plethora of software, both local and cloud, to meet the needs of this objective. I am also fond of visual devices that help to shape the skills our students should be learning to be successful in a world driven by information technology. This particular image comes from Billings Middle School's "Technology with Intention."
What do you think of this chart? Do you have an infographic you would like to share?
I am also partial to NECREL's old "Range of Use" chart.
Please let me know your opinion on this chart and send in any skill infographics you've found helpful.
Technology disuse or misuse usually comes from instructors focusing primarily on software and hardware, whereas they should be working to improve a student’s skill in solving tasks or problems through the use various forms of technology. Schools and teachers shouldn’t tie themselves to a particular piece of software or platform; rather they should be designing challenges where the only requirement is that students solve the problem. Whether the student used PowerPoint or Keynote is irrelevant to how well the challenge was met, and at what level did the student design their presentation. Question, “If we can’t measure a student’s technology competence with how they use software, then how can we measure for success?” Answer, “A measurement of learning skills.” How do you measure student's success with technology at your school?
An excellent example would be ISTE/NETS on “Communication and Collaboration”. “Students use digital media and environments to communicate and work collaboratively, including at a distance, to support individual learning and contribute to the learning of others, specifically to interact, collaborate, and publish with peers, experts, or others employing a variety of digital environments and media.” This learning objective can manifest through a plethora of software, both local and cloud, to meet the needs of this objective. I am also fond of visual devices that help to shape the skills our students should be learning to be successful in a world driven by information technology. This particular image comes from Billings Middle School's "Technology with Intention."
What do you think of this chart? Do you have an infographic you would like to share?
Please let me know your opinion on this chart and send in any skill infographics you've found helpful.
A New Year
Welcome to the New Year. Edusomnia will be working hard to reshape the fabric of education through connecting with and helping to connect professional ideas and real world applications.
The Future of Mathematics
As an educator who always seeks to prepare our students for the real world and real world math, I found Conrad Wolfram’s TED talk to be very enlightening. Most admirable is how the Wolfram brothers not only identify issues with our current system of mathematics education, but have spent their lives building global solutions to these problems with WolframAlpha, Mathematica, and Wolfram Science. I believe that if we don’t pay attention to this line of thinking we may be left behind on many different levels. I would enjoy your feedback on the annotated resources provided below regarding, “teaching kids math through computer programming”, the WolframAlpha demo, and the Mathematica Demo.
1. First watch Conrad Wolfram’s TED Talk: From rockets to stock markets, many of humanity's most thrilling creations are powered by math. So why do kids lose interest in it? Conrad Wolfram says the part of math we teach -- calculation by hand -- isn't just tedious, it's mostly irrelevant to real mathematics and the real world. He presents his progressive idea: teaching kids math through computer programming.
2. Next, watch the Mathematica for Primary and Secondary Education and then it would be interesting to set up a Live Technical Demo of Wolfram Mathematica to get a firsthand feel how Mathematica’s computational, and visual systems can help our students understand the principals of mathematics. Wolfram has also a growing Educational Portal that has a large collection of resources from K-12, and an exciting Demonstration Projects page where new mathematical demonstrations are posted daily using Mathematica’s engine.
3. A must watch is the Introduction to WolframAlpha: This short video will show you the computational power of WolframAlpha which is a FREE knowledge engine available to the world. An engine like this empowers our students to focus more on, posing clear mathematical questions, designing real world math formulation and verification, and less on tedious computation. If you thought Part I was exciting you will definitely enjoy Part II.
1. First watch Conrad Wolfram’s TED Talk: From rockets to stock markets, many of humanity's most thrilling creations are powered by math. So why do kids lose interest in it? Conrad Wolfram says the part of math we teach -- calculation by hand -- isn't just tedious, it's mostly irrelevant to real mathematics and the real world. He presents his progressive idea: teaching kids math through computer programming.
2. Next, watch the Mathematica for Primary and Secondary Education and then it would be interesting to set up a Live Technical Demo of Wolfram Mathematica to get a firsthand feel how Mathematica’s computational, and visual systems can help our students understand the principals of mathematics. Wolfram has also a growing Educational Portal that has a large collection of resources from K-12, and an exciting Demonstration Projects page where new mathematical demonstrations are posted daily using Mathematica’s engine.
3. A must watch is the Introduction to WolframAlpha: This short video will show you the computational power of WolframAlpha which is a FREE knowledge engine available to the world. An engine like this empowers our students to focus more on, posing clear mathematical questions, designing real world math formulation and verification, and less on tedious computation. If you thought Part I was exciting you will definitely enjoy Part II.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)