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Dennis OConnor

Dennis OConnor's Public Library

May
6
2012

  • Social experiences require multiple players and so does safety. We all need to do our  part. These resources are here for teens, parents, and teachers to learn more about  how to use Google+ in a fun, smart, and safe way.
Apr
15
2012

  • There are probably thousands of keyboard shortcuts out there but here are my top 17 shortcuts that I use frequently and find the most useful. Together, they probably represent 85% of all my shortcut use.  I'm still amazed at how many people don't know these...
     
     I use both Macs and PC so I'm listing the shortcuts required for each one (If I know it!).  I'll always list the Mac shortcut first (Mac / PC).  You'll notice how similar they are, so if you learn them on one platform they are easy to learn on the other.

Great STEAM materials.  Powerful source for any flipped math or science curriculum.  Interactive document format is very promising. 

education.wolfram.com/...teachers.html
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wolfram

Mar
28
2012

  • To these doubters, Henderson pointed to the open-source leaders -- Severance, Moodlerooms CEO Lou Pugliese and NetSpot's managing director, Allan Christie -- that Blackboard has brought into the fold: “guides” who are theoretically prepared to protect the “bylaws and maxims” of the open-source community. In an interview, Henderson said there is no plan to change the fees at Moodlerooms, and that Blackboard ownership would give Moodlerooms customers the opportunity to add Blackboard’s live-communications and mobile features to their platforms. If anything, Henderson said, Moodlerooms customers will get more bang for their buck.
  • Blackboard said it will continue supporting the Angel Learning platform, which it acquired in 2009, indefinitely rather than trying to move its legacy clients on to a newer version of Blackboard Learn in 2014, as previously planned.
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  • While "technology will replace teachers" seems like a silly argument to make, one need only look at the state of most school budgets and know that something's got to give. And lately, that something looks like teachers' jobs, particularly to those on the receiving end of pink slips. Granted, we haven't implemented a robot army of teachers to replace those expensive human salaries yet (South Korea is working on the robot teacher technology. I'll keep you posted.). But we are laying off teachers in mass numbers. Teachers know their jobs are on the line, something that's incredibly demoralizing for a profession already struggles mightily to retain qualified people.

  • it's hard not to see that wealth as having political not just economic impact. Indeed, the same week that Bill Gates spoke to the Council of Chief State School Officers about ending pay increases for graduate degrees in teaching, Secretary of Education Arne Duncan issued almost the very same statement.

     

    What does all of this have to do with Sal Khan? Well, nothing... and everything.

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Mar
10
2012

Online assessments become more and more popular not only among distance learning institutions but also among blended and traditional schools. However, when it comes to the online environment, it seems that multiple choice tests are used by the majority of distance learning programs…

effectiveonlineteaching.org/...sessments-of-online-activities
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rubrics assessment onlinelearning

Mar
5
2012

  • It takes a lot of time and effort to provide students with good feedback. Most faculty I know tackle the task seriously and conscientiously. We should be getting a better return on our investment. You’d think as grade-oriented as students are, they would want to do better on subsequent assignments, and would use the teacher feedback to help them accomplish that goal.
Mar
4
2012

  • For those not familiar with Edmodo, in a nutshell it is a microblogging system designed specifically for teachers and students. Using Edmodo teachers can create a microblogging network for their classes. Edmodo allows teachers to create a group specifically for their students and exclude those not invited to the group. Edmodo provides teachers with a place to post assignment reminders, build an event calendar, and post messages to the group. Just as with any good microblogging service users can share links, videos, and images.

This is a group for educators and students interested in incorporating YouTube into instructional settings. In order to weed out spammers, please indicate why you'd like to join the group when requesting access! Thanks, Lucy Gray

groups.diigo.com/...YouTubeEducation
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Mar
3
2012

  • Speaking at the RSA Conference in San Francisco yesterday, researchers at Accuvant Labs presented the results of a three-month security evaluation of Mozilla Firefox, Google Chrome, and Microsoft Internet Explorer. The goal of the study was to determine which browser is the most secure against attack -- an important consideration, given that browsers continue to represent the widest vector for attacks.

     

    The winner: Chrome. Accuvant's analysis concluded that Chrome was, by far, more secure than IE. In turn, IE was found to be somewhat more secure than Firefox.

      • Wireless devices in the classroom threaten to distract student attention but also offer opportunities for student engagement.
      • Faculty use different methods to reduce in-class distractions, up to mandating no use of wireless devices during class sessions.
      • To increase student engagement using wireless devices, faculty employ creative options for making wireless devices part of instruction, from cell phones as clickers to laptops for on-the-fly web research.

      The path of tec

  • Wow! What could be more appealing and hopeful for a change from the harmful direction that education has taken since the No Child Left Behind Act turned the learning process into a gigantic text-consumption and weakness-based test-prep industry? And the expectation that technology was a major answer to this promise of a revolution in personalizing learning made the conference even more appealing.
  • A similar case can be made for the explosion of online courses currently available to school-age students. These courses have great value when not available locally, but they almost always follow a linear, sequential instructional model rather than a more inductive and investigative model of learning. To paraphrase Gertrude Stein, a course is a course is a course, or in education-speak: Standards-driven prescriptive material is geared toward answering the questions at the end of the chapter and taking another achievement test. Skinner's teaching-machine movement failed because we were treating students like Pavlov's dogs. We could face the same consequences with today's technology unless we expand our vision about what personalization could be and how technology can help make it happen.
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