10 Ways You Can Use Podcasts in Your Course to Engage Students — from barbihoneycutt.com by Barbi Honeycutt, Ph.D.

Excerpt:

Have you used podcasts in your courses yet? If not, you might want to consider it! Podcasts can be an excellent tool to add to your lesson to enhance a message, present more in-depth perspectives, and offer a different medium for students to engage with the course content.

And, podcasts are popular! There are more than 630,000 podcasts representing a variety of topics: current issues, education, writing, research, science, leadership, politics, management, business, skill development, hobbies, etc. The list just goes on and on.

I’m almost positive there is at least one episode in one podcast somewhere you could integrate into your course. And if there isn’t, then you and your students could create one!

 

Best Restorative Justice Practices and Sites for Educators — from techlearning.com by Diana Restifo
Best practices, resources, guides, sites, and more for implementing restorative justice in schools

Excerpt:

In recent years, the conversation around school discipline has shifted from the punitive-based approach to an admittedly more complex, holistic approach known as restorative justice (RJ) or restorative practices (RP). Using carefully facilitated conversations, students, teachers, and administrators work together to solve behavior problems in schools. There may still be suspensions or expulsions—but as a last resort, not first.

The following articles, videos, guides, professional development opportunities, and research are a great starting point for educators and administrators to learn what it takes to institute restorative practices in their schools—and why it matters.

 

 

Building Confident Learners Means Valuing Student Questions — from buildingconfidentlearners.com by Bill Ferriter

This book is dedicated to Mr. Ferriter -- for inspiring me to ask questions about the world!

A great list of questions!

 

Nice work by IFF for early childhood learning spaces in MI

Excerpt from the IFF website:

Learning Spaces
IFF Learning Spaces aims to increase capacity and improve access to quality early childhood education (ECE) in Detroit, MI and Southeast Grand Rapids, MI.

The free program offers community-based ECE providers:

  1. Grants and consulting services to improve ECE facilities and transform spaces into safe and inspiring learning environments, laying the foundation for positive early childhood experiences.
  2. Technical assistance

Given COVID-19 and its long-term implications, IFF experts are on the ground with Detroit- and Southeast Grand Rapids-based ECE providers to assess facilities and provide funding to align with mandated state guidelines.

 

The Michigan Learning Channel is now available through your antenna on ALL Michigan PBS stations! 

The weekday summer 2021 schedule for the Michigan Learning Channel

 

HOW SCHOOLS ARE REWRITING THE RULES ON CLASS TIME FOR STUDENTS—AND EVEN DITCHING GRADE LEVELS — from wsj.com by Yoree Koh
Educators are testing competency-based education, a form of personalized learning that emphasizes mastery of skills over hours spent in a classroom

 

 

Top 10 Free Coding Resources for Students — from gocoderz.com

Excerpt:

With computer science and technology being such a crucial part of student’s future success, it’s important that every student receives equitable access to programs and resources that can help them build their coding and programming knowledge early on. Exposure to coding resources increases student interest in computer science and technology careers and provides them with foundational knowledge that they can improve and refine as their education progresses to be successful in these future professions.

 

 

 

Fintropolis is an educational Minecraft world that teaching middle schoolers finance — from pixelkin.org

Excerpt:

Two years ago, Ally Financial, a financial services company, hired four interns from Historically Black Colleges and Universities through their Moguls in the Making program to promote financial literacy in younger students. The four college students, Erin Martin (Alabama A&M), Earl Perry and Keishon Smith (Florida A&M), and DeMari Tyner (North Carolina A&T) designed Fintropolis, a world in Minecraft, available now for free in Minecraft and Minecraft: Education Edition.

Also see:

Learn about life-boosting financial skills, including careers & jobs, taxes, budgeting, savings, credit, identity protection and investing.

 

Amazon Web Services, Arizona State to offer for-credit cloud education to 10K high schoolers — from highereddive.com by Natalie Schwartz

Excerpt:

Amazon Web Services is working with the nonprofit National Education Equity Lab to offer cloud computing classes to high school students in low-income districts, the company announced Wednesday.

 

 

Transforming the classroom with augmented learning — from thetechedvocate.org by Matthew Lynch

Excerpt:

Forbes documented the many ways that augmented reality (AR) has come to life in recent years. They list several award-winning apps that use AR. A few are:

  • The “Gatwick Airport Passenger” App, which helps passengers navigate the airport;
  • The “Dulux Visualizer” App, which  lets you virtually scan and paint your room any color you choose;
  • “Envisioned by the Mine” App, which lets you put 3D images of any type of accessory or furnishing in your home that Lowe’s offers;
  • “Sephora Virtual Artist”, which allows you to “put makeup on” without actually touching brush to face;
  • “Accuvein”, which doctors and nurses use to scan a patient’s vein network (it reduces escalations by 45%);
  • And, of course, there are apps like the “BIC DrawyBook App” just for fun.

But what about the classroom? Can we see a future in transforming the classroom with augmented learning?

From DSC:
Along the lines of developing creativity with edtech…

I saw another item recently about Book Creator, something that’s made this blog before. I love that type of tool because it promotes creativity, unleashes a student’s imagination, promotes their artwork and writing/storytelling and their musical or acting abilities, and it develops skills in design and developing multimedia-based artifacts. For teachers, it could be a nice project-based learning exercise. 

I asked our youngest daughter if she would like to use it…we’ll see. You can get a free account that allows you to publish up to 40 books. (Plus there is pricing for schools and districts.)

And who knows…? This type of thing might just produce the next J.K. Rowling or a J.J. Abrams.

Book Creator -- check it out

Book Creator -- check it out

Book Creator -- check it out

 

 

Reimagining Education: What to Keep/What to Ditch — from techlearning.com by Matthew X. Joseph
When reimagining education, the focus needs to be on finding and keeping the best learning practices

 We have a unique opportunity to look at programmatic and philosophical shifts to promote energetic and curious learners. 

 

Reading Wikipedia in the Classroom is the Wikimedia Foundation’s flagship teacher training program, helping both educators and students to develop vital media and information literacy skills for the 21st century, including:

  • Understanding how information is produced
  • How to access and evaluate content online
  • How to understand biases and knowledge gaps in the information they consume

 

 
 
 
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