From Dennis Zions:

1. I am thrilled to be in this course and especially grateful for this resource thread. I hope to share alot of great resources with you and add onto my own growing list. Below you will find a link to an online presentation I did recently on using technology in the classroom for the international schools in South Korea. (This is where I presently live and work if you are curious)

The presentation is in the form of a newspaper called Technology Times.  In particular, you should find the section on resources that I have found with my bumbling on the Internet or most likely stolen from other peoples' lists such as wonderful people like yourself! I hope you find some of them useful.

Link to my current list of resources:http://www.scribd.com/doc/50487757/Korcos-Newspaper

2. Hey everyone. In my search to find a web site builder for my final independent project, I came across the following site below. The writer outlines and even reviews in short, 35 web site builders that are all -free- (well almost are free and rest are free enough minus a few payable addons to create a decent website). As well, you may find it useful like me to read the comments at the end for more critiques and at least 5 more free builders are mentioned.

Not sure if all of you are beyond the research stage and about to create your websites like me (or you're probably already well into making your sites!), but you might find the link useful if not for the final project but for future projects in other courses or other.

http://www.1stwebdesigner.com/design/best-web-builders-create-free-website/

3. If you (or any other teachers) are looking for a general framework for you unit planning to help implement TIG  and other lessons / activities for the sake of guiding students into taking action, you could check out Dr. Larry Benzce's  WISE approach.  It is oriented towards science but the resourceful teacher could easily apply it to other subject strands.

WISE website
http://webspace.oise.utoronto.ca/~benczela/WISE_Activism.html

(Which is a part of a bigger framework STEPWISE http://webspace.oise.utoronto.ca/~benczela/STEPWISE_R&D.html

4. In starting the partner assignment for the creation of a course, my mind drifted to a general methodology for implementing technology into the classroom that I have studied about in two previous courses (and probably many of you)...TPACK!

If you are unfamiliar with TPACK, it is basically a overlapping framework of three important basal "zones" for teachers to consider in the creation of units/lessons and also entire courses. They are technological knowledge, pedagogical knowledge and content knowledge. (I think the names pretty much spell out their meaning). Then...teachers should also consider how any two of these three overlap with each other as well as all three. So they also need to consider how to weave their elements together in directions of technological content knowledge, technological pedagogy, pedagogic content knowledge ...etc.

Here is the general site- to review / get you started http://www.tpck.org/

5. And if you want to consider the theory behind in more detail / get other insights, here are some journals that you could check out:

Koehler, M. J., & Mishra, P. (2009). What is technological pedagogical content knowledge? Contemporary Issues in Technology and Teacher Education, 9(1). Retrieved from http://www.citejournal.org/vol9/iss1/general/article1.cfm

Koehler, M. J., & Mishra, P. (2005). What happens when teachers design
educational technology? The development of technological pedagogical content
knowledge. Journal of Educational Computing Research, 32(2), 131–152.

6. In my further browsing for some neat tools to use for the final project (and future developments), I found this site that lists a number of 2.0 tools in on handy "clickable" page. You may already know about most of them but there could still be a few worthy of being added to your own lists. Personally, Iike the Wallwisher one. It looks like a cool alternative way to get people to drop comments for some topic in your blog or webpage. Going to try using it in my final project. In any case, I hope the link is handy for any of your needs or generating more ideas. This is one thing I love about technology...it keeps (endlessly) bringing new ideas and tools to add onto your list of teaching approaches and structures!

http://edudemic.com/2010/07/the-35-best-web-2-0-classroom-tools-chosen-by-you/

David St. Germain
Last semester one of the courses I was teaching was IGCSE Business Studies (grade 11). I found that there were quite a few nice resources on the internet to supplement lessons. I’m not sure how many in this class teach any business subjects, but these may also be useful if you find yourself covering a business class. Although these sites were developed for the British curriculum, many of the materials can be used in Ontario classes

IGCSE Business Studies: This site has many worksheets, activities, case studies and practice exams. http://www.igcsebusinessstudies.com
Business Studies Online:  This site has various resources, but I specifically used it for the games. It has games based on the topics in the course and I found that the students actually enjoyed playing them. Home page http://www.businessstudiesonline.co.uk
Games - http://www.businessstudiesonline.co.uk/live/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=35&Itemid=23
Dinesh Bakshi: This site has notes, worksheets, quizzes, etc for various business related courses. http://www.dineshbakshi.com

Meredith Snyder
For anyone interested in children's literature, child-lit is a tremendous resource. It's an e-mail discussion list that brings together teachers, scholars, authors, librarians, parents, and anyone interested in children's books, including top professionals in the field. It's home to lively, interesting, and informative conversation. The contents of the list depend entirely on what members are posting, but it's consistently top-quality. http://www.rci.rutgers.edu/~mjoseph/childlit/about.html
Posts include:

- Questions from teachers looking for resources
- Respectful answers from the group
- Information about forthcoming books
- Book reviews
- Thematic discussions
- Calls for papers for conferences and journals
- Calls for applications for research fellowships in children's literature
... and much, much more.

I know e-mail lists are somewhat out of fashion now that there is so much content available on blogs and websites, but I've never found a children's literature website that comes close to matching child-lit in terms of diversity, quality, and enthusiasm

Cara Singh
Thought I would share one of my favourite educational online resources, Facing the Future. http://www.facingthefuture.org/

They have some downloadable lessons (appropriate for grades 4 through to 12 - and they are AWESOME) and an amazing newsletter that you can subscribe to.
I've used their lessons in the past. They're a great launchpad for units, subsequent lessons, and great discussions.

Nita Shori

1. Here's another program that offers subsidies for school and classroom social action projects driven by students and provides a showcase for the action:
http://imagine-action.ca/

2. A resource I have recently discovered and find great potential in:

http://www.technologyintegrationineducation.com/

The website: TechnologyIntegrationInEducation also has sections for community building, newscasts and events information.  It requires sign-up using a simple form. There is a resource section containing videos, audiobooks, website links and podcasts. The website sometimes links to external sites for a resource list. For instance, the following website linked to podcasts contains a plethora of audio content including Aesop's Fables, Shakespeare's poetry, Mythology, Art, Ralph Waldo Emerson's Essays and much more:
http://www.learnoutloud.com/contents/All-LearnOutLoud.coms-Podcasts/9/21

3. Another website that I find helpful as a Professional Learning Community is:
http://teacher20.com/

It is good for collaboration with other educators who share similar interests. This network is a fairly new adventure. A previous, well-established forum that works on a similar basis is:  http://www.classroom20.com/

Rosanna Myler
The site below is a link from the website How It's Made (a popular television show on The Discovery Channel). This link focuses on Gadgets and Technology. For example, it provides videos on specific topics such as Entertainment and Health Technology. Other interesting features is a Top 10 section on topics such as Cell phone Technologies and Hackers.

http://science.discovery.com/issue/gadgets-tech/

Lisa Langley
A colleague of mine forwarded this site to me, and I thought I would share
Directory of Learning Tools 2011 - http://www.c4lpt.co.uk/Directory/index.html
This site has links to many learning resources that educators and students could both benefit from.  Many of the ones discussed on BlackBoard and in the various Forums have been listed here.  Also, many of these resources can be found in the Web Resources section of the main course site (http://astralsite.com/1799/resources.html).
A sample of the information you will find here includes:
• Instructional Tools
• Social & Collaboration spaces
• Document & Presentation Tools
• Blogging, Web & Wiki Tools
• Personal Productivity Tools
• Many others
Hope you find this helpful in your life and work.

Lea Konforte
Randy Pausch, a terminally ill professor, is  famous for his last lecture titled : "Really achieving your childhood dreams". He ought to be just as famous for helping create Alice software. Alice is a free educational software that teaches students computer programming in a 3 D environment. It is extremely user friendly and helps to create stories, animation, etc. It  is also geared towards lowering initial apprehensions learners have with computer programming.

Here is the link  http://www.alice.org/

Carla DiFilippo
1.This is a great resource showing what it would be like to have a learning disability related to reading, writing, attention and math. I used it in a presentation for a masters course on the brain and how we learn. I have also seen it used in special ed PD sessions. Few teachers actually know what it's like to have a learning disability, therefore, this resource provides us with the students' perspective.

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/misunderstoodminds/experiences/

2. This is a great resource and really they are just fun to watch! This is one of my personal favourites; (Ken Robinson says schools kill creativity).
http://www.ted.com/talks/ken_robinson_says_schools_kill_creativity.html

 3. Have you been to http://www.sexualityandu.ca/  It's an AWESOME site that I use in my health classes. It's geared towards students from grades 7-11 and it's Canadian. There are teacher and parent sections as well. It's a great resource.

Vanessa Chaperlin
TIG is a global online community for youth to share and discuss global issues. Many projects and programs have started from youth connecting on this forum. TIG provides the space for the active citizen/ educator to take action with others alike!
TIG -http://www.tigweb.org   Let me know if you get involved.

Gus Bougadis

1. Below you will find my two favorite educational resources, a brief description of each and the links to the resources.
The first resource is called “Delicious” and is a social bookmarking system that allows you to save all your bookmarks online and to share them with other people. This allows the users to create a bank of resources at the same time. Imagine all the teachers in your department having access to the same educational resources!

The second resource is “Bloom's Digital Taxonomy” by Andrew Churches. Many educational institutions ask that teachers use Bloom’s to help facilitate higher order learning skills. However, the old Bloom’s Taxonomy did not take into account the new technologies, processes and actions associated with them or the needs of students who have grown up in the digital age. Churches explains how to use Bloom’s Taxonomy for the digital age and provides practical suggestions and educational resources when implementing technology to facilitate the use of higher order thinking skills.

2. "Delicious is a Social Bookmarking service, which means you can save all your bookmarks online, share them with other people, and see what other people are bookmarking. It also means that we can show you the most popular bookmarks being saved right now across many areas of interest. In addition, our search and tagging tools help you keep track of your entire bookmark collection and find tasty new bookmarks from people like you".
http://www.delicious.com/

"Bloom's Taxonomy and Bloom's Revised Taxonomy are key tools for teachers and instructional designers. Benjamin Bloom published the original taxonomy in the 1950's and Lorin Anderson in 2000. Since the most recent publication of the taxonomy there have been many changes and development that must be addressed. Bloom's Revised Taxonomy was updated to account for the new behaviours, actions and learning opportunities emerging as technology advances and becomes more ubiquitous. Bloom's Revised Taxonomy accounts for many of the traditional classroom practices but does not account for the new technologies and the processes and actions associated with them, nor does it do justice to the “digital children”, or as Marc Prensky describes them the “Digital Natives”.

An increasing influence on learning is the impact of collaboration in its various forms. These are often facilitated by digital media and are increasingly a feature of our digital classrooms. This taxonomy is not about the tools and technologies, these are just the medium, instead it is about using these tools to achieve, recall, understanding, application, analysis, evaluation and creativity".

3. Educational  Origami:
http://edorigami.wikispaces.com/Bloom's+Digital+Taxonomy

4. I would like to recommend to you one of my favorite resources, TED.com  TED.com is an excellent resource that spans a myriad of topics and themes. TED consists of a number of 20 min lectures by some of the greatest minds and innovators today. The goal of TED is the spreading of ideas by providing access to the world’s most inspiring individuals free of cost. There are more than 900 TED talks with more being added each week.
 http://www.ted.com

5. Additionally, I would recommend the Khan Academy to anyone teaching Math
http://www.ted.com/talks/salman_khan_let_s_use_video_to_reinvent_education.html

Ivy Asamoah
I'd like to introduce you to two resources if you don't already know about them already:
PBS Teachers and National Institutes of Health (NIH).  Both are amazing resources that I use almost daily with my clients to do health teaching on a variety of topics.  With PBS, I often download the videos on health related topics and use these on my Laptop or Ipad to add variety during my home visit with the client.  Many of my clients are lower literacy levels so the information is comprehensible and accessible to them.
http://www.pbs.org/teachers/classroom/9-12/health-fitness/resources/
National Institutes of Health is a dynamic website when it comes to the content they offer.  If you browse around the site you will find they offer web tutorials that teach clients about complex health messages and procedures that are often difficult to understand.  This site is more geared to adults but is still valuable in the context of online education.  Both are worth a browse! Enjoy.... http://health.nih.gov/

Kathryn Moore

Check this out:
Special Needs Assistive Technology Blogs - http://livebinders.com/play/play_or_edit?id=2118
Perhaps you have seen something along these lines, in terms of the format for this collection, however it's new to me, and very cool. And, it's FREE.  It is called a "binder" by LiveBinders, which is a place to organize, store and share resources.  There are tutorials, webinars and videos, as well as Featured BInders, many of which relate to education.  Just in browsing I saw many special education binders, one on dyslexia, another on Autism Spectrum Disorders.  There are binders of favourite quotes related to education, ipads in schools, teaching history, science, grade one...well, you get the idea.

The Special Needs Assistive Technology Blogs, linked above, I found to be extremely valuable.  I had no idea there were so many blogs which are relevant to my particular placement with students who all require assistive technology devices, and I will recommend this binder to my colleagues in September.  Many of them feature not only descriptions of the technology, but tutorials in order to learn how to use them as well as the pros and cons.  One of my goals for the upcoming school year is to get more technology in the classrooms of students with special needs at our school, and the resources collected here will certainly help. I hope that you find something interesting in the binders, too.

August 2011