Mel's Teaching Corner

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Diigo: A Storage System

- January 01, 2021

Diigo has several great purposes. To begin, Diigo can be used in the educational world to provide links for students. For example, it could be used for students to find documents, videos, teacher notes, etc. By teachers providing one area where students can find information, this will reduce the frustration students can have when searching several websites for what they need when completing a lesson. Annotating The annotating tool can help teachers point out important parts of a webpage. For example, if you find a great example for your students on a website, and you don't want them searching through a lengthy page, you can annotate the information you want them to view. Overall, you can highlight the important information, and it will show up below the link to the website. Training/Sharing Diigo can be used for training purposes. When someone is creating a training for a group, they could place all the links from the presentation into this library and share the library with the t

Vocaroo: Educational Podcasting

- December 06, 2020

What Can Vocaroo Be Used For? Vocaroo ( https://vocaroo.com/ ) is a tool that can be used to create podcasts. To begin, a podcast is a digital audio file that can be sent to your audience. So, why do you want to consider using podcasting for instruction? To begin, you are very busy. Imagine if you can reduce the number of emails you need to send, or imagine if you can reduce the number of times you need to repeat instructions. A podcast can be used to give instructions about an assignment, or a process that you want the learners to know about. All you need to do is copy the link into your learning management system, or in the chat box of your virtual classroom. Your learners will have the instructions at their fingertips that they can pause, rewind and replay as needed. This frees you up to focus on areas of your instruction that can really help students, such as teaching a student how to do something. Next, you can use podcasting to send announcements to your learners. Yes, it is

Virtual Teaching: Interactive Whiteboard

- October 11, 2020

Interacting with your students in a virtual class can be difficult if you do not have the right tools. In fact, this is a common complaint I see among teachers. For example, Zoom is a great resource to meet with students, but you can only share a screen, use the polling tool, and use the chat. The Zoom resources are meant for webinars not teaching a class. Also, there are resources, such as Blackboard Collaborate, which allow you to use whiteboard tools, polling tools, chat, app sharing, etc..., but great options like this cost money. What do you do when you want to interact with your students for free? Also, how do you interact with your students using platforms, such as Zoom? One option that you could use is https://www.whiteboard.chat/ . In this platform, you have access to the following: Polling Tools: You can ask students practice questions. This allows you quickly check how students are doing with the material. Do you need to spend more time on a certain topic before moving on?

Weebly: How It Can Be Used

- September 28, 2020

Weebly Example: https://www.lessonsforschool.com/ Weebly is a great tool to use when creating a website . This tool is user-friendly with a drag and drop method integration for building a website . Also, there are various Apps that can be included in your website, such as social sharing , ecommerce, forms , etc. Due to how Weebly functions, it could be used in the educational world through creating a virtual textbook, a school website, a class page , a class project, etc. Also, Weebly could be used for training purposes. Each page can represent a new type of training for a business. Next , Weebly could be used for personal reasons, such as sharing stories or taking notes . Due to the variety of uses of Weebly, it will impact learning because you can ... embed material which provides fewer clicks outside of the website. integrate forms which provides the learner the opportunity to take quizzes or complete surveys. link to social media which allows the learner to f

Gamification: Will This Be the Future of the Classroom?

- September 21, 2020

Education Reforms Fail Reforms continue to fail in schools, but to change these failures, educators need to personalize their classrooms, so students can get excited about what they are learning, so the conversation continues outside of the classroom (Watson, 2014). One way that this can be done is through gamification. Although the term gamification is often confused with games, there are differences. “Games-based learning... uses exiting games to enhance the learning process” (Ling, 2018, p.142), such as Minecraft and World of Warcraft (Ling, 2018) whereas gamification applies “...game mechanics and game design techniques to non-game environments... to help achieve...goals...,” and "...to guide learners through the content without changing the content” (Boskic & Hu, 2015, p.741). “The needs of modern learners have changed in accordance with the development of technology and the evolution of the learning environment” (Kocadere & Çağlar, 2018, p.1). Gamification has made h

How to Create Simple Simulations

- September 09, 2020

Do you ever have an idea that you want to implement as a simulation in your class, but you can't find what you want online? If this is the case, you can create your own "Simple Simulations" for any subject. You could create a simulation for solving math problems, you could create a story with moving parts, you could create a virtual lab, etc... The options are endless. For example, check out the Chemistry videos below to see what can be done. To be able to create your own simulations, you will need to start with a plan. What do you want on each slide? What text will go on each slide? Do you want a moving part on each slide? Will there be any links on each slide? Once your game plan is developed, you will need to create GIF's for each moving component you will want in your simulation. If you are unfamiliar with how to create a GIF, you will want to check out the video below. Once you have your GIF's created, you will need to add your GIF's to the correct slide

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