Welcome to the 'beginning' of the 'end', but not the 'end' of what has 'begun'!
This semester I've tried to guide you through what some people consider very complicated topics:
- Navigating through Open Source content,
- Digital books, and
- Mobile devices.
Well, this is our last session, so it's now or never. (After all, your Finals are due by midnight EST Friday, 7/27.) If anyone is having trouble meeting the deadline, just drop me a line and ask for an extension. I've got to complete the grading by Monday, 8/6.
In this, our concluding session, I've included this potpourri of remaining resources that I know to be powerful, useful, and practical. These resources never made it into this semester's weekly sessions either due to the sheer size of the workload per week or b/c I just couldn't find the best fit for them. So, knowing the value of these items I couldn't very well not share them with you. That's why I've added this compilation in Session 10.
As I stated above, your Final Projects will be due by midnight of July 27th. I'll add an additional blog entry for you to post a brief summary of your F.P. later this week where you'll also include the url for the Curriki page where it can be found.
As I was reading through last semester's Final Projects I noticed that some people ran into some techno-trouble uploading material to Curriki, so if you would rather put your material in a Google Shared Doc. and then just place that link into Curriki, then that's fine. Feel free to let me know if you have any questions.
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Let's start this week with a video explaining Project Gutenberg. (If an ad comes up, make sure you skip it.)
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Readings:
- " The App Squad: SLJ's advisors weigh in on kids' book apps
- Student Comprehension of Books in Kindle and Traditional Formats by Michael Milone, a research psychologist and educational writer at Renaissance Learning. He asked students in two fourth-grade classes located in the Upper Midwest to read up to six books from a selected list of a dozen popular fiction titles that included Eleanor Estes's Ginger Pye (Harcourt, 1951), Gary Paulsen's Lawn Boy (Random, 2007), Mary Pope Osborne's Sunset of the Sabertooth The 31 students—who read a total of 135 books, 69 on the Kindle and 66 in print—were asked to alternate between reading half of the books on the Kindle and the other half in a bound, printed format.
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View the Recording
Read the Chat TranscriptFeb 8, 2011: e-Book Lending and Borrowing for Beginners
Webinar
Public Chat Transcript
Public Chat Transcript
Jan 11, 2011: eReader Device Comparison
WebinarPublic Chat Transcript
WebinarPublic Chat Transcript
Watch and listen to: "eBooks, eReaders and the Role of Mobile Devices" and
March 8, 2011: Ereaders in the Classroom
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Kansas State Dept of Ed.
This webpage contains open access resources and digital textbooks that are available within the public domain. They are not copyrighted and may be customized, modified, or combined with other materials.
Enjoy these resources! It was a pleasure working with you this semester. The enthusiasm in some of your posts was contagious. Through the years I've worked with plenty of districts that didn't encourage their employees to strive and reach for new goals. I hope this course has convinced you that over the next few years we're going to see exponential growth in the use of eBooks for all purposes. Education won't be far behind, and you, the participants of this course, will be the leaders of this movement.
=============================================
Kansas State Dept of Ed.
This webpage contains open access resources and digital textbooks that are available within the public domain. They are not copyrighted and may be customized, modified, or combined with other materials.
Enjoy these resources! It was a pleasure working with you this semester. The enthusiasm in some of your posts was contagious. Through the years I've worked with plenty of districts that didn't encourage their employees to strive and reach for new goals. I hope this course has convinced you that over the next few years we're going to see exponential growth in the use of eBooks for all purposes. Education won't be far behind, and you, the participants of this course, will be the leaders of this movement.
6 comments:
Working away on my final project here, but I wanted to share an email I got as a follow up from the midterm project. We have a new class starting next year with no textbooks being provided by the district, so I had done a presentation on CK12 and put together a flextext that could be used.
Hi Amy,
Brett and I have looked at both links you put on sky-drive (three if you count the data base one). The information is awesome. We also went to CK12 and found all types of earth science flex-books/content that could be used as resources for the new Integrated Earth Science course. The web site loads a little slow and every time you go back to the flex-book, it takes that long to load again (minor inconvenience) but other than that, the information is awesome. So, we were thinking we would just put in links via Moodle to certain materials that we want the kids to use. We are also considering giving them the URL for CK12 but a little hesitant due to the overwhelming amount of data.
I want to say THANK YOU both professionally and personally for helping us out with this project.
I am meeting with the science team in August to finalize the flextext that will be used and to go over the mechanics of downloading them to the student devices!
Editing in Curriki question!
I have almost everything set for my project. I created a collection, filled out the content, added a file, and added a link to a video. I was adding standards information from the Wisconsin State Standards still in the content section. I was copying and pasting, and a bunch of formatting showed up. I can't figure out how to get back in to edit the content section, the toolbar doesn't show up where I have the page open! All of the curriki tutorials that I've looked at just start with using the toolbar. I can figure out how to edit the other sections, but not this one.
My project is posted.
http://www.curriki.org/xwiki/bin/view/Coll_Theisena/HighSchoolLibraryOrientationandScavengerHunt?bc=
I run an introduction to the school library every year with a tour and scavenger hunt. I chose to post this because it is a resource that has been requested frequently on LM-NET and I have shared it there. I added a video component which turned out to be very instructional. It is my first video attempt and I plan to go back and re-do it to have a better version available for students during the year. I did learn that our district has not taken any measures to ensure that the iPads they purchased can be used to download video or pictures to our school computers! I'm talking with our principal about that today, so hopefully the tech dept can work on that yet before the school year starts.
I'm heading out for a wedding and know that my internet access will be limited, so I'll be checking back in on Sunday to see everyone's projects!
That is so exciting Amy!!! It's got to feel good to know that your work is already impacting others in a positive way!! Congrats!
For my final project I went back to something I had started last summer, and was never able to follow through on. It is a wiki site designed for my 5th & kindergarten students who work together as buddies throughout the year. I had sort of become overwhelmed with the project, and had consequently put it on hold. This class helped me to better understand more about online learning & how to effectively use digital content. I revised some aspects of my original idea, and am excited to try it out with my students this fall. The link is:
http://susangeidner.wikispaces.com/
I'm looking forward to viewing all the other final projects! It's been a great class!
Oops...forgot to check the follow up email box :)
Susan,
It'll be interesting to see the content get posted over the course of the year by the students! It looks like a nice assortment of content, I especially liked the author links. It should be a great start to your year to have this all set up and ready to go at the start.
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