Tuesday, May 14, 2013

Hums sites to check out




Image above: A life revealed - fascinating! The National Geographic girl. Her eyes have captivated the world since she appeared on the National Geographic cover in 1985. Now here is her story at http://ngm.nationalgeographic.com/2002/04/afghan-girl/index-text


Related links
Geogsplace
Socialsense
Thebarton Senior College Moodle


Follow Spatialworlds on Twitter

Email contact:
malcolm.mcinerney@thebartonsc.sa.edu.au



So much, so little time!


I recently came across a listing of top sites for humanities educators from a site called GoEd http://www.goedonline.com/

I have edited the sites listed to be mainly relevant to humanities adn English teachers. All we need as teachers is the time to get familiar with each of these sites and we certainly would be having some creative teaching going on.


Web 2.0 Tools

Poll Everywhere
An inexpensive and quick alternative for clicker response systems. Create your first poll in 30 seconds without having to sign up. Your students simply text their answer to a predetermined number and, voila! Poll Anywhere is free if your class size is less than 40 students.


Animoto
Use Animoto to easily create presentations and videos with your own images and music, or choose from a library of stock files. Teachers can apply for a free Animoto Plus account.


Wikispaces
With a free option for K-12 teachers, Wikispaces is a great tool for making custom webpages that your students can edit together. You can manage privacy settings, create student accounts without email addresses, embed media and even customize the design of your Wiki pages.


Voicethread
Voicethread’s group conversations are stored and shared in one place, from anywhere in the world. It allows you to create multimedia slideshows with images, videos and documents. Others can view the slides and then leave text, audio or video comments.


Prezi
Prezi is a really neat cloud-based presentation program that allows you to zoom in and out. If you don’t mind your slides being public, you can sign up for a free account with 100MB of storage.


IMDb
Use IMDb, the internet movie database, to see if there are any movies that are relevant to the topic you’re teaching. If you find one, you can also check the rating to make sure it’s appropriate for your classroom.


Quizlet
As one of the largest and most popular flashcard creation websites around, Quizlet allows students and teachers to customize their own “sets” of flashcards. You can manage access to the flashcards you create and share them with your students.


SlideShare
SlideShare is one of the most popular ways to upload and share PowerPoint presentations and other documents. Again, this is a great tool for transferring documents between your home and school computer without having to carry around a flash drive.


ClassMarker
ClassMarker is an online quiz and test creation website. As an educator, you get 100 free tests taken (and graded!) per month.



Informational Resources

CIA Factbook
The CIA World Factbook contains information on the communications, economy, geography, government, history, military, people, transnational issues and transportation for 267 world entities.


Google Scholar
Google Scholar is a simple search engine that specializes in scholarly literature. It allows you to search across many sources including articles, books, court opinions, online repositories, university libraries and more.


Wolfram Alpha
Wolfram Alpha is searchable database of information about government, historical events, political figures, important documents and more.



Current Events

Google News Archive

Time Magazine

New York Times

Newseum
View today’s front page from more than 800 newspapers worldwide. Use this website to demonstrate how different cultures can perceive the same event.


Cagle
A daily compilation of editorial cartoons from around the world that cover current issues and important figures.


Clay Bennett Cartoons Archive
Modern cartoons on a range of topics including individual liberties, global warming, lobby reform, congress and more.



Interactive Timelines

Timerime
Search for pre-made, media-rich timelines or make your own using MP3 audio clips, YouTube videos and more.


X Timeline
Another website that makes it easy to create and share timelines with pictures and videos.


Time Toast
All you need is a valid email address to create interactive timelines that can be shared anywhere on the web.


Tiki Toki
Easily create stunning web-based, sharable timelines with images and video. Tiki Toki also has a group editing feature for collaboration.


Dipity
With Dipity, you can find, create and embed interactive, customizable timelines.


Capzles
Create your own sharable timeline with images, video, audio, Microsoft Word, Microsoft Excel, Microsoft PowerPoint and PDF files.



Printable Maps and Mapping Tools

ScribbleMaps
Easily draw on Google Maps and then share with your students or post to your teacher blog.


QuickMaps
QuickMap’s slogan is “Doodle on Google!” It’s another free and easy way to draw on Google Maps.


Perry-CastaƱeda Library Map Collection
High-quality historic, thematic and topographic maps of the world including Africa, the Americas, Asia, Australia/Pacific, Europe, Middle East, Polar regions, Oceans and United States.


Printable World Maps
Free printable maps of the world’s countries. Each map is a blank outline.


Nat Geo Education: Mapping
Free, printable 1-page maps, printable large-format maps and an online interactive student map.


Mapping History
Animated socio and political maps of 18th and 19th century United States, Europe, Latin America and Africa.


Animaps
Animaps letting you create maps with markers that move, images and text that pop up on cue, and lines and shapes that change over time. Your finalized Animap appears like a video that can be played, paused, slowed down and sped up.


BBC Dimensions
This website takes important places and events, and overlays them onto a map. Just type in a zip code. Use it to show your students how large something like the Great Wall of China or the battle of Stalingrad really is/was!

Thursday, May 2, 2013

The 21st Century learner and curriculum




Image above: A Society and Culture class at Thebarton Senior College.

Related links
Spatialworlds
Geogsplace
Socialsense
Thebarton Senior College Moodle


Follow Spatialworlds on Twitter

Email contact:
malcolm.mcinerney@thebartonsc.sa.edu.au

 What's changed?

This posting explores the issue of where students as learners have changed. Is there such a thing as a 21st Century learner? The research indicates that there is! If we are on about developing a 21st Century curriculum then we must take into account that the learner has changed and think about how the currciulum may be different to accomodate these changes.

These changes may be categorised under the headings of what they require and expect and what they are interested in.

*They require and expect:• not to have to learn “by rote”knowledge. They recognize that knowledge is important but not to be expected to learn chunks of deep knowledge

• respect from their teachers. They consider respect needs to be ‘earnt’ by their teachers

• to learn the skills of knowledge acquisition, analysis and synthesis

• to develop a taste of the ethos and frameworks of disciplines.

• relevance of learning to their life. They ask how the curriculum delivered will prepare them for the real world whilst they are at school and when they leave. They expect real world competencies through their learning

• the freedom to personalise/customise their learning/tasks to meet their personal needs

• their learning to be flexible, self reliant and autonomous

• new technologies to be available to support their learning and collaborative work

• to work collaboratively in the real and virtual space

• be able to meet achievement standards if they work as required

• the opportunity to study in depth a topic/issue they find of interest

• connectivity with their life and their learning experiences.

* They are interested in:

• issues of social justice

• real stories

• connecting with others in the real and virtual space

• using current technology to learn – in particular to enhance connectivity

• being active citizens and make a difference

• embracing cross-cultural competencies – sensitivity to other cultures

• greenness and sustainability through real ecologically responsible acts

• being global in outlook – citizens of the world

• customising their education to their needs – personal pathways

• being a resourceful learner, curious, enquiring, community relevant and learning

beyond the school day.


The 21st Century curriculum needs to be written to ensure that ‘teachable moments’ happen to the maximum! To do so the curriculum should be written to incorporate:

o Flexibility• be flexible to meet the needs of the self-reliant and autonomous learner.

o Multiple literacies• recognise and consider as equally important the range of ‘non-traditional’ literacy’s i.e. visual, financial, health, media, environmental, spatial etc.
To develop cultural literacy and intercultural understanding.

o Orientation
• be thematic in nature, providing guidance via the provision of ‘big ideas’and ‘essential questions’, instead of discreet content alone.

• view all topics studied though the lens of sustainability.

Wednesday, May 1, 2013

2013 faculty plan in Prezi


Image above: The Prezi site

Related links
Spatialworlds
Geogsplace
Socialsense
Thebarton Senior College Moodle


Follow Spatialworlds on Twitter

Email contact:
malcolm.mcinerney@thebartonsc.sa.edu.au

Prezi: Another way to present for and with students

Prezi is a useful way of presenting information and worth a look. As the site says:

"Both teachers and students have become numb to conventional classroom presentations, where they’re confronted with slide after slide containing too much information in quick, disjointed succession.
Prezi’s zooming canvas opens up the classroom to active learning and interactivity, making lessons understandable, memorable, and fun."

To help me learn the program I put our 2013 faculty Plan into the Prezi format. This is the most simplest Prezi possible but shows the abilty of the format to help us focus on content, be creative and visualise information. Click here to go to the Prezi site to view the faculty plan.


Scooping research



Image above: The Scoop.it interface.

Related links
Spatialworlds
Geogsplace
Socialsense
Thebarton Senior College Moodle


Follow Spatialworlds on Twitter

Email contact:  
malcolm.mcinerney@thebartonsc.sa.edu.au

Using Scoop.it to scoop spatial technology

Over the past month I have been using Scoop.it website for my students to research their geographical issues. I continue to be impressed by the potential of this great site to gather sites of interest - many of which I would never have come across by a normal Google search. For quite some time I have been a fan of Dr Seth Dixon's Geographical Education Scoop.it. His Scoop.it continues to feed me some great information and sites every day via an email.

My four Scoop.it topics are Spatial education and technology, Spatial literacy, Geographical thinking, Aborigical culture and Hisgeography. Already I am getting some great feeds (blogs, Instagrams, Twitter feeds, Facebook links and the normal Internet sites) through the Suggested content facility of the Scoop.it site, which is fed through to my topics each day. As well as the automatic Suggested content that appears for review on a daily basis (to bin or scoop), one can add Posts manually to the topic when anything else is found on the Internet of interest to the topic.
As time goes I hope that these Scoop.it topics will grow into really useful curated site as an adjunct to the Spatialworlds blog. I highly recommend Scoop.it as a tool for curating and harvesting sites on whatever takes ones fancy. Feel free to follow my two Scoop.it topics at:
http://www.scoop.it/t/spatial-education-and-technology
http://www.scoop.it/t/spatial-literacy
http://www.scoop.it/t/geographical-thinking
http://www.scoop.it/t/hisgeography
http://www.scoop.it/t/aboriginal-culture