5 Great TED Talks on The Importance of Listening

September 12, 2014
Listening is an important skill that, unfortunately, is not given its due worth in school curricula. Listening is the key to understanding, a better understanding. It is a way of communicating and appreciating the world around us. The kind of listening am talking about here is what sound expert Julian Treasure called conscious listening. This is a mental process that consciously receives and decode auditory input. Stephen Covey talks about empathic listening (from empathy) and listed it as the fifth habit of highly effective  people. Empathic listening according to Stephen is an entirely different kind of listening; 'it is listening with the intent to understand, to really understand'. He added "empathic listening gets inside another person's frame of reference. You look out through it, you see the world the way they see the world, you understand their paradigm, you understand how they feel." (p. 251 in The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People).

Teaching our kids and students to listen both empathically and consciously is integral to the healthy growth of their intellectual, social, and psychological personality.To help you learn more about the importance of listening and how to do it much better, I am sharing with you  this wonderful selection of 5 TED talks all revolving around listening. Enjoy

1- Ways to Listen better

2- Want to help someone? Shut up and listen

3- Listening to global voices

4- Listen, learn then lead

5- How to truly listen

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3 Easy Ways to Integrate iPad into Your Google Classroom

September 11, 2014
Now that the Google Classroom is officially released to all Google Apps for Education accounts, those of you using iPad in their instruction would probably be wondering about possible ways to integrate this new tool with iPad. The video tutorial below will guide you through the process of how students and teachers can use Google Class on their iPad to create and turn in assignments.

Related: Teachers' Guide to Google Classroom

The process is pretty simple and is made of three main steps:

• Students use the suggested iPad apps to do their assigned work
• They then export that work to their Google Drive
• They turn it to Google Classroom by downloading it from Google Drive.

Here is a visual illustration of this process:

In this video tutorial, Greg Kulowiec  demonstrates this process using the following examples of assignments and apps students can work on:

• Use Explain Everything to create a screencast and turn it to Google Classroom
• Create video content through iMovie
• Use Book Creator to create an ePub file or a digital file book .
• Annotate a PDF using Notability app and turn it in to Google Classroom
• Turn in a written assignment as a Google Doc using the Google Doc app.

Watch the video to learn more

To learn more about iPads and Google Apps, EdTechTeacher will be offering a Google Apps & iPads Pre-Conference workshop at their November 12-14 iPad Summit in Boston where Greg Kulowiec will be the keynote speaker.

Courtesy of Edudemic

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11 Great YouTube Channels for Teachers

September 11, 2014
YouTube is undoubtedly one of the most popular video hosting platforms in history. The stats released by its administration a few months ago are just mind blowing. With more than 1 billion monthly visitors and over 6 billion hours of video being watched each month (which equals almost an hour for every person on Earth) and an average of 100 hours of video uploaded every minute, YouTube sets a record of being the first audio visual media with the largest reach ever.

As such, YouTube is definitely a treasure trove for us in education. It provides us with a varied and rich source of videos to use in class with students. However, searching for educational content on a platform that hosts millions of videos is akin to looking for a needle in a haystack. This is why curated lists such as the one below proves helpful especially in helping busy teachers have easy and instant access to  handy YouTube channels that feature interesting educational content relevant for classroom use. To this end, I compiled this list that comprises some of the popular channels on YouTube that teachers and students can use for educational purposes.

1- Crash Course

In this channel, teachers John and Hank Green provide some excellent video explanations and tutorials on a variety of topics related to World History, Biology, Literature, Ecology, Chemistry, and US History.

2- TED Ed

You are probably already familiar with this channel. TED Ed features some of the best video lessons created by talented educators and in collaboration with professional animators.

3- Shots of Awe

With over 151 thousand subscribers, Shots of Awe is one of the most popular YouTube channels for academics, researchers, students and science lovers. Each week, Jason Silva uploads a video that takes viewers into the miraculous depths of human knowledge. He covers topics related to the evolution of human intelligence, complex systems of society, technology and human existence and discusses the truth and beauty of science in a form of existential Jazz.

4- Asap Science

Asap Science is a Youtube channel dedicated for everything related to science and scientific  concepts. It mixes fun and learning in such a way that the explanation of scientific phenomena becomes a pleasure to watch.

5- SciShow

SciShow is another awesome YouTube channel I repeatedly featured here in this blog. SciShow contains videos that discuss scientific and historical concepts.

6- Keith Hughes

Keith's videos are really fun to watch. His channel HipHughes History features a "a series of upbeat, personable and educational lectures designed for students and lifelong learners. Videos primarily focus on US History and Politics but span across World History and general interest. So sit back and enjoy the antics of HipHughes as he melds multimodality into a learning experience."

7-  Khan Academy

The popular Khan Academy channel provides video lessons on a variety of topics and across different disciplines namely science, math, physics, biology and many more

8- NASA

NASA's YouTube channel includes hundreds of videos on space exploration, scientific discovery, and aeronautics research.

9- Smarter EveryDAY

Smarter EveryDAY is a wonderful channel where students get to learn about science through explanations of common sense phenomena.

10- Mental Floss

This is similar to Shots of Awe I mentioned above. It is a weekly show where John provides  some excellent videos on challenging topics and big questions.

11- Veritasium 

 "Veritasium is a science video blog featuring experiments, expert interviews, cool demos, and discussions with the public about everything science."

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3 Things Every Student Should Be Able to Do On Google Presentation

September 10, 2014
Google Presentation is one of the powerful presentation tools that students can use to easily create and share slideshows. Its simplicity and its practical performance features makes it an ideal tool for using in class. Besides the different guides and tutorials I published on Google Presentation, today I decided to sketch out 3 main things every student should be able to do. To this end, I am drawing on Susan Oxnevad 's videos that are included in this wonderful interactive ThingLink. Enjoy

1- Using the research tool in Presentations
Google Presentation has a built-in research tool that students can use to conduct a Google search without having to leave the page. They can also narrow down their search to look for only images, scholarly articles, quotes or anything else. Watch Susan's video to learn more about how students can use this integrated research tool to construct their knowledge.

2- Insert a Youtube video into Google Presentations
Videos can also be part of the content of the presentations students create on Google Presentation. There are two ways to insert a video in the presentation. The first one is through doing a YouTube search from within the presentation and the second one is by providing the URL of the YouTube video. Watch this video to learn more on how to insert a video in Google Presentation.

3- Insert an image in a Google Presentation
Students can easily insert images into their presentations using Google's search tool. The good thing about this service is that it helps students look for copyright friendly images. Watch this video to learn how you can use this tool.

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A Handy Visual Featuring The 7 Learning Styles

September 10, 2014
During the first month of the new school year, teachers get to know their students in terms of their learning levels, where they are at with their learning, their strengths and weaknesses, and, most importantly, their learning styles. I emphasized the last point because it is the key to a successful learning journey for students. When teachers identify the plurality of the learning styles in their classes they become in a better position to cultivate a learning environment where every student have their share in the learning taking place in class.

One of the most popular theories that inform pedagogy in this regard is Howard Gardner's multiple intelligences theory. This theory posits the existence of seven different areas of intelligence that characterize the learning style one is more comfortable with. The visual below provides a very great overview of these 7 learning styles. If you want to learn more about Howard's multiple intelligences theory I would highly recommend his seminal work "Multiple Intelligences: New Horizons in Theory and Practice".


Source: Blue Mango Learning

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Awesome Chromebook Comparison Chart for Schools and Teachers

September 10, 2014
Chromebooks are a very good and cheap solution for integrating tech particularly in schools running 1:1 programs. The great thing about Chromebooks is not only their lightweight but also their simplicity and practical performance features. Several school districts, particularly in this new school year, are opting for them. So if you or your school is planning to use them, you will probably need to see this collection of excellent video tutorials that provide a general overview of the different features and functionalities embedded in Chromebooks.

There is also this wonderful comparison chart created by software developer Danny Tuppeny in which he compares a set of variables for choosing the right Chromebook for you. These variables include :"brand, processors, specs and features like RAM or touchscreens, screen size, country-wise availability, battery, weight and more." 
Click here to access the full version of this chart.

Courtesy of Life Hacker

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6 Great Things You Can Do with Google Classroom

September 10, 2014
Google has recently announced the official release of Google Classroom in more than 40 languages. Google Classroom is a new tool in Google Apps for Education that helps teachers create and organize assignments quickly, provide feedback efficiently, and easily communicate with their classes.
As a teacher, here are some of the key features you need to know about Google Classroom.

Creating Google Class for your class

Google Class allows you to create multiple virtual classes for your students. Within these classes, you will be able to share announcements with students, create and distribute assignments with them, grade and provide feedback on students work, engage in whole or private discussions with students, and many more. For each class you create, a class code will be generated for students to use to access the class.

Watch this video to learn how to create a class in Google Classroom

Assignments
One of the neat features of Google Classroom is the Assignment functionality. Teachers can use this service to create and post assignments to their students. To share an assignment, just click on the assignment tab and provide a name for it, a short description and a due date. You can embed docs, Google docs, and YouTube videos in your assignments.

Google Drive integration
Google Classroom is seamlessly integrated with Google Drive making thus teachers' work way easier and more productive. When you create a Google Classroom, a folder named "classroom" is automatically created in your Google Drive account and the same happens in students accounts when they join in your class. Not only that, each new class you create will have a subfolder created for it by default in your Drive. And when you create an assignment, a subfolder is created for each assignment in your particular class to gather all students work handed in via Google classroom.

Sharing Assignments with students

Google Classroom has a wonderful feature for sharing assignments with students. When you create an assignment in Google Docs and upload it to your Google Class, you will be provided with three sharing options: first, students can view file, second, students can edit file, and third which is quite handy is to allow Google Class to make a copy for each student in class which saves you the hassle of making and distributing duplicate copies to students

When students log in to their Google Class, they will be able to see any pending assignments right from their home screen. To open the assignment , students can click on the title of the assignment or click on the link next to it to open it directly in Google Drive. Alternatively, students can find the assignment in their Drive under the subfolder that is automatically created for the assignment in the Classroom Folder.

Collecting assignments
When students finsih working on their assignments , they can click on the "turn in" button to submit their work. They can also leave a comment under the assignment for teacher to read. Once the assignment is submitted, students have the option to unsubmit their work by clicking on the "unsubmit" button. This will allow them to edit their work before resubmitting it back to the teacher. Even after the work has been submitted, students have the ability to post a comment under their assignment to inform their teachers about, for instance, any critical issues with their assignments.

Grading Assignments
Once assignments are turned in, teachers can log in to their Google Class and see the number of students who submitted their work and those who did not. Teachers can also grade students work right in Google Classroom by either choosing one of the numerical values provided there or by providing a customized value or by uploading grades from a CSV file. Grades will show up in students accounts in Google Class.

Watch the video tutorial below ( by EdTech Teacher) to learn about these and many other features that you can use on Google Classroom.

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