Zite vs. Flipboard

We were lucky enough to have John Evans stop by our classroom earlier this week. Although our class was only fifty minutes long, and I was trying to balance listening to him and watching the women's gold medal curling match from the Olympics, There were a number of useful tips and tools I was able to learn from him.

The two I would like to focus on today are Flipboard and Zite. Both apps (as my primary use is on my trusty iPad) are essentially e-magazines that can be personalized by allowing you to follow specific categories of your choosing.

I spent roughly an hour on each site, flipping through the articles, playing with the customization and downloading storage apps including Pocket and Evernote. After the couple hours of tinkering Zite was the app that was left standing. There were two main reasons I decided to keep Zite (to which I will admit I'm an addict):

1. I'm a sucker for a nice layout. The two sites were close in this race, but I found Zite easier to navigate and preferred the page layout to Flipboard.

2. Zite allows you to give feedback of the articles you read in an effort to pinpoint exactly what your interests are. Both Zite and Flipboard allow you to personalize your newsfeed by choosing categories, but only Zite allows you to ask for more articles that are similar, or ask that similar articles be removed from your newfeed.

Here are some of the articles I found on Zite for you to enjoy!

The Flipped Classroom Explained
http://www.educatorstechnology.com/2014/02/flipped-classroom-visually-explained.html

5 Reasons Your Portfolio Should Be Online
http://connectedprincipals.com/archives/10214

How to Protect Students While Integrating Social Media in the Classroom
http://www.emergingedtech.com/2014/02/how-to-protect-students-while-integrating-social-media-in-classroom-instruction-and-assignments/

The Power of Social Media

The power of social media is truly amazing. At this very moment on my Facebook feed are neknomination videos from people across the globe. Okay well maybe those videos aren't a great example of how power social media can be but it just goes to show how quickly things can spread when they go viral. With all the power that social media holds means that users must be taught how to harness this power safely and responsibly. Although it should not solely be the responisbility of teachers to educate students on how to safely and responisbly use social media, they should educate their students when given the opportunity, especially those who are incorporating social media into their classrooms.

Here are my three favorite social media uses that teachers can use as tools for social media education!

3. With all the neknomination videos surfacing throughout the world, some have chose to encourage others to get out there are and help the less fortunate. There are tons of these videos out there but this was the first I saw.



2. Bell Let's Talk - Bell's mental health awareness campaign grew again this past years raising over $5 million.

1. These Ontario teachers who posted this picture and within two weeks had over 90,000 retweets!

Classroom Blog

The more I getting the hang of blogging the more I am able to see the benefits it can have in the classroom. I am not going to lie when I first began blogging for my ICT course I was only doing it because it seemed like the option that involved the least work to gain the credit, but as familiarize myself with the concept I see that I chose an assignment that has the ablility to shape the communication platform in my classroom. I believe, especially for teachers who do not have a classroom website, that blogging is one of the most effective strategies to stay in constant communication with parents. Creating an effective classroom blog would only require 1-2 posts per week (minimum) and could be as simple as letting parents know what is going on in your classroom for the week, if there students need it bring anything for class, and any upcoming tests or assignments that are coming up.  Although I encourage the integration of a blog into your classroom, make sure that if you choose to do this you must commit and keep your blog updated or the communication you intend will turn into parent frustration!

The "Flipped Classroom"

Grade 10 Science. Seems like a simple enough topic to teach right? Wrong. During my first student teaching placement I volunteered to take over a Grade 10 Science classroom because I figured the material couldn't be too complex. Very early into my teaching I found that trying to recall material that I haven't so much as thought about in seven years proved to be rather difficult. In order to brush up on my balancing chemical equation skills I turned to the trust Khan Academy videos on YouTube. After my student teaching I never really thought about those videos again, that is until today. I began to dig deeper into the Khan Academy, its foundation and pedagogy. Founder Salman, presents the idea of the "Flipped Classroom" where the students learn at their own pace and level while the teacher acts more like a tutor than a lecturer. This style of learning is dependant on a teacher who is semi tech savvy, and having a one-to-one student to device ration would be ideal (one can dream!). It is more than likely that I will never implement Salman Khan's strategy to its fullest, although I am looking forward to playing with it in my next placement, at the very least re-teaching Grade 6 math to myself. Any who what made me think of this was the fact that every single video is licensed under Creative Commons which allows teachers to ease their minds about copyright issues in the classroom and I strongly urge all teachers and future teachers to check it out!