An Hour at Diigo U. (Day 2)

These three sites were my latest discoveries at Diigo U (Diigo University- part of my experiment in social online learning).

 

100 Essential Web 2.0 Tools for Teachers

This site contains a nice collection of Web 2.0 tools for teachers (and students or anyone who is interested in these types of tools). There are some of the “usual suspects” but some interesting tools that I have never explored. Each tool has a short description next to it so you have some idea what the tool can do. Can’t wait to play! Careful though, you could be at this for the rest of the year exploring the possibilities of these sites. http://www.onlinedegree.net/100-essential-2-0-tools-for-teachers/

 

Supreme Decision

I have not tried this yet but saw this on a comment for a civics site. Students observe an argument for student rights at school as presented to the Supreme Court. The animated video that lays out the case provides text of the narrative for accessibility. Students hear the case, research findings, hear different perspectives then have to make a decision (I think- have not gotten that far). This looks like it has potential on its own as well as stimulus for further narrative based simulation/game development

http://www.ourcourts.org/play-games/supreme-decision Here is the main site that was originally posted on Diigo: http://www.ourcourts.org/.

 

Learning Theories

For those of you interested in learning theories that inform your practice, here is an interesting site. This is a large collection of links to introductory pages on different learning theories as well as theorists. If you are not familiar with these, you should take some time to explore the underpinnings of your practice. The more we as teachers understand how people learn, the greater our efficacy of our efforts. While I don’t believe we will ever get to a unified theory on learning, the ideas presented here are valuable and necessary to understand if we are to improve education. Some of the sites here are introductory while others go in great depth and are sponsored by some “big names” in the field of cognition and psychology. http://www.emtech.net/learning_theories.htm