Moving From Passive Learning to Active Learning With Graphic Organizers

How do we effectively convey information/content to students to ensure that they not only comprehend it, but can then represent this new knowledge in meaningful ways? How can we accommodate students that struggle with curating important information and managing abstract ideas? What strategies can we employ to aid information retention? The use of Graphic Organizers provide students and teachers with a tool to organize important ideas logically and visually. 

Graphic organizers provide student and teachers with a resource to visually present important information in a logical format that can simplify the transition of applying that knowledge. For example, a History Frame graphic organizer may be useful to aid in comprehension of Social Studies topics. A History Frame will ask students to identify when and were an event took place, the problem, the stakeholders, the key events, what was the result and what was the future impact.

Graphic organizers may also be useful for students to better understand what they already know and still need to investigate.  A KWL chart is a great resource for students to identify what they know about a topic, what they would like to learn more about and then what they have learned. This type of graphic organizer can be used for a Do Now at the beginning of the lesson and then again during the closure as they identify what they learned and would like to explore further.

There are many types of graphic organizers that can serve a variety of purposes. These valuable instructional tools are widely available on the web for free downloads. Completion of graphic organizers by students may serve as a formative assessment for teachers as they uncover the thought process of students as well as their level of understanding. English language learners will benefit from being able to visually organize small chunks of text in a logical order to complete a task or demonstrate understanding.

Here are some resouces for graphic organizer:

Write Design Graphic Organizers

Thinking Tools

UDL Graphic Organizers

Free Mind Mapping Site that Saves to Google Drive

MindMup - http://www.mindmup.com, is a web-based and free mind mapping software. MindMup links to your Google Apps account allowing users to save mind maps in your Google Drive account. Once saved in Google drive users can share their Mindmaps.  

Mind Maps have a number of uses such as planning or organizing your thoughts prior to writing or making connections between topics or events. An extensive list of graphic organizers that serve a similar purpose can be found here.  Having the ability to share your maps within Google Drive allows students or teachers to collaborate on the development of ideas.

Teachers may collaborate with students on Mind Maps or review student progress. Maps created by students may be shared with their teachers via Google Drive. Teachers may then publish those maps on a class Smartboard for class discussion.

Providing students with graphic organizers or mind mapping resources to organize their thoughts is a classroom intervention with numerous benefits. Having the ability to access and share these maps over the web adds a new layer of interactivity and accessibility that makes MindMup worth exploring.

Directions and Documentation for Mindmup can be found here: http://blog.mindmup.com/p/documentation.html

Read the Mindmup Blog Here: http://blog.mindmup.com/

 

There's an App For That

Zite
http://www.zite.com/
Zite is a personalized magazine for the IPAD. You can select your favorite news sources or topics. Zite will build a magazine full of articles relevant to your interests. This app has a number of uses in schools. Teachers can use the app professional development. Their education topic and technology top-cs have excellent articles that are applicable to the classroom. Students may use Zite to catch up on current events, read non-fiction text, and explore articles related to health, social studies, mathematics, science and literature. Articles can be saved and shared easily.

Evernote
http://evernote.com/
Evernote is one of the first APPs that I have used on the IPAD as well as on my Android Phone.   Evernote is a great tool for teachers and students to capture notes, save research, collaborate on projects, snap photos of white-boards, record audio and more. Eve-rything you add to your account is automatically synced and made available on all of your devices.

Create Your Own STEM Textbook for Free!

The CK-12 foundation has introduced a new resource called the flexbook. CK-12 provides free access to textbooks for science, technology engineering, math and SAT review. They are now offering the ability to design your own "flexbook". You can read more about this initiative here. 

The web interface allows the user to select chapters from a text and then add them to your personalized flexbook. The editor allows the user to edit content in the chapter, insert text, insert images and insert videos. There are a series of easy to follow video tutorials that demonstrate how to add your own content.   Besides utilizing or editing existing chapters you can author your own chapter. The editor is very intuitive and offers a breadth of functionality.

Once you have finished curating the resources in your book you have options for sharing.

1. Share or Print as a PDF


2. Share as an online electronic book


3. Share as an HTML website.


4. Some of the books can be downloaded directly to the IPAD, Kindle, Nook Color, or Android Tablet.

You can share the book with your students by adding a link to it on your website or Moodle course.  There are a number of relevant books in the library. In many cases these books are best used to supplement the existing text and instructional materials already in place. The online textbooks utilize a number of primary source documents. They are designed to develop critical thinking skills.  You can search for textbooks that are aligned to the New Jersey standards and the common core standards.

The use of web-based, online textbooks that allow for the addition of personalized content offers a simple solution for educators to incorporate the resources of the web in one organized place.  Students, teachers and curriculum coordinators may author chapters or complete textbooks. Special education teachers may work collaboratively with general education teachers to provide flexible and differentiated content to meet the needs of their students. The possibilities are endless.

 

Enjoy

 

Student Made Tutorials Using Paper Slides

What do you do when workbooks, handouts, and class problem sets are not connecting with your students? What do you do for those students who have a solid understanding of a topic before you begin the lesson? How are you differentiating for them? Can you address the needs of your advanced students as well as your struggling students with one activity?

Student made tutorials should be a welcome addition to any classroom. Students may be assigned to work independently or in small groups. Their task is to develop a video tutorial that explains a topic, problem or concept discussed in class. The completed video will be published online for all students in the class to reference as a study guide. By providing such an activity you are allowing your more advanced students the opportunity to apply their knowledge of the topic and better grasp the material by developing a lesson to teach the topic. Your struggling students will then have access to this tutorial online. They can pause, stop, rewind and replay the videos at home while working on homework or studying for an assessment.

There are a number of  options for creating tutorials. Paper Slide  Tutorials is a simple, cost effective method. It is no intrusive in the classroom and can be easily integrated in all subjects. The process is simple. Students plan a storyboard for the lesson. They prepare paper slides that will be used to present the topic. Once they are organized they will begin recording their tutorial. A Flip Video Camera or any Web Cam can be used to record the tutorial. Once completed the video can be published on the teachers website, Blog, School Tube, YouTube or any other video sharing site.

Here is a video made by a teacher for his students, introducing the process of Paper Slide Videos:

Here is a a sample project made by a student:

Free Ebooks from Google

Google has released a Ebook store. Google Ebooks can be accessed online at the following website: http://books.google.com/ebooks.  The ebook store houses a large collection of ebooks that can be downloaded. The books are available in formats for the iPhone, iPad, iTouch,  Android, the general web, Nook and Kindle.

What is unique about Google Ebooks is that Google stores your books in the cloud. That means you can access your purchased or free books from any of the above mentioned devices. Once you purchase or download a free ebook it is stored in your online Google account. You can then read the book from your computer at school and then open the same book from your ipod touch at home.  Books can be downloaded directly to a device for when internet access is not available.

There are thousands of free public domain books available.  A complete listing of the free titles can be found here. Students may sign into Google Ebooks with their Google Apps for Education user name and password that we have created for them.

The accessibility of ebooks in the cloud offers many advantages for teachers and students.

• For public domain books used in instruction (example: Great Expectations) teachers may only need to purchase a class set.


• Students can access the book at home from their computers or mobile device. A student who forgets a book at school can access it at home.


• Faculty members can easily differentiate classroom reading assignments with the availability of ebooks.


• Faculty and staff can download professional development books and access them on-demand from any mobile device or computer.


• Students with disabilities can utilize many of the assistive technology features available on electronic devices such as highlighting, text to speech, enlarging of text, and color options.


• Students may publish reviews of the books they read on the site.

Enjoy!