Glossary of Instructional Stategies

Do you need new ideas for next week's lesson plans? The Glossary of Instructional Strategies may be a good site for you to check out. It contains an alphabetical listing of instructional strategies, definitions, and links to extra resources.

The site was created by Kelly Jo Rowan, who has collected over 1,200 strategies. Some of the strategies include: lesson plans, materials, and links to websites. Universal Design for Learning shifts the focus from one end-all strategy to teach students to multiple means of teaching information. Perhaps some of these strategies could be of use to you! For new teachers and experienced teachers, happy hunting!

This Day in History

One of the principles of Universal Design for Learning is providing students with multiple means of representation. This site adds multimedia and text, to deliver information on events that occurred this day in history.

I have found Nikon's This Day in History as an exceptional tool to capture student interest and enhance learning about events in history. Just taking a deep look at this site, I must say that I was quite impressed! Even if you don't teach history, this would be a great tool to have on before class starts!

Awesome Screenshot

Awesome Screenshot seems to be an excellent tool to capture screen shots and share with students. In an education setting, our students are often "blocked" by filters and other restrictions. When you just want to share a screen shot, this may be a great alternative. What's the difference between a regular windows screen shot and Awesome Screenshot?

• It combines a screen shot with annotation
• You have the ability to blur out sensitive information
• You can crop any portion and annotate with shapes, lines, etc.
  
• You can capture an entire website
• It's very easy to share

What are the cons?

• You have to download this application
• It's currently available for Safari and Chrome web browsers, but Firefox is coming out soon
  

Check out the video below: