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:

Qwiki

The National Center on Universal Design for Learning has established several basic principles for Universal Design for Learning. Each principle is designed to optimize learning for students of all backgrounds and abilities. One such example is Principle I - Providing Multiple Means of Representation.

Think for a moment about classroom assignments that you may give. Reading text is one of the most common assignments educators give students, yet it is a challenge for many kids. Some struggle with the context. Some students are reading at a higher level than the rest of their classmates. Others struggle with decoding skills. Many just hate reading! Yet, by taking the Universal Design for Learning approach, we can give students multiple ways to get to the same goal.

For kids who struggle with reading, providing a way to listen to the text can be an excellent way of completing the same task, just in a different way. Sites like Voki, have allowed this to happen. It's very much like using driving directions. Some people like maps, others GPS, and still some like to have hand-written/drawn directions.

Just this week, I found an awesome audio / visual online encyclopedia called Qwiki. Simply type in your search and Qwiki will provide an audio-visual presentation with links to other resources. This site could be very useful for students who struggle with research skills. Using Qwiki along with a graphic organizer, could help these struggling students master the art of research. Even if you don't have students who struggle in this area, Qwiki is an awesome tool to use! I encourage you to use it!

Google Search Tricks

Helping our students find quality information on the Internet is one of the biggest challenges that we face in the 21st Century! I recently saw a sign that said "laptop free classroom." But can we truly stop technology and education? Fortunately or unfortunately, technology is here to stay, thus using the Internet to find information will never truly go away. I do not foresee going back to opening dusty old encyclopedias!

Instead of ignoring our students or just telling them to blindly conduct an Internet search, why not help them refine their results? How do we get our students to look beyond the first ten items on a Google search? Or how do we get our students to use valid sources (Wikipedia can and cannot be a valid source)?

I came across an excellent site, which offers 100 Google Search Tricks for the Savviest of Students. I found this information to be very useful. Perhaps it can help you and your students, in the quest to find valuable information!

aMap - A Great Way to Debate

I recently came across a site out of the UK called aMap, which is an online debate tool, with a unique twist. It is a visual argument map, where students can express whether they agree or disagree with a certain topic, in a unique visual format.

I really like how it helps you with the structure of your argument, when you reply. Check it out!

Misc. Ideas

Over the past few days, I have been bombarded with some great ideas. Maybe you could use a couple!

• 10 x 10 - every hour 10 x 10 scans the most up-to-date RSS and news-feeds across the globe, ranked according to importance. It presents it in a visual 10 x 10 cube with pictures relating to the news stories. Along the right edge of the screen are listed the corresponding top 100 words, one for each image. When you click on the picture, it provides you with links to popular new stories relating to the keyword. Some of the sources come from ABC News, CNN, and MSNBC.
  

• SnipSnip.It - Have you ever wanted a way to show a "snip-it" of a YouTube clip? SnipSnip.It gives you a simple way of doing this. Simply copy and paste the URL of a YouTube clip to the site, choose the start and end time of the clip, and it will generate a URL for your "snipped" clip.
  

• PuzzleFast - is an instant puzzle maker. Although it does not give you as many options as Puzzlemaker.com, it is easier to generate word searches and crossword puzzles.