Mark your calendars, because EdCampMidMN is back again!
Left to right @ EdCamp 2015: Maria Burnham, Angie Kalthoff, Neil Andruschak from Little Falls, Mayor Kleis, and Joe Schulte from Sartell.
On June 8th, 2016, all area preK-12 educators are invited to gather at Sartell High School for the free 2016 EdCampMidMN unconference! Last year was the first year of EdCampMidMN, and it was such a success that it’s happening again!
The event is FREE and a wonderful opportunity to network with area educators on topics that are important and relevant to you, the attendee. Breakfast is provided and prizes are given out at the end of the day. If you have any questions, feel free to email or tweet me!
Editors note: CMLE is once again making a financial contribution to this event in order to help keep it free for you. CMLE fully supports this event and doesn’t want any barriers to keep you away from this great learning experience!
Move over Minecraft enthusiasts, you’ve got some stiff competition! Did you hear about the first ever Tech Tool Tourney that KQED MindShift and Common Sense Graphite recently hosted? 32 games were selected because of their outstanding quality and educational value. The purpose of this tourney was to introduce game enthusiasts and educators to new games, then give them three days to vote for their favorites. Sounds like some craziness happened during voting, so two winners were declared: Construct 2 and Kerbal Space Program!
The 32 games were grouped; eight to each of the following categories:
– Social & Emotion Learning
– School Subjects
– Critical Thinking
– Creativity-Game Making
Hmmmmm…..Literature Map is so incredibly easy to use, I am skeptical about how good it is. Suggested for folks who have exhausted their favorite author’s books, and want similar works by others. The Literature-Map is part of Gnod, the Global Network of Discovery. It is based on Gnooks, Gnod’s literature recommendation system. The more people like an author and another author, the closer together these two authors will move on the Literature-Map.
All you do is type the name of your favorite author in the search box, click on search and notice your author is in the middle of your screen. Watch other author names swirl around the screen a bit until some come to rest close to your author’s name. Supposedly, these authors offer similar fare. Try it out and let me know in the comments what you think. I would think your “avid reader” students would love this tool.
Image credit: http://tinyurl.com/lw8nkjr, licensed under CC BY 2.0
Although this post was written for schools, it is just as applicable to libraries. People seem to love Canva, and it is a great way to share what is going on in your library, lab, or classroom. More pictures, fewer words are what most people enjoy most. According to freetech4teachers.com…”When you’re creating graphics to use in your library Facebook posts, try to limit the text to only the most important information. In the post itself you can link to more information for parents and or students to read.”
I gave it a whirl based on the little tutorial embedded in this blog post. I didn’t do half bad in the 15 minutes I gave it. Let us know what you think or whether you already use Canva in this way! Better yet, send your Canva creations to admin@cmle.org
So, what do you get when you gather one million college course syllabuses off of university websites, extract some of their key components (metadata), dump it all into a big database, and add a powerful search engine named Syllabus Explorer? You get the Open Syllabus Project!
According to the New York Times….”The hope and expectation is that this tool will enable people to learn new things about teaching, publishing and intellectual history. We think that the Syllabus Explorer demonstrates how more open strategies can support teaching, diversify evaluation practices and offer new perspectives on publishing, scholarship and intellectual traditions.”
Without a doubt, this Project is controversial, but I will let you read the full article to weigh in on the issues. Read more now….
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