Drones aren’t just for the military anymore. With cheap models flooding the market, schools are finding new and exciting ways to engage with their students and, more importantly, improve learning. Edudemic recently highlighted 11 ways you could use drones for learning at your school. There are obvious ones like survey school land, but also ones that push students to think deeper like debating the ethics of drones. Here are the highlights but make sure you read the whole article too!
1. Make Your Own Drone
2. Survey School Land
3. Weave a Tensile Structure
4. Monitor Natural Disasters
5. Shoot Video for a School Project
6. Lead a Treasure Hunt
7. Navigate a Drone Obstacle Course
8. Make Art
9. Learn About Our Environment in Real Time
10. Debate the Ethics
11. Brainstorm Alternative Uses
It’s not easy being a school administrator. As leader of your school or department, it may be difficult to find peers you can confide in, discuss challenges or get insights.
DeLoatch combats tough administrative issues with a list of 20 blogs that can come as welcome assistance for education administrators. Most of them are written by and for administrators, but some “are written from people who aren’t in the trenches, and can provide a different, but necessary perspective.” See the post now for the list, which includes brief descriptions.
More often than not, we think of technology as the antagonist to our hero – books. But it doesn’t have to be that way! There are online resources that can encourage users to get offline & in front of a book. In fact, Sarah Muthler of Edudemic has found 10. Some of these sites are better-known than others. Check out her Ten Websites to Help Students Connect with Books, which covers sites from the ALA’s banned and challenged books to Goodreads. See which websites work best for your students, or for yourself!
Students are consistently being reminded that they need to cite their sources! Citing sources promotes digital literacy skills, but many students struggle with citing their sources correctly. If you need some citation tools to recommend to your students, Edudemic has got you covered! Check out their post, 8 Tools that Make Citations a Breeze, which highlights the tools and gives an idea of which tools work best under different circumstances.
Many schools are switching to flipped classrooms as an alternative to the traditional teaching methods we grew up with. In a flipped environment, students listen to lectures at home, then work through assignments with their teacher in person the next day – they do their learning at home, and their homework at school. If you’re considering a flipped classroom, you’re not alone. Edudemic’s Guide to Flipped Classrooms for 2015 is an excellent resource for you to check out! It goes through the pros and cons of using flipped classrooms and provides you with tips to implement one. For a quick glance, here are a couple of the pros and cons they outline:
PROS
Students can learn at their own pace, whether they need to listen just once, or pause and rewind
Schools can reduce their paper use, which is also a benefit for middle- and high-school students, whose backpacks often get too heavy
CONS
Not all students have access to the internet outside of school
Teachers may not have enough time to help all students with their questions individually
Drones aren’t just for the military anymore. With cheap models flooding the market, schools are finding new and exciting ways to engage with their students and, more importantly, improve learning. Edudemic recently highlighted 11 ways you could use drones for learning at your school. There are obvious ones like survey school land, but also ones that push students to think deeper like debating the ethics of drones. Here are the highlights but make sure you read the whole article too!
