Using ICT in Further Education

The Community College Consortium for Open Educational Resources (CCCOER) is a combined effort to develop and use open educational resources (OER) and in particular open textbooks in community college courses. An open textbook is defined as:

a body of educational content that is openly available over the web, by mail, or in a book store with a copyright that allows copying and distribution or, with the most open copyrights, allows modification of the content and even sale.

CCCOER Open Textbooks provides a growing list of links, covering a wide range of subject areas, to “OPEN and free textbooks that may be suitable for use in community college courses“. In some cases, the links also lead to useful podcasts and videos.

This is a great resource. On my first quick look, I found a comprehensive guide to using OpenOffice 3.o!

SchoolRack enables you to set up classroom portals for your students and parents to use. There is a reasonable selection of included themes to choose from.

Each student/parent creates their own individual account. They can then search for and join their school as well as joining your class group (either manually or through a generated code).

Not only can you post assignments for students and parents to read and download, but you can also use the inbuilt discussion board, calendar, internal messaging and online assignment collection and assignment grading feature.

It is, also, very easy to include any embeddable content, such as videos and widgets, from other websites. All these  features, help to make SchoolRack a dynamic two-way learning platform, which can be used inside and outside of the classroom.

Your published site, including added files etc, is publicly visible and can be accessed by anyone who knows your website address – in the form of http://schoolrack.com/sitename

This also applies to the topics on the discussion board, which can be read by anyone although only your group members can contribute to the discussions. It is worth noting that ‘password protected sites’ are available for the paid version but not for the basic free version, being reviewed here.

SchoolRack is very easy to use and for those that have not gone down the Moodle route (or something similar), then SchoolRack has plenty to offer!

Sanjaya Mishra is undertaking a study entitled “Bloggers in Education: their beliefs, motivation, and perceived impact” and is seeking the help of fellow edubloggers.

The purpose of the study is to “understand who are the educational bloggers, and what are their beliefs and motivation to blog“.

Sanjaya is asking other edubloggers to fill in an online survey, which should only take 10-15 minutes of you time. If you haven’t done so, there is still time to submit your answers!

Should be interesting to see the results of the survey which Sanjaya promises to share.

You can start planning your K12 Online 2009 conference schedule now as the Presenters and Keynote Speakers were announced last week. A virtual feast of professional development will be provided over two weeks in December. With over 50 presenters contributing there is bound to be something for everyone. The keynote speakers include: * Kim Cofino, Thailand * Joyce Kasman Valenza, Erdenheim, PA, USA * Konrad Glogowski, Ontario, Canada * Rachel Boyd, Nelson, New Zealand * Diego Leal, Columbia

If you haven’t added the conference to your diary then do it now!!

Dates:
Opening Keynote w/o 30th November 2009
Presentations from 7th to 17th December 2009

Venue: Online

Also, watch out for the  ’teaser trailers‘, which will be released in the weeks preceding the conference.

In the meantime, you can join in the 2nd live LAN party from 6:00PM to 8:00PM EDT (10pm GMT) on 20th October 2009. Gather in the EdTechTalk chatroom with colleagues to view two past conference presentations and engage in lively discussion.

ProProfs provides free knowledge sharing tools in the form of quizzes, flashcards, games and polls.

Create your own examples or simply explore and use the shared content. You can, also, easily embed any of the content on your blog, website, social network or e-learning system as well as downloading it.

Free Online IT Certification Training is also provided, by ProProfs, for the following qualifications:
* CompTIA Certification
* Cisco Certification
* Microsoft Certification
* Prosoft CIW Certification
* SAT Test Training

The amount of ads displayed can be a bit of a distraction but, if you can get past this, there is lots of useful content included! This is a little spreadsheet quiz based on using Excel.

Finding interactive multimedia resources online is a great way for educators to enhance teaching and learning in their classroom. From web apps to interactive whiteboard activities, the Internet is loaded with high quality resources that students will enjoy. Here is a list of 20 free resources for educators to try out this year:

TeacherLED – TeacherLED provides teaching resources for use with interactive whiteboards. The interactive whiteboard resources contained on this site are for math, English, and geography. Teachers can also find information on how to create their own interactive whiteboard resources.

Crickweb.co.uk – This free site offers 169 educational resources that educators can use with interactive whiteboards. Educators will also find 15 free games for kids between the ages of 4 and 11. The site also links to more than 100 other free resources online.

What2Learn – What2Learn offers free game-based learning for students. Teachers can also use this site to track progress, access more than 1,000 interactive resources, and create original games.

Interactives – Interactives offers free interactive games and activities that can be used by educators to enhance learning in the classroom. Interactives cover math, science, language, history, and art.

SMARTboard – SMARTboard provides several free online activities that educators can use with or without interactive whiteboards. The activities cover elementary, middle, and high school education.

BrainPop – The BrainPop educational site offers animated and interactive games that students can play online. There are games for science, social studies, English, math, arts, music, health, and technology. * Small selection of free content. Majority of content requires paid subscription. PD

FunSchool – FunSchool offers free online games for K-6 students. Throughout this site, educators will find hundreds of entertaining yet educational games sorted by grade level.

Visuwords – The Visuwords site is a free online interactive graphical dictionary and thesaurus. To use this site, simply type in a word to find a neural network of word associations and meanings.

FunBrain – Within the FunBrain site, educators can find dozens of interactive educational games that younger students will enjoy. The games help with math, reading, and other subjects.

BGFL – The BGFL site offers free online activities and games that can be used with an interactive whiteboard. Throughout this site, educators will find resources for foundation, primary, and secondary education for English, science, mathematics, and other subjects.

SimplyBox – SimplyBox is a free web app that gives you the capability to capture and organize sections of web pages. The web sections you collect are organized into boxes that can be easily shared with students or colleagues.

Rader’s Numbernut.com – This all inclusive math warehouse offers free online activities that students of all ages can use to improve math skills. The activities can be used on your computer and also work well with interactive whiteboards.

ScribLink – ScribLink is a free online whiteboard that can be used to collaborate in real time with students and colleagues. With this site, you can draw, upload images, chat, voice conference, and transfer files.

PrimaryGames – This fun learning site features games for language arts, math, social studies, science, and more. The site was launched by a science and technology teacher who originally created the games for his own classroom.

eField Trips – eField Trips allows students to take virtual tours of exciting monuments and attractions around the United States. Each tour features a virtual experience, field journal, and “ask the expert” question and answer opportunities. To access the tours, you must sign up for a free account.

Tramline – This site is loaded with virtual tours and field trips that students can take to explore the world of science. The tours explore everything from ecosystems to prehistoric life.

Mathsframe.co.uk – Mathsframe offers several free math resources that teachers can use with interactive whiteboards. The resources cover calculating, counting and partitioning.

BookBuilder – With this site, you can create, publish, share, and read digital books to your students. BookBuilder is perfect for teachers who want to customize learning through original books that will interest students.

Classtools.net – Classtools.net offers free tools that teachers can use to create their own interactive games to embed into blogs, wikis, websites, and more.

Earthtrips – Earthtrips allows students to take a virtual tour into the history of the earth. In this virtual tour, students are presented with raw information so that they can study earth science as professionals.

The Tunisian English Teaching Forum have just published the first issue of their new e-magazine, which is “for and by teachers in Tunisia and abroad“.

Mohamed Salah Abidi and his team have produced an excellent product containing lots of useful information and links.

It is a very enjoyable, informative read and makes for a great practical resource, which can be referenced again and again. You can read it online or download it for offline viewing.

Feedback and contributions for the next issue are welcomed and can be emailed to Mohamed Salah Abidi at med.sahaATgmail.com

The Tunisian English Teaching Forum e-magazine will be publishing quarterly and I am already looking forward to the next issue!

ThinkQuest is an online learning platform that helps you to to integrate learning projects into your curriculum and encourages your students to develop 21st century skills.

ThinkQuest includes a:
* projects area for teachers and students engage in collaborative learning
* competition area for students to participate in technology contests
* library area containing a large online repository of student-developed learning projects
* professional development area offering comprehensive training for educators

Sample lessons and projects are included to help you get started and the library area includes over 7,000 websites created by students from around the world.

ThinkQuest is a fabulous resource for 21st century learning!