BLOGORRHEA

Logorrhoea is my personal word of the day, found accidentally at Answers.com

Logorrhoea or logorrhea (Greek λογορροια, logorrhoia, “word-flux”) is defined as an “excessive flow of words” and, when used medically, refers to incoherent talkativeness that occurs in certain kinds of mental illness, such as mania. The spoken form of logorrhoea (in the non-medical sense) is a kind of verbosity that uses superfluous or fancy words to disguise a useless or simple message as useful or intellectual, and is commonly known as “verbal diarrhea.”

So I told my partner and he's just coined a new word (in the title of this post). Take it, use it, spread it around, but link to this blog post when you do, ok?

Practical Uses of Math And Science (PUMAS)

Ralph Kahn, author, describes the site as

"...a collection of one-page examples of how math and science topics taught in K-12 classes can be used in interesting settings, including everyday life. The examples are written primarily by scientists and engineers, and are available to teachers, students, and other interested parties via the PUMAS Web Site. Our goal is to capture, for the benefit of pre-college education, the flavor of the vast experience that working scientists have with interesting and practical uses of math and science."

10 Academic Resources Daily

"Our main purpose is to provide valuable solutions for students and young researchers; disseminate additional knowledge, skills and attitudes that are useful in their youth work; communicate within the academic community of scholars, professionals and students from all branches. We share information about scholarships, grants, conferences, study abroad opportunities, exchange and professional training programs and internships all over the world."

The Teachers' Lounge - lesson plan resources

Lesson plan resources. A wiki site. Rob Lucas, author, explains:

"...my first year of teaching, I spent many late nights planning lessons for the following day. During those nights, a single thought gnawed at me: Thousands of other teachers across the country were doing just as I was, and thousands more had done so every year for decades. Yet there was no way for me to fully benefit from the experience of all those who had come before. I’ve created this website to change that....any registered user...can post lesson plans, links, handouts, PowerPoint presentations—virtually anything! And you don’t even have to know HTML. Editing a page is as easy as using a word processor. My vision is that over time, we can develop an extensive library of creative, finely-tuned, engaging, exciting lessons."

E-Learning Concepts and Techniques E-Book

"This e-book, E-Learning Concepts and Techniques, is the result of a collaborative effort by students in the Bloomsburg University, Department of Instructional Design spring 2006 E-Learning Concepts and Techniques online class as well as several guest authors and contributors from around the world." Headings include: What is E-Learning? Instructional Design Models for E-Learning; E-Learning Tools; Instructional Strategies; Development; Delivering; Evaluation; Web Standards.

Folklinks: Folk and Fairy-Tale Sites

A colleague sent me this link and said, "I came across this great web site as I searched for short short stories that can be used in English classes. 2 great things about it: 1) it includes folktales from all over the world and 2) it is categorized by subject or topic or theme. Enjoy."

WikiBooks and WikiSource

WikiBooks and WikiSource: Wikipedia's Free collections of textbooks. "Wikibooks went online on 10 July 2003, and there are 22,403 modules currently on the site." ..."Wikibooks differs from Wikisource because content on Wikibooks is expected to be significantly changed by participants. Raw source documents such as the original text of Shakespearian plays is hosted on Wikisource instead."..."Wikisource collects and stores in digital format previously published texts; including novels, non-fiction works, letters, speeches, constitutional and historical documents, laws and a range of other documents. All texts collected are free of copyright, either because this has expired or because the text has been released under a GNU Free Documentation License."

Free Academic Podcasts

This site has a list of 145 (to date) links. Says the site author: "About a year ago, I put together a listing 30 or 40 free podcasts of lectures from Universities. When I started putting together another list, I was amazed at how many more lectures are available. The lectures in this list are all free and don't require any type of authentication--you don't have to be a student to download them. The links are to the rss feed of class lectures. If you copy the URL and in iTunes click on Advanced > Subscribe to Podcast it will automatically download the lectures and new ones as they become available."

Skypecasts Academic Potential

This article describes the latest offering from Skype, Skypecasting, and discusses its potential for education.

"Skypecasts as “large, hosted calls on Skype.” Sound pretty simple. Basically you can create or join a large online conference call with UP TO 100 people. Skypecasts are scheduled to begin and end at a certain time and usually have a certain topic of discussion. The users must download and use Skype in order to join the Skypecast."

"There are many programs out there that already allow users to create online classes, but those cost thousands, and even tens of thousands of dollars to implement. This option is FREE. That price tag is always a big plus for education and their limited resources."

"Overall, I was very impressed with Skypecasts and the potential it possesses in education. Above all else mentioned above, I think it is absolutely necessary to help students understand cultures beyond their own. This technology opens up the way for them to do that, not only through other people’s Skypecasts, but by having students create their own."

Podcasting in Education

The author explains podcasting, links to articles that show it works well in education, links to working examples, provides some ideas for you. A section entitled 'How to go about it: Curriculum and Class Management'. A technical section with info about applications, plus some downloads and resource links.

APA addendum for citing ONLINE SOURCES

This guide is from SFU librarian Jamie Anderson, August 1, 2006. "The APA Manual should be your main source of information for citing sources, but this addendum was put together to cover several types of electronic sources which are not covered by the APA. Here’s what the guide covers: Webpages, Blogs, Online Journal Articles, Online Encyclopedias and Dictionaries, Email, Online Images, The TECH 100 text Teamwork and Communication."

Writing Guides from SFU Library

This is a very helpful site. Includes STYLE guides, WRITING guides, and other tools. Includes style guides I hadn't heard of until now -- CBE (for biologists), IEEE (for engineers), and MUCH more...check it out.

Teaching with Games

Final report of a study/project by FutureLab. "The Teaching with Games project was a one-year study designed to offer a broad overview of teachers' and students' use of and attitudes towards commercial off-the-shelf (COTS) computer games in schools. It aimed to identify the factors that would impact the use of these entertainment games in school and describe the processes by which teachers plan and implement games-based learning in existing curricular contexts. Finally, it aimed to provide recommendations for future games-based learning approaches in schools for teachers, developers and policy makers."

knowschools

"This is the place for teachers who work online or are new to online to work and share together." From their newsletter: "is devoted to resources and skills needed to use technology in the classroom as well as building skills with these technologies and facilitation when working with students in a virtual environment."

knowmoodle

A new community devoted to all things moodle. Links to moodle resources as well as moodle courses and facilitation skills.

Second Life + Education (a new page on my site)

Click the title to link to my newest page in my Resources site.

Communities and Institutions & Organizations already in SECOND LIFE

This site lists (so far) Universities, Colleges, Schools, Organizations, Libraries. It a wiki site ~ "feel free to log in and add your own content. For a more extensive description of [Second Life] projects, see Second Life: Universities and Private Islands."

7 Principles of Good Practice in Undergrad Education

Honolulu.hawaii.edu offers these for their own faculty. "How can students and faculty members improve undergraduate education? Many campuses around the country are asking this question. To provide a focus for their work, we offer seven principles based on research on good teaching and learning in colleges and universities."

Back to School with the Class of Web 2.0

"TOOLS" is the topic of this first of a 3-Part series of articles. "The following is a compilation of Web 2.0 products that I’ve personally researched and tested. These services are grouped into two main categories: Tools and Office Applications. Some more specific services include: organizers, gradebooks, research tools, document managers, diagrams, and more."

Best of the Best Web 2.0 Web Sites

"What makes a site a Web 2.0 Site? Web 2.0 is the second coming of World Wide Web. New and improved sites that make the web their platform, provide users a way of interacting with each other, and organize and categorize their content are perfect examples of Web 2.0. Below is a list of web sites that are the best of the best!"

Dimdim: The world's FREE web meeting

"Dimdim is the Open Source web conferencing company. With Dimdim you can show Presentations, Applications and Desktops to any other person over the internet....Attendees can use either Internet Explorer 6 or Firefox 1.5 while Presenters can use Internet Explorer 6 on Windows (XP/2000/2003) only. Firefox porting for Presenters will be available soon. Please understand that this is Alpha version with known issues and bugs and our development team is squashing them. This release is meant for technically skilled early adopters."[my emphasis]

Learning Resources for Civics and Citizenship Education

This week the WWWTools For Education newsletter is featuring the topic of Civics & Citizenship. LOTS of links and information on the topic of civics in several countries. Includes links to collections of resources and classroom resources. A civics glossary. Advocacy links. Civics in the news, including some links dealing with the USA election this week. Resources for Professional Development.

Blackboard & Google become partners in search 'appliances'

Today's article from Blackboard Media Center.