Category: Web 2.0

Posted on

Classroom Collaboration and Brainstorming with Prezi Meeting

If you're a reader of my blog, you know that I'm a big fan of Prezi, the non-linear presentation tool. Prezi has just announced a new feature – Prezi Meeting which allows multiple users to remotely collaborate on the same Prezi screen. Imagine your students mind-mapping in real time on Prezi's "limitless whiteboard." 

Note: Team members will need an email accounts to be invited to participate. Select “Invite to edit” to generate a link that you can send to anyone. When your invited collaborators open the link, you will see their avatars. Text, images, and videos added to the prezi are visible to everyone, giving remote team members the sensation of being in the same creative space together. (When you are invited to co-edit a prezi you will enter the Prezi Meeting in Show mode upon clicking the link. To start co-editing the prezi, switch to Edit mode).

For more detailed instructions on how to use Prezi meeting click here. 

 

Posted on

Top 100 Tech Tools for Teaching and Learning

The Centre for Learning & Performance Technologies has assembled a useful survey of top tech tools for learning professionals. Jane Hart of the C4LPT compiled input from nearly 300 ed tech experts from around the globe who were asked to rank their "Top 10 Tools for Learning in 2009." 

The Top 100: Full Survey Results

Top100techtoolsTo get you started, here's the top 10 in order:

Twitter
Delicious
YouTube
Google Reader
Google Docs
WordPress
Slideshare
Google Search
Audacity + Firefox (tied)

The majority of the top 100 are web-based and free – great news for educators in an era of scant educational funding. New the list in 2009 are two of my favorites  - Prezi (presentation software) and Wordle (word cloud generator). For ideas for on how I use these free web resources follow my links to Prezi | Wordle.

Note: The 2010 survey is being in progress.  All learning professionals are encouraged to share their Top 10 tools to help build it further. Submit here.  Kudos to Jane for conducting the survey.  (And thanks to @russeltarr  for his tweet pointing me to the survey.)

Posted on

Follow the Twitter Backchannel at Cy-Fair’s 2010 Leadership Conference

I'm presenting at Cyprus Fairbanks ISD's "Rigor, Relevance and Relationships Conference" near Houston Texas. (June 9-11). My keynote, "The Reflective Principal / the Reflective School," is based on my Taxonomy of Reflection. For more on my reflective model click here.  Here's a link to the Prezi tour of the Taxonomy of Reflection. I'm also giving  breakout sessions in Strategies for Summarizing and Comparing. For a sample of those strategies click here.

To follow the conference Twitter stream, I created this Wiffiti visualization based on the conference hashtag #RRRCF. Stop by my session and I'll have it running live. Click in the lower right corner of the visualizer to view it full screen 

Posted on

A Prezi Guide to an Effective School – The Reflective Student, Teacher and Principal

Reflective School
Reflective School

This week I’m presenting at the “Teaching and Learning Conference” in Amphitheater SD (Tucson AZ). Next week, I will keynote at the “Rigor, Relevance and Relationships Leadership Conference” in Cyprus-Fairbank ISD (Houston TX). 

In addition to workshops on learning strategies and educational technology, I will feature a session on “Teaching, Learning and Leading in a Reflective School.” This workshop is based on my 4-part blog series “A Taxonomy of Reflection: Critical Thinking For Students, Teachers, and Principals.”

To visually introduce my taxonomy, I created the Prezi presentation below. Click on the arrow at the base of the Prezi to navigate. Then click “More” to view full screen or embed.  For a direct link to this Prezi click here.

Enjoy, reflect, and leave your feedback with a comment.

 

The Reflective School by Peter Pappas on Prezi

Posted on

Your Mission is Life-long Learning: A Video How-To

Most school mission statements include a reference to “fostering life-long learners.” Nonetheless if you walk through most schools you’ll find an information landscape that seems designed to suppress that goal. Far too many adults telling students what to know – as if that will inspire them to take responsibility for their learning. 

To explore the meaning of life-long learning at your school, I suggest you show this video (and a few of the comments it received) at your next faculty meeting. I’ve included a few questions for your follow-up discussion. 

Background: “help with a bowdrill set” is a YouTube video posted by a young man looking for help in using his bowdrill to start a fire. After detailing his materials and techniques, he states “I know I’m doing it wrong. Please comment down below so you can teach me how to do it.” If you view his YouTube post you’ll see that his video has over 8500 views and fifty people took the time to offer concrete advice. I trust he’s now successfully starting fires.

Guided questions:
1. How would you define teacher and student in this video? What roles / responsibilities do they have?
2. What information / skills / strategies did the young man lack? What did he have?
3. In what ways is the teaching / learning environment of this video similar to / different from your classroom?
4. What does all this suggest about the paths to life-long learning?

 

Tip of the hat to Angela Maiers and Ben Grey. I first saw this video at their 2010 ASCD conference workshop   Link to my Prezi coverage of the conference