Archive for the ‘Guest Posts’ Category

13 Online Resources and Collaboration Tools To Engage Classrooms by Julie Petersen

Sunday, April 3rd, 2016

Introduction

Collaborative learning involves people actively working together to solve a problem. It’s an exercise in teamwork and communication, and it’s imperative for educators to integrate collaborative edtech tools that are now available into their curriculums. Students need to learn interactively and to enthusiastically engage in their own educations. It’s a teacher’s duty to instill this in their students, and there are a large variety of easily accessible options that support the fundamental activities of collaborative learning. The search to find the right tool can be long and taxing. Don’t waste time and energy sorting through ineffective tools. Review the following tools now to begin enhancing your classroom experience.

Finding the best tool for your classroom isn’t an exact science. However, there is always a resource available that can offer a more collaborative and interactive experience for students. Teachers should always be open to new ideas and encourage students to do the same. Educators must be able to connect with classrooms on a real and effective level. In a constantly connected world, they need to take advantage of the tech resources available. There are plenty of engaging educational communities waiting to be explored, you just have to know where to look.

1. Google Drive

Google Drive is an excellent and free tool for a teacher that offers useful function like constructing tests, storing documents and sharing materials with classrooms. It’s also an efficient storage service that integrates with a variety of extensions (such as Google Calendar and Google Classroom).

2. Ask Peterson

The author of this blog provides viewers with educational articles, study guides, essay samples and other helpful tools. Educators can use the material in the classroom and look to the blog for general student life tips that will help them better relate to their students.

3. bubble.us

This brainstorming platform is intelligent and used by reputable sources such as Stanford University. The creatively applicable tool allows teachers to openly practice divergent thinking, mind mapping and flow chart creation with their students.

4. Edmodo

Edmodo is a secure and simple way for teachers to connect with their students. It helps teachers create a more collaborative and interactive blended learning experience and to discover and share valuable resources from around the globe.

5. Ninja Essays

This professional writing service is composed of highly qualified tutors and writers. If you’re struggling to grab the interest of your students, have them check out the blog full of inspiration. Or include the free writing guide or writing contests in your lesson plans.

6. TitanPad

TitanPad lets multiple users work on a document simultaneously. Teachers can create (free) public pads and highlight each user to identify who is working on what. They should encourage students to use the platform when working on group assignments or study sessions.

7. thinkbinder

ThinkBinder lets students participate in live study sessions with their classmates (via text and video), directly share information and keep group schedules organized. It’s an effective and efficient edtech tool that will actively engage students during group learning processes.

8. Twilda

This self-dubbed “web-based meeting playground” is a useful source for teachers that acts as a mediator for co-browsing. Students and classrooms can actively search the web and research ideas together in real time. It’s also free of cost, and no sign-up required.

9. Bounce App

The Bounce app is a fun way for students and teachers to share ideas and information. Examine any web page with the simple screen shot and note taking abilities, and easily share information with students or vice versa. The app also works with Notable to allow workgroup collaboration on any assignment.

10. Wiggo

This free group platform provides meet-ups, list making, messaging capabilities, calendar customization and sharing. It’s one of the most comprehensive collaboration tools a teacher can utilize. Manage an entire classroom experience through one source and give students an insightful option for communication.

11. Vyew

Vyew is a digital whiteboard that educators can use to create using images or documents, and to make notes anywhere they like. The boards may be immediately shared and viewed by an entire class. Vyew nurtures better data visualizations and a more interactive learning experience.

12. Yammer

Yammer is like the Facebook for project management and teams. It’s a private social platform that brings together specific groups of people working on an assignment together. Teachers can use Yammer to offer students a single destination for all files, documents and any news.

13. Entri

This web-based tool allows educators to create and share assignments or notes, or for students to create drafts before submittal. This offers a safe space for editing and feedback and is an effective way for teachers to communicate with their students in an unintimidating environment.

Julie Petersen

Julie is a language tutor, a freelance writer and a content marketing specialist. She is running her own writing services reviews blog at the moment. Check one of her latest blog posts about Bid4Papers. You can also contact Julie on Linkedin.

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7 Things to Consider Before Teaching an Online Course by Ben Russell
Monday, March 28th, 2016

Introduction

Online learning, also referred to as web-based learning, allows people to take credit-bearing course via the Internet on computers or even mobile devices. Increasingly, online courses are more available and popular, forcing many universities to invest in systems to offer them.

One reason for this trend is the growing number of education seekers and their ever-increasing need to acquire additional or fresh academic qualifications. In the present business and professional world, it is necessary to keep on adding value to one’s existing qualifications to get a better job or to become more indispensable. Technology is bringing changes and innovations so fast that it has become essential for every professional to continue learning new techniques and update existing knowledge.

Due to time constraints, many people do not find it convenient to attend face-to-face classes to fulfill these requirements so they look for non-traditional techniques that can offer options to learn online without having to quit their present job. Online learning is the best tool to help meet the demands of continuous learning.

Online training can be of two types: synchronous and asynchronous. Synchronous learning has the advantage of real time or live access to the instructor with immediate and direct feedback. Asynchronous learning results in delayed feedback but is economical. The choice of learning depends upon the urgency and financial background of the learner.

1. Proper Understanding of the Topic

Higher educational establishments should employ appropriate resources and well-trained, experienced and erudite professionals for teaching their courses. Students should receive value for the time and money they spend in order to improve themselves or the institution will eventually lose. Remember that a good teacher can help develop good scholars and together they contribute in building credibility for the organization.

2. Point-to-Point Interaction and Support

It is a natural tendency of human beings to lose interest if there is no continuous motivation and monitoring. This is especially true in case of education. Therefore, a higher educational establishment, which provides online learning must provide enhanced interaction, which can be delivered through live streaming sessions, forums, live chats, and virtual classrooms with lecturers to keep the learners interest alive and burning.

3. Extra Tools and Resources

Students should also have access to many options. For example, there should be a full package of written material. The package may include lecture notes, revision kits and access to online libraries. Also, a person should be able to use self-assessment tools for monitoring progress.

4. Benefits of the Course

Benefits of courses should be considered from the learners’ point of view. Courses should be oriented in such way that they fulfill desired goals of the learners, like getting jobs, promotions, and career advancement.

5. New Technology and Accessibility Features

With modern technology evolving continuously, online education should be more accessible. Also, the comprehension of the educational material should be continuously improved.

6. Availability with Accessible Document Formats

Education material should be available in structured formats like Word, Excel or Notepad, for example. Avoid tools which use fancy formats and expensive require applications as they place onerous financial demands on the students.

7. Provide simple and consistent navigation

Students are more favorable to websites or applications that have a simple and comfortable navigation menus that helps them easily access information. It is vital that you have a user interface that is intuitive so that students can focus on the course content rather than learning the system.

Ben Russel

Ben teaches students how to write a contrast essay as well as other types of essays contributing to various educational platforms including SolidEssay.com. (Disclaimer: DrDougGreen.Com does not support the purchase of completed papers for the purpose of satisfying course requirements.)

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Five Practical implementations of Internet of Things that can make your Life Easy by Vaishnavi Agrawa
Thursday, February 18th, 2016

Five Practical implementations of Internet of Things that can make your Life Easy by Vaishnavi Agrawa explains how the IoT is changing MANY aspects of our lives at work and at home. This is a guest post from Bangalore, India. If they get it there you should get it here.

The Internet of Things (IoT) is on the way to become a more diverse, well-known and pervasive international network of all. One day, IoT endpoints are probably not restrained to consumer, business, governmental and scientific makes use of but will span all areas of human pastime. Indeed, within the international economic system, the Internet of things is poised to emerge as the most important big data analytics cloud. However, although Big Data is essential to the Internet of things, it is a ways from being the only piece of the IoT fabric.

The Internet of Things represents a general concept of the capacity of network devices to function and accumulate data from the world around us, and afterward, share that data over the Internet where it can be handled and used for different intriguing purposes. With so many emerging trends in big data and analytics, IT organizations need to design circumstances that will enable analysts and data scientists to do vital research.

IT managers and implementers cannot use a lack of maturity as an excuse to halt experimentation. Originally, only a few people — the most experienced analysts and data scientists — need to do research. Then those high users and IT should collectively discover when to release new sources to the rest of the organization. And IT shouldn’t significantly control in analysts who want to move ahead full-throttle.

1. Smartphones

Currently, the smartphone is practically acting as IoT, which uses GPS. Besides the guidance of WiFi or GPS, they can with no trouble track your actions and relay your know-how to a database which can be utilized to analyze your life style and fitness.

2. Connect sense

These wireless residence sensors keep you aware of your home’s temperature, its protection, or even let you monitor for possible water and other damage.

3. Wifi Lights

The wifi lights are web-enabled, which not only can help you reduce your electricity charges, but still can produce alarms associated with a predefined movement.

4. Smarter CRM (Customer Relation Management)

When used in the conjunction with an accountable customer relationship management (CRM) instrument, the IoT will likely be able to do more than merely gather and arrange client data. It’s going to be able to effectually and appropriately analyze that data as well, delivering you with actionable results involving your customer base.

5. Social Media

The IoT is already optimized to be used with social media, enabling computerized posts and shares to be on the whole generated by way of the gadgets themselves, and preparing the best way for new online communities to enhance themselves based on users of designated devices.

Statisticians think that IoT will create the usual substantial impact on marketing in the future years. Marketers can use IoT to reach their customers. Digital promotion and marketing can become fabulous if we study the IoT as a mechanism. The entrepreneurs today have many opportunities to make their business techniques better. IoT can also make personal lifestyles anyone who comprehends how to use it.

Vaishnavi Agrawa

Vaishnavi loves pursuing excellence through writing and have a passion for technology. She has successfully managed and run personal technology magazines and websites. She is based out of Bangalore and has an experience of 5 years in the field of content writing and blogging. She is currently works for Intellipaat. Her work has been published on various sites related to Hadoop, Big Data, Business Intelligence, Cloud Computing, IT, SAP, Project Management and more.

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Five Ways To Make Essay Writing Engaging For Students by Julie Petersen
Thursday, January 21st, 2016

Five Ways To Make Essay Writing Engaging For Students by Julie Petersen offers excellent advice for teachers, parents, and students about how to make writing more exciting and interesting. You should also check out the high-quality articles for educators and parents at Julie’s fine website AskPetersen.

Introduction

Sometimes, students are natural writers, and the challenging task is getting them to stop and move onto the next assignment. But more often than not, it takes some creativity to get students excited about writing academic essays and papers. Luckily, there are some effective ways to inspire them to want to write and to give them the guidance necessary to help them succeed. Here are some tips to get your student(s) genuinely interested in writing.

1. Read

It cannot be said enough that reading and writing are intrinsically linked, for better or for worse. By encouraging your students to read more, they will not only gain more of an appreciation for the written word, but they will have a bigger vocabularies, better grammar, and more ideas to inspire them when they write. To get students to read, you can read aloud in class or assign reading several times each week. Once the students have read a work, have a group discussion about the reading assignment and get them talking about the piece.

2. Make It Applicable to Real Life

Do you have a class full of students that can’t stand writing academic essays for the sake of writing and getting a grade? Try a new approach in which they have to write things like letters to a friend, thank you notes after a holiday, or even a description of a person they are close to. They might be more interested in writing when it’s something they see as useful. Once they see the value in writing, you can go back to writing essays, poetry, prose, or research.

3. Suggest Inspiring Tools

One of the best ways to get students interested in writing is to give them tools that allow them to believe they can do it. Here are some tools that can offer help when it’s needed.
Hemingway Editor: Sometimes students need some help making their message clear. Hemingway Editor highlights any sentences that are too long or difficult to read, so that the student can rewrite these sections.

Readable: Readable gives your writing a grade level at which most people could easily read your work. Make sure this grade level isn’t so high as to be considered difficult to read. But also make sure it’s not too low.

EssayMama essay writers: Essay Mama can help students come up with great writing ideas. They can also help with editing, proofreading, and formatting academic essays.

Thesis Builder: Need some help coming up with a thesis for your paper? Thesis builder can help with that by asking some questions about your topic and giving you some options for a thesis.

Help.PlagTracker: PlagTracker will find any instances of plagiarism in your student’s paper and eliminate them. The website can even rewrite these sections with original content.

4. Show Off The Writing

Reward and inspire your best writers by showing off their work. You can do this in a number of ways. You can (with their permission) read their work aloud to the class. Alternatively, you could create a book with the best stories. These books could be distributed to your students alone or multiple classes. If you want to be a bit more subtle about it, you can post students’ work to a bulletin board or hang them in the hallways at your school. Whatever you do, make sure to let the students know that their work was featured because you enjoy their writing and look forward to what they will write next. (Doug: You can also post their best work on a class blog.)

5. Allow Illustrations

This might not be as important for older students (in High School or college), but younger students might feel discouraged when writing their essays if they can’t find the right words to say what they want to say. By allowing illustrations as part of the assignment (without compromising on the written requirements), students may feel more at ease about saying exactly the right thing. It may also provide further inspiration to tell their story in writing.

Whatever method you choose to help inspire your students, remember that everyone is different, and what works well for one student might not work for another. Try these tips one at a time to see what works and what doesn’t. And no matter what, remember that the best thing you can give to a student who is struggling to write is encouragement. Let them know that writing takes time and practice. If they keep at it, they’ll be successful.

Julie Petersen

Julie is a private English language tutor and a content marketing specialist. She is the author of educational AskPetersen review blog, and a contributor to such websites as FreelanceWrite.About, Business.com, and Teach.com. Contact Julie on Linkedin.

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When it comes to teenage safety, which is more important? Privacy or Safety? by Hillary Smith
Thursday, January 7th, 2016

When it comes to teenage safety, which is more important? Privacy or Safety? by Hillary Smith offers sound advice for parents who have children approaching the age where they will have their own smartphone. This article also contains several excellent links to sites that reinforce and add depth to this fine effort. Thanks Hillary.

Introduction

There’s a lot to love about teens, but there are also some problems that we face as parents, and a few of these problems are worse than those where two cherished values come into conflict. There are, however, conversations that we need to have with our teens in light of the impact of modern technology. In this post I’ll take a look at where the values of privacy and safety stand and what we should do to deal with problems and how you might avoid them.

Teens Want Privacy Too.

As children grow older, they naturally start trying to acquire more privacy in their lives. They stop telling us everything they’re doing, develop more of a sense of modesty, and sometimes even go behind our backs to make the nicest things. It’s not just children, though. One look at the outcry over government surveillance programs makes it clear that our whole society cares about privacy. You can’t blame teens for wanting something when we tell them it’s good to have it, right?

Safety and the Teenage Brain

That’s when the other shoe hits. We love teens, but biology has long since proven that teen brains are still under construction. This means that they literally do not have the mental capacity to truly understand their actions or the consequences that could arise from the things they do.

This is especially true for impulse-driven behaviors that offer immediate rewards, which is exactly what the Internet and Social Media cater to. Posting a picture from a party may be fun now, but what if a potential employer looks at that picture five years from now and denies them a job as a result?

Most teens aren’t thinking about that sort of thing, and it could cost them. The key issue with online safety is that many of the threats aren’t immediate. Damage can often take place months or years afterwards. As parents, we want to keep our kids as safe as possible, but we also want to give them privacy and independence. How are these values supposed to be reconciled?

Watching Teens Over Time

The best answer may be a little of both. It goes like this. When your child first gains access to technology or new technology, such as adding a their own smartphone to their technological tools, watch them closely and carefully. We’re not trying to invade their privacy here, we’re just trying to make sure they understand what they’re doing and that they can be trusted to use the device without supervision. Over the next few years after they get their first smartphone, they can slowly gain more privileges and privacy. Smartphones can be addictive, so it’s best to start small and limit them to only an hour or two of access each day, gradually increasing the limit as they demonstrate their responsibility and maturity.

“Wait a sec,” you might be saying, “Doesn’t not having the phone on them defeat the purpose of having it in the first place?” That’s a fair question, and the answer is no. First of all, teens no longer regard phones as phones. They’re personal entertainment devices with portable connections to the internet, and the ability to make phone calls is just a secondary function. Secondly, most teens have no need for access to the device all day, every day. You can give it to them when you’re heading out for the day, but they don’t need it at all times. If someone really needs to call them, they can use the house phone or your phone if you don’t have a land line.

On top of that, if they need the smartphone during or after school, make sure they’re not using it during class without the teacher’s permission as they’re a known distraction from learning. You may also want to use monitoring software to be sure they’re not sending messages when they should be listening to the teacher. They should know about the monitoring, too. Children who know they’re being watched are far less likely to misbehave.

In short, stick with the old adage of ‘Safety First’ and give your teens the right to privacy when you know they can stay safe on their own.

Hillary Smith

Hillary was born and raised in Austin, TX. She is a free-lance journalist whose love of gadgets, technology and business has no bounds. After becoming a parent she now enjoys writing about family and parenting related topics. You can reach her by email at hilary.loren.smith@gmail.com.

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Archive for the ‘Guest Posts’ Category

13 Online Resources and Collaboration Tools To Engage Classrooms by Julie Petersen

Introduction

1. Google Drive

2. Ask Peterson

3. bubble.us

4. Edmodo

5. Ninja Essays

6. TitanPad

7. thinkbinder

8. Twilda

9. Bounce App

10. Wiggo

11. Vyew

12. Yammer

13. Entri

Julie Petersen

7 Things to Consider Before Teaching an Online Course by Ben Russell

Introduction

1. Proper Understanding of the Topic

2. Point-to-Point Interaction and Support

3. Extra Tools and Resources

4. Benefits of the Course

5. New Technology and Accessibility Features

6. Availability with Accessible Document Formats

7. Provide simple and consistent navigation

Ben Russel

Five Practical implementations of Internet of Things that can make your Life Easy by Vaishnavi Agrawa

1. Smartphones

2. Connect sense

3. Wifi Lights

4. Smarter CRM (Customer Relation Management)

5. Social Media

Vaishnavi Agrawa

Five Ways To Make Essay Writing Engaging For Students by Julie Petersen

Introduction

1. Read

2. Make It Applicable to Real Life

3. Suggest Inspiring Tools

4. Show Off The Writing

5. Allow Illustrations

Julie Petersen

When it comes to teenage safety, which is more important? Privacy or Safety? by Hillary Smith

Introduction

Teens Want Privacy Too.

Safety and the Teenage Brain

Watching Teens Over Time

Hillary Smith

Book Summaries