Sisyphus - Journal of Education

Sisyphus – Journal of Education is a place for debate on different aspects of education. 

Enjoy reading and why not publishing!

Wordle

Do you want to remember words easily? Wordle is the answer.
"Wordle is a toy for generating “word clouds” from text that you provide. 

To use it click here.
Enjoy!

Science simulators

• Phet phet.colorado.edu/en/simulations/category/new  

• Virtual Bouyancy www.seed.slb.com/en/scictr/lab/buoy_exp/buoyancy.html

• Roller Coaster http://www.learner.org/exhibits/parkphysics/coaster/

• Windward: Outsmart the Weather in a Race around the World  www.ciconline.org/windward 

• Commercial Fishing www.seed.slb.com/en/scictr/watch/climate_change/anim/toc/index.htm
• SimSci Simulation Software http://software.invensys.com/simsci/  

• Wetland Exploration  net.unl.edu/wonderwise/16urban/kidsactivity/index2.htm

• Virtual Microscope www.udel.edu/Biology/ketcham/microscope/scope.html

• Cost one- Explore Learning www.explorelearning.com

Educational podcasts

Do you want to get smarter?
Who doesn't!
Julie DeNeen presents on the informED blog "50 Educational Podcasts"

Check them out !

Free cultural & educational media

Open Culture suggests a "free cultural & educational media on the web". On the menu :

• Audio Books
• Online Courses
• Certificate Courses/MOOCs
• Movies
• Languages
• K-12 Resources
• eBook

Over a million images!

December 2013 the British Library announced the following:

We have released over a million images onto Flickr Commons for anyone to use, remix and repurpose. These images were taken from the pages of 17th, 18th and 19th century books digitised by Microsoft who then generously gifted the scanned images to us, allowing us to release them back into the Public Domain. The images themselves cover a startling mix of subjects: There are maps, geological diagrams, beautiful illustrations, comical satire, illuminated and decorative letters, colourful illustrations, landscapes, wall-paintings and so much more that even we are not aware of.

Let's have a look!

ICT tools

Electronic Village Online 2014 gives a list of ICT tools that could be used in education:

Tag cloud generator (wordle): http://www.wordle.net/
Photostory3: http://microsoft-photo-story.en.softonic.com/
Exelearning: http://www.exelearning.it/mindmapping generator: http://popplet.com/
Timeline generator: http://www.dipity.com/
Poster generator: http://www.glogster.com/
Geolocalisation tool: http://www.communitywalk.com/
Sticky notes generator: http://en.linoit.com/
A  voice-based elearning tool: http://www.voxopop.com/
Slide-show generator: http://slide.ly/?tid=1620

Thanks to EVO 2014 we can be more creative in our classrooms!

Top 100 tools for learning

Would you like to know about  the "Top 100 Tools for Learning 2013"?

The 7th Annual earning Tools Survey gives us the results for 2013 and the following website allows us to compare those relults with those of 2012.

Enjoy reading the Top 100 Tools for Learning 2013
 

Shamaa (arabic)

Are you searching for an online database that documents educational research carried out in Arab countries in all fields of education?
If yes the Arab Educational Information Network (Shamaa) is the answer.

Proprofs

Proprofs allows you to build and test Knowledge for businesses, educators, and students. You can create a quiz, a training, a survey... Enjoy Proprofs www.proprofs.com

ICTs for persons with disabilities

UNESCO publishes a global report entiteled "Opening new avenues for empowerment: ICTs to access information and knowledge for persons with disabilities". The introduction of this report could be accessed by clicking here.

To read the report click here

Enjoy reading!

New version of OpenEMIS

UNESCO launched a new version of OpenEMIS, a generic and open source Education Management information System (EMIS) software package issued without conditions or restrictions for use by countries.

To access the resource click here ttp://www.openemis.org/

Digital Culture

The Unviersity of Edimbourg suggested a course (between January 28 and March 3, 2013) on Elearning  and Digital Culture (EDC MOOC). To access it click here.

Enjoy reading!                                                 

iLearn Website

Do you want to explor how the iPod Touch can be used to enhance effective teaching and learning?

This website gives you the answer, click here.

Mindmap

The following websites allow you to text your mindmap.

• To enjoy Text 2 Mindmap click here
• To enjoy Mindmup click here 
•  To enjoy Minsmeister click here 

Learning Design for a 21st Century Curriculum

Learning Design for a 21st Century Curriculum A Massive Open Online Course 10th January to 13th March 2013 http://www.olds.ac.uk/ The bigger picture: What's the purpose

The conversation prism

Do you know the conversation prism?

Visit it by clicking here.

Enjoy!

A new dudle

Do you need to create a poll ? Whether it's a  poll to schedule an event or a poll to vote for the coffee you like most here is the solution.

Technische Universitat Dresden has created a dudle for this purpose.

To access the dudle click here.

Special Educational Needs

Did you know that 1 in every 5 children is considered to have special educational needs (SEN)?

It is either because of greater difficulty in learning or because they have a disability (Hall, 2010)

For details about SEN you can visit the following websites:

• Special Educational Needs
• Asperger's syndrome

Hall David, (2010). The ICT handbook for primary teachers, A guide for students and professionals, A David Fulton Book, Routledge, 242 pages.

Software for children with learning difficulties

HelpKidzLearn suggests a collection of software for young children and those with learning difficulties to play online.

The software is split into five sections:

• Early Years
• Games and Quizzes
• Stories and Songs
• Creative Play 
• Find Out About (HelpKidzLearn, 2012 )

Click her to access the website.

Have  fun!

Relate, create, donnate

Would you like to share creative ideas for integrating ICT in education?
All you have to do is to post a link on the following wall: click here
You can also use Wallwisher to build your own wall!

Padlet

Are you searching for a new tool that could be used to somehow innovate the teaching and learning process? If yes, Padlet (Known previously as Wallwisher) could be the answer.

It is so easy and you don't even need to register. To start your wall click here.

To visit my Wallwisher and add a sticky click here.

Thanks to the stuff from the head of Sean Banville we can read "Wallwisher – 105 Classroom Ideas" by clicking here.
 

Valuable Resources for Educators

The Educational Development Unit of the Imperial College London offers valuable resources for educators about ICT in education. To access those resources click here.

Happy surfing!

Avatars for education

Do you want to create your avatar so to use it in classrooms?

It's easy, the following avatar introduces EDU 663



To create your own avatar click here.

Dictionary of ICT terms

Searching for a dictionary of ICT terms? Unesco office in Bangkok provides the solution!

You can access an online handy dictionary to search for complex technological acronyms, words and phrases by clicking here.

Media and Information Literacy (MIL) for teachers

UNESCO and many partners have developed a Media and Information Literacy Curriculum for Teachers and this is an important pioneer resource for the following two reasons:

" First, it is forward looking, drawing on present trends toward the convergence of radio, television, Internet, newspapers, books, digital archives and libraries into one platform – thereby, for the first time, presenting MIL in a holistic manner. Second, it is specifically designed with teachers in mind and for integration into the formal teacher education system, thus launching a catalytic process which should reach and build capacities of millions of young people."

To download this ebook click here.

Enjoy reading and don't hesitate to move into action because, you dear colleagues (present and future teachers), "build capacities of millions of young people" as it is said in this ebook.

Online sessions

Students majoring in sports could benefit from 3 live sessions that could help them correct and finalize their blogs and this will be a chance to experience, in a way, e-learning. You're invited to join me online as follows.

Date and time:

• Saturday June 11, 2011 from 5 p.m till 8:00 p.m. (Beirut local time)
• Sunday June 12, 2011 from 5 p.m till 8:00 p.m. (Beirut local time)
• Tuesday June 14, 2011 from 5 p.m. until 8: 00 p.m (Beirut local time)

      Place:

As precised during face-to face class.

Welcome to the world of creativity and don't hesitate to share your experience!

Two blogs ... one purpose

Retrieved from Microsft clipart

This blog's primary audience is a group of  ICT Master Students in Lebanon, and knowing that the Lebanese students are fluent in English and French, along with the Arabic, I decided not to translate information from French to English before including it in this blog. Instead I've built two blogs serving the same issue, ICT in education, one in French and one in English. 

For the primary audience, all my blog visitors, and the fellow teachers using my blog I would like to invite you to visit my French blog on ICT by clicking here.

Students' achievements

The following blogs are created by university students in education in Lebanon interested in ICT and those blogs are tested in schools. The usage of these blogs in schools have two objectives:

• integration of technology in education for a better teaching and learning experience,
• testing and observing the effects and results of ICT integration in education in Lebanon.

Still newbies ? Not really, the following blogs are really exciting and they are, just like mine, trying to improve every day! Enjoy your navigation:

1. Emmanuelle Moarbes built a french Math blog that explains math through games
2. Mireille Tabet built a french blog about ICT at schools le numérique à l'école
3. Kristel Yaacoub built a french blog about ICT Technophilie
4. Ghada Al-Saylami built a bolg for teachers and educators wishing to be introducted to social media and to integrate ICT in their practices Shape the future: social medial and education

eBook Volume 2

Since some of you have enjoyed reading parts of eBook Volume 1 (as you have expressed in class) I found it important to post eBook Volume 2.

For those of you who did not rea eBook Volume 1, the following questions could be helpful to introduce you to eBook Volume 2:

• Are you intersted in learning more about challenges facing e-learning in different countries?
• Would you like to read a study that presents a comparison of Internet penetration rate among Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, UAE ...?
• Interested to know about the Swedish distant education program and elearning in Norway?

All you have to do is to download eBook Volume 2 for free, by clicking on the following link: ebook volume 2

Enjoy reading!

Resources for Teachers

The Bangkok office of the United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural  Organization UNESCO, created as part of the UNESCO SchoolNet Project several CD-ROMs, titled “ICT Resources for Teaching and Learning of Science, Mathematics and Language”.

To know more about this "ICT-based resources for teaching and learning of science, mathematics and language for secondary-level students, including simulations, video clips, interactive learning objects for quizzes, animation, and other kinds of multimedia learning activities" (UNESCO Bangkok website, 2011) you can click here.  

Peer 2 Peer University

Learning for everyone, by everyone, about almost anything!    

Pic retrieved from:
http://p2pu.org/

Peer 2 Peer University (P2PU) that enables learning with and from each other. To visit this open community click here 

Enjoy this new learning experience!

Learning, innovation and ICT...

The following link leads us to a report that presents the "outcomes of the ICT cluster that the European Commission has set up under the education and training programme as part of the Lisbon objectives set for 2010" as indicated in the UNESCO website dedicated for ICT in education. 

Entiteled "Learning, innovation and ICT: Lessons learned by the ICT cluster education & training programme" this article could be downloaded by clicking here.

Netiquette

Clip art retrieved from:
http://www.microsoft.com/  

Do you want to make your Internet experience pleasant? Thus, whether you are a "digital native" or not it is interesting to learn about the Netiquette. In other words, the Internet Etiquette. 

To learn about the etiquette of the Net you just have to click here

ebooks

Would you like to know about challenges facing e-learning in different countries? Don't worry! You don't need to rush to the bookshop to buy the book. With technology this could be solved by clicking on ebook volume 1 and downloading the book.

An Online Course...

Picture retrieved from:
http://www2.unescobkk.org/ict/elearning/
on Jan. 27, 2010

• Do you wish to know about the integration of ICT in education and to learn about issues related to ICT?
• Are you searching for a free reliable course?
• Do you want to have an interesting easy to follow interactive course?

UNESCO Bangkok has the right answer for those questions.

UNESCO Bangkok suggests an online course about the integration of ICT in education, and guess what ?!? You will end up having a printable certificate as soon as you complete the course! 

So hurry up and click here to start the online course.
To access the page from where you can download the whole CD for free clik here

ICT in education

Dear colleagues,

Do you wish to make your students more active in the teaching and learning process? If positive, integrating technology in your practices could be the answer. In other words you could integrate the “ICT in education".  ICT stands for Information and Communication Technology and once it is integrated in an appropriate way it offers an important motivation to the students since they are “digital natives” and they are used to technology while playing and socializing through the network. So, why let’s use technology for educational purposes too.

To begin this adventure let's visit the following glossary (created by D. Gonzalez -November, 2009) in order to familiarize ourselves with some technical words.   

Welcome to ICT in education

Clip art retrieved from:
http://www.microsoft.com

I am starting this web log as part of baw2011 and I intend to use it in my ICT courses at the faculty of Education. This should allow me to shift from face-to-face courses to blended courses. 

Knowing that our graduate lebanese students are usually bilingual, thus my English and French blogs are not 100% identical.

Welcome to the digital world of education!