Glogster - Graphical Blog

Glogster, a great multimedia collage building platform that I'vewritten about in the past, has officially launched the live version of Glogster Edu. The new Glogster Edu eliminates all of the problems that teachers previously encountered when trying to use Glogster in the their classrooms. The new Glogster Edu is hosted separately from the commerical version of Glogster thereby eliminating links to Glogs (multimedia collages) containing questionable content hosted the commercial version of Glogster. Glogster Edu provides teachers with a virtual classroom space in which they can manage the accounts of up to 200 students. Glogster Edu has also partnered withVoiceThread to allow users to include VoiceThread content in their Glogs.

Khan Academy YouTube Channel

Hundreds of Math and Science Video Tutorials
Once again, Open Culture has discovered a real gem for education. Khan Academy has a YouTube Channel on which they have posted hundreds of mathematics and science tutorial videos. The videos range in length from five minutes to 20+ minutes. The videos that I previewed had clear spoken commentary as well as clear visual aids. The best thing I believe this presenter does is chat while teaching, so you feel that you are being taught one to one, face to face - almost.

BBC World News For Children

World News For Children
4 minute weekday news bulletin for 7-14 year olds. Accompanying scripts available on the BBC World Class website - bbc.co.uk/worldclass.

Myths and Opportunities: Technologies in the classroom by Alan November

Myths and Opportunities: Technology in the Classroom by Alan November from Brian Mull on Vimeo.

Teaching is not possible, only learning facilitation

Just throwing this out while I have it in my mind.
Many years ago now, the term learning facilitator was brought up and most teachers as well as myself discussed what a crazy, politically correct term. Nowadays I realise just how much this explains what we need to do.
I honestly believe that it is impossible to teach anybody (apart from yourself) anything at all. However, it is possible and commendable to help people learn. The old saying "you can lead a horse to water, but you cannot make it drink" is exactly what is going on here. And I do not just mean that some students are switched off. Even the very best students cannot be taught! They can learn and you can provide the best facilitation to make the learning as easy as possible, but you cannot force the learning into their head.
What we need to realise as teachers is that it does not matter how each student learns, we only need to provide the structure to allow this process to be an easy transmission.

Web 2.0 Tools to Inspire

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