Students | education | technology | ai & NOT A.I. | design

Using Google Docs for students with colored criterion

I have found a fantastic way to use Google Docs with students. Google Docs allows us to share documents like Word through the cloud. We can edit at the same time allowing the sharing of information back & forth.

What this enables me to do is create color coded criterion.

The students take this criterion and color code their answers to show they have covered all parts. It allows very quick examination from a student and a teacher to see where something may have been missed.

Feedback from the students also has demonstrated they like this way of doing things. I have encouraged them to take this idea beyond Google Docs to better examine chunky sets of instructions.

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Posted by Dr. Thomas Johnson | ict-design.org on January 18, 2011 in Education, Technology

Tags: Education, Google Docs, Objectives, Online Resources, Students, Teaching, Technology

Students are resources. Here are some reasons why.

07 Nov

To help develop this website and also to tap into the expertise and know-how of students, I asked them to view the site in progress in order to comment, blog, and make additions. I set up the class with a Microsoft One-Note* document available for all students to have access to. I created a few headings. In this case: good blogs, cool links, neat videos, music and games, and then let them to it.

I started with my grade 7 class and I think they had a lot of fun with the assignment. In doing this, I found out more about where they were coming from and they also found out a lot of cool things about their peers.

I feel the project worked so well I will have to try it out with other grades.

*One-Note is an excellent collaboration tool because it can be linked through a common server or LAN thus enabling multiple users to write and create on the same document simultaneously.

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Posted by Dr. Thomas Johnson | ict-design.org on November 7, 2010 in Education, Technology

Tags: Microsoft, One-Note, Resources, Students, Teaching, Technology

Awesome Wikipedia assignment for students

02 Sep

Are you a teacher?

Do you want to teach your students “first hand” about plagiarism?

If so, try this:

Have your students try to create a Wikipedia entry. Tell them they need to create a page from the ground up. It sounds easy enough to them at first, but then the turmoil[fun] begins. Following your instructions about creating new content, rather than copy and pasting information from an online source, many students will likely do exactly what you asked them not to do.

However, you don’t have to be the monster. The fine folks down at Wikipedia start to rip apart the new entry. They will look for bias, for plagiarism, for new knowledge, along with perusing to edit the spelling and grammar.

As a teacher you will probably hear a lot of groans in the class with comments like,

“Wikipedia deleted my entry!”
“Wikipedia says I have a couple days to fix my entry or it will be deleted!”
“I hate Wikipedia!”

After some time and a lot of persistence, the students will start to follow the rules. At completion a teacher will also probably hear a lot of,

“Yes!”
“It worked!”
“I finally got my entry to stay on Wikipedia!”

…

Then you need to pull out the next stop and ask them to create an image to add to a Wikipedia entry.

GROANS ALL AROUND. hehe

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Posted by Dr. Thomas Johnson | ict-design.org on September 2, 2010 in Education, Technology

Tags: Complaints, Education, Online, Students, Teaching, Technology, Wikipedia

Nings | Thesis Study of use in Education

18 Jul

On May 17th, 2009 I finished my Masters Thesis. I demonstrated the effect of a Ning as it pertains to student education. I proved that Nings can be useful for teaching students if the prescribed conditions are correct.