If you think that social media started with Facebook and Twitter (or even MySpace, remember that?) then you don’t know the half of it!! Both of today’s social media giants are relative newcomers to the game. From Arpanet in 1969 to billions of mobile users today, social media is constantly changing and evolving and doesn’t seem to be slowing down at all. Today’s infographic was designed by Karim Benyagoub (@karim_designs) for Cendrine Marrouat and originally published on Creative Ramblings. If you’d like to chat about it, I have my original ICQ number around here somewhere! 🙂
Having an iPad in your classroom can be one of the most tools in your arsenal as it’s a veritable Swiss Army Knife of technology. Today’s infographic takes you through the many ways you can use this great device, even if you only have one for yourself. Explore different ways to use the iPad as well as useful apps (many of which are free) that can help you use this technology in your classroom immediately! [VIA – Learning in Hand with Tony Vincent]
Show: A New Way to Look at the World is a fantastic interactive site that takes demographics and societal data and displays it in a unique way for the United States, Japan, and the world as a whole. Show would be a great resource for not only history and social studies classrooms (It’s a sociological goldmine!) but also geography and math classes as you can use the data, correlations, and spatial relationships to interpret the maps.
Begin using Show by choosing the region you wish to view, either the United States or Japan (divided by states and prefectures, respectively) or a world map that will deal with countries. You can then choose a category for study, whether they be broad concepts such as basic demographics (population, language, religion, etc.), more specific concepts like natural resources, GDP, and education, to the more unique categories like distribution of Wal-Marts and number of UFO sightings.
Take some time to explore before you try using this unique resource in class or have students use it during a free period or as a different way to research. I got lost in the maps on Show for quite a long time myself and still haven’t seen half of it!
With a focus on audio and video files, today’s infographic traces the history of file storage from wax cylinders through .mp3 files as well as how we have shifted to storing more photos and books as digital media files today. [VIA]
Daily Video — “Animated GIFs: The Birth of a Medium“
From PBS, learn the history of the .gif file format and how it is quickly becoming a new online art form driven by social media sites. Moving from the pixellated images of the late 1980s to modern cinemagraphs, see how thee files are being used by artists and not just for dancing babies and cats anymore!
All videos are owned by their respective YouTube channels and users and are embedded here for your benefit to use in class in compliance with the appropriate copyright provisions.
Another in a great line of creation and creativity apps, iBrainstorm allows students to collaborate on projects through their iPads. It is essentially a free form drawing and writing app that can allow students to set up flow charts and graphical designs, storyboard their creative writing, or even create notes or comics.
iBrainstorm allows multiple users to create place their ideas on the board as well as add annotations, suggestions and notes through a sticky-pad feature. This is ideal for group collaborative projects and allowing students who might need the added help to map out their thoughts and ideas.
A sister app, iBrainstorm Companion is also available for the iPhone or iPod and allows up to 4 students to work on the same document at once. They can add or create notes and pieces on their iPhone or iPod then “flick” them to the connected iPad to produce their final product.
iBrainstorm would be ideally used in a collaborative, project-based learning environment where students are comfortable with, and responsible enough, to use their own technology independently to produce great content.
Today’s video from PBS covers the basic elements of how to design an appealing website. A brief history of web design from HTML through CSS and Javascript is included, as well as why some elements of webpages are more appealing than others to the users. This is a great brief intro to web design for marketing or business students, as well as programmers.
All videos are owned by their respective YouTube channels and users and are embedded here for your benefit to use in class in compliance with the appropriate copyright provisions.
As we all become more technologically inclined and savvy, the amount of data that is generated, stored, or published on the Internet continues to expand exponentially and is showing no signs of stopping. Today’s infographic shows just how much information is created each minute of every day. [VIA]
Lots of our students want to create presentations and projects, or just fun things with their iPads, iPhones, or iPods while in class. Sometimes they need a little help with this, especially if they need to touchup, crop, or edit photos they’ve taken in anyway. Today, two free apps that can let them do just that!
This app is a very simple one for editing photos quickly. Aviary has a very similar interface and feels very much like Instagram. Students can choose from an Enhance menu where they can adjust the color and lighting in the photo, Effects where they can choose different tones and blurs, frames, stickers, and text. Aviary also supports basic photo editing like red-eye reduction, whitening, blemish removal, brightness, saturation, and sharpness adjustments, as well as simple cropping. Aviary is available for both the iPhone and iPad.
Similar to the full version, Adobe Photoshop Express offers hundreds of photo enhancement, effects, and adjustments options for students. From a simple auto adjustment by clicking on a want icon to choosing from the hundreds of effects and borders Photoshop Express offers a great deal of choice in adjusting photos. Also included are the basic editing tools, including brightness and contrast, hue and saturation, tint, sharpening tools, noise reduction, and red-eye reduction. The interface is not as graphically appealing as some other editors, as Photoshop Express chooses to allow the photograph to maximize the real estate on the screen, rather than its menus. Photoshop Express is available for both iPhone and iPad.
The Culturally Authentic Picture Lexicon (CAPL) is a great site to use in classes to help students find pictures that are both authentic and appropriate from other cultures and countries. All the photographs held in the database were taken by natives of the culture and are organized by language and also by region. You can either browse or search the CAPL to find great photos from around the world.
One of the great benefits of the CAPL in education is that it can be used by teachers outside of simply being another repository for photos. Each picture is cataloged by language and region and contains both an English description and foreign language translation. This is an excellent way to infuse your world language curriculum into searching and project creation.
Another way many educators use the CAPL is to have students use the photos as writing prompts in world history and cultures classes, to recreate the images in art classes, to identify plants and animals in science, or to address cultural differences in Social Studies classes. The CAPL is a perfect accompaniment to a Project-Based Learning environment with endless cross-curricular possibilities.
Last, but not least, check out the Pictolang Tab on CAPL as well. This will take you to a sister site where students can play four different games that use the CAPL’s photos:
Visual Word Trainer – Turns the photos into flash cards so students can practice or learn vocabulary
Picture Match Game – Given 8 images, students choose the photo that matches the word or phrase caption and are given immediate feedback.
Word Match Game – Students see one image and find the appropriate caption or vocabulary word from 8 choices, again with immediate feedback
Analyst Game – Students are given one image and then match the corresponding culture from 8 choices.
I highly recommend giving CAPL a try for both your world language classes, as well as social studies can history classes where you are looking for fun, exciting ways to incorporate real world images and examples for students that infuse and are steeped in modern culture.
NJBiblio 