Fluid Learning - Required reading

Mark Pesce is a Sydney based consultant, writer and lecturer. His consultancy, FutureSt, advises media companies in publishing and broadcasting on strategies for forward movement in an ever more fragmented and converged media marketplace.

Please read this blog post regarding Fluid Learning. Do you agree with Pesce's reccomendations of Fluidity and Flexibility? What are the advantages? What are the dangers? Is it even feasible?

Sharing an experience with you all....

I was teaching a lesson today on orthographical views of cubes (some teachers just teach this using logic) I decided to use manipulatives to teach this lesson. These manipulatives were actually my sons building blocks, since my school does not have proper geometric resources/manipulatives. I asked my students to get into groups of three (letting them have the choice of who their group members would be), the quote "smart" students (definition of "smart" is what the students use) grouped themselves together immediately, "average" students grouped themselves together etc. Theses students are great geometry students and are very talanted at various algebraic manipulations. I placed the first set of orthogonal views and had them create the originating figure that it came from, to my surprise the "smart" students had the most difficulty recreating this structure and the rest of the class did well. I provided another problem on the board for them to reconstruct the structure, there was some progress but the "smart" students took a little longer. It then hit me.... although we have been working with shapes all year the students were never responsible for creating. It seemed ironic, to the students, that this happened; but it made me feel even more responsible for contributing to these students R-brained ability... Did any of you notice this in your classroom? It is one thing to read about it and it is another to witness it.

100 Helpful Web Tools for Every Kind of Learner

A learning style is a way in which an individual approaches learning.  Here are some great tools that can be used to attempt to cater to these individual learning styles, no matter what it is.

Top Five Presentation Tips

I decided to use Google Presentation since no one else choose this free service. Google Presentation is part of the Google Apps suite. I am a Google Certified Teacher and have set up teachers in my district with Google accounts. Our district is looking at using Google Apps for Education as a solution for our online needs. Google Presentation is not as versatile as PowerPoint or Keynote (my preferred paid presentation software) but it does have a couple of features that are unique. Within Google presentation you can collaborate on a slide show. This feature has been valuable for teachers and students in my district. You can also take instant messages from presentees during your presentation. These messages pop up along side the presentation. I think this is the next step for presentations. This interactive component has already been done in a couple of presentations I attended. It enables questions to be asked in real time as well as information added to the presentation. Someone can participate in the presentation remotely. I included multimedia in my presentation tips. I think this should include interactivity in the future. People should be able to collaborate or participate in your presentation. This can be done with Google Presentation, Twitter, Poll Everywhere or Wiffiti.

http://tinyurl.com/cva7g6

The Finer Points of an Effective Presentation

Rather than use Powerpoint, I constructed my presentation on Zoho.com, which Rob had directed me to. It might be interesting to compare Google tools with this open source office suite, as Rob had mentioned to me that several companies are using Zoho as their standard presentation software. I found there were some limitations to using this open source application, such as certain features like slide transitions that seemed not to be available. Although I find many of these features to distract from one's presentation, as I dread the time and energy students spend on including them when they offer no value to the overall presentation, given the nature of this assignment these features would have been helpful to incorporate as a demonstration of what not to do. Regardless, the finished presentation was converted to a .ppt file.

http://www.slideshare.net/brentharrington

Top Five Presentation Tips project

Using a free online presentation app of your choice create a powerful and informative presentation which discusses the finer points of effective presentations. Include your Top Five Tips for better presentations. Please refer to the links posted and on the class Blackboard site. The 1 Hour PowerPoint podcast has a lot of useful resources as well as a supplemental website for further research. At the completion of this task, export your presentation and upload it to slideshare.net. Please contact me ASAP if you have any questions or issues with this project.