Into the Driver's Seat

By Andrew K. Miller

 

"II you want students to collaborate it is imperative that educators establish this as a norm at the beginning of the school year. Great teachers leverage group work and collaborative activities and projects in their curriculum and instruction, but oftentimes teachers “push-back” with the difficulties of having their students collaborate. I agree, it is a daunting task, but I always respond, “How have you taught them to collaborate and providing scaffolding of that skill?” This is the key! If you want your students to collaborate effectively, you must give the opportunity to do so, as well as give the necessary instruction in skills and scaffolding."

Via iEARN-USA, Dr. Gordon Dahlby, Dennis T OConnor

CanvasDropr provides a virtually infinite online canvas on which you and your friends / contacts can easily add, position, resize and rotate photos and video clips at will.

CanvasDropr can be used to brainstorm around visual collections, to select and organize images, and to prepare visual portfolios or tours to share with others or to be published online. 

 

From the official site: "The center of the CanvasDropr idea is to work and collaborate on a so-called "Canvas".

 

The canvas can be shared by an unlimited amount of people, and changes made in the canvas are updated real-time in every user’s canvas.

 

Users can easily drag and drop new images directly from their desktop onto the canvas."

 

CanvasDrops allows you to text chat in real-time with other "collaborators" you have invited as well as to set permissions for what "public" users can edit or modify on a "public canvas.

 

It is possible to place photos and video clips coming from Facebook, YouTube, Flickr and Picasa or to import one simply by providing its URL. 

 

The final canvas can be shared on FB or Twitter, downloaded as an "image" or a .zip file containing all of its images and can also be "embedded" on any site or blog.

 

The service is free to use.

 

Check this video: http://vimeo.com/31591478 ;

Find out more: http://www.canvasdropr.com/ ;

 

or you can try it immediately with no need for signup if you alrady have a Twitter or facebook account: http://www.canvasdropr.com/Signup.aspx ;

Via Robin Good

Why have your students work collaboratively? "Collaborative learning teams are said to attain higher levels of thinking and preserve information for longer times that students working individually."

This post provides 20 suggestions to help collaborative groups work more effectively. A few are:

* Establish group goals.

* Keep groups mid-sized.

* Build trust and promote open communication.

* Consider the learning process asa part of the assessment.

The post includes links to a variety of resources and each point has an explantion with additional information.

Via Beth Dichter

Robin Good: Meetings.io is a new videoconferencing service which allows you to meet up with to 5 people in your own branded and persistent collaboration room.

 

There is no software to download or install as Meetings.io is completely web-based.

 

Meetings.io also include other key collaboration features such as:

File transfer (coming) Group notes Text chat Screen sharing (coming) Video playback within meetings Call conferencing support Meeting management and scheduling Custom domain for your persistent room Public or Private mode

 

Free to use. No registration required.

 

Key features: http://meetings.io/features ;

 

FAQ: http://meetings.io/help ;

 

More info: http://meetings.io/ ;

Via Robin Good

Robin Good: Idroo is a real-time collaborative whiteboard (for Windows PCs only) that allows 10 or more people to annotate, highight, draw and markup over any image they want to. 

Idroo integrates perfectly with Skype allowing you to invite through Skype your meeting attendants and to talk to them while working together on the shared whiteboard.

 

Key features include:

 

FREE for non-commercial use 10 or more simultaneous participants Vector drawing tools  Import images Skype integration Supports digital tablets (such as Wacom)

 

Download (Windows only): http://www.idroo.com/download 

 

Getting started guide: http://www.idroo.com/documentation/inviting-users 

 

Find out more: http://www.idroo.com/ 

Via Robin Good

There is no curation without original content. However, curators can expand the readership and help their niche find meaning and insight in the material as it relates to them. 

 

There is too much information. The author explains that the real power of content marketing lies in the orginal content creation. Mixing curated content with your original content builds authority. There is a video "Is Your Content Good Enough To Be Curated"? That's where it is for all of us that write. Why would anyone curate my post?

 

Commentary first written by Jan Gordon "Covering Content Curation, Social Media and Beyond" and I adapted her commentary.

 

Read full article here: [http://bit.ly/w104L6]

Via janlgordon, Barbara Bray