Infographics for Language Teachers and Learners and More

Infographics (short for information graphics) are neat visual tools that can be used to convey several different topics. The use of colorful graphics and clear concise text makes organizing information a snap and allows teachers to present this information in a nice visual matter. Students benefit by the fact that they are not overwhelmed by lots of text and they don’t have to listen to the teacher lecture them on the stats and facts that can otherwise be shown by the infographic. There are also several sites that allow folks to create their own for FREE (see the resources below.) This post will share some of the resources I have collected on infographics.

QR Coded For The Future

Maybe you have seen some of the strange-looking images like the one at the right. These are QR Codes that first became popular in Japan a few years back and thanks to the earthquake and tsunami we learned about the in the US. If you are already familiar with them and have a scanner, go ahead and scan that one – don’t worry it is just going to some information about me. Most businesses have recognized the power of marketing using these neat little barcodes and have even designed codes that resemble their logos. This post will give you some resources and examples about using QR Codes in the classroom.

Causing Your STEM To Grow

“Science is for nerds, math is too hard.” How many times have your heard students express this sentiment.  Science, Technology, Engineering and Math (STEM) are all important disciplines in education. Guiding our students to learn more about and participate in these subjects is paramount to the success of our economy in the future. According to Acheive, Inc, students that complete Algebra II in high school more than double their chances of obtaining a four-year college degree. This post will give you some resources for using STEM in your school.

What’s Coding Got To Do With It?

I have always been intrigued by computers and computer programming. I remember my best friend and I would sit up hours creating text-based adventure games on an old Commodore 64 with a cassette tape. Then I took my first programming course in high school in Basic and Pascal on a TRS 80 Model III with amber colored text on a black screen. I was hooked! the exercises were tedious and at times I often asked myself “Why are we having to learn this?” During my teaching years I had the opportunity to teach computer programming in high school and some of my students would ask the same question. This post will strive to help answer that question for you.

Your Voice is Powerful – VoiceThread in Education

Wired recently published an article on the power of one’s voice about a new study published in the January issue of Evolution and Human Behavior which provides evidence that voice – its tones and intonations and rhythms, known formally as prosodics – trigger soothing affects that do not appear with plain text communication. “People still need to interact the way we evolved to interact,” says one of the studies authors, Leslie J. Seltzer. “It doesn’t matter how many smiley faces you put in your IM. It’s not going to have the same effect as talking in person.”

The human voice is a critical tool for connecting in a meaningful way with those around you. Making voice connections easily in a technologically complex and networked world is what VoiceThreading is all about.