Building the Future - Creating global citizens that function in the knowledge society
Through improving education today, we can build a better tomorrow.

The web site of Australian ICT Teacher, Kevin Grunert.

Archive for the ‘Teaching’ Category

Newer Entries »

10 Places to Find Free Educational Software

Sunday, January 31st, 2010

The open source movement has made many different educational programs freely available to schools, teachers, and students. Many of these software programs are designed to work across multiple platforms and include directions for use and installation. Here are 10 educational software products that can be downloaded or used online for free.

ATutor - Similar to Moodle, ATutor is an open source web-based learning content management system (LCMS/LMS). It provides students with a social learning network and allows teachers to conduct courses online.

SugarLabs - SugarLabs offers an award-winning learning platform for children. The free platform allows children to collaborate, communicate, write, and make music together in a safe environment. SugarLabs’ software is available in 25 languages and is used by more than one million students around the world.

MediaWiki - Originally written for use on Wikipedia, this free wiki software works well for classroom wikis. The software includes full installation instructions and allows users to restrict anonymous editing, reading, and account registration.

Elgg - This open source program can be used to create social networks for education and other school-related projects. Elgg provides everything needed to build a site or application from the ground up and offers frequently updated patches, plugins, and themes.

Anki - Anki is a free and open source spaced repetition system (SRS) that can be used to create smart flashcards and scheduled study periods. The software works online, on computers, on cell phones, and with several different portable devices.

Pauker - Pauker is an open source learning application that is available in multiple languages, including English, Esperanto, Dutch, German, French, Polish, Spanish, Slovak, and Vietnamese. The application is flashcard-based and meant to help people memorize everything from abbreviations to state capitals.

StarDict - StarDict is a free international dictionary and translator that works across multiple platforms. You can use the online version or download the StarDict software to your computer for free.

Tux Paint - Designed for children age three and up, this award-winning open source drawing program offers a friendly user interface and a wide range of drawing tools. Children can get creative with a paint brush, line tools, shape tools, text and label tools, rubber stamps, and many other easy-to-use special effects.

VoiceThread - VoiceThread is a web-based application that allows multiple people to collaborate on a slide show presentation. Users can comment together on images, documents, and videos. Several versions of VoiceThread are available; the free version allows unlimited voice threads and 2GB of storage.

Google Wave - Google Wave is a new Google tool that can be used to communicate and collaborate online in real-time. The software isn’t freely available yet, but you can request a special invitation to try out Google Wave with students or colleagues.

Guest post from education writer Karen Schweitzer. Karen is the About.com Guide to Business School. She also writes about online degree programs for OnlineDegreePrograms.org.

Posted in Educational Web Sites, School Software, Teaching, Teaching resources | No Comments »

Richard Feynman on Teaching

Wednesday, August 12th, 2009

Excerpts from “‘Surely You’re Joking Mr. Feynman!’ Adventures of a Curious Character” by Richard Feynman, Bantam Books: New York, 1986

I don’t believe I can really do without teaching. The reason is, I have to have something so that when I don’t have any ideas and I’m not getting anywhere I can say to myself, “At least I’m living; at least I’m doing something; I am making some contribution” — it’s just psychological.

When I was at Princeton in the 1940s I could see what happened to those great minds at the Institute for Advanced Study, who had been specially selected for their tremendous brains and were now given this opportunity to sit in this lovely house by the woods there, with no classes to teach, with no obligations whatsoever. These poor bastards could now sit and think clearly all by themselves, OK? So they don’t get any ideas for a while: They have every opportunity to do something, and they are not getting any ideas. I believe that in a situation like this a kind of guilt or depression worms inside of you, and you begin to worry about not getting any ideas. And nothing happens. Still no ideas come.

Nothing happens because there’s not enough real activity and challenge: You’re not in contact with the experimental guys. You don’t have to think how to answer questions from the students. Nothing!

In any thinking process there are moments when everything is going good and you’ve got wonderful ideas. Teaching is an interruption, and so it’s the greatest pain in the neck in the world. And then there are the longer period of time when not much is coming to you. You’re not getting any ideas, and if you’re doing nothing at all, it drives you nuts! You can’t even say “I’m teaching my class.”

If you’re teaching a class, you can think about the elementary things that you know very well. These things are kind of fun and delightful. It doesn’t do any harm to think them over again. Is there a better way to present them? The elementary things are easy to think about; if you can’t think of a new thought, no harm done; what you thought about it before is good enough for the class. If you do think of something new, you’re rather pleased that you have a new way of looking at it.

The questions of the students are often the source of new research. They often ask profound questions that I’ve thought about at times and then given up on, so to speak, for a while. It wouldn’t do me any harm to think about them again and see if I can go any further now. The students may not be able to see the thing I want to answer, or the subtleties I want to think about, but they remind me of a problem by asking questions in the neighborhood of that problem. It’s not so easy to remind yourself of these things.

So I find that teaching and the students keep life going, and I would never accept any position in which somebody has invented a happy situation for me where I don’t have to teach. Never.

Posted in Quotes, Teaching | No Comments »

Sorry for the lack of updates

Thursday, February 19th, 2009

Apart from the first two days of school, I’ve been teaching at a local high school every day, in Society and Environment, English and Information Processing, which has greatly restricted my free time.

On the plus side, it’s been a great experience so far and I’ll be posting some teacher resources up here in the next few days that I have been creating for my classes, for you to use, modify, adapt and critique.

Also, apologies for the change in the look of the site - I upgraded to WordPress 2.71 and it reset the changes that I’d made to the theme.

Posted in Teaching | No Comments »

Newer Entries »