Karen’s Mashups

We’re back! I can’t believe the summer has gone by, and it’s been months since I’ve done a mashup — but it’s with good reason.

This summer I focused all my spare time on a new project: the Kids Open Dictionary. This dictionary is intended for kids, though it can certainly be used for adult learners as well. As words are completed, they will be reviewed for quality and appropriateness and ultimately “frozen” for export into a variety of formats, including text, PDF, ebooks, wikis, web, etc., for use on a variety of devices.

This is a public domain resource that anyone can use for any purpose. We hope that it will be used by teachers, students, publishers, hardware manufacturers, VARs, and others. The site includes a build-your-own-glossary tool that allows users to construct glossaries for their own books, units, courses, or web sites and export them to text, html, rtf, pdf, or wikitext.

This is a mass collaboration project, and we hope that many people around the world will jump in and add a definition or two.

So, this mashup is featuring videos from TeacherTube, a great video-sharing site for education. (It’s like YouTube for schools, and, thankfully, isn’t blocked in most districts.) Teachers and students from around the world create and upload videos on topics that cover almost every curriculum area you can imaging. There are even great professional development videos.

(Note: This is a large file, so you may have to wait a while depending on your connection speed. An embedded version, which may load faster, is available here.)

One trick for using TeacherTube: If you want to download videos, you need to be signed in, and then the download link will show up on the right side of the screen under Video Details.

If you produce your own videos, consider sharing them with others on TeacherTube. This site also provides a great authentic publishing opportunity for students. Imagine how motivating it is to know that over 10,000 people have watched your video! (Just make sure you have the necessary parent permissions.)

And, as always, feel free to share this mashup with others. I think it will be particularly useful in workshops to show teachers all the great free multimedia resources out there.

Include in this show are the following:

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Sorry for the brief hiatus, but I just wanted to let everyone know that I’ll be back with a new mashup soon. I’ve had a few other exciting projects consume all my time the last month or so, but stay tuned!

This show highlights podcasts for learners with special needs.

There is new information coming out all the time about learning disabilities, brain research, universal design for learning, and more. Podcasts are a good way to keep up with it all and to connect with others who have share an interest in specific issues.

Our classrooms are filled with ever-increasingly diverse students. Static and often inaccessible educational resources like textbooks are not appropriate for many learners. The accommodations that can be made to increase accessibility are good not only for special populations but for ALL students. The principles behind Universal Design for Learning could revolutionize educational success for many learners.

Included in this show are:

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This time of year, many schools are focusing on preparation for high stakes tests. All students can benefit from improving their study skills and learning how to prep for tests, even if it’s just for regular end-of-unit tests or quizzes. There are a variety of podcasts available that can help students with this, and we’ll be featuring several in this show.

(For the moment, I’m going to put aside my feelings about the current state of testing and test prep, but if the frenzy of test prep makes you crazy, here are my thoughts.)

Another way to use podcasting for review and study purposes is to create your own studycasts. These can be audio or video versions of information you’d normally cover in a printed review packet. For some students, audio or video is more engaging and accessible. Another idea is to have your students create their own studycasts at the end of each unit. In the course of doing so, they will master the content and hone their own communication skills.

Included in this show are excerpts from the following:

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