Information and digital literacy in education via the digital path

One of the questions that readers ask me on a fairly regular basis is, "how do you keep track of everything?" The answer to that has remained largely the same for the last decade. My process is that when I find something interesting I bookmark it, review it, and, if I like it, I write about it here on Free Technology for Teachers. Once I write about something I tend to remember it better than if I just looked at it and tested it for a little while. The one part of the process that has changed over the years is just where my bookmarks get saved.

Learning is more powerful and dynamic with tools that are already right in front of you – and it’s up to educators to impress this on students in the classroom.

With Microsoft OneNote, educators can create digital notebooks that support academic standards and education outcomes across disciplines and tasks, such as writing, reading, mathematics, science, history, CTE, and elective courses. Students may use OneNote across content areas and grade levels, and use OneNote to compile and organize unstructured information, research, and content. OneNote also supports research, collaboration, information management, communication, note taking, journaling, reflective writing, and academic requirements.

I’m guilty of having a bias in favor of all things G Suite for Education that sometimes leads me to ignore some of the excellent products that Microsoft has been developing. I’m aware of that bias and I’ve been making a concerted effort over the last six or seven weeks to give more Microsoft products and honest try. One of those products is the free Learning Tools add-in for OneNote and Word.

Microsoft's free Learning Tools keep getting better. This week Microsoft announced ten updates that are either available now or will be available soon to Word and OneNote users. And if you're not currently using Word or OneNote some of these updates just might make you give Word and OneNote a try. 

The Technology Enhanced Learning team recently ran a bitesize online course for University of Sussex staff looking at Digital Productivity. This blog post will explore some ideas around that topic.

The course was conceived as a way to introduce staff to ways of working that take advantage of digital technologies to enhance or expand on practices they would previously have carried out manually. These techniques are equally useful for students and for ‘life admin’ for everyone.

It is very tempting to launch into lists of so-called productivity apps – and there are very many lists of that sort on the web – but if you are really going to find new, better ways of working then it is important to spend a little time thinking about where you are now and what you want to achieve

Posts about digital literacy written by @heydftba, @katessoper, and colinmcallistergibson