Information and digital literacy in education via the digital path

In order for a group project to succeed you need to be organised. It’s important to know what stages make up the workflow that will ensure you complete the project, and who is responsible for what. One approach which has been used by many over the years is KanBan boards. Typically a white board or wall space is used along with some coloured tape to divide the space into columns (progress) and rows or ‘swim lanes’ to seperate individual or teams sharing the same board. Post-its were then used to write individual tasks. These could be moved along as the task progresses.

With the increased demand on online education, major tech companies have upped the ante by releasing new tools with advanced features designed particularly to facilitate remote learning. Microsoft Teams is the latest in this tend to announce a wide variety of  new functionalities to its popular video calling platform. Below are three features that are coming out soon and that will definitely help you in your remote teaching. 

A collection of emerging tools just right for humanizing your online course.

Peruse the buffet, click on the links, and sample what looks intriguing and helpful to you!

A guest blog post from Sheffield Hallam University Business and Technology students working within the SMASH team. A student partnership group researching Social Media for Academic Studies at Hallam.

Is there an app for that? A review of mobile apps for information literacy classes

When we look around our libraries, students are routinely using their phones, tablets, and laptops as the basic tools for their research, and they seem to be online more often than not. When we talk about meeting students “where they are,” we are typically referring to teaching to a student’s skill-level. We propose expanding that to meeting them where they reside in the
digital landscape, and, increasingly, that involves an app-based environment on a personal device.

What mean ye SPLOT?

Smallest/Simplest * Possible/Portable * Open/Online * Learning/Living *  Tool/Technology

Yeah, we still have some work to do on tightening up that catchy acronym…

SPLOT comes from the conviction that there is great value in learners and educators sharing their work on the open web. All too often, doing so gets derailed by two problems. First, open web tools are perceived by users as difficult to use, and by organizations as complicated to support. This is why most organizations direct or even restrict activity into a consolidated Learning Management System (LMS).  Second, online identity and privacy concerns (and laws) scare people off. Not every learner is ready to share their work with the world on a medium that “never forgets”. We know that most free online communication tools capture and exploit the data of their users.

So the tools on this site are designed with two core principles in mind:

* make it as easy as possible to post activity to the open web in an appealing and accessible way

* allow users to do so without creating accounts, or providing any required personal information

About 60 percent of today’s college students are using their smartphones to study, and that is largely thanks to the wide variety of apps they can make use of.

College students are regularly using tools like Google Docs on their mobile devices because the cloud technology makes it just as easy to work on a smartphone as it is to use a computer.

Now, thanks to an update, a new Google Docs workflow will make it even easier for students and professors to use the cloud-based tool in their classes.

Explore the online teaching tools we've rounded up for you in this list. There are 50 of them for lesson planning, assessment, collaboration, and more.

Looking for some educational websites to help you with the management of your class instruction? The list below has you covered. These are some some popular web tools we have reviewed in multiple instances in the past which you can use to perform a wide variety of tasks. These include: creating interactive video lessons, collect formative assessment and provide real-time feedback to students, enhance students learning through the use of digital games and flashcards, create online classes and share with students assignments and learning resources, organize students into appropriate learning groups and many more.

There is no doubt about the utility of the apps and tools that Google presents. It has something in store for everyone or rather I should say every tool by Google can benefit everyone. Google Keep is one tool that has been discussed lately so when we explored the tool we were amazed as it offers some amazing features that can help educators in multiple ways personally and professionally. The pointers below will help educators use this tool in the possible ways.

Are you looking to build students’ digital literacy skills to better prepare them for success in today’s digital world?

Need a few ideas? We invited educators in our Renaissance Royals™ community to share examples of favorite assignments, projects, or activities they use to help students of all ages build digital literacy skills.

This case study looks at a pilot of Microsoft Teams in a Faculty of Health and Wellbeing.

When students begin their journey, it is vital that they are able to connect with their peers and form meaningful relationships around their studies. For some students this can be challenging and there are a number of different factors that can have effect. Building communities in an ‘asynchronous environment’ enables students to learn at convenient times without having the need to physically host discussions.

For the last 24 hours the Twittersphere has been buzzing about the recent changes to Padlet. While none of the following tools have as many features as Padlet, they all provide the core element of a digital wall to which you apply digital sticky notes. Here are five alternatives to Padlet. These are in the order in which I prefer them right now.

Mentimeter, one of the tools that I often mention for conducting formative assessments, has just released a new Q&A feature. The new feature will let your audience submit questions that they want you to answer. Additionally, members of the audience can vote for the questions that they want you to answer.