Educational Product Reviewing

Are you intereested in becoming an educational product reviewer?

If so, Approved Learning are looking for revieweres to help in making "the search to find useful and high quality learning products and resources easier and clearer".

As a reviewer you

will be assigned educational products that match your field of expertise and preferred age group, whether it’s seventh-grade algebra or “everything elementary.” You will then explore each product and evaluate it based on a well-defined set of criteria, with categories ranging from clarity of instruction to accuracy of content and even to ease of use.

Even if you have never reviewed an educational product before using their provided numeric scoring system will make it "easy to rate products in a consistent and reliable way, whether it’s a book, a game, a mobile app, or a software program".

You can check out all the details and sign up now online at Aproved Learning.

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eAssessment Scotland Online Conference

eAssessment Scotland 2012 are delivering an online conference over two weeks from 23rd August to 6th September. Most days have just two presentations - one in the morning and one in the afternoon.

With over 20 presentations available you are sure to learn a thing or two about eAssessment. Something that is happening already. Last year ECDL in Ireland converted to an online testing system only!!

It’s going to be an ambitious endeavour with 3 keynote presentations and 18 seminars/workshops spread over 2 weeks. You will have the chance to hear from speakers from across the globe – talking about everything from national e-Assessment initiatives to assessing students in virtual worlds (with an opportunity to experience this for yourself).

Participation is free so why not sign up now.

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WizIQ Offers Free Membership

WizIQ are offering free membership to K-12 and College Educators. All you need to have is an email address associated with your educational institute. The accepted email domains include .k12 .edu .ac.uk .edu.au .nic.in .edu.sa .ac.il

Using WizIQ Virtual Classroom you can:
● Offer online courses for your school
● Run virtual office hours and homework help
● Run summer school online to address transportation and facilities issues
● Give AP students a jumpstart with virtual summer class sessions
● Let athletes or homebound students work with their classes live
● Easily set up classes - without IT help
● Bring subject matter experts into their classrooms virtually
● Support group and project-based learning
● Record lectures or flip their classrooms
● Conduct virtual field trips
● Run professional development when and where staff are available
● Share teaching resources among schools

You can also engage hard-to-reach parents with:
o Virtual parents' nights
o Virtual conferences
o Adult education and community outreach
o Virtual math and literacy nights
o Broadcast live school committee meetings on the web

From the WizIQ press release:

Teachers can take full advantage of every WizIQ feature, including screen-sharing, polling, video-conferencing, shared whiteboards, and more.

The WizIQ Virtual Classroom features are generally available only to paying members, but teachers and their students will now enjoy free access.

Teacher accounts come with several other benefits, such as the ability to create live and asynchronous courses complete with uploadable courseware and 15 GB of free storage for class recordings. These recordings are hosted in the cloud.

You can apply now for the free WizIQ membership.

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Volunteers Needed for Research Study

Just one of the notices from the recent MERLOT Grapevine newsletter.

Doctoral candidate Allyson Heisey at Capella University is seeking disabled adult volunteers who teach online, to participate in a research study. The purpose of the study is to enhance and extend the understanding of teleworking by examining the work/life balance of online instructors who have a disability.

Participation in this study could help improve and/or enhance the current understanding of teleworking as a technology that can provide reasonable accommodation for disabled persons.

The study involves a 20-30 minute anonymous interview about experiences as an online instructor with a disability. If you are interested in participating contact Allyson at aheisey@capellauniversity.edu.

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Online Dictation with Chrome

This is a nice little online dictation application from Amit Agarwal.

You can narrate long sentences in one go and Chrome's built-in speech recognition will transcribe them. Say "new line" to start a new paragraph or "delete everything" to completely erase your writing canvas.

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Learning to Code for Free

OnlineCollegeCourses have compiled a list of free online resources where you can learn a programming language.

Well worth having a look and seeing if there is anything suitable for you and/or your students!

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