Crucial Thought Rss

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Chris selected as K12OnlineConference keynote speaker Each year the K12OnlineConference provides tremendous professional development for free, and entirely online. This year, they have selected me as one of their keynote speakers. I am thrilled to have been chosen and look forward to participating in the conversation. Read the full post announcing all the keynote speakers here.

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Two quick links on Cognitive Load Theory I've been fielding lots of questions lately about Cognitive Load Theory. Here are two quick links that may be useful. First is an article talking about the practical implications of CLT on the design of learning. The second are some "recent" (as of 2003) developments regarding CLT. Happy reading! Update: I clarified the second...

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Practical advice on kids and Android app development After hearing about my students' success developing an Android app, I've gotten several emails asking for more details as to how I practically worked with my kids. Here are some pointers that I offered to the first person that emailed me, perhaps they are of some use to you. Please note that your mileage may vary. It's ok to not be...

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Publishing an App Inventor app to the Android Market As I mentioned earlier, my students and I published an Android app to the Android Market. See those links for more information on the background. This post is decidedly technical. First, once we finished the coding process, we packaged the app for to download to the computer. This is an option in App Inventor. This downloaded an .apk file....

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Designing and publishing an Android app with kids This post is designed to provide some context around how/why we decided to build this app. The more technical details of the code and how we published it will come in a future post. My students and I recently completed and published an Android app, and here's how we did it. First, the genesis for this goes back to a question I asked...

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TeachJeffSpanish dot com – need a new idea

Category : General

Hi faithful readers!

I need some creative help. My kids and I want a new idea for TeachJeffSpanish.com. He knows about it, and will be watching this year. Last year’s idea of a Scavenger Hunt was so great it’s hard to top. The ideas kids have come up with they admit to not really wanting to even do. Our goal is to come up with an overarching idea that could carry us through the year.

A few caveats…

1. I want something that is fun, new, and fresh. I want something explicity not “schooly” to borrow a term from Clay.

2. I want something that my kids would watch if they happened upon it on YouTube. That’s sort of my litmus test. If it’s not interesting enough to get you to watch it, why bother?

3. I want something not cheesy. Kids come up with ideas that seem to fit the school mold but are unable (seemingly) to come up with something more creative. Granted, my kids are 11-12 years old so developmentally they’re just not there yet.

That said, I want something that folks can learn along with us. Something fun, interesting, and that also teaches Spanish. I think teaching Jeff is a fun gimmick that folks might want to learn along with Jeff.

Ideas?

Thanks..

Chris

Comments (2)

Maybe your students could do a take-off on Matt Harding’s videos. You know, the guy that danced all over the world and has 10 million hits on his latest You Tube video? The students could dance in front of local landmarks and teach Jeff about their locations, describe the surroundings, even make it a guessing game with clues. Matt had great success getting a sponsor for his second video–who knows, maybe some local folks could ante up for your students as well!

How about a riff on the One Semester of Spanish Love Song. Take a song or genre of songs and apply some basic Spanish to it. Kinda like a haiku, let the limitations inspire the creativity.




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