http://www.merlot.org:80/merlot/ A search of MERLOT materials Copyright 1997-2013 MERLOT. All rights reserved. Fri, 24 May 2013 23:28:34 PDT Fri, 24 May 2013 23:28:34 PDT http://www.merlot.org:80/merlot/images/merlot.gif http://www.merlot.org:80/merlot/ 44 34 http://www.merlot.org/merlot/viewMaterial.htm?id=335105 A teaching resource for digital literacy, stimulus for story telling and creativity that is FREE to download. It has been developed in partnership between BradField and the Specialist Schools and Academies Trust and its schools.Inanimate Alice the multi award-winning interactive audio-visual narrative from new-media production house the BradField Company (BradField) has been identified by Specialist Schools and Academies Trust (SSAT) as delivering compelling new media suitable for an education audience. Seen by over 1 million viewers (estimate), it is an aid to creativity in the classroom, assisting in story telling and literacy and can be a free and major contribution to the creative curriculum that has been welcomed by teachers accessing it. http://www.merlot.org/merlot/viewMaterial.htm?id=80710 To address the critical teacher shortage in math and science, the Teaching and Learning Interchange grant produced three products: two series of online video case studies of accomplished teaching and a resource guide explaining the techniques, ideas for engaging students, assessing learning progress, creating and maintaining a classroom conducive to learning, along with strategies for working with English Learners and Special needs students. Originally conceived for use with pre-service and intern teachers, the cases and resources have been recommended by field reviewers for use at all stages of the teacher professional continuum.The Pedagogy in Practice: Science video case studies document lessons from general science, biology and chemistry; the Pedagogy in Practice: Math video cases cover 8th grade algebra, high school algebra and geometry. Each case is supported by relevant artifacts that develop real contexts for the learning and includes teaching cues and transcripts of classroom dialog. National Board certified and Exploratorium Master teachers deconstruct their own teaching practices and share how they break subject matter standards into mind-sized learning units, then demonstrate those same learning units in action. Teacher reflections on assessment, along with links to resouces found in the Strategies in Practice Resource Guide, provide support for classroom management, lesson planning and essential strategies that describe how to adapt the instructional pedagogy modeled in the videos. All lessons are aligned simultaneously to the California standards for teaching and science subject matter content. http://www.merlot.org/merlot/viewMaterial.htm?id=90820 This site supports the scholarship of teaching by providing research-based resources designed to help faculty use active learning successfully in college and university classrooms. VARK is a short, simple inventory that has helped students to learn more effectively and faculty to become more sensitive to the diversity of teaching strategies necessary to reach all students. http://www.merlot.org/merlot/viewMaterial.htm?id=88609 The IHMC Concept Mapping Software empowers users to construct, navigate, share, and criticize knowledge models represented as Concept Maps. The recently released Version 3 of CmapTools takes concept mapping to a new level, providing a powerful means for collaboratively creating, organizing, evaluating, and sharing knowledge models distributed on a growing collection of servers throughout the world, or on your private server.Among a large set of new features, a redesigned, simple user interface enables users to share their knowledge and link their concept maps to those of others with simple drag-and-drop operations. The synchronous collaboration tool allows geographically dispersed participants to concurrently work on the same Cmap, and see the others' changes in real time.The act of storing a Cmap on a CmapTools server actually stores a copy as a Web page, making it fast and automatic to share your Cmap(s) in an easily viewable, read-only form to the world at large. Styles make it easy to give a common look to a set of concept maps, including background images. In addition to English, this new version brings a user interface in Italian and Portuguese (other languages are in the works).The ability to search throughout all concept maps in servers across the world and resources (images, web pages, etc.) on the Web provides the power to change how users retrieve information: the tool leverages the topology and semantics of the concept map to retrieve from the Web and concept map index servers only resources that are relevant to the content of the user?s map.IHMCs CmapTools is being used by thousands of users from corporations, government entities, universities and schools since the early 1990s. Users include NASA, the US Navy, the Electric Power Research Institute, the Department of Defense, and thousands of teachers and students from universities and schools from over 150 countries. It has been shown to be an effective mechanism to capture and share the tacit knowledge of experts, as well as a powerful assessment and collaboration tool in schools. The CmapTools software continues to be free for non-for-profit, educational use. http://www.merlot.org/merlot/viewMaterial.htm?id=76667 Tolerance.org seeks to create a national community committed to human rights.Its goal is to awaken people of all ages to the problem of hate and intolerance,to equip them with the best tolerance ideas and to prompt them to act in theirhomes, schools, businesses and communities.Hate can only be conquered by resident-activists willing to promote tolerance. You may already be one of them. The ideas in this guide will help foster tolerance in yourself, your family, your schools, your workplace and your community. Some of the ideas are things to do. Some are things to think about. Some are things to remember. Ideas are relevant to self, home, school, workplace, community. Hate, bias, and tolerance news are reviewed systematically. http://www.merlot.org/merlot/viewMaterial.htm?id=91357 The ASL Fingerspelling site offers a number of tools for novices and experts to help them become proficient at fingerspelling. For novices, there is a standard dictionary to learn the basic fingershapes. You can also see what a word looks like with the fingerspelling converter and practice your receptive skills with an interactive quiz. A stand-alone Macintosh program which gives you all of the features of the web site, with the addition of a speed control for various skill levels, can be down-loaded from this site. http://www.merlot.org/merlot/viewMaterial.htm?id=91358 Michigan State University's ASL Browser web site is an online American Sign Language (ASL) browser where you can look up video of thousands of ASL signs and learn interesting things about them. http://www.merlot.org/merlot/viewMaterial.htm?id=87590 This is the home page of the Center for Applied Special Technology (CAST), an educational, not-for-profit organization that uses technology to expand opportunities for all people, including those with disabilities. CAST created Bobby, a Web-based tool that analyzes Web pages for their accessibility to people with disabilities. (Reference: ADA) http://www.merlot.org/merlot/viewMaterial.htm?id=79429 Website dedicated to teachers of Elementary ESL classes. Includes lesson plans on variety of subject matter including science and social studies, teaching tips, resource picks, an askJudie forum and a comprehensive list of upcoming events in the ESL world. She has included downloadable classroom activities as well as supplemental ideas for those classroom lessons. http://www.merlot.org/merlot/viewMaterial.htm?id=79450 This self-paced tutorial developed with funding from the Minority Opportunities in Research (MORE) division of the National Institutes of Health (NIH)/National Institute of General Medical Sciences (NIGMS) provides information on program evaluation. The resources developed by the American Physiological Society (APS) are the result of a four-year effort, Promoting Effective Program Evaluation (RU13 GM56019). According to the web site, more than 350 MARC, MBRS, and Bridges directors and staff participated in the projects? short courses and workshops. Short-term workshop impacts were evaluated by pre and post surveys of short course participants. Long-term impacts were assessed by success rates of workshop participants in obtaining funding for MORE proposals developed subsequent to the workshop.