http://www.merlot.org:80/merlot/ A search of MERLOT materials Copyright 1997-2013 MERLOT. All rights reserved. Sat, 25 May 2013 14:35:20 PDT Sat, 25 May 2013 14:35:20 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=81657 Creative Commons is a non-profit organization that offers free licenses that provide a flexible range of protections and freedoms for authors, artists, and educators.. A Creative Commons license is based on copyright, and the licenses apply to all works that are protected by copyright law. The kinds of works that are protected by copyright law are books, websites, blogs, photographs, films, videos, songs and other audio & visual recordings, for example.The Creative Commons licenses give creators the ability to dictate how others may exercise their copyright rightssuch as the right of others to copy their work, make derivative works or adaptations of their work, to distribute their work and/or make money from their work. They do not give creators the ability to restrict anything that is otherwise permitted by exceptions or limitations to copyrightincluding, importantly, fair use, fair dealing or public domain worksnor do they give creators the ability to control anything is not protected by copyright law, such as facts and ideas. http://www.merlot.org/merlot/viewMaterial.htm?id=91408 Calibrated Peer Review (CPR) is a program, for networked computers, that enables frequent writing assignments without any increase in instructor work. In fact, CPR can reduce the time an instructor now spends reading and assessing student writing. CPR offers instructors the choice of creating their own writing assignments or using the rapidly expanding assignment library. If you believe in constructivist learning, writing is the most important tool that you have. But if you have a class of 300 students, grading essays challenges even the true believer. Calibrated Peer Review (CPR)can be used in classes of any size. CPR is based on the model of peer review in science. The student reads a document, either on-line or hard copy, then writes about it. When the student has demonstrated competence as a reviewer, the program delivers three peer documents on for review. The student answers content and style questions and assigns scores. Finally, the student does a self-review. The student grade comes from writing and reviewing. Even though the program is only in its third year, approximately 100,000 students have used it. Although CPR was designed for use in large chemistry classes, experience has shown that it can serve in many other disciplines, as well. Currently, business, chemistry, economics, English, and life science instructors are using CPR in college, graduate and professional, high schools and middle schools. CPR was developed in the Chemistry Department at U.C.L.A. with funding provided by the National Science Foundation and Howard Hughes Medical Institute. 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=80489 For those wanting to properly cite journals, books, web pages, or interviews in MLA or APA format, check the Citation Machine, from the Landmark Project. This is an automated tool for proper APA or MLA citation format for books, web pages, magazines, interviews, encyclopedias, journals, newspapers and more. The tool asks for the relevant information and then generates the citation in a format that can be copied and pasted into research papers. http://www.merlot.org/merlot/viewMaterial.htm?id=80426 In an inquiry-oriented classroom, the teacher is a co-explorer and guide who cultivates curiosity and challenges students to think and act like scientists as they explore intriguing questions. It takes time, practice, and sometimes, a shift in teaching strategies, to create a classroom where inquiry can flourish. This web site is part of a larger Online community of classrooms from 11,000 schools, representing more than 490,000 students track wildlife such as monarch butterflies across North America during the spring migration. The instructional approach integrates various disciplines in science, math, social studies, development of personal ethics, and language arts. Explicit strategies should help both novice and experienced teachers create a climate for inquiry, support productve discussions, generate questions, plan investigations and gather data, guide consideration of evidence, and critically review research reports. Established in 1991 with a grant from the Annenberg Foundation to the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, the Project uses media and communications to improve math and science education. http://www.merlot.org/merlot/viewMaterial.htm?id=90909 PALS is an on-line, standards-based, continually updated resource bank of science performance assessment tasks indexed via the National Science Education Standards (NSES) and various other standards frameworks. http://www.merlot.org/merlot/viewMaterial.htm?id=91285 The Classroom Assessment Techniques -- CATs (Angelo and Cross, 1993) within the FLAG are succinct, self-contained,self-instructional, web-based modules that introduce a broadly applicable technique for use in college or universitySMET courses. Each CAT has been written by a college or university instructor who currently uses the technique, and has beenreviewed by the FLAG Editorial Board for accuracy and consistency with current professional standards of assessment.In most cases, the technique has an extensive history of research to support claims of reliability and validity. The CATsare linked to a set of discipline-specific "tools" that can be downloaded for immediate use. The new Tool search function at the mirror site is outstanding! Assessment techniques are linked to the relevant research literature as well as to web sites showing exemplary use of each assessment technique. http://www.merlot.org/merlot/viewMaterial.htm?id=88608 The Student Assessment of Learning Gains Instrument is designed for instructors from all disciplines who wish to learn more about how students evaluate various course elements in terms of how much they have gained from them. Feedback from the instrument can guide instructors in modifying their courses to enhance student learning. It may be used at any point during a course (for formative feedback) as well as at the end. The Web delivered instrument allows you to Step 1: Modify the SALG instrument to fit your class Step 2: Implement the SALG Step 3: View and analyze the dataNote: You will need to sign up to use the material. http://www.merlot.org/merlot/viewMaterial.htm?id=78429 The Multicultural Pavilion provides resources for educators, students, and activists to explore and discuss multicultural education; facilitates opportunities for educators to work toward self-awareness and development; and provides forums for educators to interact and collaborate toward a critical, transformative approach to multicultural education. http://www.merlot.org/merlot/viewMaterial.htm?id=90915 This paper approaches Web page and site design as a challenge that combines traditional editorial approaches to documents with graphic design, user interface design, information design, and the technical authoring skills required to optimize the HTML code, graphics, and text within Web pages.