Huge Online Resource for Education Tools

Today I read on academHacK about this, they call it a “Ridiculously Useful Resource”. It’s the Centre for Learning and Performance Technology’s Directory of Learning Tools. And it’s quite a list! From blogging tools to presentation tools and mind mapping and brainstorming tools. With a note if the described tool is free, a download or a hosted service and if it’s open source.

As a Mac user I have to say I don’t see all my favorite Mac applications in the list, although it contains over 2300 tools. But especially if you’re looking for a hosted service and have a good overview of it’s competitors, this is a great directory to check out. They also have a list with their Top 100 Tools for Learning 2008 selected by 159 ‘learning professionals’. It’s worth taking a look at.

Taking Notes: Choosing the Right Tools

It’s a known fact: the longer the lecture or presentation, the smaller the amount of information that will be remembered. If a lecture is 30 minutes long, students don’t remember the first 15 minutes as well as in a lecture with a duration of only those first 15 minutes. So how can we keep track of the information given to us in a two-hour lecture?

Not Just Reading a Book

When we read a fiction book we probably read a line only once. That’s no problem. We don’t really have to remember that specific line, but we want to understand the story. When we have to learn something, say for our final exams, we really have to study the material and make sure we will not forget what we read. So we have to read it over and over again, or use a smart highlighting system to keep track of the most important fact and information.

However, when we listen to a lecturer or a presenter, we can’t highlight words or read things over several times until we really understand what’s being said Read more

A Remote Control For Your Teacher? - The Importance Of Asking Questions

Are you always sure about what your teacher really wants from you? Have you ever been in the situation that you present your work but it appeared you got the assignment wrong? There are a lot of situations in which you’ve been told to do something, but it might not be totally clear to you what the outcome has to be.

There can be various reasons for this unclearity. Maybe you’ve not been paying attention while the assignment was given. Maybe it was explained in a bad way, maybe the teacher assumed you had the knowledge to understand what he or she was talking about but you didn’t. When thinking about assignments and formulating them an educator will get fully into a subject. We might assume that, because he is teaching this subject he will know a lot about it. And the more you know about something the more difficult it is to understand why other people really don’t know what you’re talking about. That’s why it actually is very difficult to teach a seemingly very simple subject to a group of newcomers. Great teachers know this, of course, and know how to formulate their questions. But this is not always the case. Read more

A Simple Tip To Maintain Focus

For many students procrastination is a problem, and there are many reasons why we tend to procrastinate. While having to work on various assignments there will always be tasks you like to do and ones you don’t like so much.

Say you’re studying graphic design. Creating new work will be more fun than writing a review on the process of doing the project. So writing the review will be postponed and you will fully focus on the fun part (the creative process). But then, when the deadline is approaching, there is still this daunting task waiting for you at the end of the project. You will not have enough time to do some quality writing and you might have to do it the night before the presentation, leaving a bad feeling about a project that was so much fun at the beginning. Sounds familiar? Read more