eLearning Resource: Pinterest in Education

April 19th, 2012

It seems like everywhere you look, people are talking about a website called Pinterest.  Pinterest items are appearing in your Facebook news feed.  The Pinterest “P” icon is showing up on more and more websites you visit.  Perhaps you have even received an invitation or two from friends asking you to join Pinterest.  At social gatherings you may hear friends talking about this latest craze, with the first question being, “What IS Pinterest?”  Pinterest is essentially a virtual bulletin board.  It is a visual representation of things you have found online and would like to bookmark.  And, just like the bookmarking feature in your browser, you can categorize your Pinterest bookmarks by creating custom “boards” or using Pinterest’s preset categories.

While many people find Pinterest to be no more than the latest time-wasting phenomenon, many others have found ways to make Pinterest a valuable resource, educators included.  An eye-catching “infographic” at OnlineUniversities.com recently detailed some of the various ways educators use Pinterest as a supportive educational tool.  If you are a Pinterest user and work in the education field, perhaps you will find some of the ideas below useful.

Possibly the most useful thing about Pinterest is the user’s ability to select and organize content.  As anyone in the field of education knows, there is an entire world of educational resources available online.  You can find lesson plans, unit plans, projects, images, videos, and many useful OERs (Open Educational Resources) online.  Keeping track of all the great things you find can be rather difficult.  With Pinterest, you have a tidy and efficient way to track and categorize the things you find useful or inspiring and Pinterest allows you to easily share your findings with other educators.  Teachers can create a pin board for each subject they teach, or separate boards can be created for different curricular units taught throughout the year.  Pinterest users can also add comments to each link that they choose to pin so they may easily remember what struck them about the resource in the first place.

Teachers may also use Pinterest to disseminate information to their students by selecting and organizing items via Pinterest for student projects or assignments.  A Pinterest board could be created for each project and materials and resources necessary for each project could be pinned to that board.  Students working on a particular project could access the project specific board and find everything they need in one central location.  Pinterest could also be used to share or display student work by pinning finished assignments to a student work board.

Collaboration is also one of the positive aspects of Pinterest.  Educators can use Pinterest to interact with teachers who share their interests or teach in a similar subject area.  Sharing ideas for various units, lessons, projects, and other resources is effortless on Pinterest.  And if you wish, you may ask for commentary or feedback on resources you have shared on your boards as a great way to inform and improve your teaching practice.

Are you an educator and Pinterest user yourself?  Share you favorite ways to use Pinterest in a comment below!

Gatlin International Course Spotlight: More Sustainability Options

April 17th, 2012

Earlier this month, we highlighted a few courses that focus on building sustainability for our course spotlight series.  In the spirit of Earth Day, which is coming up in less than a week, we are going to continue with the sustainability topic for our course spotlight today.  However, the courses we are highlighting today are not the typical sustainability courses most people might think of when they are researching eLearning classes in the field of environmental sustainability.  Below are a few distance-learning sustainability courses offered by Gatlin International that you won’t want to overlook.

Certified Indoor Environmentalist

When most people think of sustainability, they think of individuals, corporations, and other organizations making changes in their lifestyle or business operations to reduce their negative impact on the environment in the form of air pollution, water pollution, or waste of natural resources among other things.  Many people do not realize that the quality of our indoor environments can be just as important as what is going on in the great outdoors.  Gatlin International’s Certified Indoor Environmentalist training program will train students for a career in the indoor environmentalist field.  This eLearning course will help students learn the practical steps to follow in an indoor environmental assessment, how to take samples, and how to resolve common indoor air quality (IAQ) problems.  Students taking this course will learn about HVAC, building science, and the major contaminants, including their health effects.

Not only does Gatlin International’s Certified Environmentalist Training program teach students practical skills to assess indoor environments, it also prepares them for the CIE (Certified Indoor Environmentalist) and CIEC (Certified Indoor Environmental Consultant) certifications by the American Council for Accredited Certification (ACAC). 

All the pertinent topics covered on the certification exams, including a 100-question practice examination, are included in Gatlin International’s Certified Indoor Environmentalist training program to prepare students for either certification they may choose.

Conservation

Conservation is another area often overlooked when people are investigating training or careers in the sustainability arena.  By enrolling in Gatlin International’s Conservation distance learning course, students will study topics such as an introduction to ecology, a perspective of the problems of environment, forestry and deforestation, water and the soil, pollution, the greenhouse effect, the ozone layer, poisons and waste materials, management of vegetation and birds, fisheries management, and marine conservation.

Upon completion of this course, students will receive two qualifications: a Conservation Diploma and an NCFE Level 3 Conservation Award.  The Conservation Diploma is issued by Stonebridge Associated Colleges, and entitles students to use the letters “SAC Dip” after their name in professional interactions. The Level 3 Conservation Award is an independently accredited award at a level of learning equivalent to level 3 on the National Qualifications Framework (NQF) for England, Wales and Northern Ireland. This award has been designed by Stonebridge Associated Colleges to meet specific learners’ or employers’ requirements. Accreditation by NCFE is a guarantee of quality. It means that this learning program has been scrutinized and approved by an independent panel of experienced educational professionals and is quality audited biannually by NCFE.

eLearning Resource: Apps for Special Education

April 12th, 2012

We have written a couple of articles recently that focused on using various iTunes applications to enhance and support education.  Last month, we shared an article called eLearning Resource: There’s an App for That which detailed several applications that can be helpful in discovering useful and relevant applications for educators.  More recently, we wrote an article called eLearning Resource: Evaluating Applications with Rubrics.  This article explored many excellent rubrics and checklists that can be used to evaluate apps so educators may be sure they are putting their time and energy into using applications that actually match their needs.

Today we would like to share a few application ideas for a specific area of education: working with students with special needs.  There are a large number of applications available that target students with special needs and the educators that work with these types of students.  The following list is merely a handful of applications that educators of students with special needs may find beneficial.

Kindergarten.com’s ABA Flashcards, Receptive and Problem Solving Games

Kindergarten.com makes a series of flashcard applications that are great for students with special learning needs.  These ABA (which stands for Applied Behavior Analysis) flashcard apps are not typical math or spelling flashcards most people think of when they hear the word “flashcard”.  ABA offers flashcards that are aimed at teaching students about actions, emotions, things you eat, things you play, etc.  They also have flashcard apps for things such as shapes, the alphabet, famous places, food, vehicles, animals and much more.  Kindergarten.com also offers several problem solving games such as What Rhymes?, Healthy Habits?, Which Go Together? and several others.  According to the kindergarten.com website, these apps include “lots of positive verbal praise, interactive reinforcement, errorless learning and clear, colorful, concrete images on a non-distracting white backgrounds”, making them perfect for students with special needs.

Autism/DTT (Discrete Trial Training) Shapes

Dr. Gary Brown developed this excellent app, Autism/DTT Shapes, which can be used to teach students basic shapes and is geared towards students who have Autism, attention deficit disorder (ADD), attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), or any type of challenge staying on task.  Students can learn shape names in English, French, Norwegian, and Spanish using this app.  The developer of this app also offers Autism/DTT applications in other categories including colors, letters, numbers, sight words, and animals.

Talking Calculator

The Talking Calculator by Adam Croser is a great math supplement for students who are visually impaired, blind, or have a relative strength in auditory processing.  This application does what you would expect a talking calculator to do: speaking buttons, answers, formulas, etc. aloud.

First Then Visual Schedule

The First Then Visual Schedule application was developed by Good Karma Applications, Inc as a positive behavior support tool for individuals with communication challenges, developmental delays, autism, or anyone who may benefit from a structured environment.  This application allows users to create visual schedules to help students increase their independence while decreasing anxiety during times of transition.  Daily events and the steps necessary to complete specific activities are represented by easy to understand visual images making this application a very useful tool for students with special needs.

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