5 Great Canvas MOOCs for Teachers

Canvas Network is an open online platform which provides lifelong learners with many chances and learning experiences. As a teacher, I always search for such opportunities to update my knowledge and find new people to follow and interact with. Here are some of the courses that can help teachers to develop their teaching skills and refresh their classroom practices.

Welcome to Canvas Network from Instructure on Vimeo.

Global 2013 STEMx Education Conference

Retrieved Aug. 19, 2013

Global 2013 STEMx Education Conference  is the world’s first massively open online conference for educators focusing on Science, Technology, Engineering, Math, and more. The conference will be held over the course of three days, September 19-21, 2013, and will be free to attend. STEMxCon will be a highly inclusive event that will engage students and educators around the globe and will encourage primary, secondary, and tertiary (K-16) educators around the world to share and learn about innovative approaches to STEMx learning and teaching.

Prezi Webinars for FREE

Prezi is a virtual whiteboard that transforms presentations from monologues into conversations enabling people to see, understand, and remember ideas. To understand complexity, one must zoom out to see the big picture and in to see the details. Prezi’s 3-dimensional canvas is a virtual space where users can delve deeper and pan wider to broaden the conversation. To know more about this tool potential, please visit this link. Prezi team members always do their best to share their idea among a large audience of users. In this month, they will offer some live online training designed to help users gain a better understanding of getting started with Prezi. Register now and learn the basics on how to create beautiful Prezis from old PowerPoint presentations.

Glogster Summit August 28, 2013

Retrieved Aug. 9, 2013

Glogster EDU is a social network that allows users to create free interactive posters, or Glogs. A "Glog", short for "graphics blog", is an interactive multimedia image. It looks like a poster, but readers can interact with the content. Glogster EDU provides an online environment to design interactive posters. The user inserts text, images, photos, audio files, videos, special effects and other elements into their glogs to generate a multimedia online creation. Posters can be shared with other users on the site, embedded in external wikis or blogs, and shared via many social networks such as Facebook and Twitter. Glogs can also be exported and saved to computer-compatible formats (see more here). To hear more stories about how to use this tool effectively in your classrooms, please register for Glogster Educational Technology Summit: Tech, Tools, and Teaching. This summit will focus on the fully functional Mobile glog editor. VIP support program, Glog assessment, PD Trainings and many more things.

Find out the American English Treasures

Retrieved Aug. 9, 2013

American English is a resource center for teaching and learning about American English language and culture. This website provides a variety of engaging materials and resources for teachers' professional development and for students in the classrooms. Both teachers and students will find new ways to practice English. They can find classroom activities, audiobooks, MP3s, videos and pedagogical materials to assist in learning and teaching English as a second/foreign language. One can create his/her resource list to add favorite links and email or share it with others. Users can also add their suggestions and stay up-to-date by following the website calendar.

Here are some sections you can find in American English website:

Join EdmodoCon 2013 to Hear Stories of Edmodo

Retrieved Aug. 7, 2013 from here

Edmodo is a social learning network and secure microblogging platform where teachers and students can interact and collaborate online. It has an interface similar to Facebook, however it is much more secure since it is a closed network. Both teachers and students can share notes, links, files and resources with each other. In addition to this, teachers have the ability to post alerts, assignments, grades, reminders, conduct a poll and share events. Students have the ability to participate in online discussions on the message board, submit homework, view grades, and communicate with their teacher. Also, transmission is fast, and it saves paper (Jeff O'Hara - See more here). To hear more stories about using Edmodo in classrooms from all over the world, please register for EdmodoCon 2013 today. It is never too late to participate and share tweets using #edmodocon. Sessions are running now. Enjoy your time! If you can't attend this conference, all the sessions are recorded and will be uploaded to the website soon.

Make Your Collages Interactive by ThingLink

Retrieved July 23, 2013 from here

is a free and user-friendly digital tool that provides users with the ability to turn any image into an interactive graphic. It enables you to create multiple “hot spots” on specific parts of an image and turn that image into a multimedia launcher. You can include video, record audio or provide a link to any website with the click of a button. You can easily embed an interactive ThingLink graphic into any blog or website. ThingLink is a truly amazing tool that allows users to pack a lot of content into a normal space (Susan Oxnevad, 2012). To create your own interactive images, here is a great tutorial shared by our instructors in the GE4L Micro-MOOC:

GE4L Store of Tools and Resources

In this post, I will collect all the resources and tools being mentioned during the 4-week GE4L MOOC either suggested by the instructors or my colleagues:

Game Elements for Learning

Retrieved July 2, 2013 from here

Another learning adventure just starts on Canvas. It is the Game Elements for Learning (GE4L) professional development Micro-MOOC. It introduces us to game thinking and design, game elements, and a variety of opportunities to gamify and play games. What attracts me is its clear objectives and the short time it takes (Just a month). Having a look at week one, we have a lot of things to do such as trying new tools, creating avatars, tweeting (#GE4L), blogging, attending webinars facilitated by gaming experts, playing game elements, discussing ideas, and sharing experiences. Moreover, I notice a lot of gamification features like points, leaderboard, ambassador badges, and many more things that we will see in the coming weeks. I hear that there are a lot of surprises.I'm looking forward to learning more about games, gamification, and how to create my own products. 

My e-dventures of Writing

Retrieved June 20, 2013 from here

Crafting an Effective Writer: Tools of the Trade is another amazing adventure that I have just completed on Coursera. It was offered by Mt. San Jacinto College, and instructed by Lorrie Ross, Lawrence (Larry) Barkley, & Ted Blake. The course was broken into five weekly units with each unit spanning one week. Each weekly unit had the following items: video lectures, in-video quizzes, readings, journal writings, discussion forums, peer reviewed writing assignment, and weekly quiz. Our first week started with a video by Lorrie Ross giving us some tips on how to become a successful online leaner. We spent the whole week reading the syllabus, taking the course guide quiz, checking the weekly materials, creating a success list, and a calendar as an effective way to organize the work. Then, we introduced ourselves in the discussion forum. It was just as an exploration tour for learners in order to be familiar with the platform of Coursera. By clicking each week on the sidebar, one can find all the required activities and assignments with links, benchmark dates, credit points, and estimated time to complete them. This well-designed format helped us a lot to be more organized, and saved a lot of our time. Here is a screenshot of week 2 activities:

The Power of Peeragogy

Retrieved June 19, 2013 from here

I have just completed one of the most well-organized online courses on Coursera "Statistics: Making Sense of Data" that was offered by University of Toronto, and instructed by Alison Gibbs, & Jeffrey Rosentha. It was about statistics and how to make use of this field in our lives. As any course I took on Coursera, we watched video lectures, took quizzes, completed, and reviewed assignments following model answers prepared by the instructors. What makes this course different from other learning experiences is its well-designed format, clear objectives, and high quality content. In addition, the To-Do-List provided on the top of the sidebar helped us a lot to know more about each week's tasks and assignments, and it saved our time and efforts. In contrast, I dropped another Coursera course running at the same time "Inspiring Leadership through Emotional Intelligence" because I didn't know what tasks and readings I should do in each week although the instructor was very creative and had a powerful impact on people. 

Become a Digital Storyteller!

Retrieved June 12, 2013 from here

Glogster EDU is a social network that allows users to create free interactive posters, or Glogs. A "Glog", short for "graphics blog", is an interactive multimedia image. It looks like a poster, but readers can interact with the content. Glogster EDU provides an online environment to design interactive posters. The user inserts text, images, photos, audio files, videos, special effects and other elements into their glogs to generate a multimedia online creation. Posters can be shared with other users on the site, embedded in external wikis or blogs, and shared via many social networks such as Facebook and Twitter. Glogs can also be exported and saved to computer-compatible formats (see more here). 

Mapping with Google

Thanks to +Roz Hussin, I would like to share a free online course offered by Google these days. Mapping with Google course starts June 10 and ends June 24, 2013. It is a self-paced, online course where you will watch videos (or read text lessons) and apply the skills you learn. During this course, you will be able to collaborate with a worldwide community of learners and experts in the class forum, Hangouts, and via Google+. Course completion requires an internet-enabled desktop or laptop computer. By the end of the course, those learners who are able to complete required projects using what they have learned can earn a certificate. 

 

Prezi: Bring your Presentation to Life

Retrieved May 10, 2013 from here

Prezi is a cloud-based presentation software with a zoomable canvas that allows you to create visually captivating presentations that lead your audience down a path of discovery. It is a virtual whiteboard that transforms presentations from monologues into conversations: enabling people to see, understand, and remember ideas. With a few clicks, you can bring life to your presentations adding text, images, videos, background music, files (pdf, ppt, pptx), diagrams, symbols, links, and choosing a lively template. You can zoom in and out to attract attention and inspire your audience. You can share your Prezis with your friends to edit as a collaborative work or let the conversations go using the comment box. You can present online or download a portable version to use it offline. I think that Prezi can add a different taste to your presentations. Students will like because it addresses most of their learning styles and helps to extend their attention span.

DNLE Brought Out the Best in Me!

Retrieved May 9, 2013 from here

I'm Azhar Youssef, an Egyptian EFL teacher who teaches high school students in a village. Learning adventures are only what I seek for since I became a teacher. Completing my post graduate studies helped me a lot to research and try out things to make my students happy while learning. My whole professional teaching life completely changed when I was nominated to take a 10-week online course offered by Oregon University titled "Building Teaching Skills through the Interactive Web" and instructed by Prof. Deborah Healey in 2010. This course was about how to integrate technology into curriculum. We were introduced to many tools that can make a difference in our classes. Once I got involved and found my way in the Nicenet platform, I started to help my colleagues as I always do. One of them called Roxana commented on my last post: "You became my trouble shooter. I am very thankful for all the pieces of advice you gave. They really worked." Helping people and drawing smiles on their faces is one of my dear things that I love to do in my daily life. As a result to my hard work during these 10 weeks, I was also nominated to attend the E-Teacher Scholarship Program 2011 hosted by Maryland and Oregon universities. This 3-week program was another amazing learning experience where I managed to meet 26 colleagues from all over the world face-to-face at UMBC. Really, I never forget all those sweet memories we spent together learning, discussing, creating, evaluating, presenting and finding time for chatting and laughing. I came back home with a strong desire to create a new life for my students. I used all  what I learned previously to encourage them to be more innovative and responsible citizens who are able to serve their country. They created  a wiki through which they invite tourists to visit Egypt again after the 25th Jan. Revolution. They won the First Place in the Regional Forum held in Jordan 2011 and also participated in the Global Forum held in Washington DC, 2011 to showcase their achievements. I was also Featured on Microsoft website to tell the whole world how a teacher with limited facilities can make a difference in her classes.