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An Open Sourced Education: Wikipedia Makes Push to Become Staple of Classroom Lessons
The Vancouver Sun – Education News
It was about six years ago that UBC professor Jon Beasley-Murray first noticed his students citing Wikipedia in their essays.
If they were going to use Wikipedia for his class on Latin American literature, he thought, they might as well improve some of the shoddy articles on the subject.
For the past five years, students in his class have edited or contributed articles to Wikipedia as part of a class assignment.
“It was a chance to break down some of the barriers between the university and society,” Beasley-Murray said.
Wikipedia is described as a “free, web-based, collaborative, multilingual encyclopedia project supported by the non-profit Wikimedia Foundation”. It was launched in 2001 and takes the first part of its name from the Hawaiian word “wiki,” for fast, and is the name of a server program that allows anyone to edit the website’s content through their own browser.
At the moment, Beasley-Murray is one of relatively few professors using Wikipedia in class assignments, but that may change this year. The foundation behind Wikipedia is hoping to get more teachers using the website in the classroom. So far, the universities of Alberta and Toronto have agreed to take part in the project.
By Jordan Press, Postmedia News November 4, 2011
jpress@postmedia.com
Study Guides and Educational Playlists on the National Film Board Website
Innovative Media for the Classroom and Communities
Use diverse educational tools to enhance learning: Our trusted, high-calibre content includes exciting web-based learning platforms and teaching guides probing topics such as environmental studies, citizen media and Aboriginal culture.
A good study guide can bring a film to life within a classroom setting. Guides are available for thousands of NFB productions, helping teachers to choose the right film for their curriculum and get the best out of NFB resources.
Included are detailed curriculum notes and lesson plans, along with hands-on classroom activities and discussion starters.
In addition to our study guides, NFB Education provides short Education Descriptors—brief curriculum notes and grade level suggestions—for more than 2,000 online titles.
Looking for animated shorts to show in your art class, or films that explore the complex issue of racism? Or are you seeking a good way to mark World Earth Day or another cultural event?
The NFB provides a growing collection of thematic playlists selected by experts to illustrate specific subjects or themes.
A compelling and well-researched website can be a powerful learning tool, illuminating multiple aspects of an issue and engaging students in exciting creative dialogue.
The NFB has created its own cutting-edge interactive productions and has supported other web-based initiatives. These productions can provide a fresh approach to topics like Canadian history or Aboriginal culture and help clarify complex issues such as international development or environmentalism, or they can introduce kids to film animation in a playful and appealing manner.
~from the National Film Board Website – Education
National Film Board interactive film, Bear 71, blurs lines between wild and wired
The Vancouver Sun
BY Katherine Monk, Postmedia News, JANUARY 23, 2012
PARK CITY, Utah — There are many bizarre sights parading before the viewfinder of a Sundance Film Festival visitor, but the indoor tree imported from Banff and the bear cage outside the library are two of the more cryptic signs of unfettered creativity sprawling around Park City.
Part of a National Film Board interactive film project called Bear 71, the cage and the tree are more than publicity props; they’re symbols of a larger work that aims to jolt the viewer into a different state of awareness about the natural environment, and our relationship to it.
“In our modern age, it’s hard to know where the wired world ends and the wild one begins,” says co-creator Leanne Allison, half the filmmaking team behind the Gemini-winning Being Caribou.
“This whole thing started with a huge collection of trail photographs gathered in Banff National Park. These were images that were not framed by people. They were sort of nature uninterrupted.”
Essentially low-resolution stills gathered from motion-activated cameras in the wild, the images showed a variety of animals simply doing what they do, from crows and eagles to foxes and bears.
The bear was the central motivator for Allison, because she and her husband, Karsten Heuer, a park ranger in Banff, had been following her moves for years.
© Copyright (c) The Vancouver Sun
Checkout the National Film Board’s Interactive Website here.
UBC LIbrary Catalogue NFB Screening Room access here.
Apple unveils digital textbook service iBooks 2
The Vancouver Sun
BY YINKA ADEGOKE, REUTERS JANUARY 19, 2012
NEW YORK – Apple Inc unveiled a new digital textbook service called iBooks 2 on Thursday, aiming to revitalize the U.S. education market and quicken the adoption of its market-leading iPad in that sector.
The consumer electronics giant has been working on digital textbooks with publishers Pearson PLC, McGraw-Hill and Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, a trio responsible for 90 per cent of textbooks sold in the United States.
The move pits the makers of the iPod and iPhone against Amazon.com Inc and other content and device makers that have made inroads into the estimated $8 US billion market with their electronic textbook offerings.
At an event at New York’s Guggenheim Museum, Apple marketing chief Phil Schiller introduced tools to craft digital textbooks and demonstrated how authors and even teachers can create books for students.
The “value of the app is directly proportional to students having iPads,” said Michael Gartenberg, an analyst with industry research firm Gartner. “But this will lead to more schools adopting as a requirement.”
REINVENTING THE TEXTBOOK
Schiller said it was time to reinvent the textbook, adding that 1.5 million iPads are in use now in education.
THIS JUST IN: New Book at Education Library
Information Literacy and Information Skills Instruction: Applying Research to Practice in the 21st Century School Library, Third Edition
This book provides a comprehensive review of the current research relating to the teaching of library and information literacy skills as part of effective school library media center programming.
What are the current best practices for information literacy instruction? How should one design information literacy lessons to motivate and instruct today’s tech-savvy students? What are the best ways to foster critical thinking tasks and build searching skills? Academic research provides great insights for answering these pressing questions.