Content
“This includes the ideas, skills, knowledge, and information being studied. Usually, content is structured by state standards, district curriculum guides, textbooks, and teacher-developed units of work. All students must learn the content, but they can learn it in different ways. Some students may learn it in more depth and complexity while others will learn the basics of content knowledge.”
Some technologies for differentiating CONTENT
Some technologies for differentiating CONTENT
- Delicious
- Diigo
- Blogs - Wordpress, Tumblr, Blogger
- Websites - Google Sites, Weebly
- Video Subscriptions - Brain Pop, United Streaming, Atomic Learning, Learner.org
Delicious and Social Bookmarking
What:
If you’ve never heard of social bookmarking, watch this short video explaining it in plain English. If you’re familiar with the concept, feel free to skip ahead to the instructions section.
Why?
Bookmarked sites are available regardless of the computer you are on
Easy to organize (like ‘labels’ for messages in Gmail)
Easy to share your bookmarks with other teachers, students, etc.
You can search other people’s bookmarked sites too for a refined way of searching for new sites
Instructions:
1. Go to www.delicious.com
2. Create an account by clicking “Join Now” in the upper right hand corner (note: this will direct you to Yahoo login. If you already have Yahoo email you can login with that and then create your delicious ID. If not you’ll have to create a (free) yahoo account by clicking the “Don’t Have a Yahoo ID?” button and create one)
Next there are two steps to get started:
3.It will ask you to choose a “link address” this is essentially your username for Delicious and your bookmarks will be available at that link. For example, open a new browser tab (you can use keyboard shortcut command+tab) and copy paste www.delicious.com/benpaulson to see the bookmarks I’ve made.
4. Add the Delicious button to your browser toolbar (optional but highly recommended!)
5. Bookmark this site! You can do this by clicking the toolbar button you installed, or by clicking “save a new bookmark” from the upper right hand corner of the Delicious homepage.
Open another new tab and navigate to a favorite site of yours (if you are drawing a blank, I suggest www.boingboing.net, because it’s awesome) and then bookmark it.
6. Now type descriptive words in the Tag box, you can separate multiple tags with spaces, for example: “genetics apbio plants labs lessonplans” is 5 separate tags.
7. You can also search through sites previously bookmarked by other Delicious users. Try typing a key word or words in the search bar to see what sites users have applied those tags to.
Your task (choose one):
Use the search function to find a few sites that have been tagged with key words related to an upcoming unit and add them to your own bookmarks.
OR
Visit a few sites that you have bookmarked in your web browser and convert them to Delicious bookmarks and apply tags as you see fit.
How can this be used in the classroom?
If you’ve never heard of social bookmarking, watch this short video explaining it in plain English. If you’re familiar with the concept, feel free to skip ahead to the instructions section.
Why?
Bookmarked sites are available regardless of the computer you are on
Easy to organize (like ‘labels’ for messages in Gmail)
Easy to share your bookmarks with other teachers, students, etc.
You can search other people’s bookmarked sites too for a refined way of searching for new sites
Instructions:
1. Go to www.delicious.com
2. Create an account by clicking “Join Now” in the upper right hand corner (note: this will direct you to Yahoo login. If you already have Yahoo email you can login with that and then create your delicious ID. If not you’ll have to create a (free) yahoo account by clicking the “Don’t Have a Yahoo ID?” button and create one)
Next there are two steps to get started:
3.It will ask you to choose a “link address” this is essentially your username for Delicious and your bookmarks will be available at that link. For example, open a new browser tab (you can use keyboard shortcut command+tab) and copy paste www.delicious.com/benpaulson to see the bookmarks I’ve made.
4. Add the Delicious button to your browser toolbar (optional but highly recommended!)
5. Bookmark this site! You can do this by clicking the toolbar button you installed, or by clicking “save a new bookmark” from the upper right hand corner of the Delicious homepage.
Open another new tab and navigate to a favorite site of yours (if you are drawing a blank, I suggest www.boingboing.net, because it’s awesome) and then bookmark it.
6. Now type descriptive words in the Tag box, you can separate multiple tags with spaces, for example: “genetics apbio plants labs lessonplans” is 5 separate tags.
7. You can also search through sites previously bookmarked by other Delicious users. Try typing a key word or words in the search bar to see what sites users have applied those tags to.
Your task (choose one):
Use the search function to find a few sites that have been tagged with key words related to an upcoming unit and add them to your own bookmarks.
OR
Visit a few sites that you have bookmarked in your web browser and convert them to Delicious bookmarks and apply tags as you see fit.
How can this be used in the classroom?
- Create a class specific tag for resources to share with students, e.g. sisapbio1011 Then all students can tag sites they’ve found and they can also search other students tags
- Share sites related to class content at various difficulty levels and use tags to denote which links are for extra practice, reinforcement of basic concepts, extensions, etc.
- Use the search function as a way to find resources or materials (for yourself or your students) that have already been identified by other people as valuable
- You can also add people to “My Network” who have similar interests as you (e.g. other teachers in the same discipline) and then you’ll have access to their bookmarks as well.