Webdoc - Great Tool to Bring Learning to Life Through Multimedia

I discovered Webdoc.com at the 140edu conference.  The company did something really cool.  They made a Webdoc of each presenter like the one they created below that features me and my talk.  You can see the others here. 



What is cool about webdoc is that you can so easily embed or drag and drop all sorts of content / media right onto the page and it is also designed for discussion / conversation that can have media included as well.

Here are some ways I can envision using it in education:

• Students create passion profiles.
• Students create "What's Your Genius" profiles of one another and use the discussion to build upon it.
• Forget textbooks. Create webdocs.
• Each teacher can have Webdoc that outlines who she is.
• Classes can make webdocs to celebrate the completion of a unit of study.
• Schools can use webdocs to organize events. Imagine this webdoc from @jmarkeyAP was a school event.  
• Webdocs as a student learning portfolio.
• Create a Webdoc to provide an overview of your school as Richard Cassella has done in the following video. You can read his whole explanation here.

Webdoc.com also has an education page full of ideas.  Check them out here.

Here is a video that shows how to use webdocs.com.  How might you use this for learning?

webdoc in action from webdoc on Vimeo.

You have read this article #140conf / #140edu / learning innovatively / webdocs with the title . You can bookmark this page URL https://benncam.blogspot.com/2011/08/webdoc-great-tool-to-bring-learning-to.html. Thanks!

If the School Won’t Customize, Take Your Kid Out

I had the pleasure of writing the featured guest post for Penelope Trunk's new homeschooling blog designed to give piece of mind to parents who are considering (or already engaging in) home education. For some, home education becomes a sensible option when parents realize schools are not providing the best opportunities for their children. If this happens these ten reasons explain why leaving school behind may be the best way for children to find success and happiness. 

Here are some of the reasons that home ed beats out school.

1. Learning is customized not standardized
2. Associate with those you enjoy rather than those who share your birth year
3. Freedom to learn with their tools
4. Socialize with those who share your passions not just your zip code
5. Do work you value

You can visit the full post here to read the other reasons and an explanation of each idea.

You have read this article DIY Learning / home education / homeschooled / homeschooling / unschooled / unschooling with the title . You can bookmark this page URL https://benncam.blogspot.com/2011/08/if-school-wont-customize-take-your-kid.html. Thanks!

Preparing for Life with Real World Simulations

Guest post by Mike Kramlich

Innovation in education is about doing things better.

And it starts with imagination.


Imagine an education resource that lets you live out a life in someone else’s shoes. 


Imagine being able to experiment with different choices, see their consequences, and learn how it affects others. Imagine if there was a simple way to learn how to better set goals, achieve your dreams, consider a fuller set of opportunities and consequences in typical daily life situations, and gain the ability to “think six moves ahead” on the chessboard of life. Imagine if the purpose of all of this was to better learn how to live a happy and healthy life, how to raise a better family, be a better friend, a better community member, a better employee and business partner, how to be a better human being and contribute to a better society both politically and economically and ethically.



Imagine all the above and more in the form of interactive software that is web-based and able to be accessed anytime, anywhere, on any device whenever you happen to have the time and energy and interest. Imagine your children being able to play with it and learn from it. Your students. Your employees. Perhaps job applicants. A potential business partner or entrepreneur you’d like to invest in. Anyone seeking a new and potentially more effective way to be educated or assessed or both.


Imagine that instead of focusing on educational goals or topics which are mere proxies for the thing we want, however noble and foundational they clearly are (math, language, and science for example), we focus on the real outcomes we want: better human beings and a better society. Teaching people how to solve real world problems that almost every human will have to face like making friends, knowing what makes you happy, how to manage money wisely, how to raise a family, how to make job-finding easier, how to turn a crisis into an opportunity and how to see opportunities everywhere. Not abstract artificial ones that very few people and professions have to actually master (examples: calculus, painting, cheerleading, literature theory.) What if there were less testing of artificial topics and narrow academic subjects and more preparation for the actual real world skills that the game of life has in store for all of us.


Well the good news is that there’s a new company that is putting this into place and they are inviting readers of the Innovative Educator blog to become early users and testers in return for feedback. Simply email your interest to groglogic+egie@gmail.com. Put “Imagine Tester” in the subject line and a sentence or so about how you could see using this with students in the body.  

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Mike is a software developer and long-time believer in education of all kinds. He is a huge STEM proponent but is also into the trunk and root system, and the leafy green things. His website is http://Synisma.com.

You have read this article Video Games; Instruction; educating innovatively with the title . You can bookmark this page URL https://benncam.blogspot.com/2011/08/preparing-for-life-with-real-world.html. Thanks!