NIS Learning Curve

Online ‘interactives' are becoming commonplace in higher education as a way of presenting Blended Active Learning experiences, and the advent of easy-to-use tools means that you don't have to be an experienced multimedia designer to create content. Teachers and learners are now able to design and develop their own activities, and HP5 is the ideal authoring tool for this type of content. H5P( HTML 5 Package) has some great tools to make your content pages more interactive. The platform empowers everyone to create, share and reuse interactive content - all you need is a web browser and a web site that supports H5P (for example Google sites/ Blogger / Weebly, WordPress, Moodle etc). You can see a few examples at the end of this article.  H5P was created for teachers to use, to make online courses more interactive and engaging for students. In all, there are 40 types of interactive content available to create on H5P, with the “featured” tools bei...

  Instructional Strategy#13: Claim, Evidence, Reasoning (CER) This strategy provides a scaffolded way for students to use evidence to formulate and justify their own arguments by breaking down materials and research into smaller pieces for analysis.                                                                                                                                                              (Click on the images to enlarge) McNeill, K. L., & Krajcik, J. (2008). Inquiry and scientific explanations: He...

Instructional Strategy#12: Create the Problem This mathematics-focused instructional activity has students create a hypothetical problem that matches a given real-world solution.                                                                                                   (Click on the images to enlarge) Keeley, P., & Tobey, C. (2011). #11. Create the problem. In Mathematics Formative Assessment: 75 Practical Strategies for Linking Assessment, Instruction, and Learning (p. 80). Thousand Oaks, CA: Corwin, SAGE.                                                               ...

If you are looking for a part calculator, part interactive simulation tool, Desmos is a standout example of inquiry-driven math tool with super-smart instructional supports. Desmos is an easy-to-use tool that gives students a visual way to understand expressions. It is a Graphing Calculator app that provides features beyond those of a regular calculator, allowing users to graph functions, create tables, simulations and more.  The site boasts a huge collection of activities in accordance with IGCSE and AS/A level requirements. The tool is free and is available on the web as well as on iOS and Android. In addition to plotting equations, classroom activities are available to help students learn about a variety of math concepts. For example, students can learn how to transform periodic functions by trying to slide marbles through points on a graph. Or they can plug in their own equation and see what kind of graph pops up; sliders allow students to adjust values and see w...

Great for -   Assessment, Formative Assessment, Presentation, Flip classroom, Classroom Management, Instructional Strategies, Differentiate instructions Have you wondered if your students are actually watching the videos you assign? PlayPosit can provide the answer. Use PlayPosit to embed quiz-type questions, facts, or links to websites in a video you create or a video you find from on site library or sources such as YouTube, TEDx, Vimeo, Khan Academy, and other popular video platforms. From inside Canvas, instructors can create an assignment that requires students to interact with the video they watch. PlayPosit also includes analytics, so instructors can see how students respond to questions. Instructors can even assign students the task of creating an interactive video. Data can then be analyzed on the individual or group level, providing powerful insight into educational trends in the classroom. Using video effectively in the classroom requires switching s...

  Liveworksheets.com is an educational tool which allows teachers to transform their traditional printable worksheets (in format .doc, pdf, .png or .jpg) into interactive online exercises with self-correction. These interactive worksheets may include fill-in-the-gaps activities, join with arrows, multiple-choice, drag and drop, sounds, videos, listening exercises and even speaking exercises. The site gives an option to create an interactive workbook system, where workbooks can be assigned to one or more students at a time and are organised by class/level. Since the Live Worksheets are interactive worksheets they help save paper, ink, and time, and are fun to complete. Teachers create an account to upload worksheet pdfs, then drag text entry boxes on top of the worksheet. The student then enters the answers online. Questions can be fill in the blank, multiple-choice, matching, drag and drop, join with arrows, recording audio, word search, and more, with new activities frequently add...