Last night I published a post that featured a poster of explanations of common logical fallacies. This morning I received an email from a reader who wanted to know if there was a way for her to print the poster. My suggestion was to try using the Block Posters website.
Block Posters is a web-based tool to which you can upload a high quality graphic then divide it into letter-sized chunks for printing. Print out each section and put them together on a poster board to make your own poster.
Applications for Education
If you find a great infographic or poster that you want to display in your classroom, Block Posters could be a great tool for you to use. Want to create a giant jigsaw puzzle? Block Posters could be useful for that. Or if you have students create their own infographics that they want to display, you can print them out with Block Posters.
One of the most challenging things to tackle in education today is the glut of information that is available to students right in their pocket! With a few swipes, students can come up with thousands of resources; however, evaluating all of those sources serves as a challenge for students. Enter, instaGrok. InstaGrok is a search engine that brings together information in the form of an interactive mind-map, including text, videos, and more. It is available for free online, iOS App, and Android App.
After entering a query, instaGrok creates an interactive mind-map on the topic including multiple sources. Each node builds off of the subsequent one, giving students a visual idea of how concepts and ideas connect. When students select a source from instaGrok, it guides them through a process to help them vet their source by asking a series of questions about the author, publisher, website, and more. When they are finished building their Grok, students can share via email, link, Social Media, and even embed it onto a webpage. Check out this Grok I built on Project Based Learning:
Students can also keep a journal in their Grok and test themselves with quizzes designed by the Grok engine. InstaGrok is a great way for students to begin exploring online content and learning how to vet various sources.
Looking to learn more about research or Project Based Learning? EdTechTeacher will be hosting their first Innovation Summit in San Diego, February 1-3, 2016.
When teaching current events courses, I always begin with lessons about about recognizing bias, propaganda, and logical fallacies. There are two good resources that I like that can help students understand logical fallacies.
The Guide to Common Fallacies is a series of short videos from the PBS Idea Channel. Each video covers a different common fallacy. The fallacies are Strawman, Ad Hominem, Black and White, Authority, and No True Scotsman. I have embedded the playlist below.
Your Logical Fallacy Is is a website that provides short explanations and examples of twenty-four common logical fallacies. Visitors to the site can click through the gallery to read the examples. Your Logical Fallacy Is also provides free PDF poster files that you can download and print.
Last winter I started a playlist of TED-Ed video lesson about how the human body works. I started the playlist because I wanted a list that was a bit more refined than what I was finding on the TED-Ed website. The playlist started with five videos and is now up to eleven videos covering topics like how the lungs, heart, and liver work. The complete playlist is embedded below.
Applications for Education
Last winter I shared five good apps and sites for learning about how the human body works. These TED-Ed lessons could make good companion lessons to using those apps. Like all TED-Ed lessons they're not thorough enough to stand alone, but they do make for good introductions and or concept reviews.
Earlier this fall ago I published a post about creating video blog entries on Blogger. Last week someone asked me how his students could do the same thing through Weebly. The process for creating a video blog series on Weebly isn't quite as simple as it is on Blogger, but it is still a straight-forward process. In the video embedded below I demonstrate how to create a video blog with Weebly and YouTube.
