Who runs the Internet?

Freakonomics is a great book on 'the hidden side of everything' and the Steves behind it also do a podcast called Freakonomics radio. This is an episode where they talk about the Internet with great contributions from Clay Shirky. For a thoughtful discussion on this topic, you will only need to spare half an hour. Just click on the audio below.

Does Google Drive you crazy?

If you feel like you're on the ground floor when it comes to the Google skyscraper, they have created some helpful free online courses. Maybe you can incorporate one into your PD goals? Here is a link to the course on Google Drive for Educators.

https://educourses.withgoogle.com/drive/preview

You can log in with your islux account. There's an assessment at the end, and knowing Google, a colourful certificate.

If anyone tries this out, please let me know how it goes, good or bad.

Ishmael Beah at ISL

This was a very memorable presentation. Several teachers and students asked if they could have access to the video. Here it is:

The new school website and calendars

If you missed the presentations on the new school website, here are the main points. You can't see it yet, though.

When it is live (by the 5th December), the address will be www.islux.lu (this is still the address of the previous website).

Here are some highlights of the features:

HOMEPAGE
You reach the homepage by clicking the school logo at the top of the page.
Latest News - these are snippets to recent events in the ISL community. If you want to contribute your own recent or upcoming event, email the Communications team.

ABOUT US
Calendar

• different views: day, week, month, year
• Views can be advanced by a day, week etc, but beware of the double arrow (one year)
• There are a number of calendars which you can customise for your own needs. See calendar options icon with a red tick at the right hand side.
• Subscription: you can subscribe to one or more calendars so that data is displayed in Google calendar, Apple calendar or Outlook.

Events

If you want to book an event onto the calendar, you can do it right from the calendar page (having checked that the date is appropriate). The procedure is the same as in the past: your request goes to Carmel who informs you of the outcome.

Quicklinks

ISL Community portal: these are still the pages from the previous site. They will operate in exactly the way you are used to. They will be updated some time in the future.

Teaching Shakespeare (and everything else) with Learnist

Learnist is a website where users create 'boards' of learning materials on a single topic. There are thousands of them on every topic of education, and indeed, life. See the screenshot below for some examples and here is a collection of Learnists for teaching Shakespeare.

Here's one I made earlier: Why 1 to 1 in schools?

Blendspace for your lesson resources.

Blendspace looks like a great way to combine different resources for a lesson. You can put videos, presentations, documents and your own comments and quizzes. You can embed your own Blendspaces in a wiki or website or blog, or just give the students the link. If you have your own resources already, use them, but you can also search for others from within Blendspace. Amongst other uses, it can be a great way for students to demonstrate what they have learned.

Here is a Blendspace on Photosynthesis and below is a short video showing how it works.

If you would like a personal lesson on how to use Blendspace in your classroom, just ask me.