onlinelearningcoursedesign

In this post,  I curated for you a collection featuring some of the best apps to help you learn to read sheet music.  You will have access to lessons tailored to different levels, interactive activities, exercises, and games to help you develop your music reading skills. You can start from the very basic level of music reading and work your way up to a confident music notes reader. And you can do all that from the comfort of your own home! 1. Tomplay Sheet Music Tomplay Sheet Music helps you learn to play your favourite music with backing tracks and recordings created by professional musicians. Features offered by Tomplay include access to 40.000 scores containing tons of high quality tracks for back up, adapt the music to your level the way you want, record yourself and playback to assess your performance, add your own annotations on the score, turn fork for re-tuning string and wind instruments, integrated metronome, and many more. Compatibility: iPhone/iPad and Android / Price:...

AhaSlides is a presentation tool that allows you to create interactive and immersive presentations. It makes use of numerous interactive features such as live quizzes, polls, Q&A,  scale ratings, word clouds, and spinner wheels to engage participants and  creating immersive learning experiences.  AhaSlides works both online and offline and is also integrated with third party tools such as Zoom and PowerPoint. AhaSlides is simple and easy to use. Choose from various available slide types to build your presentation, share the unique code of your presentation with your participants and lead them through your slides as they interact live with them.  Below is a quick overview of some of the interactive features provided by AhaSlides: 1. AhaSlides Live Quizzes AhaSlides offers a live quiz maker that allows you to create and host your quizzes online or offline. The way it works is simple: you create your quiz questions, customize the settings of your quiz, then host it for your parti...

TED Ed is one of my favourite video resources that I have been recommending for teachers over the last few years. TED Ed features short video explanations (usually less than 5 minutes) covering different educational topics including science, history, physics, sports, media literacy skills, mental health, math, animals, art, planet earth, brain, genetics, technology, literature, coding,  and many more.  The purpose of this post is to share with you this collection of amazing TED Ed riddles to use with your kids and students. I curated the list from TED Ed YouTube riddle series and only featured those popular riddles as measured by number of views and audience interaction. These TED Ed riddles can be used to engage students in a wide variety of activities that require them to use various cognitive skills including analytical thinking, problem solving, strategic thinking, decision making, critical thinking, and many more.  1. Can you solve the prisoner hat riddle? - Alex Gendler ...

Semantic Scholar is an AI-powered academic search engine that allows you to search millions of scholarly articles for academic content relevant to your research topic. Unlike other academic search engines, Semantic Scholar combines the power of artificial Intelligence, machine learning, language processing   with semantic analytic search enabling users to get more accurate search results.   "Semantic Scholar uses machine learning techniques to extract meaning and identify connections from within papers, then surfaces these insights to help scholars gain an in-depth understanding quickly." Semantic Scholar is a good alternative to Google Scholar, however, its content is mainly focused on journal articles. The way Semantic Scholar works is simple. Enter your search query in the site's search box and start navigating your search results. You can conduct your search by topic, paper, keyword, or author. You can further filter your search by field of study, date range, PDF av...

After covering Google Scholar alternatives, I got an email from a science teacher asking for recommendations for science-focused academic search engines so I created the list below. I included what I believe are some of the most reliable and academically authoritative search engines with a focus on science (among other disciplines). I am using the word science in its broad denomination incorporating a wide variety of disciplines.  You can use these search engines to search for and locate science academic literature including peer-reviewed journal articles, theses/dissertations, books, reports, and many more. While some of the resources you might come across are available for free most of the academic literature, as you know, is paywalled and you can either use your institutional affiliation or purchase the document yourself to access it.  1. PubMed PubMed is a platform that features academic and scientific research covering the areas of biomedicine, health, life sciences, behavio...

For us in academia Google scholar is a staple search engine. I have been using it throughout my PhD journey (and beyond) and have also included it in the list of the best websites to find academic books and journal articles. However, Google Scholar is not the be-all and end-all of academic search.  In fact, there is  a number of other equally interesting and even more powerful academic search engines that you can use to search for academic and scholarly literature including peer-reviewed journal articles, books, scientific periodicals, reports, and many more.  In the list below I share some of the best academic search engines that are viable alternatives to Google Scholar. Whether you are a student researcher, a budding scholar, or an established educator, these Google Scholar alternatives will empower you with the tools you need to enhance your research skills and improve your overall academic productivity. 1. WorldCat WorldCat is one of the largest online library catalogs that c...

Sometimes those micro-decisions that you make in your class on a daily basis can eat up a lot of your teaching energy without you knowing it. For instance, mundane tasks as selecting a student to answer, a place to go to, or  labels to name a group can exert tremendous decision power and sack your energy. Hence the importance of spinner wheel tools. Spinner wheel tools or picker wheels are online tools that enable you to generate random output for various types of activities. Instead of labouring over which student name to call, you can simply input students names in the spinner wheel and pick a random name. Spinner wheel tools take charge of making those tiny decisions while you focus on what matters more: quality teaching. Spinner wheel games One of the interesting ways to use online custom spinner wheel is to create educational spinner wheel games to integrate in your teaching, regardless of the content area you teach. Spinner wheel games are a great way to engage students and dr...