Apropos is a collaborative search and learning activity (CLA) enabling educators and learners to seamlessly blend technology into their classroom lessons applying 21st century skills as defined by ATC21S, UNESCO, OECD, P21 and the European Commission. Built by Continuum Education in Santa Cruz, California, Apropos turns the Internet into a collaborative learning space. With Apropos, educators engage learners with visually rich, problem based, standards aligned activities that inform assignments, augment lesson plans and make online inquiry simple and available on demand. Educational programs gain a collaborative activity tool that enlivens the curriculum and leverages education technology investments ranging from devices, platforms to specialty course tools. Apropos incorporates collaborative search, discovery and curation of materials in any curriculum, supporting any learning standard, using its innovative and easily extended activities. Educators create their own prompts, choose from the instructional activities or modify the activities. Using any search engine, content repository or web site, learners and educators assign, find and incorporate Apropos on any device. Learners share, take notes, vote and comment on others' submissions directly within the activity. Whether in the enterprise or local and state education agency (LEA & SEA), the Continuum Education team has been faced with poorly built, un-extensible solutions that often consider interoperability and standards compliance an after thought. Apropos has been built to be a “good citizen” within the learning ecosystem leveraging Learning Tools Interoperability, specifically LTI2, for baseline integration into various learning platforms. LTI offers a standard way of integrating Apropos, as a Tool Provider, with platforms as Tool Consumers. LTI allows Apropos to integrate with various virtual learning environments (VLEs) or directly between tools for sophisticated and complex learning interactions.

1. Symbiosis & Mutualism
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A P R O P O S & L E A R N I N G
P L A T F O R M S

2. August 09, 2014
What is Apropos?
• Apropos is a collaborative search and learning
activity (CLA)
• It enables educators and learners to seamlessly
blend technology into their classroom lessons
• Apropos applies 21st century skills as defined
by ATC21S, UNESCO, OECD, P21 and the
European Commission.
!
• Built by Continuum Education in Santa Cruz,
California, Apropos turns the Internet into a
collaborative learning space.
2

3. Introducing Apropos
Turning the Internet into a collaborative learning space
3
Educators
create inquiry,
problem-based
activity, aligned to
standards
Learners
collaborate and
search for content
related to activity
Educators
and Learners
discuss results
Educators
extend lesson plans
based on discussion
and results
Educators
possess longitudinal
data for student
progress

4. Apropos: Results
Educators are empowered with easy-to-incorporate
applications of technology in the classroom.
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5. Apropos: Results
Learners leverage knowledge and resources while
using personal or institutional-supplied devices.
!
Learners inquire and explore content based on
personal desire.
!
Institutions fulfill greater ROI on SW/HW IT
investments.
!
Publishers and Providers realize greater reuse of
content IP.
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6. Apropos Demo
Educator View: on the video conference screen
!
Student View: (use your smart phone browser)
(passcode comes from the educator)
!
Today’s prompts (you choose):
• Academic: Find positive and negative examples of the purpose and
value of marketing research.
• Academic: What are examples of integers form the real world?
• Familiarization: If you could take a few years to go back to school and
get a new degree, what would you want to study?
• Familiarization: Who are your favorite musicians?
• Familiarization: If we could all have dinner together tonight, where
would you suggest we go?
• Or we can make one up…
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7. L E A R N I N G P L AT FO R M S A R E L A R G E , CO M P L E X
A N D R E Q U I R E S I G N I F I C A N T CO M M I T M E N T O F
R E S O U R C E S , I N V E ST M E N T A N D P E R S O N N E L

8. A P R O P O S I S A CO L L A B O R AT I V E L E A R N I N G
AC T I V I T Y A N D TO O L . L E A R N I N G TO O L S
P R OV I D E P L AT FO R M AG I L I T Y T H AT C A N B E
L E V E R AG E W I T H O U T R I S K I N G T H E I R
C U STO M E R R E L AT I O N S H I P S

9. sym·bi·o·sis // noun //
!
: a relationship between two people or
groups that work with and depend on each
other

10. A P R O P O S WO R K S A LO N G S I D E L E A R N I N G
P L AT FO R M S W I T H O U T D I S R U P T I O N

11. mu·tu·al·ism // noun //
!
: mutually beneficial association between
different kinds of organisms

12. A P R O P O S C A N WO R K W I T H
OT H E R TO O L S S E A M L E SS LY

13. A P R O P O S C A N A L S O WO R K
A LO N E

14. A P R O P O S C A N A L S O S U P P O R T
I N ST I T U T I O N S AS W E L L

15. eco·sys·tem // noun //
!
: everything that exists in a particular
environment

16. Apropos Technology
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17. Apropos Integration
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18. August 09, 2014
sources
• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/
List_of_birds_in_Kaziranga_National_Park
• http://www.theguardian.com/news/2013/nov/01/best-
pictures-of-the-day-live
• http://mangelsen.com/birds/wadingbird/free-ride-african-
elephant-and-cattle-egret-2631.html
• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cattle_egret
• http://www.mombasaairsafari.com/Destination/masaimara
• http://www.allaboutbirds.org/guide/cattle_egret/id
• http://nathistoc.bio.uci.edu/birds/ciconiiformes/Bubulcus
%20ibis/index.htm
• http://www.zoo.org.au/werribee/animals/rhinoceros
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