Group items tagged

"The meaningful and careful use of technology is one of the most significant conversations in education today. When educators offer students greater access to knowledge through technology, and encourage them to use that knowledge to inquire about the world around them and beyond, they are providing students a chance to succeed in even the toughest conditions. "

"It is time that teachers and administrators realize that public education has reached a dam in the river. We have gone about as far as we can go with isolated instruction and learning. While it may have served the purpose for the older generations, it does not meet the deeper learning needs of students today and tomorrow. Deeper learning can be accelerated by consolidating teacher efforts and combining relevant contents, in effect, opening new spillways of knowledge. "

""Design your own shoe." That's what high school students thought they were signing up to do when they volunteered for an immersive experience in design thinking. Truth be told, the course description was not quite accurate. Shoe design "is really a Trojan horse for solving problems in a new way," acknowledged Chad Faber, director of the Knight Family Scholars Program at Catlin Gabel School, an independent K-12 school in Portland, Oregon. He facilitated the four-day, hands-on learning experience along with Greg Bamford (@gregbamford) from the Leading is Learning collaborative in Seattle. Several more Catlin Gabel staffers took part to learn by doing, building a cohort of teachers with design chops. "

"Important research compiled on the effects of students multitasking while learning shows that they are losing depth of learning, getting mentally fatigued, and are weakening their ability to transfer what they have learned to other subjects and situations."

"In the fall of 2006, Clarence R. Edwards Middle School ("the Edwards" as it is known locally within Boston Public Schools) became one of the first schools in the state of Massachusetts to implement the Expanded Learning Time (ELT) Initiative. The reasons why were simple: we were not making Adequate Yearly Progress (AYP) and we wanted to make significant academic gains with our students. As it turned out, making our school day longer was one of the best things we could have done to help reform our school model and improve student outcomes. Our statewide exam scores, student enrollment, daily student attendance rate, community and family engagement, and time for team teaching/collaboration all improved as a result of ELT. "

"Most excellent teachers have learned what first-rate filmmakers have always known, that to be successful you need to reach your audience emotionally. I want to revisit one the best approaches I know, emphasizing its application at the secondary school level. The purpose is to increase student motivation and foster healthy emotional development. "

"he Someday/Monday dichotomy captures one of the core challenges in teacher professional development around education technology. On the one hand, deep integration of new learning technologies into classrooms requires substantially rethinking pedagogy, curriculum, assessment, and teacher practice (someday). For technology to make a real difference in student learning, it can't just be an add-on. On the other hand, teachers need to start somewhere (Monday), and one of the easiest ways for teachers to get experience with emerging tools is to play and experiment in lightweight ways: to use technology as an add-on. Teachers need to imagine a new future-to build towards Someday-and teachers also need new activities and strategies to try out on Monday. Both pathways are important to teacher growth and meaningful, sustained changes in teaching and learning."

"Adults forget all that they do while reading. We are predicting, making connections, contextualizing, critiquing, and already plotting how we might use any new insights or information. Yep, we do all that when we read. As teachers, we need to train students in each of these skills, and begin to do so early on. I was recently in a second-grade classroom where 70 percent instruction was in English and 30 percent in Spanish. Most of the children spoke Spanish as their first or home language. "

"When asked why he became a scientist, Nobel Laureate Isidor Rabi attributed his success to his mother. Every day, she would ask him the same question about his school day: "Did you ask a good question today?" "Asking good questions - made me become a scientist!" Rabi said."

"What is the best approach teachers can take towards homework? I think the guest responses today, along with numerous reader comments, provide a great perspective on the topic. If you'd like to read more research and discover additional ideas, you might want to explore my collection at The Best Resources For Learning About Homework Issues. Todays guests are educator/authors Dr. Cathy Vatterott and Bryan Harris. Reader suggestions follow their contributions."

"For the past five years I have collaborated with a playwright who works with my students as they write original plays. Each year, on the first day that she has been in the room with us, Kate and I stage a conflict about what should come next in the lesson. "

"Can creativity be taught? Absolutely. The real question is: "How do we teach it?" In school, instead of crossing subjects and classes, we teach them in a very rigid manner. Very rarely do you witness math and science teachers or English and history teachers collaborating with each other. Sticking in your silo, shell, and expertise is comfortable. Well, it's time to crack that shell. It's time to abolish silos and subjects. Joichi Ito, director of the M.I.T. Media Lab, told me that rather than interdisciplinary education, which merges two or more disciplines, we need anti-disciplinary education, a term coined by Sandy Pentland, head of the lab's Human Dynamics group."

"In math, the Rule of Three is a method of finding a ratio. In English essay writing, the Rule of Three states that things are more interesting to read in triads. In presentations, the Rule of Three comes in handy to keep the audience engaged, and in entertainment, the idea of trebling makes jokes and gags funnier. As it turns out, economists, chemists, aviators, and scuba divers use the Rule of Three (even Agatha Christie did when she wrote a series of plays entitled, The Rule of Three). Although it has not been labeled as the Rule of Three, great educators have used it in classrooms since Aristotle (ever heard of syllogisms?). So what is the Rule of Three for learning? Well it is as simple as one, two, three (not kidding). The Rule of Three for learning basically establishes the requirement that students be given the opportunity to learn something at least three times before they are expected to know it and apply it."

"We recently spent a day in a district with a highly experienced and motivated leadership team. They were exploring an interest in a district wide STEAM shift. On the team was a young, newly appointed elementary principal. With the simplicity of a beginner's eye, she asked us to clarify the difference between buy-in and commitment. It gave us reason to pause. We answered in the moment but the question has stayed with us. In educational change efforts, we frequently talk about...and seek...buy-in from our various constituencies. But there is a vast difference between buy-in and commitment. What if we sought commitment instead?"

"In response, we asked her if she was willing to send us her argument-writing unit so we could share it with other teachers. We're pleased to publish it below, including all of her handouts and recommended videos embedded. And, of course, all students age 13 to 19 can find this year's contest here."

"With the abundance of media messages in our society, it's important to ensure students are media literate. The Oscars provide a great opportunity to use the year's best films to teach students about media and film literacy. Not to mention, films can also be an engaging teaching tool for piquing interest in a variety of subjects and issues. In this compilation, you'll find classroom resources from around the web that cover many of this year's nominated films, as well as general resources for using film as a teaching tool."

"Scannable technology can totally alter the way that you think about teaching and learning in the math classroom. This powerful free and low-cost technology can support students inside and outside the classroom and change the way you think about interacting with content. QR codes and augmented reality are scannable technology tools that are perfect for K-12 math classrooms. A Quick Response (QR) code connects users to a link such as a website, YouTube video, or audio clip. Augmented reality (AR) layers digital content over the real world. There are a handful of apps that have pre-made AR experiences and a few tools that you can use to create your own. Once you explore these tools and understand their capabilities, scannable technology offers exciting possibilities for deeper learning."

"A while back, I was asked, "What engages students?" Sure, I could respond, sharing anecdotes about what I believed to be engaging, but I thought it would be so much better to lob that question to my own eighth graders. The responses I received from all 220 of them seemed to fall under 10 categories, representing reoccurring themes that appeared again and again. So, from the mouths of babes, here are my students' answers to the question: "What engages students?" "

"All great teachers do great work. And not only that, but they also do different work. Great teachers are always looking to improve practice, steal ideas and try new things -- all in order to meet the needs of their students. PBL teachers are no exception. Any teacher who is truly doing PBL would also agree that it's different. There is something about being a PBL teacher that requires different work, and work that is especially capitalized when implementing a PBL project. Because I work with so many PBL teachers, I feel there are some things that PBL teachers should specifically be proud of. I present them in these six affirmations. "

Google tools for searching