Group items tagged

"The report argues "that for technology to reach its greatest potential it needs to be better integrated into an instructional system we call the 'closed loop.'" The closed loop system suggested in the report includes creating learning objectives, developing curricula and instructional strategies, delivering instruction, embedding ongoing assessment, providing appropriate interventions, tracking outcomes and learning, then feeding the results back into creating new learning objectives. Technology must be integrated into closed-loop instruction to reach its full potential, according to a new report from the World Economic Forum."

"When four South Carolina districts joined forces in 2013 to compete for a federal Race to the Top grant, their shared educational vision was clear: Teaching students to be creative innovators and independent learners will improve school performance. The challenge was finding a model to encompass all the sweeping changes they wanted to implement. What the districts' leaders eventually settled on was the term "enterprise learning," which refers to both a popular public education program overseas, and a model for professional development in corporate America. The South Carolina schools-working collectively as the Carolina Consortium for Enterprise Learning (CCEL)-are now trying to blend the two programs together with the help of $24.9 million in federal funding."

Having devices in your classroom for students to use, whether you have carts of computers, iPads, or Chromebooks; a 1:1 program; or a BYOD initiative, can be exciting and overwhelming at the same time. Using these devices to provide content support and differentiation for each student is not hard to do. You have long been supplying material for your students at all levels to both remediate and expand their knowledge base. But what about designing formative and summative assessments that use technology and target higher-order thinking skills? Teachers should ask themselves this question, as well as how to develop tasks that transform what goes on in the classroom.

"Amazon.com is launching a national movement to eradicate the fear math imparts in many U.S. students. The initiative orbits around the slogan "With Math I Can" and an eponymous website. It was developed by an Amazon division devoted to providing tech-based resources for K-12 education. TenMarks, an online math instruction company that Amazon bought in late 2013, is getting top billing in the campaign's launch: Amazon says that teachers using that company's services helped inspire the initiative."

"It seems a waste. Millions of educational apps, millions of lesson plans available online, millions of laptops in the hands of students. Yet only a small segment of teachers nationwide find ways to infuse technology into their lessons. "There's a real hunger out there, about how do I get better at my craft?" said Jeff Liberty, the senior director of teacher development initiatives at BetterLesson, which trains teachers to use technology in class. 'But there aren't clear mechanisms for that to occur in a dependable way.'"

Voice of the Educator Guest Blogger 3 ways to infuse 21st-century skills into instruction By Sandy Merz on February 8th, 2016 | Comments (0) 10 inShare Pixabay SmartBlog on Education this month is exploring 21st-century teaching and learning. Join us for original content in which experts explore the trends and highlight best practices that can help prepare students for their future worlds of work and living. All teachers seek to prepare students for life after high school. These days that means equipping them with the skills it will take to survive in the 21st century workplace, while also covering other curriculum requirements. What concrete examples of 21st century workplace skills like communication, self-management, collaboration, motivation and inquiry do you focus on in your classroom? As an interesting parallel, how do your examples compare with these actual comments from employees and their supervisors who participated in the Arizona K12 Center's Lesson2Life professional development?

"Complete state results will become publicly available this fall for California and New York, and the entire library will be online in 2017, said Daniel Lewis, chief executive and co-founder of Ravel Law, a commercial start-up in California that has teamed up with Harvard Law for the project. The cases will be available at www.ravellaw.com. Ravel is paying millions of dollars to support the scanning. The cases will be accessible in a searchable format and, along with the texts, they will be presented with visual maps developed by the company, which graphically show the evolution through cases of a judicial concept and how each key decision is cited in others."

"One small change in the classroom can make a big difference. And the same is true when it comes to professional development. In the past year, the switch to visual note taking has impacted my thinking. Visual note taking, also known as sketch noting, is taking down notes and information using both words and pictures. When listening to a speaker or reading text, we naturally form mental images. In sketch noting, the note taker captures those images and creates sketches and doodles on paper or a digital device, such as a tablet."

"All educators care deeply about their students' motivation. They want them to love learning, and to be resourceful and persistent in the face of learning challenges. They don't want their students to lose heart when they get stuck, make mistakes, or receive disappointing grades. In this context, the growth mindset entered the scene. A growth mindset is the belief that you can develop your talents and abilities through hard work, good strategies, and help from others. It stands in opposition to a fixed mindset, which is the belief that talents and abilities are unalterable traits, ones that can never be improved. Research has shown (and continues to show) that a growth mindset can have a profound effect on students' motivation, enabling them to focus on learning, persist more, learn more, and do better in school. Significantly, when students are taught a growth mindset, they begin to show more of these qualities."

"The U.S. Department of Education released a free, web-based survey Thursday that schools can use to track the effectiveness of school climate efforts and resources on how to best improve learning environments for students. The surveys, developed with input from researchers and the department's office of safe and healthy students, can be administered to middle and high school students, staff, parents, and guardians, providing real-time data about their perceptions of the school environment."

"With the rise of MOOCs, Edupunks, and other radically transformative notations of school, I hear a lot of talk about building capacities for independent learning in our students. Where will this come from, I ask, if we do not re-awaken the desire and capacity for learning on our own within all of our teachers?"

"For a brief period in the history of teaching, using PowerPoint automatically qualified you as a tech-savvy professor - an innovator who wouldn't settle for the usual combination of staticky black-and-white overhead films and hand-scrawled chalkboard notes. Now, it's hard to believe that PowerPoint was once considered innovative by anyone. Popular criticism includes everything from tongue-in-cheek comments about death by PowerPoint to serious claims that it fundamentally degrades how we think and communicate."

"Organizing an Edcamp? Kristen Swanson, chair of the Edcamp Foundation Partner Program, has curated resources from Edutopia and across the web to help you on your journey."

"How do new teachers grow professionally their first year on the job? The answer might astonish you -- because everything needed to improve their craft is right on their device. That's right! Simply take out your smartphone or tablet and learn away. Web applications like Instagram, Feedly, Google Classroom, Twitter, and LinkedIn can do wonders for an educator's professional growth. Of course, I know it's not all about technology, which is why fostering collaborative relationships with colleagues is critical for staying on top of best practices. Let's look at the various ways that technology, coupled with a willingness to learn from others, can put first-year teachers on the right track."

"When teachers read professional books, the majority of interaction around the content is based solely on our interpretation and its application to our work. While we know discussing the content with others would allow us to gain a new perspective on the material, finding time for a book study seems nearly impossible; and particularly with this subject, finding someone who would love to read and engage in discussions around a math book is often difficult."

"Growing interest in teaching "grit" or "growth mindset" is a hopeful sign. It reflects an increasing awareness that richer, deeper learning can flow from having students struggle with a challenging task and persisting until completion. "

The first time I heard of Open Space Technology was in 2013 at the initial meeting of the Teacher Resistance and Action Network, a group of teachers and education practitioners who had gathered under the guidance of Dr. Thomas Poetter of Miami University to discuss how to teach responsibly in the age of high-stakes testing. My friend and mentor, Kevin Lydy, had invited me to attend what was billed as a non-conference. It was a life-changing experience, not only because of the great conversations that I had with fellow educators, but also because I learned about a technique that I'd never heard of before: Open Space Technology. Some Edutopia readers may be familiar with Edcamps, which are, in fact, based on (and utilize) OST. Edcamps, however, are geared toward collaborating across schools and districts, while this post will focus on using OST within a school (or even your own classroom) to realize similar benefits.