21st Century Learning & Teaching

"Today's math curriculum is teaching students to expect -- and excel at -- paint-by-numbers classwork, robbing kids of a skill more important than solving problems: formulating them. At TEDxNYED, Dan Meyer shows classroom-tested math exercises that prompt students to stop and think. Dan Meyer is exploring the way we teach teachers to teach kids"

"Teachers want to know what the day-to-day looks like. I know I do. After generating great project ideas, I want to know exactly what my day-to-day looks like. There is a pitfall there. Sometimes we plan the calendar too quickly."

"BIE has created free materials - "FreeBIEs" - such as planning forms, student handouts, rubrics, and articles for educators to download and use to design, assess, and manage projects."

"The end of the school year presents us with an opportunity for reflection at Envision Schools. We take a final measure of students' progress throughout the school year, celebrate the many Envision graduates that will be heading off to college in the fall, and consider how we can incorporate those lessons into improving our own work to best enable, encourage, and ensure student learning."

"For nearly 20 years, high school chemistry teacher Jonathan Bergmann would teach a lesson in class, help students after school and give them standard homework assignments. He was good enough to win a teacher award. But seven years ago, he and Aaron Sams, another teacher at Woodland Park High School in Colorado, decided to do something different."

"It's no surprise that students are obsessed with their mobile devices. What may come as a surprise, though, is the fact that these digital devices may someday replace textbooks all together-and it may be sooner than we think! South Korea recently announced that by the year 2015, all paper textbooks will be replaced with digital textbooks available on mobile devices such as tablets and e-readers. As students become more and more dependent on digital, will textbooks become extinct? Learn more about this trend in the below infographic."

"Even if you have a 21st Century classroom(flexible and adaptable); even if you are a 21st Century teacher ; (an adaptor, a communicator, a leader and a learner, a visionary and a model, a collaborator and risk taker) even if your curriculum reflects the new paradigm and you have the facilities and resources that could enable 21st century learning - you will only be a 21st century teacher if how you teach changes as well. Your pedagogy must also change. "

"There's been a lot of excitement around TED's foray into education, bringing its inspirational video model to the classroom. TED-Ed launched the YouTube Channel with produced and animated videos about two months ago and now includes a free service that lets teachers upload any YouTube video to its polished platform. Teachers can also make any of the videos - TED or any other - more relevant to their classes by adding customized questions and quizzes."

"THE July/August issue of The Atlantic trumpets the "14 Biggest Ideas of the Year." Take a deep breath. The ideas include "The Players Own the Game" (No. 12), "Wall Street: Same as it Ever Was" (No. 6), "Nothing Stays Secret" (No. 2), and the very biggest idea of the year, "The Rise of the Middle Class - Just Not Ours," which refers to growing economies in Brazil, Russia, India and China. "

"s a boy, I loved taking things apart. Clocks, radios, my mother's kitchen appliances. Luckily for her, I was fairly adept at reassembly. I wanted to discover how things worked, what made them tick (and not just the clocks). But at school, the closest I came to engineering was art lessons and woodworking class. "

"Much as tablet computers went mainstream in the iPad's wake, Apple's latest educational project heralds an age of tablet-based schoolbooks. That, at least, is the hope and hype surrounding iBooks textbooks, launched Jan. 19 at a promotional gala held in the Guggenheim Museum and advertised in terms as glowing as an iPad's screen. "

"Visual representations of data is extremely valuable for all of us in the education industry; we've got to consume a lot of it to make valuable decisions for our students and schools."

"My third truth. Data are not best analyzed alone, while you are sitting in front of a computer screen staring at Excel spreadsheets or colorful graphs. Data analyses are most effective when they are performed with other teachers who share the same standards and assessments, and who can discuss concretely and specifically, based on student results, what is working and what is not working to increase student learning in their context."

On-line Screen Capture Free Recording Audio/Visual

"Just a few years ago, the idea of using a mobile phone as a legitimate learning tool in school seemed far-fetched, if not downright blasphemous. Kids were either prohibited from bringing their phones to school, or at the very least told to shut it off during school hours. But these days, it's not unusual to hear a teacher say, "Class, turn on your cell. It's time to work.""

"Expecting students to read deeply and draw meaningful conclusions is at the heart of the Common Core ELA standards. Students are asked to read closely, cite evidence, and make evidence based inferences when they read. They are expected to deepen their learning by valuing textual evidence and reading critically. Annotating text is one way students can cite textual evidence, infer and deepen meaning as they read.. "

"Teachers who are interested in shifting their classrooms often don't know where to start. It can be overwhelming, frightening, and even discouraging, especially when no one else around you seems to think the system is broken. The question I've been asked often throughout the past year is "Where should a teacher begin?" I've reflected on this a fair amount, and I think small strategic steps are the key."

"The students work, huddled in pairs, jotting down ideas in notebooks. The classroom buzzes with collaboration, punctuated by giggles and laughter. Students are excited to be writing as we start our annual celebration of Script Frenzy! "

Excellent resource for contemporary and classic speeches that can be sued in many ways both for instruction and assessment purposes. The included speeches also include transcripts.

Amazing Web site for scale perspective of the world around us!