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learn to work together to complete project -- just as they will someday in the workplace or in college.

Next year, I plan to augment my project-based approach by connecting my classes with classes in 3 Francophone countries - France, Canada, and Sénégal

ie, they will learn to communicate in French while learning 21st century skills!

Provide access to a variety of materials which target different learning preferences and reading abilities.

Differentiated instruction is based upon the belief that students learn best when they make connections between the curriculum and their diverse interests and experiences, and that the greatest learning occurs when students are pushed slightly beyond the point where they can work without assistance. This point differs for students who are working below grade level and for those who are gifted in a given area.

Differentiated instruction is based upon the belief that students learn best when they make connections between the curriculum and their diverse interests and experiences, and that the greatest learning occurs when students are pushed slightly beyond the point where they can work without assistance. This point differs for students who are working below grade level and for those who are gifted in a given area.

Differentiated instruction is based upon the belief that students learn best when they make connections between the curriculum and their diverse interests and experiences, and that the greatest learning occurs when students are pushed slightly beyond the point where they can work without assistance. This point differs for students who are working below grade level and for those who are gifted in a given area.

Differentiated instruction is based upon the belief that students learn best when they make connections between the curriculum and their diverse interests and experiences, and that the greatest learning occurs when students are pushed slightly beyond the point where they can work without assistance. This point differs for students who are working below grade level and for those who are gifted in a given area.

Differentiated instruction is based upon the belief that students learn best when they make connections between the curriculum and their diverse interests and experiences, and that the greatest learning occurs when students are pushed slightly beyond the point where they can work without assistance. This point differs for students who are working below grade level and for those who are gifted in a given area.

open source movement

Digital StudyHall (DSH)

We now need a new approach to learning—one characterized by a demand-pull rather than the traditional supply-push mode of building up an inventory of knowledge in students’ heads. Demand-pull learning shifts the focus to enabling participation in flows of action, where the focus is both on “learning to be” through enculturation into a practice as well as on collateral learning.

open participatory learning ecosystems

“I think, therefore I am,” and from the assumption that knowledge is something that is transferred to the student via various pedagogical strategies, the social view of learning says, “We participate, therefore we are

provided students with opportunities to observe and then to emulate how experts function

seeking the knowledge when it is needed in order to carry out a particular situated task.

all student writing was done on public blogs

In addition to supporting lecture-style teaching, Terra Incognita includes the capability for small groups of students who want to work together to easily “break off” from the central classroom before rejoining the entire class. Instructors can “visit” or send messages to any of the breakout groups and can summon them to rejoin the larger group.

CyberOne Classroom in Second Life

Generally, oral learners have a more difficult time with online learning. It is not that they cannot do the work; rather, they will have to work harder to stay engaged through this print-based teaching form. Many of the above recommendations still apply but they may be more difficult to provide in an online platform. Suggestions for teaching oral students online include:

personal contact

Incorporate media assignments in the classroom,

Provide opportunities for assignments that are engaged in real life struggles, events, and people instead of abstract principles

Oral learners learn best and have their lives most transformed when professors utilize oral teaching and assessment methods.

Whereas previous generations in U.S. seminaries assumed that print-based means of teaching and assessing were effective to produce student learning and transformation, many contemporary students prefer to learn through oral means

The results of this research indicate that slightly more seminary students had an oral versus print learning preference. In order to create positive learning experiences and effectively reach students, it is important to understand the difference between oral and print preferences

, this paper seeks to understand how learning is shaped by oral versus print preferences. In short, how do oral learners learn differently than print learners?

discovered that slightly over half of the students evaluated via an Orality Assessment Tool (Abney 2001) had a preference for oral learning

Her grades were based entirely on print-based rubrics. Part of the difference in her grading was due to learning/assessment preferences rather than intelligence. This was a breath of fresh air for her as she was finally starting to understand herself and her learning preferences better.

When the teacher dominates the learning, students take shallow approaches to learning.

1.  Teachers do learning tasks less. Assign to students some of the tasks of organizing the content, giving examples, summarizing discussions, solving problems, and drawing diagrams, charts, and graphs.            2.  Teachers do less telling; students do more discovering. Give a quiz on your syllabus and policies without going over it first. Let students discover information in assigned readings without presenting it first or summarizing it later.  3.  Teachers do more design work. Design activities and assignments that move students to new skill levels, motivate engagement in the course content by doing the work of practitioners in the discipline, and that develop self-awareness of their learning of the content. 4.   Faculty do more modeling. Demonstrate how a skilled learner (the teacher) continues to learn. Show them drafts of your articles, notes on your own reading in professional journals; talk aloud as you solve a problem, thereby revealing  and modeling your thinking process. 5.  Faculty do more to get students learning from and with each other. Create work for small groups to do in class. 6.  Faculty work to create climates for learning. Create a climate that promotes interaction, autonomy, and responsibility (more in chapter five). 7.  Faculty do more with feedback. In addition to assigning grades, use other means of providing frequent feedback (more in chapter six).

focuses on student responsibility for learning and how to promote it.

transforming passive students into autonomous learners

The more structured we make the environment, the more structure students need

The more motivation we provide, the less they find within themselves. The more responsibility for learning we try to assume, the less they accept on their own. The more control we exert, the more restive their response. We end up with students who have little commitment to and almost no respect for learning and who cannot function without structure and imposed control. (p. 98)

The more we decide for students, the more they expect us to decide.

eimer explains several strategies for creating a climate that produces self-regulated intrinsically motivated learners: 

The instructor should “make the content relevant, demonstrate its power to answer questions, and otherwise show its apparent intrigue.” Make the student responsible for learning decisions by relying on logical consequences of action and inaction, rather than punishment. For example, to deal with lateness, present important material or assignments early in the period that you do not repeat, rather than deduct attendance points for lateness. Do not summarize chapters if students have not read them. If they arrive unprepared, put the unread material on a test; give frequent tests. Be consistent in administering policies. If your syllabus says late homework is not accepted, never accept late homework despite the heart-wrenching excuse offered by the student. Involve students in a discussion of creating a climate that promotes learning. Have this discussion early in the semester. Weimer’s suggestion for starting the discussion is to have students complete sentence stems such as “In the best class I ever had, teachers . . .” “In the best class I ever had, students . . .” “I learn best when . . .” “I feel most confident as a learner when . . .” (p. 108) Obtain feedback on the classroom climate occasionally and revisit the discussion of policies and procedures. Employ practices that “encourage students to encounter themselves as learners” (p. 111). Explain the purposes and benefits of assignments and projects; tell students what problems they might run into in doing the assignments and suggest remedies. Help them with time management. With group projects, provide guidance in managing the project, handling group dynamics, and assigning individual responsibilities.

helps us deal with the fact that almost all students will resist their teacher’s learning-centered approaches. Most of the learner-centered strategies recommended in this book change what students have become accustomed to. Understanding the reasons will help teachers deal with the inevitable student resistance when they present learner-centered practices and policies that withdraw the support students have become dependent upon during their first twelve years of schooling. The good news is that most students see the benefits of learner-centered approaches and benefit from them.

, why do students resist it? Based on her research, Weimer lists four reasons: Learner-centered approaches are more work. When the teacher does not summarize the important points in the chapter, the students will have to read it for themselves. When the teacher asks small groups to produce five applications of a concept, rather than supply it in a handout, the students have to do more work. Learner-centered approaches are more threatening. Students who lack confidence in themselves as learners become filled with anxiety at the prospect of becoming responsible for decisions that might be wrong. Students who are not used to questions with no single, authority-approved right answer are fearful of being wrong. Learner-centered approaches involve losses. The strategies recommended in this book are designed to move students to higher stages of self-directedness and higher stages of intellectual development. Moving from one stage to another requires a loss of certainty and the comfort that certainty brings. Learner-centered approaches may be beyond students. Some students’ lack of self-confidence or intellectual immaturity may prevent their accepting responsibility for their own learning.

overcome student resistance to learner-centered approache

The communication is frequent and explicit The communication encourages and positively reinforces The communication solicits feedback from students The communication resists their resistance.

developmental approach to transforming passive dependent learners into self-confident autonomous learners. Learners become self-directed in stages, not in one sin

moment of transformatio