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Not just another Edublogs.org weblog. :D

Democratic learning involves empowering students to control the direction of how exactly they reach an end-destination involving any subject to be learned. Democratic models employ various leaning strategies particular to the personality types and preferred learning styles making up a student body. For example, the anatomy of a democratic-learning environment involves three distinct themes: assigning a minimum amount of tests at the end of a predetermined time frame, transferring all responsibilities to students (individuals or groups) to learn everything needed to pass all required tests and implementing a self-driven or voting model allowing students to determine for themselves appropriate learning strategies. Furthermore, implementing true democratic voting models in learning environments both encourages and even forces group participation. For instance, the least active member is more inclined to participate than in non-democratic environments when realizing voting is required to bring about the most favorable learning circumstance for both himself and his group.

A group blog from Accomplished California Teachers: Classroom expertise for better education policy. Home About ACT ACT Publications Blogger Bios My teacher . . . the computer?

 “One of [a successful student's] key skills in school is his ability to bond with teachers. We’ve spent a generation trying to reorganize schools to make them better, but the truth is that people learn from the people they love.”

computers and technology cannot replace the ability of skillful teachers to develop a young student’s ability to think critically, be innovative, and believe in the potential that he or she possess.  A computer will never be able to provide a safe environment for a child seeking stability and support.

Social construction of understanding has long been a significant underlying principle of learning and teaching

Learning through dialogue with others has a long history.

main themes of learning theory

A rubric is an authentic assessment tool used to measure students' work. It is a scoring guide that seeks to evaluate a student's performance based on the sum of a full range of criteria rather than a single numerical score.

It is a formative type of assessment because it becomes an ongoing part of the whole teaching and learning process.

use a range to rate performance.

A learning style is: "A complexus of related characteristics in which the whole is greater than its parts. Learning style is a gestalt combining internal and external operations derived from the individual's neurobiology, personality and development, and reflected in learner behaviour" (Keefe & Ferrell 1990, p. 16).

general tendency towards a particular learning approach displayed by an individual.

Riding & Cheema (1991), from an extensive review of the literature, conclude there are only two principal styles "families", the holist-analytic, and the verbaliser-imager. These two broad groupings relate to the type of cognitive activities normally ascribed to the two hemispheres of the brain. Curry (1983) suggests there are three different perspectives on styles: those relating to a preference for a particular instructional approach, those relating to the individual's intellectual approach to assimilating information independently of the environment, and those relating to the individual's intellectual approach to assimilating information with the environment.