Group items tagged

"Motivating and engaging students is the goal of most teachers-priming them to receive instruction, or otherwise align themselves to a pre-set process you've sketched out that you hope will yield a learning goal you selected beforehand. But I've also been thinking recently of how learning actually happens-the causes of learning. Learning events, maybe. Eh. So I came up with 60 (of millions) of these "learning events" (for lack of a better term)-circumstances in which students seem to learn effortlessly. They can learn when they are coerced-to start, to increase the pace, to finish, to revisit. But what kind of conditions or contexts promote effortless learning? Learning when they don't even know it's happening? When they're (essentially) tricked into deep understanding?"

"As a learning strategy, inquiry-based learning is all about learners constructing their own understanding and knowledge through asking questions. Unlike traditional learning methods that focus primarily on drills, memorization and rote learning, inquiry-based learning is essentially student-centered. It starts with posing questions and directly involves students in challenging hands-on activities that drive students to ask more questions and explore different learning paths. In today's post, we have assembled a collection of some useful web tools and apps that support the ethos of inquiry-based learning.  Using these tools will enable students to engage in a wide range of learning tasks that are all driven by a sense of inquiry and questioning."

"Coding brings young children rich opportunities for language development and the "notion of learning from mistakes," says Chip Donohue, the dean of distance learning and continuing education at the Erikson Institute in Chicago, a graduate school in child development. "We actually don't do enough of that with young kids." The sequencing and patterns involved in programming reinforce skills that have always been taught in the early years, but now also create "habits of mind that are essential for the 21st century," adds Donohue, also senior fellow at the Fred Rogers Center, which provides resources and information on media use with young children. When children code together, they are also learning from each other. "In the process of learning to code, people learn many other things. They are not just learning to code, they are coding to learn," Mitchel Resnick, professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) Media Lab, wrote in an EdSurge article. "In addition to learning mathematical and computational ideas (such as variables and conditionals), they are also learning strategies for solving problems, designing projects, and communicating ideas." Resnick adds that these skills are useful to everyone "regardless of age, background, interests, or occupation.""

Making is as old as learning itself. While the maker movement may only be about a decade old, the human desire to create dates back to the earliest forms of human activity, from making stone tools to drawing on cave walls (Halverson & Sheridan, 2014; Martinez & Stager, 2014). Thinkers such as Pestalozzi, Montessori, and Papert helped paved the way for the maker movement by stressing the importance of hands-on, student-centered, meaningful learning. Instead of viewing learning as the transmission of knowledge from teacher to student, these thinkers embraced the idea that children learn best when encouraged to discover, play, and experiment. More recently, maker education is being used as a way to connect do-it-yourself informal learning to classrooms. Driven by new technologies such as 3D printing, robotics, and kid-friendly coding, making is emerging as an effective way to introduce students to STEM, particularly women and minorities. By incorporating elements of making into the classroom, educators can bridge the gap between what students are passionate about and what they're learning in school.

"A meaning of "essential" involves important questions that recur throughout one's life. Such questions are broad in scope and timeless by nature. They are perpetually arguable - What is justice? Is art a matter of taste or principles? How far should we tamper with our own biology and chemistry? Is science compatible with religion? Is an author's view privileged in determining the meaning of a text? We may arrive at or be helped to grasp understandings for these questions, but we soon learn that answers to them are invariably provisional. In other words, we are liable to change our minds in response to reflection and experience concerning such questions as we go through life, and that such changes of mind are not only expected but beneficial. A good education is grounded in such life-long questions, even if we sometimes lose sight of them while focusing on content mastery. The big-idea questions signal that education is not just about learning "the answer" but about learning how to learn. (http://www.authenticeducation.org/ae_bigideas/article.lasso?artid=53)"

"Just a few years ago, mobile devices were almost unheard of in classrooms. Over time, teachers and administrators have been experimenting with how to make mobile devices into powerful learning tools, and have come up with some strategies. A group of administrators from some of the first districts to pioneer Bring Your Own Device (BYOD) policies and other forms of mobile learning are now sharing their experiences with those hustling to get on board. The Consortium of School Networking, a professional group for district leaders, is trying to make that knowledge more widely available through its Mobile Learning Initiative."

"Last summer at the Apple developer conference, WWDC, we learned that there were more than 1.2 million apps in the Apple App Store alone. That's a lot of choices. In a sea that large, understanding how to find apps for the classroom can be challenging. In speaking with numerous educators, we learned that most app downloads result from a colleague's recommendation (i.e., word of mouth) or from choosing the first app in the search results. These are both sound strategies given the limited time educators have to explore each new app. But a larger point has become clear: learning to swiftly evaluate apps has become an essential skill in the fast-growing, ever-changing mobile classroom. The Great App Checklist, go.sas.com/MobileLearning. We offer this checklist to help educators zero in on the app they need and to judge how well it performs key functions. This rubric can help developers understand how educators choose apps, what information would help someone in this audience, which details to mention in the app store summary, and what is the essential functionality. The checklist's themes - Purpose, Alignment, Pedagogically-based, Personalization, Sharing, Ease of Use, Privacy, App Citizenship, and Access - are those discussed throughout Mobile Learning: A Handbook for Developers, Educators, and Learners."

"We do not learn from experience... we learn from reflecting on experience." ― John Dewey These words by John Dewey point to a truth about learning that is often forgotten. Experience alone is not sufficient for true learning to occur; reflection is an essential part of the process and our failure to include time for this is why our learning often does not stick.

ollaboration Tools Collaborative learning is essentially people working together to solve a problem, create a product, or derive meaning from a body of material. A central question or problem serves to organize and drive activities, and encourage application, analysis, and synthesis of course material. While the landscape of technology that can be used to support central activities of collaborative learning is vast and varied, it is often lumped together under a single label: "collaboration tools." Given this vast and distributed landscape of tools, the difficulty of finding one or a set of tools to meet your goals can be time intensive. We are here to help. For faculty who are interested in learning more, want to explore, or try out a tool, contact us to talk with an Eberly colleague in person.

"In our new conception for Gold Standard PBL, we have created two separate but related components of the model: Essential Project Design Elements, and Project Based Teaching Practices. We call them the Essential Project Design Elements because that's precisely what they are - not the "elements of PBL" the instructional methodology, which is a much broader topic than the design of a project itself. The Project Based Teaching Practices expand on what it means to implement PBL well, beyond designing the project. You can read more about our new model in another post, but as you can see in the diagram below, while some of the familiar "8 Essential Elements" remain, others are gone. Let's explain where they went and why."

"One of the biggest learning trends you should know about is project-based learning. Basically, students are given a task and allowed to work in groups to deliver solutions to a problem. This is an applicable methodology in science, technology, math, arts, etc. You name it, project-based learning could likely be used. But how do you get started with a new way to teach? That's a major question that often stops teachers right in their tracks. It's hard to switch up what's been working in the past. It's impossible to figure out how to integrate a new classroom structure in the small amount of time available to educators around the world. In an effort to help solve this issue, our friends at EdTechTeacher have created what's essentially a crash course in project-based learning. The video is about an hour long and is by Suzy Brooks, a third-grade teacher in Massachusetts."

"School administrators and educators are currently zealous about the idea that every student should learn computer science. "Think about the world we live in now," says New York Mayor Bill de Blasio, "Hundreds of thousands of good jobs will be accessible to those with coding and other essential skills." I agree that everyone should learn to program, but I disagree with Mayor de Blasio's motivations. You shouldn't learn to program in order to get a good job. Learning to think computationally can give you a new way to understand and describe your world. Learning to program can make you a more expressive person."

"For better or worse, computing is pervasive, changing how and where people work, collaborate, communicate, shop, eat, travel, learn and quite simply, live. From the arts to sciences and politics, no field has been untouched. The last decade has also seen the rise of disciplines generically described as "computational X," where "X" stands for any one of a large range of fields from physics to journalism. Here's what Google autocomplete shows when you type "computational." (You can try it for yourself!) But the big question is: Does current K-12 education equip every student with the requisite skills to become innovators and problem-solvers, or even informed citizens, to succeed in this world with pervasive computing? Since the turn of this century, the "4C's of 21st century" skills-critical thinking, creativity, collaboration and communication-have seen growing recognition as essential ingredients of school curricula. This shift has prompted an uptake in pedagogies and frameworks such as project-based learning, inquiry learning, and deeper learning across all levels of K-12 that emphasize higher order thinking over rote learning. I argue that we need computational thinking (CT) to be another core skill-or the "5th C" of 21st century skills-that is taught to all students."

"To me, the single biggest myth that we must correct is thinking that Mobile Learning is only about learning via mobile devices. It makes sense to think that Mobile Learning is only about Mobile but to me this is essentially the opposite of what is true."

"Pushing students to go beyond what they think they can do is at the core of good teaching. This Teaching Channel video follows students and educators at Springfield Renaissance School, part of the Expeditionary Learning network. Students at the school understand that struggling with a particular task is part of learning. Teachers have high expectations of students, expect a positive classroom culture and are willing to gently prod students to dig deeper and reveal more. Teachers embed Common Core standards like the ability to use textual evidence to back up arguments, into the culture of class. They also understand that the love of learning takes ownership and self-awareness."

"This is part one of a three-part series for educators that describes how to create a rich, robust learning network and virtual space-a personal learning environment that supports professional and personal enrichment for lifelong lear"

"Katrina Schwartz's recent KQED blog post explores why trust is crucial in shaping independent learners. The article points out that in this age of preparing students to be "college and career ready," it is puzzling that schools block portions of the internet in the name of protecting students from inappropriate online behavior. Additionally, by blocking digital tools that serve a useful purpose in learning, schools effectively stop educators from teaching and modeling appropriate online behavior. And yet, younger students especially need some kind of protection online. In this article, we explore why building trust today is difficult in a traditional sense, while also remaining crucial for independent learning activities."

"Reading, writing, and math are no longer the only essential subjects everyone should learn. Today's essential skills include navigating the web, writing code, and engaging with others online. This web literacy map from Mozilla presents activities that cover these 21st-century skills."

"Four Essential Principles of Blended Learning"

"Computer coding is essentially a language that computer uses. When we think about helping kids learn computer coding, we automatically think we need a computer first. But in fact, there are many ways to learn computer coding without a computer, as many thinking and coding approach can be learned in many different activities off-screen. Today we share some off-screen activities that teach kids computer coding."