Group items tagged

"A variety of assessment forms and some student choice can bring students to the assessment with less anxiety and increase the positive learning experience as well as providing the opportunity for them to demonstrate what they know (as opposed to what they don't know)."

"Gamification is simply the application of "game" mechanics to non-game entities. The big idea here is to encourage a desired behavior. In this way, "gamification" amounts to installing mechanics or systems that recognize and reward behavior. Through increased visibility of nuance, documentation of progress, and rewarding of seemingly minor (but critical) behaviors, a specific outcome can be achieved."

"n Mrs. Chellani's continual efforts to create an engaging learning experience for her students, she has found utilizing QR codes to facilitate collaboration to be highly beneficial. In order to review material discussed in an assigned video and in class in her Pre-Calculus and Calculus courses, she created QR codes with relevant questions on the material and its' applications. Students were placed in groups of four to five; and, using a QR reader app on their phone, they were able to view the question. Once the students worked on the problem together, they would confirm the result with Mrs. Chellani. When the solution was correct, they would be given the next QR code (i.e. question). The level of engagement increased dramatically with the use of QR codes and simply allowing students to utilize their cell phones in the learning process! "

"It's easy to forget that we have access to a virtually limitless resource of information, i.e. the Internet. For a lot of us, this is even true at our fingertips, thanks to the ubiquity of smartphones and an ever-increasing push for online greatness by tech engineers all over the world. As a result, there are countless websites out there that are geared to make you smarter and more brilliant for either a low or no cost. Here are just 25 killer websites that may just make you more clever than ever before."

"The Inspire project: an intervention programme of activities for disengaged young people has seen attendance increase by 30% at Josie Maitland's school. "

"Over the last several decades, the United States has declined as an economic and educational global leader in science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM). To regain economic success and global competitiveness in these fields, government at all levels should launch campaigns that raise STEM awareness and increase student engagement. Actively leveraging social media channels is one potential path to drive K-12 excitement in STEM education and jobs through challenges."

"Our philosophy is to talk about apps and tools that change the game for us as educators, and our students. We do not agree with the "100 great apps" approach because you will never make it to #17 let alone #100. Here are a list of 5 FREE tools we recommend to use this upcoming school year to increase student engagement, deeper level thinking, teacher productivity, and make parent communication flawless! "

"Project Tomorrow®, the national education nonprofit organization that annually facilitates the Speak Up National Research Project, conducted a special Speak Up survey in Spring 2012 for college students in teacher preparation programs. Since 2007, Project Tomorrow has collaborated with Blackboard Inc. to create a series of annual reports that focus on key trends in the use of technology to increase student achievement, teacher productivity and parental engagement. This new report, "Learning in the 21st Century: Digital Experiences and Expectations of Tomorrow's Teachers," is the latest in the series and provides new insights that will inform college and university based teacher preparation programs as well as the induction and professional development processes within K-12 schools and districts. Tomorrow's teachers may have the keys to finally unlock the potential of technology to transform teaching and learning, but much depends upon their experiences in their preparation program and how well future school leadership can support their expectations for essential technology tools and resources."

"Oxford Dictionaries announced "Selfie" as the international Word of the Year 2013, noting its frequency in the English language has increased by 17,000% since last year. "

"In a way, the current education system is already set up like a game-just not a very well designed one. Students earn points (grades), gain levels (grades), and in a way, have leaderboards. There are class valedictorians and students are essentially ranked based on their grades when colleges are deciding who to accept. Currently, the typical grading system in schools has students starting off with a 100 average, which slowly (or quickly, depending on the student's performance) gets lower and lower as the student receives anything less than a 100 on any assignments, tests, etc."

""What if school grading systems mirrored a video game?"

"After posting about the "10 ways to get your students engaged" here is another good visual I learned about from Mindshift and which outlines different levels of engagement. As I have already argued elsewhere here in this blog, getting today's students deeply engaged (the first level of engagement below) in the learning experience taking place in class is not an easy task. Unless students see a direct relevance between what they are going to learn and how that information will help them them in their actual life , it becomes hard to hook and maintain their attention. Proponents of socio-cultural linguistics emphasize the importance of "context" in learning. Learning materials that are contextualized and tailored to speak to the immediate context of the learners are more likely to get students engaged and hence increase their rate of retention and comprehensibility."

"As schools change leadership must as well. With society becoming more and more reliant on technology it is incumbent upon leaders to harness the power of digital technologies in order to create school cultures that are transparent, relevant, meaningful, engaging, and inspiring. In order to set the stage for increasing achievement and to establish a greater sense of community pride for the work being done in our schools, we must begin to change the way we lead. To do this, leaders must understand the origins of fear and misconceptions that often surround the use of technology such as social media and mobile devices."

"This post is born out of a request I have repeatedly received from several readers of Educational Technology and Mobile Learning. Some of you have emailed me asking for apps to help increase teachers productivity in terms of classroom management, planning tasks and assignments....etc. I have already reviewed apps for each of these categories and some of them are included in the links below :"

"Not long ago, a teacher had nothing more to rely on than knowledge, textbooks and a few markers. Technology has slowly changed that in the past few years, with the Internet, multimedia programs and computers increasing their presence in the classroom. But with the rise of tablet tech, the student-teacher experience is facing a subtle revolution: joining the trend makes students feel as if they're part of an environment that's desirable because people speak their native languages. As the iPad becomes a teaching tool, classrooms are transformed into contemporary settings."

"Gaming is an amazing strategy to use in the classroom, yet few teachers use it to increase their students' learning. Generally it is used a 'reward' or dismissed as purely fun, with no learning purpose. Gaming, however, is a wonderful way to re-engage students with learning and make learning relevant to their lives. This is not to say that it should be the only teaching strategy that you should use, or that all topics would be best taught through gaming. Many learning situations, however, can be dramatically improved through introducing gaming to your classroom."

"The revolution that began with the web in the mid 1990s has exploded with the advent of small, ubiquitously connected devices in every space and size. The kind of technological changes that took a lifetime in previous centuries has occurred in the span of a decade, and this rate of change is accelerating, not slowing down. With the turn of this new century, this digital revolution took another increasing pitch transforming thus the way we live and do business."

"In today's post I sharing with you a list of some of the best apps you should definitely try with your students. This list contains only apps I have not included in similar previous lists. Also, because of the increasing number of requests I get from you concerning Android apps , I decided to include links to the Android versions of those apps that are available in Google Play."

"Perhaps one of the most powerful expectations of students in an environment of scarcity is that they not question the source of the information. As the modern classroom has become connected, the amount of information available to both teachers and students has exponentially increased. Where teachers once lectured about important ideas and events, or shared their acquired knowledge with their students, today's classrooms can see every key primary source document, the actual notes of great scientists, and a limitless amount of literary criticism. For students, this abundance of information means not only a changing role from the traditional classroom, but also a drastically different set of skills and expectations."