Group items tagged

"We know there's no silver bullet for improving learning outcomes for kids, and Stanford researcher Carol Dweck, who originated the concept of growth mindset, has spoken out recently against the misapplication of her findings. But with a deeper understanding of the idea, and more exploration around what proper implementation looks like, growth mindset has a lot of potential. If you'd like to learn more, or want to clarify the idea for the people around you, these five videos offer something for every audience-from preschoolers to parents and colleagues to college kids."

"The flipped classroom model is here to stay. This model, although not a golden bullet, puts the student firmly into the educational process. Think back over the last few years that you have been teaching or learning about teaching. What did you do when you came across a new idea? Did you investigate on your own? Did you seek others who had experiences they could share? This is what the flipped classroom is all about: Putting students in charge of their learning process and allowing them to wrestle with ideas and topics before coming back to class with their own specific questions and seek guidance from the teacher. Often (but not always) there is some sort of online activity outside of the school day that students are responsible for. This could be a video lesson, a video about a lab set up, a discussion board inside of a learning management system (LMS), or any other vehicle that communicates the topic of the lesson outside of the normal class time instruction. "

"It really all started with the 20+ iPads we loan out to educators. Those suckers are constantly in demand and constantly in need of charging. They're each firmly encased in Fintie Kiddie cases, which, laugh all you want, those things can stop a bullet. And they stand up. And they recline, have carrying handles and come in neon colors, perfect for locating 20+ loaned out units during the chaos of an event, but that's a whole other blog post. Anyway, we've been loaning these iPads out in tote bags, and just tossing the chargers in higgledy-piggledy. Mainly because if you have done any shopping around for charging carts you likely have needed to be resuscitated at least twice when looking at the prices. The cheapest we could find that works with our beloved Fintie cases started at $399.00, and there was no guarantee everything would fit. We've borrowed another department's iPad charging tray a couple times, but a) it cost them closer to $1,000.00, b) weighed close to 25 lbs and c) had no wheels, thus entailing that their tech guy** lug it four blocks each way. The thing about the Fintie cases is that part of their magic durability is that they surround the iPad in thick molded foam rubber - perfect for tossing in bags and bike panniers (guilty!) but problematic for trying to buy a pre-made charging cart, as the slots in those are generally cut for slimmer, uncased iPads. Plus can we get back to the whole cost thing? Are school districts really running around with so much cash? I know I'm not. And thus, with no more rambling, I present: How to Build Your Own iPad Charging Cart Out of Office Supplies"

Twine's features presented in bullets: 1. Social bookmarking service, 2. Central storage for documents, images, videos and other data (from your machine or from the web, 3. Media viewable inside Twine, bookmarked or uploaded. (videos, images, etc.), 4. Collaborative platform with wiki-like editing/built in text editor, 5. User-created groups with discussion boards, 6. Intelligent analysis of added content (more on this below), 7. A recommendation engine to help discover information & people relevant to you and your interests Do note that this list is not complete

From the blog post: "I'm constantly amazed when I see kids in our library cutting and pasting from a Web site into a PowerPoint file. I'm really not amazed that they do it. I'm amazed that a teacher would design a learning experience where that would be a possibility!"

"The Teaching Tolerance Digital Literacy Framework offers seven key areas in which students need support developing digital and civic literacy skills. The numbered items in each box below represent the overarching knowledge and skills that make up the framework. The bullets represent more granular examples of student behaviors to help educators evaluate mastery. "

"Stress! It's just a part of everyday life, right? But what if that stress is chronic and beyond a child's control? More than half of all students in U.S. public schools come from low-income families. Poverty is associated with chronic stress, which can have a toxic effect on the brain. While there is no silver bullet to solve the problem of poverty, we as educators do have the power to positively influence learning for children experiencing poverty by better understanding their brains."

"When I ask teachers what their biggest struggles are, one issue comes up on a regular basis: student motivation. You are able to reach many of your students, but others are unreachable. No matter what you try, they have no interest in learning, no interest in doing quality work, and you are out of ideas. For a long time, I had no solutions; the problem was too complex. I have had my own unmotivated students, and I never had any magic bullets for them. Still, the issue kept coming up from my readers. So I decided to do some research, to try to find what the most current studies say about what motivates students. This is what I found:"

""Nothing could be more absurd than an experiment in which computers are placed in a classroom where nothing else is changed." - Seymour Papert When it comes to improving outcomes in the digital age, efficacy matters more than ever.  Billions of dollars are spent across the world on technology with the hopes that it will lead to better results.  Tom Murray and I shared this thought in Learning Transformed: Educational technology is not a silver bullet. Yet year after year, districts purchase large quantities of devices, deploy them on a large scale, and are left hoping the technology will have an impact. Quite often, they're left wondering why there was no change in student engagement or achievement after large financial investments in devices. Today's devices are powerful tools. At the cost of only a few hundred dollars, it's almost possible to get more technological capacity than was required to put people on the moon. Nevertheless, the devices in tomorrow's schools will be even more robust. With that in mind, it's important to understand that the technology our students are currently using in their classrooms is the worst technology they will ever use moving forward. As the technology continues to evolve, the conversation must remain focused on learning and pedagogy-not on devices. Unfortunately, technology is not a magic wand that will automatically empower learners to think critically, solve complex problems, or close achievement gaps.  These outcomes rely on taking a critical lens to pedagogical techniques to ensure that they evolve so that technology can begin to support and ultimately enhance instruction.  If the former (pedagogy) isn't solid, then all the technology in the world won't make a difference.  As William Horton states, "Unless you get the instructional design right, technology can only increase the speed and certainty of failure.""

"There is also a lot to like about iOS. It's a lean, mean operating system. It's use of sandboxing keeps it relatively clutter free. iOS doesn't do a lot, but it's pretty good at what it does do. That said, deploying iPads at any kind of scale is just short of maddening. While the process of tapping around to install one app on one iPad isn't too bad, installing a dozen apps on hundreds iPads isn't a particularly appealing way to spend a month. If you are going to deploy iPads at scale, you need a strategy. You need a battle plan. In addition, you will also need to stay hydrated. I don't think I've discovered the silver bullet, but I'll share some of my experiences with you in order to, hopefully, shorten the learning curve."

"[This is part of the Infographic Design Series. Check out the other posts!] Good visual arrangement for infographics is putting together graphic and visual elements in a manner that draws your reader's attention. The key to achieving simple, elegant and attractive content are ample whitespace and a well arranged layout. What is whitespace? White space is as its name defined-space that is unmarked in a piece of infographic or visual representation. It could be margins, padding or the space between columns, text and icons and design elements. Whitespace matters to create visually engaging content A page crammed full of text and images will appear busy. This makes the content difficult to read. It makes you unable to focus on the important stuff too. On the other hand, too much of white space can make your page look incomplete. It is always crucial to remember visually engaging content is usually clean and simple. Here's an example of what I mean. whitespace-matters Understanding common infographics layouts help ease visual arrangement Infographic layouts refer to the arrangement of your visual elements and your content. When you begin working on a piece of infographic, you should have a story to tell hence, you will need to select a layout that best suits your story. Using the right layout will ensure good readability and convey your message well. We have put together a cheat sheet for your quick reference to the right arrangement to use, here are six common ones you can quickly work with. Infographic Layout Cheat Sheet Useful Bait: Works well with most types of data. Rather than focusing on design, it works more for practicality, thus making it easy to read. For instance, a reference sheet where you can print it out and use it over and over again. If your content has many subtopics to a main subject, this layout enables you to segregate them into clean chunks that are easy to consume. Versus/Comparison: This layout is typically split vertically to