Group items tagged

"No matter how clean a house you keep, your computers and gadgets are bound to get a little dirty here and there. Here's what you need to clean them, and how to do it without hurting them. Your gadgets aren't as resilient as they might seem, and just spraying Windex on everything and rubbing it down with a paper towel can cause all sorts of damage to a device. However, they are remarkably easy to clean as long as you do it right-and you can do most of it with just a few simple household items (or at the very least, a trip to CVS). Here's how to do it. "

"The new Canva for Education site features eighteen lesson plans written by Vicki Davis, Steven Anderson, Terri Eichholz, and Paul Hamilton. The lesson plans include things like Paul's making historical infographics in which students summarize and visually represent the connections between historical events and their causes. For the elementary school crowd Terri has a lesson called Initial Selfies in which students learn to isolate and pronounce the initial, medial vowel, and final sounds. One of Steven's lesson plans calls for students to build graphics about percentages. And to take advantage of students' familiarity with Facebook, Vicki has built a lesson plan in which students build historical figure fan pages."

"Lately I've found myself squinting a bit at some of the practices and structures in teaching and learning. This squinting is less about efficiency or performance, but rather what effect each piece has-a kind of causal analysis. This is the cause, and it might have this effect. In trying to imagine what would be different if we did this instead of that, I was surprised at how education has settled one a small handful of models in light of so much possibility. Was it because we've found the magic formula, and in 2014 we're in an era of simple refinement? That we know "what works," and now it's all a matter of tweaks? That if teachers just listened and did what they were told and used #edtech and stuck to the script and if parents just read to kids and if poverty wasn't an issue and if classrooms were more inviting and we just used the data that is staring us in the face that it'd all somehow coalesce? So, this list. Other ideas for learning. I'm not saying any of these ideas are good-or even the least bit viable. I'm not saying they wouldn't be downright destructive, curiosity-snuffing intellectual abominations that'd take education back to the dark ages. I'm just wondering what would happen."

"Editor's note: This guest post from Chris Casal started as a comment on "Filtering social media in schools because it's a 'distraction'" which appeared on Scott McCleod's Dangerously Irrelevant blog. Social media is no different than pencil and paper. I doodled a lot in the margins of my physics book. It wasn't Twitter and Facebook that made me doodle but I doodled nonetheless. Social media can serve as the new platform for distraction but not a new cause for it. Doodles, passing notes, sleeping in class, all of the "analog" forms of distraction, have just morphed into branded platforms. The difference? Sleeping in class never led to anything. On the other hand, connecting & engaging on social media might. The doodler who grew up to be a graphic designer may have been distracted in class but is now earning a living born out of that distraction. Maybe the students tweeting in class will develop the next great media platform."

"You don't need a meteorologist to tell you what lake-effect snow is: it's snow that's, um, caused by a lake, right? As it turns out, things are a teensy bit more complicated than that, and if you live in one of the states bordering the Great Lakes that are forever getting clobbered by the stuff - or even if you just marvel at the footage of the latest white-out to hit those luckless places - it can help to know what's actually going on."

"Ed note: Part 1 of this 2-part series can be seen here; note that some of the language has been slightly revised from the original post by Nigel. He uses the term passion projects, which is very close to Genius Hour and Passion-Based Learning. The differences across the three terms are often a matter of individual use and interpretation, a point we wanted to help clarify by using the three terms interchangeably even though they may not be exactly the same-passion projects needn't use a Genius Hour format, nor does passion-based learning necessarily need to take the form of projects. In that way, the above model can be used for any of the three, but it felt most precise as a model for teachers to use to design Genius Hour projects. So, here we are. You can (and should!) read more from Nigel at thelearnersway.net. In an ongoing effort towards polishing the edges, over the years we have continued to refine the processes we apply to the Personal Passion Project. We have gained insights into the sorts of projects that work well and which will cause difficulties. We have added a degree of structure while maintaining the required degree of freedom necessary for a personalised project. The results of this learning are presented (in the model above and the text) below."

"This is a must for those teachers use the great benefits that the AppleTV can bring to the classroom. Do you see this intro screen when the Apple TV turns on? Those movies on the top? While a lot of these are the most popular movies playing though it is, they may not be the most appropriate for our students. This happened just today as I was teaching in another classroom, and it was a small distraction during my lesson. Kids were excited to see their favorite movie, in this instance, Big Hero 6. They cheered and became excited. Wild this case was harmless, I can only imagine other cases where movies that are rated PG-13 or higher can cause some concern for teachers of younger students. These can even be a distraction for high schoolers, who will likely veer off topic if they see a movie that they like or dislike."

"An Ottawa school was in lockdown earlier this week because of a gun reference posted on the social messaging service Yik Yak. And Charlottetown police said this week that some local students aren't attending school because they can't take reading the comments on Yik Yak. Yik Yak is the latest anonymous messaging app to cause trouble among teens Be anonymous, share online with these social networking apps The app has been linked to threats, pranks and cyberbullying at schools across North America, prompting many to block it. But is that a good idea? Here's what you need to know about Yik Yak."

"In this factual talk, geneticist Wendy Chung shares what we know about autism spectrum disorder - for example, that autism has multiple, perhaps interlocking, causes. Looking beyond the worry and concern that can surround a diagnosis, Chung and her team look at what we've learned through studies, treatments and careful listening."

Colourful language in this post, however lots of really strong points made. An alternative to the "technology is bad" rhetoric so prevalent in social media posts/cartoons/popular opinion.

"In an ongoing effort towards polishing the edges, over the years we have continued to refine the processes we apply to the Personal Passion Project. We have gained insights into the sorts of projects that work well and which will cause difficulties. We have added a degree of structure while maintaining the required degree of freedom necessary for a personalised project. The results of this learning are presented (in the model above and the text) below."

"One of the best gifts you can possibly give your child is an education in computer programming. Not only is it a fun, intellectually-challenging pastime, but it's also a solid guarantee of a future career in an industry that not only offers competitive wages, but also promises to provide stable and steady employment. One of the best tools for teaching coding to kids is the Raspberry Pi. At $30, these are cheap enough for most parents to buy. Using the built-in GPIO (General Purpose Input/Output), they can attach electrical components, and build their own physical computing devices. Because you're unlikely to use a Raspberry Pi as your main computer, your children can experiment and play without the fear of causing damage to your system or your documents. But if you aren't a coder, and don't know your Python from your Prolog, you might not know where to direct your children to. If that sounds like you, don't worry. Here's five simple activities to teach your child how to code with the Raspberry Pi."

"If you've been keeping up on edtech news in the past decade, you might have noticed that coding courses have been targeting younger and younger students every year. Starting in college? Lost cause. High school? Behind! Elementary school? Perfect. The younger and younger the lessons will start, until we learn how to pre-program babies to be tech geniuses. While this might seem like micromanagement of children's destinies to some, we must all face the truth: coding is the new writing. As computer programming skills become more and more crucial to future careers, coding will become more prevalent as a required skill for high school graduation. So, once we've faced the music about the need for students to start programming instruction young, where do we begin? Coding camps are all the rage right now, and well worth the expense, but not all parents can afford the additional cost of instruction. So, we took a look at a few of the more affordable coding games out there to see just what the worldwide web has to offer"

"It is getting to be that time of year here in Maine when we can't walk across a carpet then touch a light switch without getting a bit of a shock. What causes that happen? And why does it seem to happen more often in the winter months than in the summer months? The answers to those questions and more are found in the TED-Ed lesson The Science of Static Electricity."

"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?"

"I used to think that when students were disengaged it was their own fault, and while sometimes that is still true, I have found in my years of teaching that a lot of the fault lies with me as the teacher.  Yet, realizing that I may be the cause of my students disengagement is hard to swallow.  It certainly has not done wonders to my self-esteem, and yet, there is something liberating about realizing that while I am a part of the problem, that also means that I can fix it.  Or at the very least fix the things I control.  Student disengagement is something I can do something about. But why are students so disengaged?  What lies behind the restlessness, the misbehavior, the bored stares?  Every year I survey my students throughout the year, and particularly on those days where nothing seems to be working.  I ask them simply to explain what is going on and they share their truths with me.  So here are their truths on student disengagement."

"Perceptions of people and events are very much dependent upon who you are and what your experience has been. Events in Ferguson and Baltimore, among others, highlight our misunderstandings of each other, and how the same facts can be interpreted entirely differently. What's worse, people of color and underrepresented groups are defined by journalists covering these events, who themselves don't reflect the ethnic composition of our country as a whole. Recent studies have proven that stories can change perceptions and even make people more tolerant. Rather than wait to be defined by others, it's important that students learn to create understanding by sharing their story, their worldview, their concerns, and their triumphs with others. Groups like Youth Radio and Cause Beautiful are empowering teens in poor and minority-majority neighborhoods to become multimedia journalists. Kids in these programs learn how to tell and share their own stories with a local or national audience. No matter your class demographics or grade level, ELA and social studies teachers should integrate similar projects in their own classrooms, because every student will benefit from learning to craft a compelling visual story backed by persuasive facts and ideas."

"Night Shift in iOS causes the device display to readjust to a warmer color spectrum, thereby reducing the displays output of blue light. This makes the screen of an iPhone or iPad not only more pleasant to look at in the evening and dark hours, but it also is easier on the eyes and potentially offers some health benefits as well."

"Questions can fire the imagination and feed your creativity. In my research for The Book of Beautiful Questions, I found dozens of questions that can help in identifying fresh ideas, overcoming creative block, soliciting useful feedback, and getting an idea "out the door" and into the world. However, the questions we ask ourselves about creativity also can have the opposite effect. They can undermine creative confidence or cause us to misdirect our efforts. Below are five questions that can be thought of as "creativity killers." Take note of them now-so that in the future, you can stop asking them."