Group items tagged

""The single most important thing I learned in this class is that I don't have to have tons of homework to learn a lot." Mid-year or more frequently, I ask students to complete an evaluation form. I craft the questions carefully so simple answers are hard to write. Instead, I try to create specific, complex questions that cover the material, the classroom activities and the students-peers and the individual. Many teachers shake their heads and avoid these exercises. They scoff that students would actually take the forms seriously or that the students will say anything useful. But I find the nature of the questions often elicits a straight answer-short, but helpful."

"Last year my grade 1 students were uploading videos to their personal blogs and to youtube, tweeting from our classroom Twitter feed, face timing, skyping and participating in Google Hangouts with peers, soon to be teachers, teachers, experts in a certain field, and the class down the hall. We participated in global projects like the Global Read Aloud and created our own global projects. Why?"

"The U.S. Individuals with Disabilities Education Act defines the concept of the Least Restrictive Environment as the opportunity for a student with a disability to be "provided with supplementary aids and services necessary to achieve educational goals if placed in a setting with non-disabled peers." (Daniel R.r. v. State Bd. of Educ., 874 F.2d 1036, 1050, 5th Cir.1989) This concept of providing students with "supplementary aids and services necessary to achieve educational goals" could be applied to all students. By leveraging the capabilities of mobile devices, teachers can support their students in creating a personalized learning environment with the least number of barriers. "

"When you look at the very best work happening in iPad classrooms, you'll see students creating media, showcasing their understanding, collaborating with peers, and communicating with broad audiences. The pockets of excellence are ever-present and inspiring. On the whole, however, tablets are most often used to reproduce existing practices-to distribute resources and enable students to take notes. Past generations of school leaders might have been forgiven for permitting these patterns of technology adoption, but today we have the benefit of history to look back on. We know that without a change in our technology integration strategies, there's no reason to expect that a new device will magically create new teaching practices in schools. To make the most of the investment in tablet computers, school leaders need to do three things. First, they need to work with their communities to articulate a clear vision for how new technology will improve instruction. Second, they need to help educators imagine how new technologies can support those visions. Finally, they need to support teachers and students on a developmental journey that will take them from using tablets for consumption to using them for curation, creation, and connection."

"When you employ total participation techniques, every learner shares their response to every question posed and every challenge offered. This becomes a consistent expectation, allowing teachers to check for understanding while inspiring higher levels of engagement. Know that ensuring total participation isn't enough, though. Once you've achieved it, you have to walk the room, peer over shoulders, provide feedback, and bounce student responses out to the group as a whole in order to forward the learning. Interested in giving this a try? Consider some of these techniques."

"It's a familiar classroom ritual - every June, teachers assign summer reading. And every September, students come back to school having read too few books. This is frustrating for teachers, and challenging for students. When kids aren't in school, they forget crucial skills they learned during the year - at least a month of reading achievement, on average. This so-called "summer slide" is particularly pernicious in children from low-income families. Low-income students often walk through the door of their kindergartens already behind their more fortunate peers because of a mix of poverty, poorer health, less parental education, and higher rates of single and teenage parents. With limited access to books and other academic opportunities in the summer, these children experience the summer slide threefold. Over time, this adds up. By third grade, children who can't read at their grade level (a whopping 73 percent of students eligible for free or reduced-price lunch) begin to struggle with other subjects. Students living in poverty who cannot read proficiently by third grade are 13 times less likely to graduate from high school. By ninth grade, some have estimated that two-thirds of the reading achievement gap can be explained by unequal access to summer learning opportunities. There is good news: Stemming the summer slide isn't impossible. Students who read just four to six books over the summer maintain their skills (they need to turn more pages to actually become better readers.)"

I am a huge proponent of using hands-on, interactive learning activities to explore ill-defined problems as a way of teaching for all age groups. Given the spontaneity and uncertainty of these types of active learning environments, I believe educators should observe, reflect on, and analyze how learners interact with the materials, the content, the educator, and the other learners. This practice is in line with the teacher as ethnographer. In my role as a teacher as ethnographer, I made some initial observations during my first two weeks of teaching maker education for elementary age students. With half the kids under 7, I learned a bunch about young makers. Young makers are more capable than what people typically believe. Young makers need to be given more time, resources, strategies to learn how to solve more ambiguous and ill-defined problems (i.e., ones that don't have THE correct answer). Too many don't know how to approach such problems. If a project doesn't "work" during the first trial, they way too often say "I can't do this." They have a low tolerance for frustration; for not getting the answer quickly. Young makers often celebrate loudly and with extreme joy when making something work. Young makers like to work together but lack skills or desire to peer tutor one another. Young makers usually like to stand while working. Young makers are more capable than what people (adults) typically believe. During our maker education summer camp, the young makers made LED projects, circuit crafts, and simple robotics. Looking at the instructions for similar activities, the recommended ages were usually 8 and above. Yet, my group of 14 kids contained half under that age. The kids of all ages struggled a bit - as is common with making type activities but all were successful to some degree with all of the activities.

"Several teachers now have already stated using the flipped classroom model in their teaching and some are still thinking about how to do it. If you are one of those who are keen on applying this learning/teaching strategy with your students then this resourceful section will provide you with all the materials, tips, ideas, and tools to flip your classroom. A flipped classroom is a model in which the ordinary teaching activities which are done in class like lecturing or demonstrations are recorded in videos and podcasts for students to access at home. The in-class time is used instead for deeper class discussions, students projects, one-one-one interventions, peer collaboration, and many more."

"Students are coming out of school expected to solve 21st-century problems and enter into occupations that haven't even been imagined yet. Schooling is not designed in this manner, so we wanted to give students an opportunity to solve problems in authentic contexts, using 21st-century skills and collaboration techniques. We wanted to break down walls between classrooms and have students use interdisciplinary skills to solve problems with teams of their peers, with mentors, and with industry professionals."

"Makers have long been known as hobbyists or tinkers. However, with increased access to professional-grade tools, the maker movement is transforming business as usual. Through collaboration and connectivity, makers are inspiring innovation on a daily basis with the creation of smart gadgets, machines, robots and wearables. This new way of doing business is a shift from the historic model where innovation was monopolized by multi-million-dollar companies. Makers and their peers have the opportunity to build cutting-edge products, test them in collaborative workspaces and share their inventions online in order to bring "the next big thing" to market for mass consumption. It is through this connectivity that makers are able to contribute to the Internet of Things - a world of interconnected devices that use sensors to interact with the people, the environment and other devices around them. This smarter, connected way of life is the future of technology worldwide."

"From ambitious entrepreneurs to casual meet-up participants, women are proactive about engaging with STEM and with other women in their field. Besides their shared affinity with science, tech, engineering, and math, they often find that they have another thing in common. Many of these women can recall a time when they walked into a classroom or office, looked around, and noticed that they were sharing the space with an overwhelming majority of men. This was the experience of Nicole Messier, a former student of aerospace engineering, who recalls that she had sparse female role models, teachers, or peers in her undergraduate program. Instead of following a traditional aerospace career, Messier instead decided to help change STEM's evident gender imbalance. She is now the CEO of blink blink, a purveyor of creative circuit kits that help beginners get their feet wet with simple electronics, arts & crafts with embedded circuitry, and wearable fashion technology. Not only did she co-found the company, she also collaboratively designed the kits with the very girls that they're made for."

"Are  your students texting in class? Of course they are. A better question is, are you allowing your students to send text messages? If not, why? The picture above is what happens in most classes. Students hide their mobile devices and surreptitiously send text messages to their friends. In many cases they may be texting peers in the same room. Teachers fear this secret texting in class and, in many cases, ban the use of mobile devices entirely. A better practice is to embrace the mobile devices and the text messaging."

""Work that matters" has significance beyond classroom walls; it's work that is created for an authentic audience who might  enjoy it or benefit from it even in a small way. It's work that isn't simply passed to the teacher for a grade, or shared with peers for review. It's work that potentially makes a difference in the world."

"It started with a move by resourceful students who were able to unlock security settings on their iPads. The disastrous $1 billion iPad rollout by the Los Angeles Unified School District in September 2013 provided a cautionary tale to districts looking to spend public dollars on technology and digital curriculum. But below the surface of the news stories were thousands of kids feeling hurt by the way they were portrayed by the media and the school district's lack of trust in them. To explore the aftermath of the scandal that put them front and center of that cautionary education technology tale, students at Theodore Roosevelt High School in Boyle Heights conducted their own research on how the rollout was handled, talking to peers and family members and ultimately painting a very different picture of the lasting consequences."

"f you're planning to give project-based learning a try during the coming school year, you may hope a spark of inspiration will strike during the summer months that will lead to a memorable PBL experience. And maybe that's just the excuse that hard-working teachers need to take a hike or daydream by a pool. But here's another surefire strategy for PBL planning: borrow project ideas from your colleagues and adapt or remix to fit your context. Here are ten project ideas that I've gathered from a busy season of summer conferences and professional development events (including ISTE 2015 and PBL World, an annual event hosted by the Buck Institute for Education). By sharing their thinking at this early draft stage, teachers invite feedback from peers. That's another strategy for effective project planning. (Most project ideas were shared anonymously and some are mashups of similar suggestions. Thanks to the creative teachers behind these PBL plans.)"

Maggie Tsai, co-founder of Diigo and her special guest, Jennifer Dorman, will demo and discuss the first phase of "Diigo Educator Account:" a suite of features that makes it easy for teachers to get their entire class of students or their peers started on collaborative research using Diigo's web annotation and social bookmarking technology. For reference: Peggy Steffens - "Diigo ~ 21st Century Tool for Research, Reading, and Collaboration" http://www.amphi.com/~technology/techtalks/online/nov08/bestpract.htm Thursday, November 20, 2008 at 5:00 PM Pacific / 8:00 PM Eastern / 1:00 AM GMT (on Friday)

SUMMARY: The majority of cyber offenses involving children, adolescents and young adults are perpetrated by peers of approximately the same age or grade level. The old paradigm of adults preying on children has been replaced with the new reality that kids now regularly prey on each other online.

Teachers need teachers, too, especially when it comes to making the best educational use of technological teaching tools.

For the next 4 days, we will explore ways to become mentors for our colleagues. As coaches/mentors, you will assist your peers in identifying ways that technology can strengthen classroom curriculum and enhance students' academic achievement. You will also help your colleagues to develop the necessary technology skills and instructional strategies needed to integrate technology into teaching and learning.

Wikipedia is an incredible teaching tool for the importance of citation, peer review, and evaluating sources. Without proper citations, the entry will change to reflect only sourced information.