Group items tagged

"n Texas, a 13-year-old boy built a robot that could rescue victims of natural disasters. In Georgia, a 15-year-old girl developed a device that alerts parents who have have left their child in the car. And in California, a 13-year-old boy created a Braille printer that would be almost six times cheaper than the currently available model. Young people aren't just the future. They're the present, innovating and creatively solving problems in a range of fields. Students across the country, from every background, have the ability to build new products that could change lives around the world. That's what educators at the forefront of the "Maker movement" believe. Leaders of this initiative are changing the American educational landscape by engaging kids in discovery-based learning from a young age, encouraging them to learn not just by watching, but by doing - to not only consume, but also create. Photos: National Maker Faire Takes Washington EXPAND GALLERY Maker spaces - studios and labs designed for students to pursue projects of their choosing - are popping up around the country in schools, universities and informal learning environments such as community centers and libraries. In these labs, students are challenged to develop solutions to real-world problems, from designing and prototyping to refining and marketing."

"I agree with Brene Brown about developing "shame resilience" and have found the usual tug of war between with teaching and mistake making diminishes when we introduce students to a mindset in which they appreciate the importance of recognizing our errors and strive for constant improvement. When I think about design thinking, I believe it could be a powerful way for students to experience their vulnerability and develop perspective taking, all the while creating real cool stuff-whether it is a piece of writing, a t-shirt, a rollercoaster, an app or, in my Early Year's classroom, a garden. They learn how to fail forward and create another prototype. This design sprint is not a destructive but constructive element because, although they spent a lot of time developing their idea, the focus shifts from the product itself to the user-who will reap the benefits of this redesign. It gets the kids to detach from what they are making to who they are making it for. This nuance has a relatively big impact on the process of improvement."

"I work part-time with elementary learners - with gifted learners during the school year and teaching maker education camps during the summer. The one thing almost all of them have in common is yelling out, "I can't do this" when the tasks aren't completed upon first attempts or get a little too difficult for them. I partially blame this on the way most school curriculum is structured. Too much school curriculum is based on paper for quick and one shot learning experiences (or the comparable online worksheets). Students are asked to do worksheets on paper, answer end-of-chapter questions on paper, write essays on paper, do math problems on paper, fill in the blanks on paper, and pick the correct answer out of a multiple choice set of answers on paper. These tasks are then graded as to the percentage correct and then the teacher moves onto the next task. So it is no wonder that when learners are given hands-on tasks such as those common to maker education, STEM, and STEAM, they sometimes struggle with their completion. Struggles are good. Struggles with authentic tasks mimics real life so much more than completing those types of tasks and assessments done at most schools. Problems like yelling out, "I can't do this" arise when the tasks get a little too difficult, but ultimately are manageable. I used to work with delinquent kids within Outward Bound-type programs. Most at-risk kids have some self-defeating behaviors including those that result in personal failure. The model for these types of programs is that helping participants push past their self-perceived limitations results in the beginnings of a success rather than a failure orientation. This leads into a success building upon success behavioral cycle."

What is micromobs? micromobs is a group messaging service and is the easiest way to manage and communicate with multiple groups. micromobs presents your group messages as a stream of content which means you can chose which messages to respond to and which messages to skim over or ignore. This means your group messages will no longer clutter your inbox, and you wont need to go to different websites to interact with your various social groups.

Might help create a blended classroom, even when you have to share the blender.  Common sense advise for the real world of underequipped classrooms and stretched thin teachers.

""Pope Francis Shocks World, Endorses Donald Trump for President"; "ISIS Leader Calls for American Muslim Voters to Support Hillary Clinton." These examples of fake news are from the 2016 presidential election campaign. Such highly partisan fabricated stories designed to look like real reporting probably played a bigger role in that bitter election than in any previous American election cycle. The fabrications spread on social media and into traditional news sources in a way that tarnished both major candidates' characters. Sometimes the stories intentionally damage a candidate; sometimes the authors are driven only by dollar signs. Questions about how and why voters across the political spectrum fell for such disinformation have nagged at social scientists since early in the 2016 race. The authors of a new study address these questions with cognitive experiments on familiarity and belief."

"Few middle schoolers are as clued in to their mathematical strengths and weakness as Moheeb Kaied. Now a seventh grader at Brooklyn's Middle School 442, he can easily rattle off his computational profile. "Let's see," he said one morning this spring. "I can find the area and perimeter of a polygon. I can solve mathematical and real-world problems using a coordinate plane. I still need to get better at dividing multiple-digit numbers, which means I should probably practice that more." Moheeb is part of a new program that is challenging the way teachers and students think about academic accomplishments, and his school is one of hundreds that have done away with traditional letter grades inside their classrooms. At M.S. 442, students are encouraged to focus instead on mastering a set of grade-level skills, like writing a scientific hypothesis or identifying themes in a story, moving to the next set of skills when they have demonstrated that they are ready. In these schools, there is no such thing as a C or a D for a lazily written term paper. There is no failing. The only goal is to learn the material, sooner or later."

"LiveMinutes is a very cool app that integrates with Evernote (my all time favorite and most used app) and allows you to work on the same Evernote note with others, similar to Google Docs. Evernote is an excellent app, with the ability to share notes with others, but there is not a collaboration piece until this app came along."

"One-to-one technology can transform a classroom. When implemented correctly, students are engaged and excited to learn, and teachers can assess their progress in real-time. The amount of technology resources available for educators can be overwhelming. "

"If you are looking for a new formative assessment tool check out Understoodit. Whether your students are on iPads or have access to the web from desktops, Understoodit is a fantastic free assessment tool that is perfect for collecting data when presenting new information to students. As you speak, students press one of two buttons on a website unique to your class: "Confused" or "Understood" You'll receive real-time data on how well your class understands your presentation."