Group items matching

in title, tags, annotations or url

"Learning from failure has become a popular idea in education recently, partly because it feels like common sense to many people. In a general way, the idea of "picking yourself up after a fall" has long existed in American culture as in many other parts of the world. Teachers are hoping that if they can instill this idea in their students, the small, everyday setbacks inherent to learning new things won't feel so emotionally charged to students, who might instead see them as part of the path to greater understanding and ultimate success. But turning the difficult experience of failure into a positive isn't as easy as telling students to change their mindsets; it takes careful lesson design, a strong classroom culture and an instructor trained in getting results from small failures so his or her students succeed when it matters."

"Convincing more students to pursue STEM studies is a goal widely shared by educators, policymakers, and industry representatives concerned about the leaky pipeline of students preparing to become the next generation of innovators. Fortunately, there's no shortage of solutions. When more than 200 of the nation's top math and science educators gathered at the White House this fall to receive the 2016 Presidential Award for Excellence in Mathematics and Science Teaching, they exchanged practical ideas for igniting student interest in STEM. ADVERTISEMENT Among the honorees was Dr. Jaunine Fouché, science curriculum supervisor at the Milton Hershey School in Pennsylvania. This unique residential school, founded as a philanthropic effort more than a century ago, serves more than 2,000 students in preK-12 from across the U.S. Every student comes from a background of poverty. Education and wraparound services are provided at no cost. In a recent conversation, Dr. Fouché shared strategies for making science education more engaging to diverse learners. Here are the highlights."

"For the past several decades, I have had my feet in both elementary education and teacher training and development. Regardless of age, grade level, and setting, I include hands-on and experiential learning as a integral part of my instruction. It is learning by doing with a reflective element which, in turn, creates conditions for deeply engaged learning."

"What makes an effective teacher? Or more specifically, what observable characteristics might you see and hear? The University of Minnesota offered some observable characteristics of effective teaching which, while focused on teacher actions rather than student learning, had some useful tips-not so much how to teach generally, but specific actions that you can use tomorrow."

"To be sure, there have been changes in the Maker movement in the decade-plus since the first Maker Faires wooed a new generation of DIYers. Along the way, we've celebrated successes and asked hard questions. How can we help making become more equitable and inclusive? How can maker ed embrace traditional technology, including computer science? What are the benefits of a maker education, and how do we measure them? In this guide, we hope you'll find answers to-or at least ideas about-these and other questions that explore the meaning of making. We've also included tips and techniques for building and funding your maker program and honing your maker skills. You'll learn how to do a lot with a little, and find inspiration for what's possible-in a school district, college library, even on a bus. For those of you who've never been to a maker event-we've brought one to you. And if you're an experienced maker educator ready to up your game, check out our roster of professional development opportunities. At its core, making is about doing. So we've also made sure you can build something-sitting right where you are. "

"While project-based learning has existed for decades, design thinking has recently entered the education lexicon, even though its history can be traced back to Herbert A. Simon's 1969 book The Sciences of the Artificial. So why the resurgence of these ideas? Lately, I have heard teachers and school leaders express a common frustration: "We are _______ years into a _______ initiative, and nothing seems to have changed." Despite redesigning learning spaces, adding technology, or even flipping instruction, they still struggle to innovate or positively change the classroom experience. Imagine innovation as a three-legged stool. Many schools have changed the environment leg, but not the other two legs: the behaviors and beliefs of the teachers, administrators, and students. Consider this conundrum: much of what we know about teaching comes from 16+ years of observation as students. In no other profession do you spend that much time watching the previous generation before being told to change everything once you take control. Without the framework or scaffolding for that change, it's truly unreasonable to tell educators, "OK, start innovating.""

"Flickr hosts millions of images that are licensed under a Creative Commons license or are in the public domain (Flickr Commons). Depending on the license, you may use the images on your private or commercial webpage, or can make changes to it. If you want to use these images, you need to to the following: Make sure you understood the license correctly Get the correct HTML code for the IMG tag Link the image back to the Flickr photo page Give the author of the image proper credits (Attribution) Link to the Flickr profile of the author Link to the license the image is licensed under With ImageCodr.org, there is no need to do all this manually, you simply enter in the URL of the picture page (as seen in your browser) you are interested in and ImageCodr.org will generate the ready to use HTML code. It will also display a brief and easy license summary, so you don't get in legal trouble because you missed something."

Not that long ago I was a writer of interesting and engaging educational programmes. Fortunately, that is no longer the case. The programmes that I wrote and shared with a team of teachers were generally well accepted and the feedback offered was always politely positive. I enjoyed writing these programmes but in recent times I have enjoyed even more stepping away from this process and in doing so empowering the team of teachers that I learn with. The programmes that this team produces far exceed the quality I could ever have hoped to produce but more importantly the students are benefiting from their experience of highly engaged and thus engaging teachers.

"You've probably heard of the student-led "Genius Bar", which is generally a team of student leaders that provide technical support for the technology devices and programs in their schools. What a great way to utilize and develop student knowledge and skills, right? I couldn't agree more. Busch's student tech teams have four sub-committees: the "Newcast Directors," the "iPad Consultants," the "Makerspace Mentors," and the "Cyber Squad." But what if we took the opportunity to develop young, skilled learners a step further, and asked those student leaders to support, collaborate with, and mentor teachers and their peers with in-class technology projects? What if we asked those student learners to create informative, instructional digital content that is accessible to all? After all, many of us would agree that the students are the ones who are usually the most knowledgeable, up-to-date resources for what is the latest and greatest with technology, so why not tap into their large knowledge base and cultivate their leadership potential? Our school here in Wisconsin did just that, and the results have been astounding. Here's how it happened."

"I wrote in my book about the power of using word clouds in the classroom. They are such a good tool for activities linked to literacy, problem solving and much more. The classic Wordle and Tagxedo still rank highly in my estimation but as more and more use of technology moves to tablets and other mobile devices; so the search for a decent word cloud generator moves from the desktop to the mobile device too. Over time, more and more Apps have become available on the App Store and so in this post I'll explore my top six Apps for creating word clouds using iOS devices. Note, not all of these apps have Android alternatives although some have."

"Project Bloks is a research project with the aim of creating an open hardware platform to help developers, designers, and researchers build the next generation of tangible programming experiences for kids. Learn more at http://g.co/projectbloks"

"Taking friendship bracelets into the digital age, Jewelbots teaches young girls to tinker and code their way into the exploding world of wearable technology. Whether it's the Queen of Coding Grace Hopper or the new wave of women innovation engineers, fashion brand CEOs and musicians, young girls today have a growing number of role models who use science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) in their recipes for success. Having more role models is critical, but according to the founders of Jewelbots-the so-called friendship bracelets for the iPhone era-the next generation of women leaders and inventors will chase STEM endeavors at an early age, like a game of tag."

"Our CREATE Education Project champions partner organisations who share our ethos for making 3d printing as easy, accessible and affordable as possible for everyone. In the name of open source we find synergies with many pioneers who understand that sharing is the way forward to developing and seeding innovation for new technologies. When we find these pioneers it is our mission to provide access to our community so that everyone can enjoy the progress and even add to it themselves.  One of the more challenging aspects of introducing 3D printing into schools is the complexity of 3D modelling software and the general cost of having computers that can handle such software. A good majority of schools have adopted a cheaper method of computing which is the tablet. iPads are fast becoming common in the classroom and this is where Gravity Sketch comes in."

"As one of the commenters exclaims on David Neat's blog of modeling tips: "I feel like I've just discovered the Holy Grail of modeling sites!" David's simple, plain WordPress blog betrays the amount and quality of the content found there. David writes about and teaches model-making and this site gathers the materials from his books, courses, and lectures. More on Modeling Tabletop Gaming -- Modeling Tips and Tricks Top Ten Tips: Designing Models For 3D Printing How to Design and 3D Print Your Own Custom Gaming Miniatures There is a ton of material here, on everything from technical drawing to materials and supplies for modeling, modeling techniques (from the most general to the very specific), and lots more. David even has a Lexicon section with terms used in model-making. Most of what's covered concerns architectural models and models used in set decorating, but the techniques can be applied to any type of building and terrain modeling. I look at a lot of hobby modeling sites and rarely have I seen one with this much depth, rigor, and high-value content. I will definitely be spending a lot of time here in the future."

"Higher education issues have been one of the hot topics of the current presidential race, with candidates touching on reducing student loan debt and improving college access. However, what has rarely come up is whether or not college is even the best option for each and every student. The general message in popular culture and political debates is that attending and graduating from a traditional four-year college is the only way to find a fruitful job after high school. However, there are a number of alternatives for students who don't necessarily want to take out loans or the academic focus of a traditional university experience, and these alternatives can still lead to fulfilling careers. Called career technical, professional, and trade or vocational training, these programs are typically offered at high schools, two-year colleges, and through other outlets."

"I've led a couple of Twitter chats on makerspaces, and one of my favorite ways to get started is to ask the participants how they define makerspaces. One of my most popular posts on Renovated Learning focuses on how various publications define makerspaces, so it's always great to see what everyone's perspective is. The definitions of March's TLchat varied, but I noticed a lot of common threads throughout the conversation. I took the text of everyone's answers and put them into a word cloud generator, and the final results are pretty striking:"

"If you're a teacher, or teaching assistant there are plenty of great blogs out there to help you with everything from coming up with teaching plans, to implementing technology in the classroom. Where to start though? The internet is crowded with blogs. We decided to go through some of them for you, so that you can find the blog(s) covering the topics you're looking for and be sure it's quality content. Generally, there are four key qualities of a good teaching & learning blog: Activity (25%). Information should be updated regularly Originality (25%). It should add value with content that's different from all the other blogs out there Helpfulness (25%). A good teaching & Learning blog should teach you a new skill, direct you to a useful resource, or at least get you to think in a new way about something Authority (25%). The author/authors have the authority and credentials to blog about the topic of teaching & learning Each category was assigned an equal weight in our evaluation. They were averaged together to determine the final score in order to come up with our list of the top 68."