Group items matching

in title, tags, annotations or url

"Imagine a world where resources were limited to what was found in the classroom or the school closet known as the "Curriculum Materials Room." Picture a world where students wrote letters with pen and paper to communicate with other students and adults outside of the building. Due to postage costs, the teacher either sent the letters in bulk or paid for stamps out of his or her own pocket. Can you recall a time when student interests like skateboarding or video were never used as part of learning curriculum because the tools needed were either too expensive or not yet conceptualized? Do you remember a time when non-traditional learners struggled, and absenteeism meant a high likelihood of students doing poorly in school, and possibly having to retake the course?"

"So the other day I tweeted out this comment, "I am amazed each day to see so much educational progress in my Twitter feed. This should be the norm, not the exception." Many people in education talk a great game when it comes to the effective use of technology, but the results (lack there of) speak for themselves. I constantly see and hear about leaders who tout themselves in a way that makes others develop a perception that they actually know something about the effective integration of a variety of technology tools to improve professional practice. However, once you get past the rhetoric you quickly realize that it is just talk with a clear lack of substance.  This is not to say that they are unwilling to learn or embrace significant change in this area.  It just hasn't happened yet, at least from my view.  Thus, the use of social media in schools by educators continues to be an uphill battle.  "

"A student's social status faces no bigger threat in schools than bullying. In research, schools with a higher bullying rate, subsequently had lower scores on algebra, geography, earth science, biology, and world history. At first glance, bullying and academic achievement should not be related because one is academic and one is behavioral. This is not a coincidence. While bullying has taken the mainstream media by storm in recent years, the neuroscience behind what truly happens to students is usually absent from these reports."

"I love educational technology. When technologies were first available online, I was an early adopter, and often got brutally criticized by administrators and colleagues in my K-6 settings for having students use the internet for research, use web tools, create webpages in wikis, and work virtually with schools in other states and countries (for example, see their work from 2008 at http://weewebwonders.pbworks.com/). Now, similar work is often seen as innovative by colleagues. Boy, have times thankfully changed, but I have not. I still am an early adopter of technologies in that I believe many can benefit students in their learning. As many in education know, commentary about ChatGPT is appearing on the news, social media, and the internet. As I always do, I am exploring its use in my classes (elementary-level gifted education). This post describes its use in education from the perspectives of ChatGPT, itself, and from a handful of educators. Later, I describe and show the work of my students. I conclude with tools for detecting machine-generated text, and provide a parting shot."

Interesting and excellent article, thank you for sharing .https://insulin-store.com/

"A new law requires K-12 schools to add media literacy to curriculum for English language arts, science, math and history-social studies."

"I've always found a sense of peace in the creative process. It's a time when I feel like I don't have to stick with the rules in place for all the different parts of my life. That freedom helps me come up with some of my most creative ideas and exciting projects. This has been true my entire life. When I entered the classroom, I wanted to give my students as many chances as possible to be creative. Over the years, I've seen amazing projects from students who dared to take creative chances. Until very recently, I thought these creative opportunities were the best way to engage kids in this process. It wasn't until I dove into the maker movement that I realized how much more is possible. I always come up with some big projects for my own students, but what about the rest of the building? I'd never been supported in larger school or district ideas, but this past year was different. With the support and challenge to do something for students outside of my classroom, I decided to go for it. After talking with some friends and our amazing media specialist, a makerspace in the library made the most sense. Here are some tips and tricks for putting together a makerspace in your school, and some thoughts on how it can be beneficial to your students."

"The "maker movement" can play an important role in getting kids interested in innovation and design, and littleBits-which makes easy-to-use electronic building blocks-is finding itself at the center of this movement. Until now, the company has focused mostly on the consumer market, but during a March 8 keynote session, littleBits founder and CEO Ayah Bdeir announced a new kit made specifically for schools. "We want to unleash the inventor in everyone," Bdeir said. In a conversation with Education Week, Bdeir said schools need to find ways to make science, technology, engineering, arts, and math (STEAM) education more fun, engaging, and accessible for students. "I studied engineering, and almost on a weekly basis I wanted to quit," she said. "We need to find ways of approaching STEAM education differently." Bdeir said her experience in learning engineering as an undergraduate was "completely hands-off; as a result, many other students and I were turned off to it." But when she arrived at the MIT Media Lab for her master's of science degree, "it was the exact opposite. Every week was a new project, a new learning challenge. It was very scary, but also exhilarating and engaging." That's the experience her company is trying to replicate for students at all levels with the new STEAM Student Set."

"Gone are the days when kids would get in trouble for passing notes in class. Today's youngsters are much more sophisticated, technologically speaking, than those who grew up in the days of flip phones and CD players - let alone those whose only access to a phone growing up was a spin-dial one. This means there's a lot more texting, tweeting, and Facebooking on smartphones in your average high school or college classroom than ever before. Does this also mean that kids today are way more distracted by the bombardment of information reaching them via their tablets and iPhones? A new study out of the National Communication Association wanted to find out whether increased smartphone and social media use in class impacted student learning - and what they found was that it had both negative and positive effects. In the study, researchers analyzed kids who were using phones in class to respond to text messages - both relevant and irrelevant to the class material. They measured the type of messages and the frequency of them, and found that students who were texting about the material actually scored higher on multiple choice tests about the subject than those who were texting about non-class related things."

"I'd like to offer up a video playlist to remind all of us about the power of empathy, kindness, and human connections. It's always a good time to practice gratitude for the relationships that sustain us all -- for the people who have taught us in a school setting and beyond, and for the young ones we are able to nurture and inspire. I was also thinking about how many of us are living out the paradox of being ever more plugged in, and ever more aware of what's happening in our community via social media platforms, while at the same time, face-to-face interactions are less frequent than ever before. We are in constant touch, but barely touching. Watching these videos made me remember the importance of re-connecting, treating people with kindness and respect, and being generous and compassionate to both loved ones and strangers. If each of us pledged to do more of that, we'd make a better world for all of us to learn and grow in."

"Shhh! You're in the library! As the great-granddaughter of a librarian, I was brought up to know that the quiet of the library was sacred space. Fast-forward 30 years. In the media centers of the Cherokee County, Georgia schools, where I train as an instructional technology specialist, quiet is no longer the chief value. Instead, makerspaces are bringing books to life, and the new mantra is, "Innovate, create, collaborate." Many media specialists still struggle with this transformation from silent reading space to innovative makerspace; with that in mind, I interviewed six women who seamlessly flow from rockin' librarians to Creative Directors of Making in the same day to ask how they do it."

"As the collective family of social media channels grows, each adopts their own personality. LinkedIn is oldest sibling -a go-getter that wore a suit in middle school. Instagram is the playful teen that opened her own restaurant with her family's money. Facebook is the walking political argument that you know not get started. And twitter? twitter is the wild child of the bunch. Offering quick bits of information, a dynamic stream that looks great on desktop and mobile devices, and a variety of ways to communicate from #hashtags to @messaging to micro-blogging and link distribution, twitter works, and unlike facebook, blogging, and other digital tools, when something does indeed "fail" on twitter, the overwhelming number of tweets can help mitigate the loss. The best I've heard explanation we've heard for the difference between twitter and facebook is (paraphrased), "Facebook makes me dislike people I've known for years, while twitter makes me like people I've never met." I'm not sure it's quite that cut and dry, but the big idea remains the same-every social channel has its own personality."

"Since I first started my Makerspace at Stewart Middle Magnet School in January 2014, I have received a lot of positive feedback. I've given talks, presented at conferences, and shared about our experiences through my blog and through social media.  Some of the questions I am most frequently asked are: Why should makerspaces be in the library?  Why not just convert a classroom into a STEM lab? In a similar vein, I often hear from librarians who are struggling to get their administration/teachers/community to understand the rationale for having a Makerspace in their library.  Aren't those kids just playing?  Shouldn't libraries be quiet and clean?  How does this tie in with the curriculum? How we react to these types of questions are crucial in our advocacy for our spaces.  Here's some ways to respond."

"Financial literacy used to be a class in many schools-well, until that whole standards-based reform and "accountability" movement started turning the screws on schools. And like that, it was gone. It only takes one look at our nation's financial crisis, heaps of student loan trouble, and general credit malaise to wonder if financial literacy shouldn't be a bit higher on our priority list. An easy retort is to wonder who has the time-and where are the standards, where is the research, and who's going to see the data? But what if, rather than teaching a pure financial literacy lesson or unit, you tied it to your content area? What if it was embedded into a project-based learning unit about design or social media or the causes and effects of World War II?"