Group items tagged

"The Minute Paper comes in many variations, but the simplest one involves wrapping up the formal class period a few minutes early and posing two questions to your students: What was the most important thing you learned today? What question still remains in your mind? Taken together, those two questions accomplish multiple objectives. The first one not only requires students to remember something from class and articulate it in their own words (more about that in a moment), but it also requires them to do some quick thinking. They have to reflect on the material and make a judgment about the main point of that day's class. The second question encourages them to probe their own minds and consider what they haven't truly understood. Most of us are infected by what learning theorists sometimes call "illusions of fluency," which means that we believe we have obtained mastery over something when we truly have not. To answer the second question, students have to decide where confusion or weaknesses remain in their own comprehension of the day's material. Closing connections. If we want students to obtain mastery and expertise in our subjects, they need to be capable of making their own connections between what they are learning and the world around them - current events, campus debates, personal experiences. The last five minutes of class represent an ideal opportunity for students to use the course material from that day and brainstorm some new connections.The metacognitive five. We have increasing evidence from the learning sciences that students engage in poor study strategies. Likewise, research shows that most people are plagued by the illusions of fluency. The solution on both fronts is better metacognition - that is, a clearer understanding of our own learning. What if all of us worked together deliberately to achieve that?Close the loop. Finally, go back to any of the strategies I introduced in my recent column on the first five minutes of clas

"It has me thinking about what it would mean to improve online classes. A few ideas come to mind: Use multiple platforms. I'm not against using an LMS as a central hub. However, I think it's valuable to experiment with the types of productivity tools you will actually use outside of a classroom. Use Google Docs to share ideas, create surveys, and ask questions. Use Google Hangouts to meet as a group. Go project-based. I haven't figured this out entirely with my first class but my hope is that we can go fully project-based in the same way that my face-to-face class is. In fact, the asynchronous nature of online classes actually means there is a better potential of creating a project-based culture that mirrors the way people actually work on projects. Make something together. I use a collaboration grid with co-creating and communicating on separate spectrums (x-axis) and multimedia and text on another spectrum (y-axis). This has been an effective way to think through collaborative tools that allow students to co-create. Embrace a synchronous/asynchronous blend: I love using Voxer because students can speak back and forth in the moment. However, if they miss it, they can listen to it later. The same is true of using a Google Hangouts On Air. Make it more connective. We tend to treat online instruction as if it is a linear process and we don't do enough to link things back and forth and connect ideas, resources, discussions and content creation in a seamless, back-and-forth nature. Incorporate multimedia. It's a simple idea, but I create a short video at the beginning of each week and I encourage students to create video and audio as well. This has a way of making things more concrete. There's something deeply human about hearing an actual human voice. I know, crazy, right? Go mobile. I don't simply mean use a smart phone. I mean assign some things that allow students to get out in the world and create videos, snap pictures,

"It has me thinking about what it would mean to improve online classes. A few ideas come to mind: Use multiple platforms. I'm not against using an LMS as a central hub. However, I think it's valuable to experiment with the types of productivity tools you will actually use outside of a classroom. Use Google Docs to share ideas, create surveys, and ask questions. Use Google Hangouts to meet as a group. Go project-based. I haven't figured this out entirely with my first class but my hope is that we can go fully project-based in the same way that my face-to-face class is. In fact, the asynchronous nature of online classes actually means there is a better potential of creating a project-based culture that mirrors the way people actually work on projects. Make something together. I use a collaboration grid with co-creating and communicating on separate spectrums (x-axis) and multimedia and text on another spectrum (y-axis). This has been an effective way to think through collaborative tools that allow students to co-create. Embrace a synchronous/asynchronous blend: I love using Voxer because students can speak back and forth in the moment. However, if they miss it, they can listen to it later. The same is true of using a Google Hangouts On Air. Make it more connective. We tend to treat online instruction as if it is a linear process and we don't do enough to link things back and forth and connect ideas, resources, discussions and content creation in a seamless, back-and-forth nature. Incorporate multimedia. It's a simple idea, but I create a short video at the beginning of each week and I encourage students to create video and audio as well. This has a way of making things more concrete. There's something deeply human about hearing an actual human voice. I know, crazy, right? Go mobile. I don't simply mean use a smart phone. I mean assign some things that allow students to get out in the world and create videos, snap pictures,

"Llevo dos semanas de curso y ya puedo hacer un primer balance provisional de la incorporación de estrategias de aprendizaje radicalmente distintas a las clases. Estas son la punta del iceberg de un proceso terriblemente complejo en que se puede decir que cada clase real supone cuatro o cinco horas de preparación si no mucho más. Mis clases se basan en la utilización de la investigación punta a nivel educativo. No explico. Mis unidades de información están grabadas en vídeo que ellos ven (me refiero a tercero de ESO) en casa. Las grabé durante el verano. Desarrollé la historia de la literatura del programa con mi voz y mi presencia histriónica, imágenes, mapas mentales... Ellos ven el vídeo y yo tengo constancia de que lo han visto y respondido a preguntas que van insertadas en el vídeo que se para. No son difíciles pero exigen atención continua. Yo recibo información de las respuestas. La respuesta ha sido hasta ahora de un ochenta por ciento de seguimiento pero sé que va a ir a más. Cuando llegan a clase les hago un cuestionario en el cañón digital con una aplicación que es una bomba que se llama Kahoot y que les entusiasma y les motiva enormemente. Ellos contestan con el ordenador o con el móvil y el ranking, basado en la corrección de la respuesta y el tiempo de la misma aparece en la pizarra digital, lo que promueve delirios de entusiasmo. La clase es un organismo vivo. Luego el resto de la clase les planteo problemas relacionados con el vídeo que han visto en los que han de aplicar estrategias del pensamiento. Ahora estamos trabajando la comparación. Se pueden comparar objetos, personas, movimientos estéticos, países, autores literarios ... Así que no necesito justificar que es un ejercicio intelectual de primer orden. Y curiosamente no son los más estudiosos los que destacan, que se ven sobrepasados por los más imaginativos y despiertos aunque no saquen notas brillantes. Las clases son para pensar y pasan en un soplo. Se me h

"Llevo dos semanas de curso y ya puedo hacer un primer balance provisional de la incorporación de estrategias de aprendizaje radicalmente distintas a las clases. Estas son la punta del iceberg de un proceso terriblemente complejo en que se puede decir que cada clase real supone cuatro o cinco horas de preparación si no mucho más. Mis clases se basan en la utilización de la investigación punta a nivel educativo. No explico. Mis unidades de información están grabadas en vídeo que ellos ven (me refiero a tercero de ESO) en casa. Las grabé durante el verano. Desarrollé la historia de la literatura del programa con mi voz y mi presencia histriónica, imágenes, mapas mentales... Ellos ven el vídeo y yo tengo constancia de que lo han visto y respondido a preguntas que van insertadas en el vídeo que se para. No son difíciles pero exigen atención continua. Yo recibo información de las respuestas. La respuesta ha sido hasta ahora de un ochenta por ciento de seguimiento pero sé que va a ir a más. Cuando llegan a clase les hago un cuestionario en el cañón digital con una aplicación que es una bomba que se llama Kahoot y que les entusiasma y les motiva enormemente. Ellos contestan con el ordenador o con el móvil y el ranking, basado en la corrección de la respuesta y el tiempo de la misma aparece en la pizarra digital, lo que promueve delirios de entusiasmo. La clase es un organismo vivo. Luego el resto de la clase les planteo problemas relacionados con el vídeo que han visto en los que han de aplicar estrategias del pensamiento. Ahora estamos trabajando la comparación. Se pueden comparar objetos, personas, movimientos estéticos, países, autores literarios ... Así que no necesito justificar que es un ejercicio intelectual de primer orden. Y curiosamente no son los más estudiosos los que destacan, que se ven sobrepasados por los más imaginativos y despiertos aunque no saquen notas brillantes. Las clases son para pensar y pasan en un soplo. Se me h

De acuerdo con el artículo en inglés de Katrina Schwartz en Mind Shift: What Project-Based Learning is and what it isn't, el término que se ha puesto tan de moda últimamente en educación, aprendizaje por proyectos, a veces se confunde con aprendizaje orientado a proyectos.

Brainstorming and Project Management

Text 2 Mind Map es una aplicación web que te convierte al instante un listado de palabras u oraciones en un mapa mental; interpreta lo que tú teclees y a partir de tu input dibuja un mapa mental.

"Education plays an important role in shaping our future and success. Students and parents have become more vigilant and aware about choosing the right educational institute for them/their wards. Thanks to the rising awareness and easy access to the internet, people now check online, each and every detail about the institute they are interested in. Going to an educational institute means an investment of both time and money so today's generation wants to make sure that it is inducted in the right place. Therefore, you will find almost all the institutes having their websites now to give full information about them. Today we have come up with 40 Education WordPress themes specially designed to keeping in mind the needs of the education industry. Please have a look."

"Close Reading and Argument Writing - Authentically Across the Curriculum 7/16/2015 0 Comments Close reading of informational texts and non-fiction articles is not - and should not be - reserved for language arts classes. Every content area would be immensely enhanced if science teachers, social studies teachers, physical education teachers, welding teachers, woodworking teachers (in other words, "all technical subjects," as Common Core states) would not push aside the textbook, but instead embrace it, along with content area and trade articles. Students would then simultaneously learn how to dissect the readings while gaining knowledge in these content areas. What often happens is that teachers feel that students can't handle the text books or can't read the articles independently - and often that is true. However, when teachers instead go into a survival mode, of sorts, and read aloud the whole chapter or article or summarize it with a slideshow, it ends up doing a disservice to students - students are not learning HOW to read these complex texts. They are not learning how to acquire the information on their own. They are not being given the skills to read the sometimes intricate information within a particular content area or even within their possible future trade. They are not being given the opportunity to read, understand, articulate, and discuss or even debate topics within their area of study. Teachers sometimes feel that they can't do these things with students because they are not language arts teachers, or because they don't have time, or simply because they don't know how. Alternatively, a simple solution is to let go of the control and let students do…..with the guidance called close reading. Close reading is a guided reading approach. It is guided because 1) the close reading strategy is reserved for complex texts that are often too high for students to be left with independently and 2) students don't use close reading strateg

"The Fairphone is a modular handset designed with repairability and ethical sourcing of its materials as headline features. It sold 60,000 units. Amazingly, for what sounds like a nerd-phone, almost half of those buyers had never owned a smartphone before. Now the Fairphone 2 is launching, and with a totally-new, in-house design. The new phone is even easier to repair, and because it was wholly designed by the FairPhone team, its supply chain is even more responsible than ever. The Fairphone is thicker than the latest iPhone or Samsung flagship, but that's the point. Instead of packing everything into a tiny case and keeping it there with glue, the Fairphone is designed to be taken apart. The lightweight magnesium frame supports modules that can be easily replaced by the user. "We have designed it with an aim to last three to five years, looking at making it robust and modular-for repairability," says Fairphone's chief communications officer, Tessa Wernink. "Obviously how long it lasts depends quite heavily on the user, so what we as a company are doing is offering an ecosystem around the phone that supports long-lasting use, first-hand or second-hand." Inside the case (itself one of several options) you'll find the core unit, containing all the chips and radios; a replaceable battery pack; a display that can be snapped off and replaced without any tools (not even a screwdriver); a receiver unit, which contains the front camera, sensors; the headset connector and microphones; a speaker/vibrator unit; and a camera module. These modules are designed to balance manufacturing complexity with repairability. For instance, the display comes as a standalone unit, but less-vulnerable components are bundled into one module. The camera, which people are most likely to upgrade as better versions become available, is also housed in its own module. That way you don't need to toss out your whole phone just to get a better camera. "In fact, the motto from the maker mo

"This sample rubric from Lisa Yokana can help guide efforts to assess the materials and knowledge students come to understand through the process of making, as well as the habits of mind and qualities they demonstrate. For more information, read the associated post: "Creating an Authentic Maker Education Rubric." For an editable version of this rubric, check out this "Editable Sample Rubric.""

Mapas mentales y conceptuales?? Vi esta herramienta en la presentación de Francis Pisani en #aulablogs11 (en streaming ;)) y me parecio interesante y versatil, mas grafica y facil de usar que otras similares para crear mapas mentales, la estoy probando para crear una programacion docente...