Group items tagged

"Developing questions that align with the ubiquitously misused New Bloom's Taxonomy -- starting a discussion with recall questions and stair-stepping through the rest until higher order prompts are dispatched -- has been sold as a pathway to cognitive vigor. Observe how many classrooms have Bloom's Taxonomy posted on the back wall for the teacher to reference. Over-reliance on question hierarchies can result in conversations that are irrelevant to the content and context of the learning environment, and invite answers that nobody cares about. " Quality whole-class discussion, rather than recitation/quiz type discussion is possible with good teacher training.

"#Edchat The purpose of this site is to convert the inspiring and thought-provoking discussion from the weekly Twitter #edchat into real change. Open, collaborative, focused discussion can open and expand minds. But let's not stop there- let's harness this wisdom of the many to crowdsource possible solutions to some of the major issues that are uncovered..." You can join the #edchat discussion by joining the wiki and posting your profile to the Who are We? page. Then vote on weekly topics and follow the discussion through Twitter at #edchat. This is a great example of how a growing community of educators are creating their own professional development online through rich technology resources.

"Figuring out which students participate in a class discussion-and how often-can be a huge challenge. Equity Maps is an iPad app for keeping track of that. "You start by creating a seating chart that shows where students are sitting for a discussion. When the discussion starts, you just tap each student's icon as that student contributes to the conversation. Equity Maps keeps track of how long each student talks so that when you're done, you can get a summary of how often each class member participated, how many were active participants, and whether there was equal gender distribution among those who actively engaged." Sounds like a good teacher tool. T/h to Jennifer Gonzalez

A nice demonstration of how to conduct discussions in small group and pairs. Demonstrates active listening by the teachers as students report back then go to the board to offer the results of their discussions. Structured discussions and student ownership of the reasoning process are good even for very young learners.

"This wikibook article discusses Second Life, a virtual environment. The first part of this article, Introduction, gives a brief introduction to virtual environments and to the features of Second Life. The second part of this article, Characteristics of Second Life, discusses the theoretical features of virtual environments. The third part, Uses of Second Life & Projects in Second Life, focuses on uses of Second Life for social activism, education, and language teaching and learning. The final part of this article, Criticisms, Problems, and Limitations, includes a discussion of the most serious social problems occurring in Second Life and the constraints that individuals face when using Second Life." This is a very straightforward analysis of Second Life and even considers ethical issues in virtual worlds.

Whole group (in a circle) of young students (4-5th grade) discuss the non-fiction text. Students ask questions, use hand signals, and probe deeper before writing about the text. The discussion has Common Core standards subtitled throughout, and also allows for brief embedded small group discussions. Although it is a nonfiction text, the teacher helps students probe higher level aspects, such as author point of view.

"Socratic Smackdown offers a fun approach to having students practice discussion strategies. Socratic Smackdown is a printable game designed to be played with up to forty students at a time. In the game students are awarded points for using each of six questioning and discussion methods. Students can lose points for interrupting or distracting others." R. Byrne describes the program, with a video tutorial as well. The game includes alignment to Common Core.

"With the advance of web 2.0 technologies, there emerged a wide range of educational tools that we can use with our students in and outside the classroom.Collaborative web tools is one example. Using such websites, teachers will be able to help in holding online and real-time discussions with their students, help them in their projects and assignments, guide their learning, do backchanneling, and synchronously moderate discussion threads and many more." The focus here is on tools for collaboration. Many are new and interesting, such as virtual whiteboards, searchteam to do online searches together, browse websites together, create online projects collaboratively, create your own chatroom, etc.. Some of these will be gone quickly, but they all appear quite useful. About 30 in the list.

Thinking about texts, and using "pinwheel discussion" in groups to discuss several books together and how they relate to each other. Students "impersonate" authors and there is a "provocateur" in each group to pose significant questions. Nice teaching plan that could be adopted for several different levels/ages. This particular lesson is for grades 9-12 (ages 14-18), and is keyed to Common Core standards. Could be used with historical characters also.

"Stories are a part of the bedrock of human evolution sharing wisdom, history and cultural values to citizens growing into their society. How storytelling has evolved, and is evolving, is the inspiration for this infograph, which explores the evolutionary process of this important aspect of human life. Share on visually, the inforgraph starts off with the origins of storytelling, all the way through to modern times, concluding with a 'in the future' section discussing how this evolution will continue. Certainly a great resource for discussion with colleagues and pupils alike."

A good review of both LMS tools. Winning for me is Schoology's iPad connections and, especially, it's good was to create and thread discussions (with embedded media). Teachers can also see which students participate by using a filter, and share discussions across classes/courses.

"Short videos from YouTube and other sources can be quite helpful in introducing topics to students and or reinforcing concepts that you have taught. Watching the video can be enough for some students, it's better if we can call students' attention to specific sections of videos while they are watching them. " R. Byrne discusses helpful tools for commenting on video. These can be great for flipped/blended classrooms as discussion starters.

Tips by R. Stannard on how to use G-Docs with your students. Includes how to create a Doc in your personal G-Drive. Students do not need a Google account to access your selected documents. For example, students can discuss a question with a table indicating which group students belong to. Students write their answers/discussion within the cell of the table. Once the doc is created, one student can access a computer to put in all the ideas generated by the group, using a shareable link. Google provides an area to shorten the link so it can be written on the board. [Remember, all students could type in the Doc simultaneously, and chat in the margin of a G-Doc.]

"I was recently in a third grade classroom and was struck by the presence of rules that were posted for how to have a conversation. The poster said, "Each person must contribute to the discussion but take turns talking. Ask each other, 'Would you like to add to my idea?' or 'Can you tell us what you are thinking?' Ask questions so that you understand each other's ideas. Say, 'Can you tell me more about that?' or 'Can you say that in another way?'" "Having visited many middle and high schools, I think these same rules could -- and probably should -- be posted there as well. " How important the rules of conversation are! We all too often expect our students to "get into groups and discuss," but how often are these productive conversations? These tips/strategies are well worth practicing at the beginning of every year/semester, and not just with young learners. These tips are also a nice practice for EFL/ESL students as they prepare to speak with native speakers.

An interesting article from Slate and Future Tense, an e-zine from Arizona State University, that discusses how constructivism may have been lost in the rush to make education cheaper for universities. Linked articles discuss Certificates for online courses and other issues in the MOOC movement.

This is not about the technical how-to of G-Docs. The teacher instead discusses the pedagogical aspects of how collaboration works, as students write a collaborative essay and discuss it together as they write. The teacher also explains how she does formative assessment as the students write. Using Goggle Docs she can see who contributes and how much.

A great lesson plan for writing collaboratively. Students extract memento and write them on large cards/pieces of paper. They then create the poem by placing the cards on the floor or table. The teacher (or students) select a topic that the quotations should reflect. It makes students thing about the real meanings within the text. Students discuss their found quotations as they write them. The 5 min. video shows students discussing and coming to realizations as they collect and collaborate. Great speaking, writing, reading activity.

Discusses the need for children's emotional commitment to the subject read and discussed in English classes. (What does one do with math?) While standardized texts (and tests) don't value emotional appeal, students turn again and again to feeling-packed books and poems. So avoid the "agnostic" or neutral texts that have no interest level and instead, go for the power punch. EFL students often complain that English can't express emotions. Find the power.

"Rankin uses a weekly hashtag to organize comments, questions and feedback posted by students to Twitter during class. Some of the students have downloaded Tweetdeck to their computers, others post by SMS or by writing questions on a piece of paper. Rankin then projects a giant image of live Tweets in the front of the class for discussion and suggests that students refer back to the messages later when studying. The Professor's results so far have been mixed but it is clear that more students are participating in classroom discussions than they used to. A video about Rankin's classroom experiment follows."

"SnagLearning is dedicated to presenting high-quality documentary films as educational tools to ignite meaningful discussion within the learning community." A great place to gather information and stimulate discussion.