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John Seely Brown: "Even when children are high achievers and facile with new technology, many seem gradually to lose their sense of wonder and curiosity, notes John Seely Brown. Traditional educational methods may be smothering their innate drive to explore the world. Brown and like-minded colleagues are developing the underpinnings for a new 21st century pedagogy that broadens rather than narrows horizons. John Seely Brown, former chief scientist at Xerox, has morphed in recent years into the "Chief of Confusion," seeking "the right questions" in a range of fields, including education. He finds unusual sources for his questions: basketball and opera coaches, surfing and video game champions. He's gathered insights from unorthodox venues, and from more traditional classrooms, to paint quite a different picture of what learning might look like. The typical college lecture class frequently gathers many students together in a large room to be 'fed' knowledge, believes Brown. But studies show that "learning itself is socially constructed," and is most effective when students interact with and teach each other in manageable groups. Brown wants to open up "niche learning experiences" that draw on classic course material, but deepen it to be maximally enriching. In basketball and opera master classes, and in architecture labs, he has seen how individuals become acculturated in a "community of practice," learning to "be" rather than simply to "do." Whether performing, creating, or experimenting, students are critiqued, respond, offer their own criticism, and glean rich wisdom from a cyclical group experience. Brown says something "mysterious" may be taking place: "In deeply collective engagement in processes...you start to marinate in a problem space." Through communities of practice, students' minds "begin to gel up," even in the face of abstraction and unfamiliarity, and "all of a sudden, (the subject) starts to make se

Research shows that students have difficulty achieving deep understanding of many fundamental science concepts, for instance, the nature of matter, pressure, density, and electrical circuits to name but a few. After students have presumably learned the scientific explanations, they often revert back to their initial explanations. The Understandings of Consequence Project has demonstrated that part of the problem arises from differences in how students and scientists think about cause and effect. Scientific explanations often require students to structure knowledge in ways that contradict their expectations about the nature of how causes and effects behave. Such explanations can involve: causal mechanisms that are inferred or abstract; causal patterns that extend beyond linear and unidirectional to cyclic, reciprocal, and non-sequential; correspondences between causes and effects that are in various respects probabilistic; and causal agents that are decentralized and involve aspects of emergence. These are ways of thinking that students typically are not familiar with. Thus students attempt to assimilate information about complex concepts into simplistic causal structures which ultimately distort the information. In order to achieve deep understanding of scientific explanations, students need to learn the levels of these dimensions that fit the level of explanation needed. We have developed a taxonomy of causal models to guide these teaching and learning efforts. We have also developed a taxonomy of epistemological "moves", such as comparing more than one model and being alert to possible gaps in one's explanation, that serve scientific inquiry and lead to more complex conceptions.

We started LearnZillion at E.L. Haynes Public Charter School in Washington, D.C. because we wanted to solve a problem. We knew what lessons our students needed but we didn't have enough time to teach each student the right lesson. To create more time, and to share best practices across classrooms, E.L. Haynes' teachers began to capture their expertise on screencasts. We posted them on a homemade website and coupled them with a short quiz to help us track student progress. Soon the idea grew. What if teachers from across the country could contribute to the site? What if new teachers could learn the new Common Core standards from the wisdom of experienced teachers? What if students could get a playlist of lessons that matched their needs? What if, over time, the video lessons got stronger and stronger, as more teachers contributed and the data showed which lessons had the biggest impact? Thanks to funding from the Next Generation Learning Challenge, NewSchools Venture Fund, Achievement Network, and others, we are about to find out!

No Significant Difference Phenomenon This website has been designed to serve as a companion piece to Thomas L. Russell's book, "The No Significant Difference Phenomenon" (2001, IDECC, fifth edition). Mr. Russell's book is a fully indexed, comprehensive research bibliography of 355 research reports, summaries and papers that document no significant differences (NSD) in student outcomes between alternate modes of education delivery, with a foreword by Dr. Richard E. Clark. Previous editions of the book were provided electronically; the fifth edition is the first to be made available in print from IDECC (The International Distance Education Certification Center). The primary purpose of the NSD website is to expand on the offerings from the book by providing access to appropriate studies published or discovered after the release of the book. In addition to studies that document no significant difference (NSD), the website includes studies which do document significant differences (SD) in student outcomes based on the mode of education delivery. Both types of entries may be searched: * By year, through the left navigation menu; * Through a simple keyword search, available at the top right of each page; or * Through an advanced search. This site is intended to function as an ever-growing repository of comparative media studies in education research. Both no significant differences (NSD) and significant differences (SD) studies are constantly being solicited for inclusion in the website. Please feel free to submit an entry.

good reference for project studies at CATE

About Digital Learning Now! (Jeb Bush's thing) Digital Learning Now! is a national campaign to advance policies that will create a high quality digital learning environment to better prepare students with the knowledge and skills to succeed in college and careers. Digital Learning Now! is building support for the 10 Elements of High Quality Digital Learning, which provides a roadmap for reform for lawmakers and policymakers to integrate digital learning into education. Establishing the Roadmap for Reform The Digital Learning Council was convened in 2010 to define the policies that will integrate current and future technological innovations into public education. The Digital Learning Council united a diverse group of more than 100 leaders from education, government, philanthropy, business, technology, and think tanks to develop the roadmap of reform for local, state and federal lawmakers and policymakers. Jeb Bush, former Governor of Florida 1999 - 2007, and Bob Wise, former Governor of West Virginia 2001 - 2005, serve as co-chairmen. The Digital Learning Council covered a wide range of topics, including: student eligibility for digital learning, access to high quality digital content and instruction, customization and personalization of education such as blended learning, funding models, assessments and accountability. The 10 Elements of High Quality Digital Learning was released at the 2010 Excellence in Action National Summit on Education Reform in Washington, D.C.

Introducing the Earworms Musical Brain Trainer Learn a new Language in Second Life, your Ipod, your iPhone or PC for the new year! 200+ essential words and phrases anchored into your long-term memory with great music. The 70 minute Earworms SLCD's will play the tracks inworld - can be downloaded as mp3 files to your desktop, Ipod or Iphone and comes with full documentation on PDF files for you to print and read at your leisure. Come and sample Earworms for yourself inworld - visit us at and TP up to The Earworms Loft Earworms mbt puts the words and phrases you need not just on the tip of your tongue, but also transports them deep into your long-term memory. Simply by listening to these specially composed melodies with their rhythmic repetitions a few times, the sound patterns are indelibly burned into your auditory cortex. You will have successfully learned the phrase and have the correct accent ringing in your ears. Wherever you are, whatever you are doing: While jogging, in the car, in the bath, doing the ironing…you can be learning a new language at the same time! earworms mbt© Rapid Languages is the first language course to get your toe tapping. You know the phenomena of those catchy tunes or earworms that you just can't get out of your head? Voulezvous coucher avec moi, ce soir? Well, earworms mbt© has put this phenomena to positive use. Gone are the days of learning pressure and frustration at not being able to remember, the experience of many on conventional language courses. In combination with music, the phrases you need are automatically anchored deep into your memory, ready for instant recall.

Seven Things That Could Make Your Gadgets Obsolete: (1) HDMI 1.4 - new standard for moving media from source to display will include 3DTV & ethernet for transfer of data up to 100 Mb/sec (2) USB 3.0 - new USB format at up to 400 Mb / sec is ten times faster than USB 2.0 (3) 3DTV - you'll need glasses - to appear latter half of 2010 (4) DLNA - Digital Living Network - around since 2004 is now getting integrated into lots of digital appliances. Get ready for the promised "connected house" (5) Mobile ATSC - to allow us to get t.v. broadcast signal to mobile devices (6) Ambient Light Sensors and other eco-friendly tv features (7) Internet-enable TV sets

Emerging Technologies for Online Learning Symposium, a joint Symposium of Sloan Consortium and MERLOT with MoodleMoot, is designed to bring together individuals interested in the technological aspects of online learning. The symposium, focusing on the technologies that drive online learning effectiveness, will continue to highlight research, applications, and best practices of important emerging technological tools. Experts, intermediate users and novices are welcome to participate in Symposium activities that will include face-to-face and virtual components. Symposium tracks highlight and demonstrate research, application and best practices of important emerging technological tools related to social networking, assessment, open educational resources, new media and support services. The Symposium is brought to you by the partnership of the Sloan Consortium, MERLOT, and MoodleMoot.

from the University of Missouri - "eThemes is your source for content-rich, kid-safe online resources that will help enhance your teaching and save you time. eThemes provides free, fast access to over 2,500 collections of websites, on topics ranging from Aerodynamics to Zebras and everything in between! By researching and creating these resources for you, eThemes will save you the time that you used to spend wading through millions of hits on Google, trying to find a few websites that meet your teaching needs. We do the searching for you, giving you more time to improve your lesson plans and actual teach!"

Geneio is a service that installs on your computer and analyzes your current web history to determine content that interests you. A few minutes after installing, it determines your preferences and generates a homepage which is tailored to your interests. The thing I like about Geneio is that you do not need to spend any time 'training' it. Once you install it, it uses your past web history to determine the types of articles and topics that you are already interested in, and I've found it to be fairly accurate.

Startl Will: # Establish vision. Define and diffuse characteristics of effective, catalytic learnercentered products. # Develop talent. Scout and support innovators creating or wanting to create learnercentered products. # Accelerate products. Advance products to sellable, scalable, and sustainable state for market. # Position entities. Help connect start-ups to resources, investors, and partners for product promotion and distribution to market. # Evaluate performance. Evaluate the contributions that Startl network products have on user centered learning and will aggregate, analyze and freely distribute research on user centered learning back to the education market.

We know students love learning on our platform. Students love going to a Class and learn the basics of a new skill. We wanted to take that even further. We created Courses to allow teachers to create more in-depth, organized, and well thought-out learning experiences. We think that Courses will allow you learn even more about the skills that you are passionate and curious about.

Bright Hub's goal is simple: share knowledge about how the simplest scientific idea evolves into tomorrow's technology. With an expert writer network and an active community of life-long enthusiasts Bright Hub provides a level of technology transparency rarely seen in high tech. The team of writers and managing editors utilize deep domain expertise to focus on creating valuable information for both novice and advanced consumers. With a content inventory of thousands of science and technology articles, software and hardware reviews, buyer's guides, blog entries and forum discussions, Bright Hub is able to provide readers with a dependable resource to make informative technology decisions.

this wristphone has text-to-speech capability! Research grant: give one of THESE to each kid and see what they can do!

this wristphone has text-to-speech capability! Research Grant: give one of THESE to each kid and see what they can do!

science education: Chickscope - Using computers in the classroom with access to the Internet, students and teachers are able to access data generated from the latest scientific instruments. The goals include an increased understanding of the process of gathering scientific data and the opportunity to interact with scientists from several disciplines and students in other classrooms The access to unique scientific resources and expertise provides motivation for learning science and mathematics and stimulates interest in the scientific world.

Creative Commons: what every educator needs to know - great slide presentation to show to class

The EcoMUVE project at the Harvard Graduate School of Education is a recently funded project of the United States Department of Education's Institute of Education Sciences (IES). The goal of EcoMUVE is to develop a Multi-User Virtual Environment (MUVE)-based ecosystems science curriculum for middle school, and to conduct feasibility studies on the practicality, integration, and acceptance of the MUVE-based curriculum for student engagement and learning in classroom settings. MUVEs enable multiple participants to access virtual worlds simultaneously, interacting with other students and with computer-based agents to facilitate collaborative learning activities of various types.

"People love to learn by examining visual representations of data. That's been proven time and time again by the popularity of both infographics and Pinterest. So what if you could make your own infographics? What would you make it of? It's actually easier than you think… even if you have zero design skills whatsoever. Below are my two favorite infographic-making web 2.0 tools that I highly recommend. They both have pros and cons but in general are great for any beginner or novice designer. If Photoshop is a 4-letter word to you, then these sites are your friend. If you're a tech-savvy designer and illustrator, it can't hurt to check out some of the work on these two sites for inspiration."

sign up with (favorite color) (favorite animal) + choose an available number. Then choose a type of game to play: Maths 101, Maths Mix, Algebra, Spelling, or Times Tables. From within those categories, select a difficulty level. Then a competitor (a real person) will select to be your opponent... and you RACE to see who wins! Get badges and level up as you go.

The Common Core State Standards provide a consistent, clear understanding of what students are expected to learn, so teachers and parents know what they need to do to help them. The standards are designed to be robust and relevant to the real world, reflecting the knowledge and skills that our young people need for success in college and careers. With American students fully prepared for the future, our communities will be best positioned to compete successfully in the global economy.