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And, as an added benefit, with technology tools and a project-learning approach, students are more likely to stay engaged and on task, reducing behavioral problems in the classroom.

Technology also changes the way teachers teach, offering educators effective ways to reach different types of learners and assess student understanding through multiple means. It also enhances the relationship between teacher and student. When technology is effectively integrated into subject areas, teachers grow into roles of adviser, content expert, and coach. Technology helps make teaching and learning more meaningful and fun.

dedicated e-readers with e-ink technology are equivalent to print, as far as the mind is concerned. “

So should reading on tablets and laptops be avoided in classrooms? Not if a digital reading experience offers options for learners who need more support.

social media isn’t just for the kids. Educators can leverage these connections to their advantage.

In a recent study, teenagers originally from Mexico living in the US saw improvement in acquiring English skills through interacting within Facebook communities (Stewart, 2014). These adolescents also felt more supported and connected when they were able to communicate with others using their native language.

When words are on a screen, we tend to not stick with content as long as we might when compared to paper.

What we allow at school needs to be balanced with an awareness of the often unrestricted access students have at home and the community.

Integrating digital devices into the classroom tends to accentuate current instruction but does not improve poor practice (Toyoma, 2015)

college students who do not use a digital device during class show better understanding of the content taught compared to students who did (Shirkey, 2014)

In fact, the mere presence of a laptop or tablet was distracting to those around the student using technology.

Keep it simple. If the digital devices lack a natural point for integration, don’t shoehorn it in for the sake of making instruction “connected.” Pedagogy trumps technology.

Use technology. Not too much, at home and school. Mostly for learning.

top education technology bloggers and ask their advice on social media

"The time I spend helping my students to edit and refine their writing as they write is exponentially more valuable for them than the final comments I leave on their essays."

For even more information on this topic, visit Edutopia’s Resources for Technology Integration.

hould we ever stymie collaboration among our students? We live in a collaborative world. It is rare in a job, let alone life, that individuals work in complete isolation – with lack of assistance or contributions from anyone else. Perhaps as educators, it’s time to reassess how we want students to work.

what if we incorporated collaboration into our lessons and our assessments?

Using tools such as Google Drive, students can more easily collaborate across distances and with conflicting schedules. Better yet for me as their teacher, I can actually view their collaborative efforts using the “revision history” function of Google Drive (Go to File → See Revision History). This allows me to see who contributed what and when. This way, I can track not only quality, but quantity.

We have all heard students complain that a member of the group has “contributed nothing.” Now there is a method to verify and follow up this complaint.

If you can Google the answer, how good is the question?

Perhaps instead of focusing our concerns on technology as a wonderful aid to plagiarizers, we should focus on its ability to foster creativity and collaboration, and then ask ourselves (we are the clever adults here) how we can incorporate those elements into our formalized assessments.

Unfortunately, yes, there will always be those students who want to cut corners, find the easy way, and cheat to get out of having to do the hard work. (See my post on combating plagiarism.) But a significant majority of students are inherently inquisitive: they want to learn and do better by engaging and thinking, not memorizing and fact checking. It’s up to us to appeal to that inquisitiveness.

and she was trained to highlight strengths

Showing empathy was important

The trainer stressed the importance of avoiding teen patois and not making typos, which undermine authoritativeness.

Having all three factors present in a school can compensate for their absence in the family, community, or peer group. And a school with these factors can be resilient as an organization in the face of challenges and traumatic events it may face.

But in practical terms, text messaging affords a level of privacy that the human voice makes impossible. If you’re hiding from an abusive relative or you just don’t want your classmates to know how overwhelmed you feel about applying to college, a text message, even one sent in public, is safer than a phone call.

What’s more, tears go undetected by the person you’ve reached out to, and you don’t have to hear yourself say aloud your most shameful secrets.”

All people have the capacity for resilience, she says, and there are three factors that tap and nurture that potential: (a) caring relationships, (b) high expectations, and (c) meaningful opportunities for participation and contribution.

The advantage of using texting for a crisis hotline is that teens who are willfully uncommunicative when speaking are often forthcoming to the point of garrulous when texting, quite willing to disclose sensitive information.

The three factors help develop children’s social competence, problem-solving ability, sense of self and internal locus of control, and sense of purpose and optimism about the future – all of which are key to dealing successfully with adversity.

This is all about providing a sense of connectedness and belonging, “being there,” showing compassion and trust.

Teachers make appropriate expectations clear and recognize progress as well as performance. They also encourage mindfulness and self-awareness of moods, thinking, and actions. Principals orchestrate a curriculum that is challenging, comprehensive, thematic, experiential, and inclusive of multiple perspectives. They also provide training in resilience and youth development, and work to change deeply held adult beliefs about students’ capacities.

Teachers hold daily class meetings and empower students to create classroom norms and agreements. Principals establish peer-helping/tutoring and cross-age mentoring/tutoring programs and set up peer support networks to help new students and families acclimate to the school environment.

Resilience is a process, not a trait. It’s a struggle to define oneself as healthy amidst serious challenges.

Several personal strengths are associated with resilience – being strong cognitively, socially, emotionally, morally, and spiritually.

In classrooms, open channels of communication are essential. Nothing should inhibit, embarrass, or shame students from asking questions during a lesson.

a person who displays bad judgment is not ‘forever’ a bad person.”

To help others, educators need to take care of themselves. An analogy: on an airplane, people need to have their own oxygen masks in place before they can help others.

“The admissions process can counteract a narrow focus on personal success and promote in young people a greater appreciation of others and the common good.

ome have pointed out that the report applies mostly to a small percent of students, and what colleges say they value may be a challenge to game the system.

Julie Coiro (University of Rhode Island) takes note of a large international study by the OECD (Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development), which found that computers were having no significant impact on students’ proficiency in reading, math, and science.

In many countries, the study found, frequent use of computers actually made students’ performance worse. “Although these findings may relate to differences in professional development or implementation,” says Coiro, “it was clear that drill-and-practice software had a negative effect on student performance.”

Technology is not critical for learning to be personal; all that’s needed is space and time to actively reflect, collaborate, and engage with personally meaningful ideas.

“What students can learn,” says Stygles, “is how to manage their time, select books reasonably, and justify their reading choices. When students understand their capacity – what they can do successfully – they not only protect themselves from shameful failure, but also become stronger readers through repeated experiences of success and pleasure.”

when blended learning is implemented in a balanced way, “teachers and students use a range of human and digital resources to improve their ability to think, problem solve, collaborate, and communicate. A delicate balance of talk and technology use keeps us all grounded in conversations with other people about what really matters.” Coiro has four suggestions for striking this balance:             • Build a culture of personal inquiry. Students have regular opportunities to pursue topics relevant to them, using a range of texts, tools, and people (offline and online) to get emotionally engaged.             • Expect learners to talk. Students engage in literacy experiences involving face-to-face and online collaboration, conversations, arguments, negotiations, and presentations.             • Encourage digital creation. Students create original products that share new knowledge and connect insights from school, home, and the community.             • Make space for students to participate and matter. “Through participation, individuals assert their autonomy and ownership of learning,” says Coiro. “In turn, their inquiry becomes more personal and engaging.”

Once students are empowered to direct their own learning pathways, technology can open the door to a range of texts, tools, and people to explore and connect ideas

“Unlike participation in sports,” says Stygles, “the choice to abandon reading to pursue other talents is not an option. Kids really have no escape from the struggles they face during the learning-to-read process, especially in light of frequent assessment or graduation through levels.”

“Measurement must be replaced by early and frequent positive transactions between reading, teacher, and texts,”

We should share with students what intimidates us about reading, how we find time, and how we focus… If we show our readers realities of reading, maturing students will see reading as less burdensome.”

“Shamed readers do not believe they improve or can improve,” says Stygles

“A good exit ticket can tell whether students have a superficial or in-depth understanding of the material,” they write. “Teachers can then use this data for adapting instruction to meet students’ needs the very next day… Exit tickets allow teachers to see where the gaps in knowledge are, what they need to fix, what students have mastered, and what can be enriched in the classroom…

The key to differentiation is that you have high expectations for all students and a clear objective.

If you know what you want students to master, differentiation allows you to use different strategies to help all students get there.”

Each of these tools allows students to contribute individually to shared creations involving inquiry, peer feedback, and collaborative composition.

Google Docs

Padlet

Coggle

VoiceThread

If STEAM is dominated by Engineering problems where are the opportunities for science to be the servant of art, or for technology to be the doorway to new scientific discoveries.