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Melissa Seifman

Education Outrage: Why do we still have schools? - 1 views

  • Competition: Why should school be a competitive event?
  • We learn what we choose to know in real life.
  • Stress: When 6 year olds are stressed about going to school you know that something is wrong.
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  • Right answers: School teaches that there are right answers.
  • But, in real life, there are very few right answers.
  • Bullying and peer pressure
  • In school there are always other kids telling you how to dress, how to act, how to be cool.
  • Stifling of curiosity: Isn’t it obvious that learning is really about curiosity?
  • Adults earn about things they want to learn about. Before the age of 6, prior to school, one kid becomes a dinosaur specialist while another knows all about dog breeds. Outside of school people drive their own learning. Schools eliminate this natural behavior.
    • Tero Toivanen
       
      Exactly!
  • Subjects chosen for you:
  • Classrooms:
  • Classrooms make no sense as a venue for learning unless of course you want to save money and have 30 (or worse hundreds of) students be handled by one teacher.
  • Schools cannot work as places of learning if they employ classrooms.
  • Grades: Any professor can tell you that students are pretty much concerned with whether what you are telling them will be on the test and what they might do for extra credit.
    • Melissa Seifman
       
      I disagree - Employers do have rating systems, performance evaluations, but most of those are on the whole person, not just technical or academic skills
  • Parents do not give grades to children and employers do not give grades to employees. They judge their work and progress for sure, but not by assigning numbers to a report card.
  • Certification: We all know why people attend college. They do primarily to say they are college graduates so they can get a job or go on to a professional school.
    • Caroline Roche
       
      So, why is this the student's fault? Why blame, or disadvatage them for this? We should be fighting the system that causes students to work like this, not blaming them for doing it! it is the constant testing and league table system that is wrong.
  • Confined children: Children like to run around.
  • Of course in school, sitting still is the norm. So we have come up with this wonderful idea of ADD, i.e. drug those who won’t sit still into submission. Is the system sick or what?
  • Academics viewed as winners: Who are the smartest kids in school?
  • Those who are good at these subjects go on to be professors. So those are certainly the smartest people we have in our society.
  • But, I can tell you from personal experience that our society doesn’t respect professors all that much, so something is wrong here.
  • Practical skills not valued: When I was young there were academic high schools and trade high schools. Trade high schools were for dumb kids. Academic high schools were for smart kids.
  • The need to please teachers: People who succeed at school are invariably people who are good out at figuring what the teacher wants and giving it to them.
  • In real life there is no teacher to please and these “grade grubbers” often find themselves lost.
  • Self worth questioned: School is full of winners and losers.
  • In school, most everyone sees themselves as a loser. Why do we allow this to happen?
  • Politicians in charge: Politicians demand reform but they wouldn’t know reform if it hit them over the head.
  • Major learning by doing mechanism ignored: And last but not least, scholars from Plato to Dewey have pointed that people learn by doing. That is how we learn. Doing. Got it? Apparently not. Very little doing in schools. Unless you count filling in circles with number 2 pencils as doing.
  • Government use of education for repression: As long as there have been governments there have been governments who wanted people to think that the governments (and the country) is very good.
  • School is about teaching “truth.”
  • Discovery not valued: The most important things we learn we teach ourselves.
    • Tero Toivanen
       
      Autotelic learning!
  • This kind of learning is not valued in school because it might lead to, heaven forbid, failure, and failure is a really bad word in school. Except failure is how we learn, which is pretty much why school doesn’t work.
    • Tero Toivanen
       
      Exactly!
  • Boredom ignored: Boredom is a bad thing. We drug bored kids with Ritalin so they will stop being bored.
  • What they mean is that school should be like they remember rather than how it is now
    • Caroline Roche
       
      Not accepting students with straight A's only shows your own prejudices. Students can be good at a range of subjects, without being passionately interested in all of them. Lots of people are self motivated, without being teacher pleasers, they just wish to do their best in everything for their own satisfaction.
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    Why do we have schools? Instead of answering this question by listing all the good things that schools provide, which anyone can do, I will turn the question around: What is bad about having schools?
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    Why do we have schools? Instead of answering this question by listing all the good things that schools provide, which anyone can do, I will turn the question around: What is bad about having schools?
Lisa Stevens

Classroom 2.0 Convention in the UK? - 141 views

I'll lurk on FM - pop past the webcam and wave ;o) Lisa xx Joanne Bennett wrote: > Yes ...lets all try and meet up.... say hello to fellow diigo and twitter users. > > > Danny Nicholson wrote: >...

learning teaching web2.0

Tero Toivanen

Flipped classrooms: teaching at home and doing homework at school | koaa.com | Colorado... - 33 views

  • The 5th graders in Doug Hinkle's class at the DaVinci Academy in School District 20 are among the first elementary students in the country to be part of a "flipped" classroom.
  • Instead of spending 20 minutes each hour lecturing, Mr. Hinkle pre-records video podcasts to teach his lessons.
  • Removing the lectures from the school day frees up Hinkle to give more attention to individual students or small groups. If you were to drop into his class unannounced, it may seem a bit chaotic, but Hinkle says it's a controlled chaos.
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  • The online community flippedclassroom.com boasts 3,000 teacher members. Sams says he's routinely asked to join conference calls or use Skype to address educators and lawmakers around the world.
  • "I've been to Norway, I've been to Germany, I've been to probably 6 or 7 different states just this year and it's only March."
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    "The 5th graders in Doug Hinkle's class at the DaVinci Academy in School District 20 are among the first elementary students in the country to be part of a "flipped" classroom."
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    It a great idea , today I was attending a high school implimenting location based learning project. I actualy came to the same conclusion. forml knowledge would have better been aquired through reading and recorded information while the class would have been better used for "workshop" activity in which students would have created location based learning objects
anonymous

Critical Issue: Using Technology to Improve Student Achievement - 0 views

shared by anonymous on 23 Feb 10 - Cached
  • Technologies available in classrooms today range from simple tool-based applications (such as word processors) to online repositories of scientific data and primary historical documents, to handheld computers, closed-circuit television channels, and two-way distance learning classrooms. Even the cell phones that many students now carry with them can be used to learn (Prensky, 2005).
  • Bruce and Levin (1997), for example, look at ways in which the tools, techniques, and applications of technology can support integrated, inquiry-based learning to "engage children in exploring, thinking, reading, writing, researching, inventing, problem-solving, and experiencing the world." They developed the idea of technology as media with four different focuses: media for inquiry (such as data modeling, spreadsheets, access to online databases, access to online observatories and microscopes, and hypertext), media for communication (such as word processing, e-mail, synchronous conferencing, graphics software, simulations, and tutorials), media for construction (such as robotics, computer-aided design, and control systems), and media for expression (such as interactive video, animation software, and music composition). In a review of existing evidence of technology's impact on learning, Marshall (2002) found strong evidence that educational technology "complements what a great teacher does naturally," extending their reach and broadening their students' experience beyond the classroom. "With ever-expanding content and technology choices, from video to multimedia to the Internet," Marshall suggests "there's an unprecedented need to understand the recipe for success, which involves the learner, the teacher, the content, and the environment in which technology is used."
  • In examining large-scale state and national studies, as well as some innovative smaller studies on newer educational technologies, Schacter (1999) found that students with access to any of a number of technologies (such as computer assisted instruction, integrated learning systems, simulations and software that teaches higher order thinking, collaborative networked technologies, or design and programming technologies) show positive gains in achievement on researcher constructed tests, standardized tests, and national tests.
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  • Boster, Meyer, Roberto, & Inge (2002) examined the integration of standards-based video clips into lessons developed by classroom teachers and found increases student achievement. The study of more than 1,400 elementary and middle school students in three Virginia school districts showed an average increase in learning for students exposed to the video clip application compared to students who received traditional instruction alone.
  • Wenglinsky (1998) noted that for fourth- and eighth-graders technology has "positive benefits" on achievement as measured in NAEP's mathematics test. Interestingly, Wenglinsky found that using computers to teach low order thinking skills, such as drill and practice, had a negative impact on academic achievement, while using computers to solve simulations saw their students' math scores increase significantly. Hiebert (1999) raised a similar point. When students over-practice procedures before they understand them, they have more difficulty making sense of them later; however, they can learn new concepts and skills while they are solving problems. In a study that examined relationship between computer use and students' science achievement based on data from a standardized assessment, Papanastasiou, Zemblyas, & Vrasidas (2003) found it is not the computer use itself that has a positive or negative effect on achievement of students, but the way in which computers are used.
  • Another factor influencing the impact of technology on student achievement is that changes in classroom technologies correlate to changes in other educational factors as well. Originally the determination of student achievement was based on traditional methods of social scientific investigation: it asked whether there was a specific, causal relationship between one thing—technology—and another—student achievement. Because schools are complex social environments, however, it is impossible to change just one thing at a time (Glennan & Melmed, 1996; Hawkins, Panush, & Spielvogel, 1996; Newman, 1990). If a new technology is introduced into a classroom, other things also change. For example, teachers' perceptions of their students' capabilities can shift dramatically when technology is integrated into the classroom (Honey, Chang, Light, Moeller, in press). Also, teachers frequently find themselves acting more as coaches and less as lecturers (Henriquez & Riconscente, 1998). Another example is that use of technology tends to foster collaboration among students, which in turn may have a positive effect on student achievement (Tinzmann, 1998). Because the technology becomes part of a complex network of changes, its impact cannot be reduced to a simple cause-and-effect model that would provide a definitive answer to how it has improved student achievement.
  • When new technologies are adopted, learning how to use the technology may take precedence over learning through the technology. "The technology learning curve tends to eclipse content learning temporarily; both kids and teachers seem to orient to technology until they become comfortable," note Goldman, Cole, and Syer (1999). Effective content integration takes time, and new technologies may have glitches. As a result, "teachers' first technology projects generate excitement but often little content learning. Often it takes a few years until teachers can use technology effectively in core subject areas" (Goldman, Cole, & Syer, 1999). Educators may find impediments to evaluating the impact of technology. Such impediments include lack of measures to assess higher-order thinking skills, difficulty in separating technology from the entire instructional process, and the outdating of technologies used by the school. To address these impediments, educators may need to develop new strategies for student assessment, ensure that all aspects of the instructional process—including technology, instructional design, content, teaching strategies, and classroom environment—are conducive to student learning, and conduct ongoing evaluation studies to determine the effectiveness of learning with technology (Kosakowski, 1998).
David McGavock

CITE Journal - Editorial - 21 views

  • A classroom that has successfully integrated technology into the curriculum would be one where you would not really notice it because it would be so second nature. The teacher would not have to think up ways to use whatever tools were available, but would seamlessly use them to enhance the learning of whatever content was being covered. Technology [would be] used to assist in acquiring content knowledge, and the acquisition of technology skills [would be] secondary. Contrast this depiction with what the International Society for Technology in Education’s (ISTE) National Educational Technology Standards for Students (NETS-S; ISTE, 2002) say about technology integration: Curriculum integration with the use of technology involves the infusion of technology as a tool to enhance the learning in a content area or multidisciplinary setting….Effective integration of technology is achieved when students are able to select technology tools to help them obtain information in a timely manner, analyze and synthesize the information, and present it professionally. The technology should become an integral part of how the classroom functions—as accessible as all other classroom tools.
  • his urging to shift the focus from the learning tools to what is being learned and how that learning happens still needs to be heeded—almost 20 years later.
  • Integration is defined not by the amount or type of technology used, but by how and why it is used.
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  • many of these technology-specific studies did not explore more fundamental issues in technology and education
  • what needs to be further developed, examined, and shared
  • particular curriculum standards-based instructional strategies that are appropriately matched to students’ learning needs and preferences
  • understanding the processes and interim results of how and why specific tools can and should be appropriated
  • help students with distinct needs and preferences to achieve identified learning goals.
  • the STaR Chart
  • According to the national StaR Chart, then, technology use in what is typically described as “constructivist” learning is preferable to technology used to “reinforce basic academic skills.”
  • Constructivists view people as constructive agents and view the phenomenon of interest (meaning or knowledge) as built instead of passively “received”
  • curriculum-based integration of educational technologies – defined in Education and Technology: An Encyclopedia (Kovalchick & Dawson, 2004) as “the effective integration of technology throughout the curriculum to help students meet the standards and outcomes of each lesson, unit, or activity”
  • As discerning educators and researchers, we should question why teachers’ roles “must” change to integrate technology effectively into K-12 curricula.
  • the technologies themselves do not require this shift
  • Though teachers in the nationally representative sample they studied acknowledged that computers helped them to change instructional practice over time, they cited experience, organized professional learning, and school culture as the primary factors provoking instructional changes.
  • In districts in which teachers’ academic freedom is preserved—at least in part—aren’t the pedagogical approaches to be used the result of decisions that each teacher makes, preferably rooted in a well-informed knowledge base of both students’ learning needs and preferences and corresponding methodological alternatives?
  • Can it really be assumed that a particular approach “works best” in all teaching, learning, school, district, and community contexts?
  • perhaps a new approach is warranted at this point in time—one that genuinely respects pedagogical plurality and honors teachers’ academic freedom.
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    A classroom that has successfully integrated technology into the curriculum would be one where you would not really notice it because it would be so second nature. The teacher would not have to think up ways to use whatever tools were available, but would seamlessly use them to enhance the learning of whatever content was being covered. Technology [would be] used to assist in acquiring content knowledge, and the acquisition of technology skills [would be] secondary. Contrast this depiction with what the International Society for Technology in Education's (ISTE) National Educational Technology Standards for Students (NETS-S; ISTE, 2002) say about technology integration: Curriculum integration with the use of technology involves the infusion of technology as a tool to enhance the learning in a content area or multidisciplinary setting….Effective integration of technology is achieved when students are able to select technology tools to help them obtain information in a timely manner, analyze and synthesize the information, and present it professionally. The technology should become an integral part of how the classroom functions-as accessible as all other classroom tools.
Philippe Scheimann

A Vision of Students Today (& What Teachers Must Do) | Britannica Blog - 0 views

  • It has taken years of acclimatizing our youth to stale artificial environments, piles of propaganda convincing them that what goes on inside these environments is of immense importance, and a steady hand of discipline should they ever start to question it.
    • Russell D. Jones
       
      There is a huge investment in resources, time, and tradition from the teacher, the instutions, the society, and--importantly--the students. Students have invested much more time (proportional to their short lives) in learning how to be skillful at the education game. Many don't like teachers changing the rules of the game just when they've become proficient at it.
  • Last spring I asked my students how many of them did not like school. Over half of them rose their hands. When I asked how many of them did not like learning, no hands were raised. I have tried this with faculty and get similar results. Last year’s U.S. Professor of the Year, Chris Sorensen, began his acceptance speech by announcing, “I hate school.” The crowd, made up largely of other outstanding faculty, overwhelmingly agreed. And yet he went on to speak with passionate conviction about his love of learning and the desire to spread that love. And there’s the rub. We love learning. We hate school. What’s worse is that many of us hate school because we love learning.
    • Russell D. Jones
       
      So we (teachers and students) are willing to endure a little (or a lot) of uncomfortableness in order to pursue that love of learning.
  • They tell us, first of all, that despite appearances, our classrooms have been fundamentally changed.
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  • While most of our classrooms were built under the assumption that information is scarce and hard to find, nearly the entire body of human knowledge now flows through and around these rooms in one form or another, ready to be accessed by laptops, cellphones, and iPods. Classrooms built to re-enforce the top-down authoritative knowledge of the teacher are now enveloped by a cloud of ubiquitous digital information where knowledge is made, not found, and authority is continuously negotiated through discussion and participation. In short, they tell us that our walls no longer mark the boundaries of our classrooms.
  • And that’s what has been wrong all along. Some time ago we started taking our walls too seriously – not just the walls of our classrooms, but also the metaphorical walls that we have constructed around our “subjects,” “disciplines,” and “courses.” McLuhan’s statement about the bewildered child confronting “the education establishment where information is scarce but ordered and structured by fragmented, classified patterns, subjects, and schedules” still holds true in most classrooms today. The walls have become so prominent that they are even reflected in our language, so that today there is something called “the real world” which is foreign and set apart from our schools. When somebody asks a question that seems irrelevant to this real world, we say that it is “merely academic.”
  • We can use them in ways that empower and engage students in real world problems and activities, leveraging the enormous potentials of the digital media environment that now surrounds us. In the process, we allow students to develop much-needed skills in navigating and harnessing this new media environment, including the wisdom to know when to turn it off. When students are engaged in projects that are meaningful and important to them, and that make them feel meaningful and important, they will enthusiastically turn off their cellphones and laptops to grapple with the most difficult texts and take on the most rigorous tasks.
  • At the root of your question is a much more interesting observation that many of the styles of self-directed learning now enabled through technology are in conflict with the traditional teacher-student relationship. I don’t think the answer is to annihilate that relationship, but to rethink it.
  • Personally, I increasingly position myself as the manager of a learning environment in which I also take part in the learning. This can only happen by addressing real and relevant problems and questions for which I do not know the answers. That’s the fun of it. We become collaborators, with me exploring the world right along with my students.
  • our walls, the particular architectonics of the disciplines we work within, provide students with the conversational, narrative, cognitive, epistemological, methodological, ontological, the –ogical means for converting mere information into knowledge.
  •  
    useful article , I need to finish it and look at this 'famous clip' that had 1 million viewers
kabir mo

ZIIEI - INNOVATIVE PATHSHAALA- APP FOR TEACHERS - 0 views

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    ZIIEI Innovative Pathshaala App is designed to encourage and promote an experiential learning environment in the classroom. This platform serves as an everyday classroom companion to the teachers who can refer to the innovative ways of teaching different lessons through these zero-investment ideas. IP App is a digital leap of Innovative Pathshaala that is a series of books serving as a readymade teaching tool for all the teachers. This free learning App is a one-stop junction for subject-specific teaching tools mapped with all educational boards like C.B.S.E, I.C.S.E, Uttar Pradesh Board, Bihar Board, MP Board and many more. Teachers have access to innovative and experiential learning concepts, based on the existing school curriculum, applicable to any grade, multi-grade, and inclusive classrooms. The zero investment teaching tools available on this educational app can be of great help to govt. school teachers, private school teachers, tutors and to all kinds of educationists.
GoEd Online

One Flip of the Classroom [INFOGRAPHIC] - 0 views

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    Improve Student Learning and Teacher Satisfaction in One Flip of the Classroom provides a visual representation of the results from Classroom Window's flipped classroom survey. It highlights some interesting statistics about the kind of teachers who have implemented this educational model.
Rob Rankin

Creating Classroom Culture - 0 views

  • ) Always come to class prepared: The students must bring their notebook, pen, pencil, eraser, dictionary, etc. Whatever they need to help them learn English. This includes a positive attitude. Merely coming to class prepared is not enough. My students must also be prepared. This means sitting quietly in their seats and in their groups before I enter the classroom. 2) Always keep the classroom clean: If I see any paper on the floor, I tell the students to pick it up. A dirty classroom should never be tolerated. I will not start the lesson until the classroom is clean. I want my students to not only respect their teachers and each other, but to respect the sanctity of the classroom and the school as well.3) Be polite and show respect: This doesn't only mean saying "Please" and "Thank you." It also means never throwing things across the classroom. Far too often I've seen students throw everything from pencils to books to their classmates. This also should never be tolerated. When someone needs a pencil or an eraser, a student must physically get up, walk over to the student in need, and hand it to him in a respectful manner. Students must also use the proper honorific when referring to their teacher. We must teach right speech AND right action.4) Pay attention and cooperate: This means teaching the students to listen to the teacher and listen to one another. Listening is the first step towards cooperating with each other in order to get the job done and do the job well. 5) Work hard and as a team: Team work is important in my classroom. I'm not looking for individual superstars. I want students who are team players. Everyone learns more that way. In working as a team, my students learn to plan their lessons carefully and to think before they act.6) Sacrifice your time and share your understanding: Now we're getting to the heart of the matter. If a student understands something then he/she has an obligation to help another who does not yet understand. The students must help and support each other. I love to see a student physically get up, walk over to another, and kindly explain what he has just learned to someone who is struggling. If one team does not succeed in reaching the class/lesson objectives, then the other teams are responsible for helping them until they do. This shows respect, cooperation, and responsibility, and if we can teach our students that, then we are beginning to succeed as educators.7) Be responsible for one another: Now we're deep into the heart of the matter. This is the crux of my classroom culture. Teaching my students to be responsible. Response-able. Or able to respond. Isn't this what compassionate people do in a compassionate society? Isn't this our main responsibility at educators--- to take on the responsibility of teaching others how to be responsible? What a thrill it truly is to see students taking responsibility for themselves AND others. If we can teach our students to naturally respond to others in need, then we are truly succeeding as educators.8) There are no free rides: I don't want slackers in my class. If I see a student not pulling his weight, I let him know. The team is relying on him. The team either succeeds or fails--- as a team. The class either succeeds or fails--- as a class. In my classes, you will not get away with doing nothing--- and that includes my co-teachers and myself! There are no free rides.
    • Rob Rankin
       
      I like this idea of students actively supporting each other.
Victorious Kidss Educares Pune

Best School in Pune : Victorious Kidss Educares - 0 views

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    Victorious Kidss Educares is a co-educational IB school, it offers classes from nursery upwards, providing a blend of academic, sporting, cultural and artistic activities in a high quality environment.It is one of the best IB School in Pune that houses state-of-the-art classrooms, a laboratory and library, and audio-visual room and art studio, and a playground for sports and recreation. All of which contribute to giving our students a world-class education with lifelong benefits. Visit us @ http://www.victoriouskidsseducares.org
J Black

ed4wb » Blog Archive » The New Bottom-up Authority - 0 views

  • It appears that most teachers today underestimate the amount of learning that is happening among youth outside of schools.  Since this informal learning sometimes dubbed “hanging out”, “messing around” or “geeking out”  happens outside of the classroom and doesn’t look like traditional learning, it’s easy for educators to miss. The quality and quantity of learning, the process by which it occurs, and the way authority is established in these informal environments, should be something that teachers become familiar with. Will Richardson, who writes extensively on these matters, believes that, “One of the biggest challenges educators face right now is figuring out how to help students create, navigate, and grow the powerful, individualized networks of learning that bloom on the Web and helping them do this effectively, ethically, and safely.” (see article)
  • It appears that most teachers today underestimate the amount of learning that is happening among youth outside of schools.  Since this informal learning sometimes dubbed “hanging out”, “messing around” or “geeking out”  happens outside of the classroom and doesn’t look like traditional learning, it’s easy for educators to miss. The quality and quantity of learning, the process by which it occurs, and the way authority is established in these informal environments, should be something that teachers become familiar with. Will Richardson, who writes extensively on these matters, believes that, “One of the biggest challenges educators face right now is figuring out how to help students create, navigate, and grow the powerful, individualized networks of learning that bloom on the Web and helping them do this effectively, ethically, and safely.” (see article)
  • It appears that most teachers today underestimate the amount of learning that is happening among youth outside of schools.  Since this informal learning sometimes dubbed “hanging out”, “messing around” or “geeking out”  happens outside of the classroom and doesn’t look like traditional learning, it’s easy for educators to miss. The quality and quantity of learning, the process by which it occurs, and the way authority is established in these informal environments, should be something that teachers become familiar with. Will Richardson, who writes extensively on these matters, believes that, “One of the biggest challenges educators face right now is figuring out how to help students create, navigate, and grow the powerful, individualized networks of learning that bloom on the Web and helping them do this effectively, ethically, and safely.” (see article)
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  • Schools, in general, are not taking advantage of the power of peer-based learning or the benefits of a more decentralized type of expertise which lies outside of its ivory walls.
  • The same study later describes a writer’s heightened sense of authenticity that comes from peer feedback as opposed to school evaluations: “It’s something I can do in my spare time, be creative and write and not have to be graded,” because, “you know how in school you’re creative, but you’re doing it for a grade so it doesn’t really count?”
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    The top-down, authoritarian model found in most classrooms today looks very different from the model many students experience when they learn online. The classroom's hierarchical approach, with the sage on the stage, requires, (and, ultimately demands) passivity and deference on the part of the learner. Informal, interest-driven networked learning, with its access to large stores of information and variety of opinion, on the other hand, takes a much different view of authority. It's usually peer based, largely democratic, meritocratic, often creates dissonance due to variety and demands evaluation. Knowing what we do about active learning, one would seem clearly superior to the other.
Wendy Windust

WIDE World - Program Overview - 14 views

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    Our goal is to transform school systems by developing professional communities of teachers and school leaders with interactive online courses and on-site support programs that enable schools to cultivate the critical learning students need for the 21st century world. Research-Based. WIDE World professional development programs are based on Teaching for Understanding, a classroom-tested framework developed through research at the Harvard Graduate School of Education. Online. WIDE World courses are conducted online and are asynchronous. This allows for flexible, adaptive, and convenient learning for all participants, regardless of location or schedule. Job-embedded. Through our courses, WIDE World learners integrate research-based strategies in their own workplace. Online coaches support cycles of learning, applying, and reflecting as teams of educators improve lesson plans, instruction, and data-driven action projects. Team-Based with Coaching. Systemic change requires coordinated effort from all stakeholders. Expert coaches help teachers, leaders, and specialists work in teams to develop a common language for defining and achieving shared goals. Tailored for Local Impact. WIDE World works with you to design professional development programs adapted precisely to address the needs of your school, program, district, or system and build local capacity for continuous improvement. Global Learning. In the online environment, participants collaborate with innovative educators from across the US and around the globe.
Marc Lijour

Go Ahead, Mess With Texas Instruments - Phil Nichols - The Atlantic - 5 views

  • Though many devices enter our classrooms for different reasons -- they are not neutral. Some are used to reinforce the authority of formal teaching; some engage students in the process of imaginative discovery. By balancing conventional and subversive academic possibilities, these latter objects show us the real potential of learning technologies. Not as sterile knowledge-delivery devices policed by authorized educators, but as boundary objects between endorsed educational utility and creative self-expression gone rogue.
  • Though many devices enter our classrooms for different reasons -- they are not neutral. Some are used to reinforce the authority of formal teaching; some engage students in the process of imaginative discovery. By balancing conventional and subversive academic possibilities, these latter objects show us the real potential of learning technologies. Not as sterile knowledge-delivery devices policed by authorized educators, but as boundary objects between endorsed educational utility and creative self-expression gone rogue.
  • Though many devices enter our classrooms for different reasons -- they are not neutral. Some are used to reinforce the authority of formal teaching; some engage students in the process of imaginative discovery. By balancing conventional and subversive academic possibilities, these latter objects show us the real potential of learning technologies. Not as sterile knowledge-delivery devices policed by authorized educators, but as boundary objects between endorsed educational utility and creative self-expression gone rogue.
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  • Though
  • Though many devices enter our classrooms for different reasons -- they are not neutral. Some are used to reinforce the authority of formal teaching; some engage students in the process of imaginative discovery. By balancing conventional and subversive academic possibilities, these latter objects show us the real potential of learning technologies. Not as sterile knowledge-delivery devices policed by authorized educators, but as boundary objects between endorsed educational utility and creative self-expression gone rogue.
  • Though many devices enter our classrooms for different reasons -- they are not neutral. Some are used to reinforce the authority of formal teaching; some engage students in the process of imaginative discovery. By balancing conventional and subversive academic possibilities, these latter objects show us the real potential of learning technologies. Not as sterile knowledge-delivery devices policed by authorized educators, but as boundary objects between endorsed educational utility and creative self-expression gone rogue.
  • Much like skateboarders have an imaginative orientation that allows them to see textures and movement in the curvatures of everyday objects -- a park bench, a railing, an empty swimming pool -- programmers learn to see their immediate environment as a creative space, a source for inspiration and improvisation.
  • This is distinct from other popular educational technologies -- many of which are marketed as subversive tools to "disrupt" traditional notions of learning, but often end up preserving those aspects of schooling that are most in need of disruption. In recent decades, districts have spent millions of dollars equipping classrooms with TVs, computers, and Smartboards -- only to find that such devices are mostly used to aid formal teaching instead of facilitating student discovery.
  • writing code for an iPad is restricted to those who purchase an Apple developer account, create programs that align with Apple standards, and submit their finished products for Apple's approval prior to distribution.
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    "Though many devices enter our classrooms for different reasons -- they are not neutral. Some are used to reinforce the authority of formal teaching; some engage students in the process of imaginative discovery. By balancing conventional and subversive academic possibilities, these latter objects show us the real potential of learning technologies. Not as sterile knowledge-delivery devices policed by authorized educators, but as boundary objects between endorsed educational utility and creative self-expression gone rogue."
Tero Toivanen

Digital Citizenship | the human network - 0 views

  • The change is already well underway, but this change is not being led by teachers, administrators, parents or politicians. Coming from the ground up, the true agents of change are the students within the educational system.
  • While some may be content to sit on the sidelines and wait until this cultural reorganization plays itself out, as educators you have no such luxury. Everything hits you first, and with full force. You are embedded within this change, as much so as this generation of students.
  • We make much of the difference between “digital immigrants”, such as ourselves, and “digital natives”, such as these children. These kids are entirely comfortable within the digital world, having never known anything else. We casually assume that this difference is merely a quantitative facility. In fact, the difference is almost entirely qualitative. The schema upon which their world-views are based, the literal ‘rules of their world’, are completely different.
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  • The Earth becomes a chalkboard, a spreadsheet, a presentation medium, where the thorny problems of global civilization and its discontents can be explored out in exquisite detail. In this sense, no problem, no matter how vast, no matter how global, will be seen as being beyond the reach of these children. They’ll learn this – not because of what teacher says, or what homework assignments they complete – through interaction with the technology itself.
  • We and our technological-materialist culture have fostered an environment of such tremendous novelty and variety that we have changed the equations of childhood.
  • As it turns out (and there are numerous examples to support this) a mobile handset is probably the most important tool someone can employ to improve their economic well-being. A farmer can call ahead to markets to find out which is paying the best price for his crop; the same goes for fishermen. Tradesmen can close deals without the hassle and lost time involved in travel; craftswomen can coordinate their creative resources with a few text messages. Each of these examples can be found in any Bangladeshi city or Africa village.
  • The sharing of information is an innate human behavior: since we learned to speak we’ve been talking to each other, warning each other of dangers, informing each other of opportunities, positing possibilities, and just generally reassuring each other with the sound of our voices. We’ve now extended that four-billion-fold, so that half of humanity is directly connected, one to another.
  • Everything we do, both within and outside the classroom, must be seen through this prism of sharing. Teenagers log onto video chat services such as Skype, and do their homework together, at a distance, sharing and comparing their results. Parents offer up their kindergartener’s presentations to other parents through Twitter – and those parents respond to the offer. All of this both amplifies and undermines the classroom. The classroom has not dealt with the phenomenal transformation in the connectivity of the broader culture, and is in danger of becoming obsolesced by it.
  • We already live in a time of disconnect, where the classroom has stopped reflecting the world outside its walls. The classroom is born of an industrial mode of thinking, where hierarchy and reproducibility were the order of the day. The world outside those walls is networked and highly heterogeneous. And where the classroom touches the world outside, sparks fly; the classroom can’t handle the currents generated by the culture of connectivity and sharing. This can not go on.
  • We must accept the reality of the 21st century, that, more than anything else, this is the networked era, and that this network has gifted us with new capabilities even as it presents us with new dangers. Both gifts and dangers are issues of potency; the network has made us incredibly powerful. The network is smarter, faster and more agile than the hierarchy; when the two collide – as they’re bound to, with increasing frequency – the network always wins.
  • A text message can unleash revolution, or land a teenager in jail on charges of peddling child pornography, or spark a riot on a Sydney beach; Wikipedia can drive Britannica, a quarter millennium-old reference text out of business; a outsider candidate can get himself elected president of the United States because his team masters the logic of the network. In truth, we already live in the age of digital citizenship, but so many of us don’t know the rules, and hence, are poor citizens.
  • before a child is given a computer – either at home or in school – it must be accompanied by instruction in the power of the network. A child may have a natural facility with the network without having any sense of the power of the network as an amplifier of capability. It’s that disconnect which digital citizenship must bridge.
  • Let us instead focus on how we will use technology in fifty years’ time. We can already see the shape of the future in one outstanding example – a website known as RateMyProfessors.com. Here, in a database of nine million reviews of one million teachers, lecturers and professors, students can learn which instructors bore, which grade easily, which excite the mind, and so forth. This simple site – which grew out of the power of sharing – has radically changed the balance of power on university campuses throughout the US and the UK.
  • Alongside the rise of RateMyProfessors.com, there has been an exponential increase in the amount of lecture material you can find online, whether on YouTube, or iTunes University, or any number of dedicated websites. Those lectures also have ratings, so it is already possible for a student to get to the best and most popular lectures on any subject, be it calculus or Mandarin or the medieval history of Europe.
  • As the university dissolves in the universal solvent of the network, the capacity to use the network for education increases geometrically; education will be available everywhere the network reaches. It already reaches half of humanity; in a few years it will cover three-quarters of the population of the planet. Certainly by 2060 network access will be thought of as a human right, much like food and clean water.
  • Educators will continue to collaborate, but without much of the physical infrastructure we currently associate with educational institutions. Classrooms will self-organize and disperse organically, driven by need, proximity, or interest, and the best instructors will find themselves constantly in demand. Life-long learning will no longer be a catch-phrase, but a reality for the billions of individuals all focusing on improving their effectiveness within an ever-more-competitive global market for talent.
  •  
    Mark Pesce: Digital Citizenship and the future of Education.
Tom Daccord

Top Online High Schools on Twitter - Find Online High Schools on Twitter - 1 views

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    Several online high schools now participate in Twitter, the popular microblogging platform. By "following" these virtual high schools on Twitter, you can receive the latest updates about their programs and accomplishments. Below you'll find links to some of the top online high schools on Twitter. If you know of any other online schools that should be included in this list, email me at: distancelearn.guide@about.com.
Julie Shy

Global Classroom Project - 0 views

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    The Global Classroom was born in the minds of Deb Frazier's (@Deb_Frazier) young students in March 2011: "Our first grade class [in Ohio, USA] was thinking about the ways people around the world meet their needs. We began to do some research, diving into books about various cultures. While sharing new learning about India, Puju, whose family is from India, commented "My dad says that's not really true." From there we knew we needed more than books ... We needed to talk with people in other cultures to really discover the many ways in which they meet their needs." Global Classroom 2012-13 is an exciting opportunity for you to make a positive difference - in your classroom, community, and around the world. We hope you will join us on this journey, and help us realise the full potential of this amazing learning community. We will officially launch in late October 2012, and run through to the end of the Northem Hemisphere school year in June 2013. Over that time, we will be hosting a wide range of global projects, and providing opportunities for new and experienced teachers alike to explore new ways to learn, share, connect, and collaborate worldwide. Working together, we can make this dream a reality.
Roland Gesthuizen

http://www2.futurelab.org.uk/resources/documents/handbooks/digital_literacy.pdf - 0 views

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    This handbook is aimed at educational practitioners and school leaders in both primary and secondary schools who are interested in creative and critical uses of technology in the classroom ...  This handbook aims to introduce educational practitioners to the concepts and contexts of digital literacy and to support them in developing their own practice aimed at fostering the components of digital literacy in classroom subject teaching and in real school settings.
Roland Gesthuizen

Schools set up for the Google generation | Stuff.co.nz - 0 views

  • "I think a teacher tries to organise their classroom so they scaffold the learning of students. When they can't see what's going on, it can be really challenging."
  • "There are advantages and disadvantages to everything. What we have to do is set up an education environment so that the innovations actually become helpful to education. It is quite possible that if we do nothing, they will get in the way."
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    In the classrooms of the future, students will use their phone as a computer and instead of raising their hand to ask a question, they'll simply send the teacher a tweet. Imogen Neale reports. Some schools demand students leave their digital devices at home, but Albany Senior High School, north of Auckland, has taken the opposite approach, BYOD. "That means, Bring Your Own Device," explains deputy principal Mark Osborne.
Tero Toivanen

Commons Sense | What my student think about the flipped classroom - 49 views

  • So the key points I want to make about the flipped classroom that I have learnt from my wonderful class: Students do learn how to manage themselves to make this method effective Making your own video’s really matters with respect to teacher contact and correct syllabus language/ style The right online question bank is a great tool for student learning (plus reduces stress on all) And finally …my year 12 IB Physics flipped classroom really works and so could anyone else’s.
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    Could you tell us more about your online question bank? How do you have it setup, tool? Do you use an online quiz that provides more than one time to get the correct answer, hints to answers, and scores to students so they will know performance? What types of activities do you provide partnered with videos they watch? Thanks for your feedback.
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    Thank you for your comment and really good questions. I'm special education teacher and I'm teaching severely autistic pupils. Comment in my Diigo post is directly from the blog, so I think it would be better to make the question in the blog. There are already really good comments in there. I think flipped classroom is fantastic idea and I'm trying to find teachers in my school, who could try it. In my classroom it's not possible so far.
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