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lesmcbeth

Creative Workshop - 0 views

www.scribd.com/...Creative-Workshop

DesignThinking BrainstormingMethods

shared by lesmcbeth on 01 Dec 14 - No Cached
  • lesmcbeth on 01 Dec 14
     
    Need to get your creative thinking juices flowing? Check out these 80 quick and easy challenges that will sharpen your design and thinking skills. Great activities for students as well.
amacrae

The Third Teacher - 1 views

DIIGO_FILE_HOME/5qz9p/5nc2

shared by amacrae on 19 Nov 16 - No Cached
  • 2Getting Started with the Physical EnvironmentOVERALL ...It is both an art and a science to design (as opposed to decorate) a learning environment that responds to our ultimate goal as educators – to develop independent and rigorous thought. Therefore, if we want to foster discovery and reflection, dialogue and the sharing of ideas, the overall physical environment should include:•A large gathering space for whole-group work and discussions, located near whiteboards, easels and/or projector screens.•A gathering space for small-group and whole-group discussions – where students can see clearly the representations of learning that are posted on boards or screens and hear classmates as they share ideas.•Flexible and reconfigurable space for small-group collaborative work and inquiry – space must allow for groupings of various sizes, such as pairs, triads and groups of four or more.•Desks and tables configured to facilitate discussion by allowing eye contact with peers and teacher, the unencumbered flow of traffic and enough space for students to write collaboratively.•Active areas for inquiry, investigation and wonder and quiet areas for thinking and exploring technology – all areas need to be accessible to students for communicating and documenting their own learning (e.g., computers, computer software, tablets, digital cameras and video recorders, document cameras, interactive white boards).•Instructional materials organized in such a way as to provide easy selection and access for all students – materials may include computer software, educational web sites and applications, found materials, graphic organizers, newspapers and other media, resource texts, etc.FOR MATHEMATICS ...Mathematically literate students demonstrate the capacity to “formulate, employ and interpret mathematics” (OECD, 2012, p. 4); they view themselves as mathematicians, knowing that mathematics can be used to understand important issues and to solve meaningful problems, not just in school but in life. By extension, the physical environment for mathematics learning should include: •Spaces where students can use manipulatives to solve problems and record their solutions.•Board and/or wall space to display student solutions for Math Congress and Bansho – student solutions should be easily visible from the group gathering space.•Space to post co-created reference charts such as glossary terms and past and current summaries of learning that specifically support the development of the big ideas currently under study.•Instructional materials organized in such a way as to provide easy selection and access for all students; may include mathematics manipulatives, calculators and other mathematical tools, mathematical texts, hand-held technology.FOR LITERACY ... Today’s literate learners experience “a constant stream of ideas and information” – they need strategies for interpretation and making sense and lots of practice in identifying meaning, bias and perspective (Ontario Ministry of Education, 2009, 2006). By extension, the physical environment for literacy learning should include: •Spaces where students can talk, listen, read and write.A place for wonder, mystery and discovery ...“We need to think about creating classroom environments that give children the opportunity for wonder, mystery and discovery; an environment that speaks to young children’s inherent curiosity and innate yearning for exploration is a classroom where children are passionate about learning and love school.” (Heard & McDonough, 2009)
  • maintain that the key to learning in today’s world is not just the physical space we provide for students but the social space as well (
  • A large gathering space
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  • mall-
garth nichols

Change the Subject: Making the Case for Project-Based Learning | Edutopia - 0 views

www.edutopia.org/...s-larry-rosenstock-rob-riordan

project based learning staff_development learning projectbasedlearning

shared by garth nichols on 11 Apr 14 - No Cached
  • What should students learn in the 21st century? At first glance, this question divides into two: what should students know, and what should they be able to do? But there's more at issue than knowledge and skills.
  • For the innovation economy, dispositions come into play: readiness to collaborate, attention to multiple perspectives, initiative, persistence, and curiosity. While the content of any learning experience is important, the particular content is irrelevant. What really matters is how students react to it, shape it, or apply it. The purpose of learning in this century is not simply to recite inert knowledge, but, rather, to transform it.1 It is time to change the subject.
  • Expanding the "Big Four" Why not study anthropology, zoology, or environmental science? Why not integrate art with calculus, or chemistry with history? Why not pick up skills and understandings in all of these areas by uncovering and addressing real problems and sharing findings with authentic audiences? Why not invent a useful product that uses electricity, or devise solutions to community problems, all the while engaging in systematic observation, collaborative design, and public exhibitions of learning?
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  • What might students do in such schools, in the absence of prescribed subjects? They might work together in diverse teams to build robots, roller coasters, gardens, and human-powered submarines. They might write and publish a guide to the fauna and history of a nearby estuary, or an economics text illustrated with original woodcuts, or a children's astronomy book. They might produce original films, plays, and spoken word events on adolescent issues, Japanese internment, cross-border experiences, and a host of other topics. They might mount a crime scene exhibition linking art history and DNA analysis, or develop a museum exhibit of World War I as seen from various perspectives. They might celebrate returning warriors, emulating the bard in Beowulf, by interviewing local veterans and writing poems honoring their experiences. The possibilities are endless.
  • Changing the subject, then, means deriving the curriculum from the lived experience of the student. In this view, rather than a collection of fixed texts, the curriculum is more like a flow of events, accessible through tools that help students identify and extract rich academic content from the world: guidelines and templates for project development, along with activities and routines for observation and analysis, reflection, dialogue, critique, and negotiation.
garth nichols

Do You have the Personality To Be an Inquiry-Based Teacher? | MindShift - 3 views

blogs.kqed.org/...to-be-an-inquiry-based-teacher

inquiry 21st Century Learning PBL

shared by garth nichols on 30 Apr 14 - No Cached
  • Are you optimistic? Viewing the world as damaged or the future as bleak shuts down the brain by transmitting fear. Maintaining an optimistic attitude is an expression of love, inspiring curiosity and hope, and fostering emotional and physical health. Optimism is essential to teaching: Without hope, the reason to learn disappears. Are you open? The world is being refreshed and powered by divergent thinking. Outcomes are unclear, even dangerous. But faith in the flexible thinking of the human mind can support young people as they sort out their new world and have the freedom to discover solutions not yet visible. An open attitude activates the frontal lobes, the place of flow and creativity. Are you appreciative? Deep appreciation gives permission for failure, rather than penalizing for the “wrong” answer. It honors the stops and starts of human development. It conveys the ultimate message of a communal world: We are in this together. Are you flexible? In inquiry, the journey matters as much as the destination. Constant reflection is a necessity to improving thinking and doing. Metacognition encourages wisdom, the ultimate goal of any worthy education system. Flexibility tells the brain and heart to keep working, keep going—you’re getting there. Are you purposeful? Purpose binds teacher and student into the high-minded pursuit of solutions that matter. It is the reason that “authentic” education works and inauthentic education struggles. It tightens the connection between the learner and the teacher in ways that spur the natural creative impulse to change and improve the world.
  • garth nichols on 30 Apr 14
     
    This is an important list of attributes for 21st Century Teaching. As schools and teachers are looking to PBL, we often don't think about what is required in the social-emotional realm of teaching that will allow PBL to fly...here's some good info' on this...
garth nichols

Why I'm Asking You Not to Use Laptops - Lingua Franca - Blogs - The Chronicle of Higher... - 3 views

chronicle.com/...-asking-you-not-to-use-laptops

Laptops EdTech

shared by garth nichols on 05 Jan 15 - No Cached
  • On the first day of class, students and I spend the first 30-40 minutes learning something new about how language works (in order to set the tone for the class), and then we go over the syllabus. When we get to the laptop policy, I pause and say, “Let me tell you why I ask you generally not to use laptops in class.” And here’s the gist of what I say after that:
  • There’s also the issue of the classroom environment. I like to foster a sense of conversation here, even in a class of 100 students. If you are on a laptop, I and your peers are often looking at the back of your computer screen and the top of your head, rather than all of us making eye contact with each other. Learning happens best in a classroom when everyone is actively engaged with one another in the exchange of information. This can mean looking up from your notes to listen and to talk with others, which means you may need to make strategic decisions about what to write down. Note-taking is designed to support the learning and retention of material we talk about in class; note-taking itself is not learning. And speaking of what you choose to write down …
  • Now I know that one could argue that it is your choice about whether you want to use this hour and 20 minutes to engage actively with the material at hand, or whether you would like to multitask. You’re not bothering anyone (one could argue) as you quietly do your email or check Facebook. Here’s the problem with that theory: From what we can tell, you are actually damaging the learning environment for others, even if you’re being quiet about it. A study published in 2013 found that not only did the multitasking student in a classroom do worse on a postclass test on the material, so did the peers who could see the computer. In other words, the off-task laptop use distracted not just the laptop user but also the group of students behind the laptop user. (And I get it, believe me. I was once in a lecture where the woman in front of me was shoe shopping, and I found myself thinking at one point, “No, not the pink ones!” I don’t remember all that much else about the lecture.)
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  • In addition, I can find your multitasking on a laptop a bit distracting as the instructor because sometimes you are not typing at the right times; I am not saying anything noteworthy and yet you are engrossed in typing, which suggests that you are doing something other than being fully engaged in our class. And that distracts my attention.
  • First, if you have your laptop open, it is almost impossible not to check email or briefly surf the Internet, even if you don’t mean to or have told yourself that you won’t. I have the same impulse if I have my laptop open in a meeting. The problem is that studies indicate that this kind of multitasking impairs learning; once we are on email/the web, we are no longer paying very good attention to what is happening in class. (And there is no evidence I know of that “practice” at doing this kind of multitasking is going to make you better at it!)
  • A study that came out in June—and which got a lot of buzz in the mainstream press—suggests that taking notes by hand rather than typing them on a laptop improves comprehension of the material. While students taking notes on a laptop (and only taking notes—they were not allowed to multitask) wrote down more of the material covered in class, they were often typing what the instructor said verbatim, which seems to have led to less processing of the material. The students taking notes by hand had to do more synthesizing and condensing as they wrote because they could not get everything down. As a result, they learned the material better.* I think there is also something to the ease with which one can create visual connections on a handwritten page through arrows, flow charts, etc.
  • I figure it is also good for all of us to break addictive patterns with email, texting, Facebook, etc. When you step back, it seems a bit silly that we can’t go for 80 minutes without checking our phones or other devices. Really, for most of us, what are the odds of an emergency that can’t wait an hour? We have developed the habit of checking, and you can see this class as a chance to create or reinforce a habit of not checking too.
  • Of course, if you need or strongly prefer a laptop for taking notes or accessing readings in class for any reason, please come talk with me, and I am happy to make that work. I’ll just ask you to commit to using the laptop only for class-related work.
  • garth nichols on 05 Jan 15
     
    Why we need a balanced approach to the use of computers in the classroom. This is a great partner-piece to Clay Shirky's from 2014...
garth nichols

Beyond teacher egocentrism: design thinking | Granted, and... - 2 views

grantwiggins.wordpress.com/...er-egocentrism-design-thinking

Design education curriculum

shared by garth nichols on 27 Sep 13 - No Cached
  • As teachers we understandably believe that it is the ‘teaching’ that causes learning. But this is too egocentric a formulation. As I said in my previous post, the learner’s attempts to learn causes all learning.
  • From this viewpoint, the teacher is merely one resource for learning, no different from a book, a peer, an experience, or an experimental result.
  • It is the learner who decides to try to learn (or not) from what happens.
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  • We think like a designer, not like a teacher, when we say: the teacher is just one element in the design. The choice of task, pedagogy, groupings, flow of work, resources, furniture, light, noise level, role of people and text – all of these design elements are arguably as important as the teacher.
  • What are those conditions, in a nutshell? I would highlight the following: Thought-provoking intellectual challenges (inquiries, questions, problems) The challenge has been designed to optimize self-sustaining and productive work by learners, related to a clear and intellectually worthy goal The learners have become reasonably competent in classroom routines that foster productive goal-focused work The challenge cannot be accomplished by a worksheet, checklist or recipe. It requires strategic use of knowledge and skill, creative problem-solving, and critical thinking; and the eliciting of multiple perspectives on how to address the challenge and gauge progress. There is an unambiguous product or performance goal (even if there is ambiguity about how to achieve the goal), supported by clear criteria and standards, thus permitting ongoing student self-assessment and self-adjustment. There is enough feedback within the challenge (and resources) that the work can be maximally self-sustaining and productive. The teacher is therefore freed up to coach for a significant amount of time, permitting personalized feedback and guidance (as well as just-in-time mini-lessons). This coaching role also permits the teacher to determine what is and isn’t working in the challenge, and thus enables the teacher to quickly change gears if the desired learning is not occurring or the process is not working.
  • In other words, it is a poor design for learning that puts all the burden of teaching and processing on the teacher. Then, the teacher can neither coach nor understand what is going on in the minds of learners. Worse, endless teaching, no matter how expert, soon becomes passive and without much meaning to learners who must wait days, sometimes weeks, to get meaningful chances to interact with the content, to try out their ideas on others, and to get the feedback they need.
  • Group-worthy tasks – Focus on central concepts or big ideas that require active meaning-making The challenge itself has ambiguity or limited scaffold and prompting so that student meaning-making and different inferences about the task and how to address it will emerge. Are best accomplished by ensuring that multiple perspectives are found tried out in addressing the task. This not only rewards creative and non-formulaic thought but undercuts the likelihood that one strong student can do all the key work. Provide multiple ways of being competent in the task work and the task process Can only be done well by a group, but are designed to foster both individual and group autonomy. (The teacher’s role as teacher and direction-giver should be minimized to near zero). Demand both individual and group accountability Have clear evaluation criteria
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