The key to infusing technology for deep learning is professional development for teachers. At our school, each teacher wrote his or her own professional development plan. Then we changed the job description of the technology teacher to include meeting with each teacher to refine and review these plans. Instead of teaching computers to the students, the new technology integration coach—a new title to reflect new duties–was now available to partner with the teacher in the classroom. As teachers became more comfortable, the coaching sessions centered on how to extend learning.
At the same time, our administrative team began using e-communication folders for parent communication, e-portfolios for teachers, and Moodle for virtual classroom environments. Teachers experienced rich, efficient collaboration and communication through technology. This resulted in more effective face-to face communication.
Three things are basic to preparing students to be deeper learners: (1) access to quality curriculums, teaching, and learning, (2) robust information resources, technology tools, devices, and infrastructures, and (3) a student-centered learning environment that promotes critical thinking and problem solving.
One of a leader's most important roles is to be a model for teachers–who then become models for students. Modeling digital learning in professional learning communities, faculty meetings, parent events, and everyday tasks helps adult learners in the school challenge themselves to authentically learn how to use technology.
VideoNotes is a neat new tool for taking notes while watching videos. VideoNotes allows you to load any YouTube video on the left side of your screen and on the right side of the screen VideoNotes gives you a notepad to type on. VideoNotes integrates with your Google Drive account. By integrating with Google Drive VideoNotes allows you to share your notes and collaborate on your notes just as you can do with a Google Document.
Both of them will probably come around eventually, and be successful in this system, but it will be in spite of it rather than because of it. When they do emerge, having coped with an ungainly organization of mass production, they will be perfectly prepared for life in the early 20th century
A Great investigation and discussion on the future of learning from TVOs "The Agenda". You'll want to listen to this if you are interested in where schools are planning to go to address the shift in education.
This is a great link to solve a common Youtube issue as a teacher...
Youtube made friendly! It allows you to hyperlink to a precise time in a YouTube video...awesome!
The authors of this study conclude that teacher bias regarding behavior, rather than academic perfor
mance, penalizes boys as early as kindergarten. On average, boys receive lower behavioral assessment scores from teachers, and those scores affect teachers' overall perceptions of boys' intelligence and achievement.
The most effective lessons included more than one of these elements:
Lessons that result in an end product--a booklet, a catapult, a poem, or a comic strip, for example.
Lessons that are structured as competitive games.
Lessons requiring motor activity.
Lessons requiring boys to assume responsibility for the learning of others.
Lessons that require boys to address open questions or unsolved problems.
Lessons that require a combination of competition and teamwork.
Lessons that focus on independent, personal discovery and realization.
Lessons that introduce drama in the form of novelty or surprise.
Split the class into groups of four and spread them around the room. Each team will need paper and pencils. At the front of the room, place copies of a document including all of the material that has been taught in some sort of graphical form--a spider diagram, for example. Then tell the students that one person from each group may come up to the front of the classroom and look at the document for thirty seconds. When those thirty seconds are up, they return to their group and write down what they remember in an attempt to re-create the original document in its entirety. The students rotate through the process until the group has pieced the original document back together as a team, from memory. These end products may be "graded" by other teams, and as a final exercise, each student can be required to return to his desk and re-create the document on his own.
Rather than penalize the boys' relatively higher energy and competitive drive, the most effective way to teach boys is to take advantage of that high energy, curiosity, and thirst for competition. While Reichert and Hawley's research was conducted in all-boys schools, these lessons can be used in all classrooms, with both boys and girls.
A great idea for an AAL activity at the end of a project or assignment. Students can reflect on their learning as well as their teamwork/collaboration.