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su11armstrong

Remind101 | Free and Safe Text Messaging for Teachers - 1 views

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    An option for reminding students about homework or sending messages while maintaining a level of privacy.
garth nichols

great technology requires an understanding of the humans who use it - 0 views

  • Clearly, MIT BLOSSOMS (the name stands for Blended Learning Open Source Science Or Math Studies) isn’t gaining fans by virtue of its whiz-bang technology. Rather, it exerts its appeal through an unassuming but remarkably sophisticated understanding of what it is that students and teachers actually need. It’s an understanding that is directly at odds with the assumptions of most of the edtech universe.
  • For example: BLOSSOMS is not “student-centered.” In its Twitter profile, the program is described as “teacher-centric”—heresy at a moment when teachers are supposed to be the “guide on the side,” not the “sage on the stage.” The attention of students engaged in a BLOSSOMS lesson, it’s expected, will be directed at the “guest teacher” on the video or at the classroom teacher leading the interactive session.
  • All this is blasphemy in view of the hardening orthodoxy of the edtech establishment. And all this is perfectly aligned with what research in psychology and cognitive science tells us about how students learn. We know that students do not make optimal choices when directing their own learning; especially when they’re new to a subject, they need guidance from an experienced teacher. We know that students do not learn deeply or lastingly when they have a world of distractions at their fingertips. And we know that students learn best not as isolated units but as part of a socially connected group. Modest as it is from a technological perspective, MIT BLOSSOMS is ideally designed for learning—a reminder that more and better technology does not always lead to more and better education.
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  • The creators of BLOSSOMS also candidly acknowledge that many teachers are threatened by the technology moving into their classrooms—and that they have reason to feel that way. Champions of educational technology often predict (with barely disguised glee) that computers will soon replace teachers, and school districts are already looking to edtech as a way to reduce teaching costs. The message to teachers from the advocates of technology is often heard as: Move aside, or get left behind.
  • Should the creators of educational technology care so much about the tender feelings of teachers, especially those inclined to stand in the way of technological progress? Yes—because it’s teachers who determine how well and how often technology is used.
  • Edtech proponents who think that technology can “disrupt” or “transform” education on its own would do well to take a lesson from the creators of BLOSSOM, who call their program’s blend of computers and people a “teaching duet.” Their enthusiasm for the possibilities of technology is matched by an awareness of the limits of human nature. 
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    A very important message to all who are trying to integrate Tech into their school...
Urvi Shah

Text Message (SMS) Polls and Voting, Audience Response System | Poll Everywhere - 0 views

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    Instant audience feedback
Myriam Lafrance

Using Emojis to Teach Critical Reading Skills | Edutopia - 6 views

    • Myriam Lafrance
       
      Awesome idea for FSL!
  • A student might analyze how the two eyes emoji can indicate confusion about the message (“Wait, what are you saying?”), an impatience with a slow response (“Hurry up and reply!”), or a signal that the information is something they haven’t heard before.
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    Great idea for any language teacher or learner!
garth nichols

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

  • 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.
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    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

Multitasking while studying: Divided attention and technological gadgets impair learnin... - 2 views

  • For a quarter of an hour, the investigators from the lab of Larry Rosen, a psychology professor at California State University–Dominguez Hills, marked down once a minute what the students were doing as they studied. A checklist on the form included: reading a book, writing on paper, typing on the computer—and also using email, looking at Facebook, engaging in instant messaging, texting, talking on the phone, watching television, listening to music, surfing the Web. Sitting unobtrusively at the back of the room, the observers counted the number of windows open on the students’ screens and noted whether the students were wearing earbuds.
  • tudents’ “on-task behavior” started declining around the two-minute mark as they began responding to arriving texts or checking their Facebook feeds. By the time the 15 minutes were up, they had spent only about 65 percent of the observation period actually doing their schoolwork.
  • The media multitasking habit starts early. In “Generation M2: Media in the Lives of 8- to 18-Year-Olds,” a survey conducted by the Kaiser Family Foundation and published in 2010, almost a third of those surveyed said that when they were doing homework, “most of the time” they were also watching TV, texting, listening to music, or using some other medium. The lead author of the study was Victoria Rideout, then a vice president at Kaiser and now an independent research and policy consultant. Although the study looked at all aspects of kids’ media use, Rideout told me she was particularly troubled by its findings regarding media multitasking while doing schoolwork.
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  • During the first meeting of his courses, Rosen makes a practice of calling on a student who is busy with his phone. “I ask him, ‘What was on the slide I just showed to the class?’ The student always pulls a blank,” Rosen reports. “Young people have a wildly inflated idea of how many things they can attend to at once, and this demonstration helps drive the point home: If you’re paying attention to your phone, you’re not paying attention to what’s going on in class.” Other professors have taken a more surreptitious approach, installing electronic spyware or planting human observers to record whether students are taking notes on their laptops or using them for other, unauthorized purposes.
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    Why digital multitasking is inhibiting our learning
Justin Medved

Learning Theories - 2 views

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    To help you learn and refresh your memory about some of the leading learning theories in educational literature, we are sharing with you this excellent resource from Instructional Design that features over 50 learning theories. Each theory comes with a short definition, a section on how it is applied, few examples illustrating the use of the theory, and a final section with resources and references to learn more about the theory in question.
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    Instructionaldesign.org is a gold mine! I appreciate the consistent comparative layout for each theory, and that I can look directly to the Principles. Beyond the learning theories, have a look at the "Bad Error Message" section if you fancy a wee laugh. http://www.instructionaldesign.org/bad_error_messages.html
jenniferweening

Developing a Growth Mindset in Teachers and Staff | Edutopia - 0 views

    • jenniferweening
       
      - how many of us need to be reminded of this as well?!  - we say that it's important for the kids to fail and try again, but how often are we willing to do the same in our teaching? 
  • Fixed mindset people dread failure, feeling that it reflects badly upon themselves as individuals, while growth mindset people instead embrace failure as an opportunity to learn and improve their abilities.
  • We have to really send the right messages, that taking on a challenging task is what I admire.
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    • jenniferweening
       
      Besides just doing away with grades, how can we actually convince students that failure is part of the process? As much as we tell them that it's about challenging themselves, when it all boils down to it, at the end of the grading period we still have to put a number on their report card. So hard to reconcile!
  • Parents around the dinner table and teachers in the classroom should ask, ‘Who had a fabulous struggle today?
  • how to model a growth mindset amongst students and one of her key principles is encouraging teachers to see themselves as learners, and, just like students are all capable of learning and improving, so too are teachers
  • A second principle requires that schools provide opportunities for teachers to try new things and make mistakes.
  • what will teachers and the school learn as part of the process, rather than whether the new idea is going to be a success or a failure.
  • inked to it, and equally vital, is providing a chance for teachers to reflect upon their new ideas and consider what they learned from the process. Ideally, this reflection should focus less on whether the idea was a success or a failure, but rather on what the teacher learnt from the process.
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