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Sheri Edwards

Actually, practice doesn't always make perfect - new study - The Washington Post - 0 views

www.washingtonpost.com/...-always-make-perfect-new-study

practice perfect study washington post strauss alfie_kohn engagement motivation collaborating

shared by Sheri Edwards on 06 Aug 14 - No Cached
  • They found that how interested the students were in the passage was thirty times more important than how “readable” the passage was.
  • Maybe the right question to ask is: Why do some people decide to practice a lot in the first place? Could it be because their first efforts proved mostly successful?   (That’s a useful reminder to avoid romanticizing the benefits of failure.) Or, again, do they keep at it because they get a kick out of what they’re doing? If that’s true, then practice, at least to some extent, may be just a marker for motivation. Of course, natural ability probably plays a role in fostering both interest and success, and those two variables also affect each other.
  • By contrast, when the hours were logged, and the estimates presumably more reliable, the impact of practice was much diminished. How much? It accounted for a scant 5 percent of the variance in performance. The better the study, in other words, the less of a difference practice made.[1]
  • ...1 more annotation...
  • What’s true of time on task, then, is true of practice — which isn’t surprising given how closely the two concepts are related.
  • Sheri Edwards on 06 Aug 14
     
    "The question now is what else matters." And there are many possible answers. One is how early in life you were introduced to the activity - which, as the researchers explain, appears to have effects that go beyond how many years of practice you booked. Others include how open you are to collaborating and learning from others, and how much you enjoy the activity."
Sheri Edwards

It's Not What We Teach - 0 views

www.alfiekohn.org/...inwwt.htm

learning teaching alfiekohn alfie_kohn

shared by Sheri Edwards on 03 Nov 13 - Cached
  • The fact is that real learning often can’t be quantified, and a corporate-style preoccupation with “data” turns schooling into something shallow and lifeless.  Ideally, attention to learning signifies an effort to capture how each student makes sense of the world so we can meet them where they are.  “Teaching,” as Deborah Meier reminded us, “is mostly listening.”  (It’s the learners, she added, who should be doing most of the “telling,” based on how they grapple with an engaging curriculum.)  Imagine how American classrooms would be turned inside out if we ever really put that wisdom into action.
  • The fact is that real learning often can’t be quantified, and a corporate-style preoccupation with “data” turns schooling into something shallow and lifeless.  Ideally, attention to learning signifies an effort to capture how each student makes sense of the world so we can meet them where they are.  “Teaching,” as Deborah Meier reminded us, “is mostly listening.”  (It’s the learners, she added, who should be doing most of the “telling,” based on how they grapple with an engaging curriculum.)  Imagine how American classrooms would be turned inside out if we ever really put that wisdom into action.
  • Sheri Edwards on 03 Nov 13
     
    The fact is that real learning often can't be quantified, and a corporate-style preoccupation with "data" turns schooling into something shallow and lifeless.  Ideally, attention to learning signifies an effort to capture how each student makes sense of the world so we can meet them where they are.  "Teaching," as Deborah Meier reminded us, "is mostly listening."  (It's the learners, she added, who should be doing most of the "telling," based on how they grapple with an engaging curriculum.)  Imagine how American classrooms would be turned inside out if we ever really put that wisdom into action.
Sheri Edwards

Five Special Strategies for Teaching Tweens | MiddleWeb - 0 views

www.middleweb.com/...-strategies-for-tween-teachers

strategies wormelli tweens midleved

shared by Sheri Edwards on 27 Dec 13 - No Cached
  • Strategy 1: Teach to Developmental Needs
  • competence and achievement; opportunities for self-definition; creative expression; physical activity; positive social interactions with adults and peers; structure and clear limits; and meaningful participation in family, school, and community.
  • physical movement. It’s not enough for tweens to move between classes every 50 minutes (or every 80 minutes on a block schedule)
  • ...40 more annotations...
  • flexible grouping
  • choices
  • identify consequences
  • own learning styles.
  • in positions of responsibility
  • recognition for doing so
  • clear rules and enforce them calmly
  • learn to function as members of a civilized society
  • Strategy 2: Treat Academic Struggle as Strength
  • show students that not everyone starts at the same point along the learning continuum or learns in the same way.
  • make academic struggle virtuous.
  • model asking difficult questions to which we don’t know the answers, and we publicly demonstrate our journey to answer those questions.
  • affirm positive risk taking
  • explore their undeveloped skills without fear of grade repercussions
  • we frequently help students see the growth they’ve made over time.
  • Strategy 3: Provide Multiple Pathways to Standards
  • We don’t limit students’ exposure to sophisticated thinking because they haven’t yet mastered the basics
  • invite individual students to acquire, process, and demonstrate knowledge in ways different from the majority of the class if that’s what they need to become proficient.
  • can teach a global lesson on a sophisticated concept for 15 minutes, and then allow students to process the information in groups tiered for different levels of readiness.
  • present an anchor activity for the whole class to do while we pull out subgroups for minilessons on basic or advanced material.
  • we should never let the test format get in the way of a student’s ability to reveal what he or she knows and is able to do
  • In differentiated classes, grading focuses on clear and consistent evidence of mastery, not on the medium through which the student demonstrates that mastery.
  • may give students five different choices for showing what they know
  • grade all the projects using a common scoring rubric that contains the universal standards for which we’re holding students accountable
  • Of course, if the test format is the assessment, we don’t allow students to opt for something else. For example, when we ask students to write a well-crafted persuasive essay, they can’t instead choose to write a persuasive dialogue or create a poster. Even then, however, we can differentiate the pace of instruction and be flexible about the time required for student mastery.
  • llow tweens to redo work and assessments until they master the content, and we give them full credit for doing so
  • Our job is to teach students the material, not to document how they’ve failed.
  • Strategy 4: Give Formative Feedback
  • provide frequent formative feedback
  • Tween learning tends to be more multilayered and episodic than linear;
  • helping them compare what they did with what they were supposed to have done
  • provide that feedback promptly.
  • short assignments
  • When we formally assess student writing, we focus on just one or two areas so that students can assimilate our feedback.
  • exit card
  • 3-2-1 exit card format can yield rich information (Wormeli, 2005)
  • Strategy 5: Dare to Be Unconventional
  • transcend convention
  • substance and novelty
  • Shake me out of my self-absorption” age, being unconventional is key.
Sheri Edwards

How a Bigger Purpose Can Motivate Students to Learn | MindShift - 1 views

blogs.kqed.org/...can-motivate-students-to-learn

bigger purpose students motivation

shared by Sheri Edwards on 19 Aug 14 - No Cached
  • “However, the reality is that schoolwork is often neither interesting nor meaningful,” he said — at least, not in a way that students immediately get.
  • a mindset of “self-transcendent” purposeful learning
  • They’re learning how to learn, how to practice self-discipline and motivate themselves through frustrating roadblocks, and thus are preparing for adulthood.
  • ...1 more annotation...
  • But having that bigger sense of purpose, that personal mission of making a positive difference in the broader world, might help students to find meaning in difficult or mundane schoolwork.
  • Sheri Edwards on 19 Aug 14
     
    How a Bigger Purpose Can Motivate Students to Learn - Potential of a Purposeful Mindset http://t.co/wD1xRdOF7z via @MindShiftKQED #edchat
Sheri Edwards

e-writing - Problem and Solution Paragraph - 0 views

e-writing.wikispaces.com/Problem+and+Solution+Paragraph

problem solution

shared by Sheri Edwards on 11 Dec 13 - No Cached
  • Sheri Edwards on 11 Dec 13
     
    Weightlessness in Space Astronauts face many problems in space caused by weightlessness. One of these problems is floating around the cabin. To solve this problem, astronauts wear wear shoes that are coated with a special adhesive. This adhesive sticks to the floor of the cabin. Serving food is another problem. It won't stay put on the table! Experts solved this problem by putting food and drinks in pouches and tubes. It only needs to be mixed with water. Weightlessness also causes problems when an astronaut tries to work. The simple task of turning a wrench or a doorknob can be difficult. Since there is no gravity to keep him down, when he exerts a force in one direction, the opposite force may flip him over completely. To solve this problem, he must be very careful about how much force he uses to do these simple tasks. Here on earth, life is much simpler, thanks to gravity.
Sheri Edwards

#TackkEdu Tackkboard - Tackk Essay - 0 views

tackk.com/TackkEdu

writing tackk blend learning how to

shared by Sheri Edwards on 05 Aug 14 - No Cached
  • Sheri Edwards on 05 Aug 14
     
    how to write an essay tackk
  • Sheri Edwards on 05 Aug 14
     
    How to use tackk in the classroom
Sheri Edwards

The Origins of Good Ideas - WSJ.com - 0 views

online.wsj.com/...3989304575503730101860838.html

innovation ideas creativity technology tinkering thinking wsj design

shared by Sheri Edwards on 09 Jul 13 - No Cached
  • the way that good ideas usually come into the world. They are, inevitably, constrained by the parts and skills that surround them.
  • the adjacent possible defines all those molecular reactions that were directly achievable in the primordial soup. Sunflowers and mosquitoes and brains exist outside that circle of possibility. The adjacent possible is a kind of shadow future, hovering on the edges of the present state of things, a map of all the ways in which the present can reinvent itself.
  • The strange and beautiful truth about the adjacent possible is that its boundaries grow as you explore them
  • ...13 more annotations...
  • Johannes Gutenberg, for instance, took the older technology of the screw press, designed originally for making wine, and reconfigured it with metal type to invent the printing press.
  • The premise that innovation prospers when ideas can serendipitously connect and recombine with other ideas may seem logical enough, but the strange fact is that a great deal of the past two centuries of legal and folk wisdom about innovation has pursued the exact opposite argument, building walls between ideas.
  • intellectual property, trade secrets, proprietary technology, top-secret R&D labs.
  • they reduce the overall network of minds that can potentially engage with a problem, and they reduce the unplanned collisions between ideas originating in different fields.
  • Modeled on the success of services like Twitter and Flickr, new Web startups now routinely make their software accessible to programmers who are not on their payroll, allowing these outsiders to expand on and remix the core product in surprising new ways.
  • Nike announced a new Web-based marketplace it calls the GreenXchange, where it has publicly released more than 400 of its patents that involve environmentally friendly materials or technologies. The marketplace is a kind of hybrid of commercial self-interest and civic good. This makes it possible for outside firms to improve on those innovations, creating new value that Nike might ultimately be able to put to use itself in its own products.
  • Nike is widening the network of minds who are actively thinking about how to make its ideas more useful, without adding any more employees
  • might well turn out to be advantageous to industries or markets
  • Apollo 13 mission
  • the mission control engineers realize they need to create an improvised carbon dioxide filter, or the astronauts will poison the lunar module atmosphere with their own exhalations before they return to Earth.
  • "We gotta find a way to make this fit into a hole for this," he says, and then points to the spare parts on the table, "using nothing but that."
  • the building blocks that create—and limit—the space of possibility for a specific problem
  • The trick is to get more parts on the table.
Sheri Edwards

EmTech Preview: Another Way to Think about Learning | MIT Technology Review - 0 views

www.technologyreview.com/...er-way-to-think-about-learning

learning education elearning OLPC edtech MIT experiment Ethiopia

shared by Sheri Edwards on 03 Mar 13 - No Cached
  • What you really want to measure is curiosity, imagination, passion, creativity, and the ability to see things from multiple points of view.
  • I believe that we get into trouble when knowing becomes a surrogate for learning. We know that a vast recall of facts about something is in no way a measure of understanding them.
  • The gods must be crazy
  • ...6 more annotations...
  • What have we learned? We learned that kids learn a great deal by themselves.
  • can children learn how to read on their own?
  • To answer this question, we have delivered fully loaded tablets to two villages in Ethiopia, one per child, with no instruction or instructional material whatsoever. The tablets come with a solar panel, because there is no electricity in these villages. They contain modestly curated games, books, cartoons, movies—just to see what the kids will play with and whether they can figure out how to use them. We then monitor each tablet remotely, in this case by swapping SIM cards weekly (through a process affectionately known as sneakernet
  • If kids in Ethiopia learn to read without school, what does that say about kids in New York City who do not learn even with school?
  • children can learn a great deal by themselves. More than we give them credit for. Curiosity is natural, and all kids have it unless it is whipped out of them, often by school. Making things, discovering things, and sharing things are keys.
  • Having massive libraries of explicative material like modern-day encyclopedias or textbooks is fine. But such access may be much less significant than building a world in which ideas are shaped, discovered, and reinvented in the name of learning by doing and discovery.
Sheri Edwards

Teachable Moment - - 0 views

www.teachablemoment.org/...criticalthinking.html

critical thinking

shared by Sheri Edwards on 21 Jul 14 - Cached
  • Sheri Edwards on 21 Jul 14
     
    What follows is an approach to teaching critical thinking that includes a "methodological belief" process (the believing game) and a "methodological doubt" process (the doubting game). An excerpt from "Civil Disobedience" will be the take-off point for an outline of how the two games might be used with students as they study any controversial issue. Starred items in the description of the doubting game refer to suggested lesson plans that follow the conclusion of the game. Teachers may find one or more of them useful when a close examination of some aspect of the question process seems desirable.
  • Sheri Edwards on 21 Jul 14
     
    What follows is an approach to teaching critical thinking that includes a "methodological belief" process (the believing game) and a "methodological doubt" process (the doubting game). An excerpt from "Civil Disobedience" will be the take-off point for an outline of how the two games might be used with students as they study any controversial issue. Starred items in the description of the doubting game refer to suggested lesson plans that follow the conclusion of the game. Teachers may find one or more of them useful when a close examination of some aspect of the question process seems desirable.
Sheri Edwards

RT : Learn how Google Hangouts are being used by E - 0 views

movies.teachercast.net/dents-and-collaborate-globally

eduvid elearning tweet_favs google_hangouts

shared by Sheri Edwards on 17 Nov 13 - No Cached
  • Sheri Edwards on 17 Nov 13
     
    RT @TeacherCast: Learn how Google Hangouts are being used by Educators to Engage Students and... http://t.co/h5fpVTsF3Y #eduvid #elearning
Sheri Edwards

Building School-Based Student Digital Book Clubs | MiddleWeb - 0 views

www.middleweb.com/...ding-student-digital-book-club

book clubs student building

shared by Sheri Edwards on 27 Jun 14 - No Cached
  • So instead of focusing on skill development alone, we considered engagement.
  • real readers find pockets of time during the day in which to squeeze some reading, known in her classes as “reading emergencies.” Highly portable digital devices make it much easier to exploit these pockets of time.
  • responses to their reading on Kidblog.
  • ...8 more annotations...
  • Two other elements for engagement, purpose and audience, proved to be the difference makers. When learners know that they will receive feedback when posting their thoughts and questions about what they’re reading, they see how these digital forums can serve them compared to just chatting about the mundane.
  • We stopped referring to this offering as an “intervention.” It was a book club.
  • having a diversity of abilities and interests paved the way toward a more authentic community of readers.
  • readers theater performance,
  • But we don’t plan to quantify the results. Instead we’ll ask questions like: Do they read without the need of a log? Have they ever saved up their allowance so they could get that special title on its release date? Has a whole afternoon passed by because they were so immersed in a book?
  • All learning is social.
  • . Bridging these two worlds through social media such as Google+, Twitter, and Edmodo gives us that authentic experience of what read readers do.
  • teach our students to be critical thinkers of what we read and investigate multiple perspectives before we can say we “learned” something.
Sheri Edwards

Edmodo - 0 views

support.edmodo.com/home

edmodo google apps

shared by Sheri Edwards on 17 Sep 13 - No Cached
  • Sheri Edwards on 17 Sep 13
     
    how to connect to google drive in edmodo
Sheri Edwards

Literature -- Analyzing Theme - 0 views

www.learner.org/...theme1.html

shared by Sheri Edwards on 16 Oct 13 - Cached
  • Sheri Edwards on 16 Oct 13
     
    "Theme What exactly is this elusive thing called theme? The theme of a fable is its moral. The theme of a parable is its teaching. The theme of a piece of fiction is its view about life and how people behave. In fiction, the theme is not intended to teach or preach. In fact, it is not presented directly at all. You extract it from the characters, action, and setting that make up the story. In other words, you must figure out the theme yourself. The writer's task is to communicate on a common ground with the reader. Although the particulars of your experience may be different from the details of the story, the general underlying truths behind the story may be just the connection that both you and the writer are seeking. "
Sheri Edwards

Flubaroo Overview - Welcome to Flubaroo - 0 views

www.flubaroo.com/flubaroo-user-guide

googledocs grading assessment flubaroo

shared by Sheri Edwards on 02 Nov 13 - No Cached
  • Sheri Edwards on 02 Nov 13
     
    flubaroo how to
Sheri Edwards

10 Things Every Teacher Should Know How To Do With Google Docs - Edudemic - 0 views

www.edudemic.com/every-teacher-know-google-docs

edtech tools tweet_favs google google docs teacher how to to do docs

shared by Sheri Edwards on 23 Jul 14 - No Cached
  • Sheri Edwards on 23 Jul 14
     
    RT @MindShiftKQED: Good tips on the most useful features of Google docs for teachers http://t.co/LWA8QQsCUF #edtech #tools via @edudemic
Sheri Edwards

Connectedness, or lack of, in Education (School) « User Generated Education - 0 views

usergeneratededucation.wordpress.com/...or-lack-of-in-education-school

connected learning etmooc midleved

shared by Sheri Edwards on 22 Jan 13 - No Cached
rainecb

A Great Poster on How to Use Blogs as A Teacher ~ Educational Technology and Mobile Lea... - 0 views

www.educatorstechnology.com/...er-on-how-to-use-blogs-as.html

poster blogs mobile learning educational technology

shared by rainecb on 03 Mar 13 - No Cached
  • rainecb on 03 Mar 13
     
    types of educational blogs
Sheri Edwards

Digital Storytelling Pop-Up Video - 0 views

rhondajessen.com/?p=1736

digital storytelling storytelling video etmooc midlevt

shared by Sheri Edwards on 10 Feb 13 - No Cached
  • Sheri Edwards on 10 Feb 13
     
    The rest of the story... a brief how to with links
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