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Lisa C. Hurst

Inside the School Silicon Valley Thinks Will Save Education | WIRED - 9 views

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    "AUTHOR: ISSIE LAPOWSKY. ISSIE LAPOWSKY DATE OF PUBLICATION: 05.04.15. 05.04.15 TIME OF PUBLICATION: 7:00 AM. 7:00 AM INSIDE THE SCHOOL SILICON VALLEY THINKS WILL SAVE EDUCATION Click to Open Overlay Gallery Students in the youngest class at the Fort Mason AltSchool help their teacher, Jennifer Aguilar, compile a list of what they know and what they want to know about butterflies. CHRISTIE HEMM KLOK/WIRED SO YOU'RE A parent, thinking about sending your 7-year-old to this rogue startup of a school you heard about from your friend's neighbor's sister. It's prospective parent information day, and you make the trek to San Francisco's South of Market neighborhood. You walk up to the second floor of the school, file into a glass-walled conference room overlooking a classroom, and take a seat alongside dozens of other parents who, like you, feel that public schools-with their endless bubble-filled tests, 38-kid classrooms, and antiquated approach to learning-just aren't cutting it. At the same time, you're thinking: this school is kind of weird. On one side of the glass is a cheery little scene, with two teachers leading two different middle school lessons on opposite ends of the room. But on the other side is something altogether unusual: an airy and open office with vaulted ceilings, sunlight streaming onto low-slung couches, and rows of hoodie-wearing employees typing away on their computers while munching on free snacks from the kitchen. And while you can't quite be sure, you think that might be a robot on wheels roaming about. Then there's the guy who's standing at the front of the conference room, the school's founder. Dressed in the San Francisco standard issue t-shirt and jeans, he's unlike any school administrator you've ever met. But the more he talks about how this school uses technology to enhance and individualize education, the more you start to like what he has to say. And so, if you are truly fed up with the school stat
Peter Beens

PIPEDREAMS - Seeing with New Eyes - International Perspectives on Trust and Regulation ... - 16 views

  • This year, I was asked to attend as a Canadian Teacher Representative, along with Ontario Ministry Officer, Colette Ruduck and our Ontario Deputy Minister of Education, George Zegarac.
  • the theme of “Trust and Regulation”
  • my Canadian values of equality, diversity, safety and choice
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  • high degree of trust for teachers, administrators and district decision makers
  • Our regulations are meant to encourage equality and diversity, choice, opportunity, innovation – fundamental values in our society.
  • In contrast to many of the other countries represented, our Canadian context was unique in that the regulations (organizations, federations, policies, curriculum) imposed actually tie in Trust and Relationship building and partnerships as key factors to increase capacity building with a wide range of stakeholders.
  • We need our profession to be respected, which includes paying us well, treating us fairly, supporting us with resources, nurturing our learning and leadership opportunities
  • systems of education can achieve and can be highly ranked without the use of formalized testing
  • We need to feel safe to make mistakes because we too are learners, especially in a profession that is changing so drastically in the 21st Century
  • We need to feel trusted and with that, we want our skills, our education, our talents and our passions to be respected so we -together – can become the creators of our own pedagogies
  • these passionate and experienced leaders agreed that such tests don’t work when used to rate, or punish teachers
  • can even sometimes do more harm then good
  • such tests are not always authentic
  • First and foremost, teacher voice needs to be heard and respected
  • As principals, we need to empower our teachers and community
  • the importance of the teacher/principal relationship came up over and over and over
  • Trust – allows me to teach in my style, developing my own curriculum
  • I wonder if there is a correlation between that supportive, trusting principal and the fact that we have incredibly dynamic teachers here, at Van Leer from all over the globe
  • We too need to think different because change can start with us
  • We need to make our voices heard by be socially active
  • By sharing and reflecting our learning openly and even by sometimes being vulnerable and asking for help and challenging the status quo
  • we need to recognize that our learning environments are changing and are very different from how we were once trained and educated
  • We need to remind our leaders that we are not just teachers of academics but we teach the whole person
  • Many of us struggle, without supports – to help impoverished families, students with mental health disabilities, learning disabilities, students that speak a different language, large class sizes, violence, inequalities
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    The conference in Jerusalem, Israel that Van Leer hosts each year  is intended to encourage professional dialogue among educators, academics, representatives of the Third Sector, and policymakers from diverse areas and places in Israel and abroad.    This year, I was asked to attend as a Canadian Teacher Representative, along with Ontario Ministry Officer, Colette Ruduck and our Ontario Deputy Minister of Education, George Zegarac. With the theme of "Trust and Regulation" at the center of our discussions, it did not take long to realize that my context, as a Canadian Educator, a parent, and a student -  was one of privilege and opportunity.
Roland O'Daniel

Word Clouds; Tag Clouds. Which is the best software? « Seeing the Meaning - 87 views

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    Terry Freedman discusses different tools for creating word clouds including wordle, tagxedo, and many eyes. 
Jim Tiffin Jr

Many Eyes - Data Visualization - 131 views

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    Create atypical visualizations of different types of data for a variety of purposes. Beyond just bar charts and pie charts, this platform will allow you to analyze existing data sets, or upload your own to see what story the data may be trying to tell you. An experiment brought to you by IBM Research and the IBM Cognos software group.
smilex3md

Why You Shouldn't Pep-Talk Difficult Students - Smart Classroom Management - 149 views

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    The student stands wordlessly, eyes averted, still smarting from yet another backslide as the earnest teacher softens the blows of the student's many transgressions.
Martin Burrett

Mathematics with a Twist by @RTBCoaching - 15 views

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    "I began my personal journey into the world of Cubing when I was attending Regis University in Denver, Colorado in 2009. My senior thesis project involved devising a cryptosystem using the Rubik's Cube to encode and decode messages. Although my involvement with the Rubik's Cube waned post-graduation, it was rekindled shortly after I became a secondary teacher of mathematics in 2014. I had several Rubik's Cubes in my possession from my college days and these decorated the shelves in my classroom. I recall these puzzles catching the eyes of many curious pupils. After months of traditional curriculum presentation, I determined that my students were in need of a novel lesson, one that would ignite a passion for problem-solving. This lesson would involve the colourful and alluring hexahedron puzzle on my desk: the Rubik's Cube."
Martin Burrett

Designing Education - 8 views

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    "Many of us will have fond memories of children's TV engaging us to turn our used bottles into rockets, our wooden spoons into cartoon character puppets, and attaching googly eyes to anything which keeps still for more than 3 seconds! Schools are great at turning recycling into creativity, and design is at the heart of this. Later, the skills pupils learn turning pasta into planes and tins into trains fuel are the beginning of making the engineers and artisans of the future."
Martin Burrett

Imaginary Geometry - Kanizsa Figures by @CambridgeMaths - 32 views

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    "Italian psychologist Geatano Kanizsa first described this optical illusion in 1955 as a subjective or illusory contour illusion. The study of such optical illusions has led to an understanding of how the brain and eyes perceive optical information and has been used considerably by artists and designers alike. They show the power of human imagination in filling in the gaps to make implied constructions in our own minds. Kanizsa figures and similar illusions are a really useful way to encourage learners to 'say what they see' and to explain how they see it. It offers a chance for others to become aware of the different views available in a diagram and share their own thoughts without the 'danger' of being wrong; many people see different things."
Martin Burrett

Webinar: Supporting Special Needs Students with eBooks & Audiobooks - 2 views

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    In this webinar, expert in eBooks Meredith Wemhoff discusses ways to engage and support learners with special needs using eBooks and audio. Using the case-study of an independent all-boys school located in Surrey, the school provides special needs students an opportunity to succeed and thrive. Many arrive to the 80-year-old institution with low self-confidence, often due to struggles they faced in traditional educational institutions caused by learning and language difficulties. This means providing a collection that meets the individual learning needs of the school's 470 students, who range in age from 8-18. ​​​​​​​ During this eye-opening webinar, Meredith will share the story of selecting, launching and promoting a digital library service that helps address learning challenges. Attendees will come away with best practices for bringing ebooks and audiobooks to their school and real-life examples of these practices in action. Don't miss out, register today!
anonymous

The Coach in the Operating Room - The New Yorker - 37 views

  • I compared my results against national data, and I began beating the averages.
    • anonymous
       
      this is one of the most important reasons for data and using the data to help guide instruction
  • the obvious struck me as interesting: even Rafael Nadal has a coach. Nearly every élite tennis player in the world does. Professional athletes use coaches to make sure they are as good as they can be.
    • anonymous
       
      Why wouldn't we want a coach? Our supervisor or administrator often serves as an evaluator but might not have the time due to time constraints to serve as an effective and dedicated coach. Yet, a coach doesn't have to be an expert. Couldn't the coach just be a colleague with a different skill set?
  • They don’t even have to be good at the sport. The famous Olympic gymnastics coach Bela Karolyi couldn’t do a split if his life depended on it. Mainly, they observe, they judge, and they guide.
    • anonymous
       
      PROFOUND!!!
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  • always evolving
    • anonymous
       
      Please tell me what profession isn't always evolving? It something isn't evolving, it is dying! So, why doesn't everyone on the face of the earth - regardless of his/her profession or station in life - need coaching periodically to help them continue to grow and evolve?
  • We have to keep developing our capabilities and avoid falling behind.
  • no matter how well prepared people are in their formative years, few can achieve and maintain their best performance on their own.
  • outside ears, and eyes, are important
  • For decades, research has confirmed that the big factor in determining how much students learn is not class size or the extent of standardized testing but the quality of their teachers.
    • anonymous
       
      So, instead of having students take test after test after test, why don't we just have coaches who observe and sit and discuss and offer suggestions and divide the number of tests we give students in half and do away with half? Are we concerned about student knowledge? student performance? student ability? student growth or capacity for growth? What we really need to identify is what we value!
  • California researchers in the early nineteen-eighties conducted a five-year study of teacher-skill development in eighty schools, and noticed something interesting. Workshops led teachers to use new skills in the classroom only ten per cent of the time. Even when a practice session with demonstrations and personal feedback was added, fewer than twenty per cent made the change. But when coaching was introduced—when a colleague watched them try the new skills in their own classroom and provided suggestions—adoption rates passed ninety per cent. A spate of small randomized trials confirmed the effect. Coached teachers were more effective, and their students did better on tests.
    • anonymous
       
      Of course they are more effective! They have a trusted individual to guide them, mentor them, help sustain them. The coach can cheer and affirm what the teacher is already doing well and offer suggestions that are desired and sought in order to improve their 'game' and become more effective.
  • they did not necessarily have any special expertise in a content area, like math or science.
    • anonymous
       
      Knowledge of the content is one thing and expertise is yet another. Sometimes what makes us better teachers is simply strategies and techniques - not expertise in the content. Sometimes what makes us better teachers could simply be using a different tool or offering options for students to choose.
  • The coaches let the teachers choose the direction for coaching. They usually know better than anyone what their difficulties are.
    • anonymous
       
      The conversation with the coach and the coach listening and learning what the teacher would like to expand, improve, and grow is probably the most vital part! If the teacher doesn't have a clue, the coach could start anywhere and that might not be what the teacher adopts and owns. So, the teacher must have ownership and direction.
  • teaches coaches to observe a few specifics: whether the teacher has an effective plan for instruction; how many students are engaged in the material; whether they interact respectfully; whether they engage in high-level conversations; whether they understand how they are progressing, or failing to progress.
    • anonymous
       
      This could provide specific categories to offer teachers a choice in what direction they want to go toward improving - especially important for those who want broad improvement or are clueless at where to start.
  • must engage in “deliberate practice”—sustained, mindful efforts to develop the full range of abilities that success requires. You have to work at what you’re not good at.
  • most people do not know where to start or how to proceed. Expertise, as the formula goes, requires going from unconscious incompetence to conscious incompetence to conscious competence and finally to unconscious competence.
    • anonymous
       
      Progression
  • The coach provides the outside eyes and ears, and makes you aware of where you’re falling short.
    • anonymous
       
      The coach also makes you aware of where you are excelling!
  • So coaches use a variety of approaches—showing what other, respected colleagues do, for instance, or reviewing videos of the subject’s performance. The most common, however, is just conversation.
  • “What worked?”
    • anonymous
       
      Great way to open any coaching conversation!
  • “How could you help her?”
  • “What else did you notice?”
    • anonymous
       
      These questions are quite similar to what we ask little children when they are learning something new. How did that go? What else could you do? What could you do differently? What more is needed? What would help?
  • something to try.
    • anonymous
       
      Suggestions of something to try! Any colleague can offer this - so why don't we ask colleagues for ideas of something to try more often?
  • three colleagues on a lunch break
  • Good coaches, he said, speak with credibility, make a personal connection, and focus little on themselves.
    • anonymous
       
      I probably need this printed out and stuck to the monitor of my computer or tattooed on my hand!
  • “listened more than they talked,” Knight said. “They were one hundred per cent present in the conversation.”
    • anonymous
       
      patient, engaged listening
  • coaching has definitely changed how satisfying teaching is
  • trying to get residents to think—to think like surgeons—and his questions exposed how much we had to learn.
    • anonymous
       
      Encouraging people to think - it is important to teach and encourage thinking rather than teaching them WHAT to think!
  • a whole list of observations like this.
  • one twenty-minute discussion gave me more to consider and work on than I’d had in the past five years.
  • watch other colleagues operate in order to gather ideas about what I could do.
    • anonymous
       
      This is one of the greatest strategies to promote growth - ever!
  • routine, high-quality video recordings of operations could enable us to figure out why some patients fare better than others.
    • anonymous
       
      I always hate seeing a video of me teaching but I did learn so much about myself, my teaching, and my students that I could not learn in any other way!
  • I know that I’m learning again.
  • It’s teaching with a trendier name. Coaching aimed at improving the performance of people who are already professionals is less usual.
    • anonymous
       
      But it still works and is effective at nudging even those who are fabulous to be even better!
  • modern society increasingly depends on ordinary people taking responsibility for doing extraordinary things
  • coaching may prove essential to the success of modern society.
  • We care about results in sports, and if we care half as much about results in schools and in hospitals we may reach the same conclusion.
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    Valuable points about coaching - makes me want my own coach!
Deborah Baillesderr

Through Your Child's Eyes Tool | Learning Disabilities - Understood - 64 views

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    This site has tons of wonderful information for both parents and teachers on learning issues. This part of the site has actual simulations on what students with reading, writing, attention, math and/or organization issues experience everyday. I can't tell you how many times a parent has said, "I just don't understand what is going on." in a meeting. This will help them experience what their child is going through on a daily basis. It's wonderful for teachers to experience these simulations to remind themselves of how difficult it is for our struggling students and how very brave they are to show up everyday in our classrooms.
Aelius Rusticus

Paris Review - The Art of Fiction No. 61, Stanley Elkin - 0 views

  • It’s a rare joke that is funny. Only situations are funny.
    • Aelius Rusticus
       
      I asked my cat why he didn't help me with the elaborate vegetable soup I was preparing. When he had no quick answer, I suggested it was because he had no stock in it. My wit, pedestrian in the grand scheme, nonetheless amused me in the moment. Funny situation or funny word-play? or neither?
  • “The point of life was the possibility it always held out for the exceptional.”
  • to do the kinds of things which people don’t really do in real life but which they do do in fiction—to follow their own irrational—but sane—obsessions which, achieved, would satisfy them. Alas, these guys never catch up with their obsessions.
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  • There isn’t a day that goes by that I don’t think, “Jesus Christ, how many more months do I have left?” or years, I hope. I am totally preoccupied with death. I mean my own death. Barth, for example, has said that he comes from very good stock and expects to live a long time. Bill Gass thinks that one of the reasons he takes so much time writing his novels—it took him ten years to write Omensetter’s Luck—is that he has an infinite amount of time left to him. I don’t believe that I have an infinite amount of time left to me. Probably I would be a healthier man if I did believe it.
  • making a scratch on a stone?
  • it’s not a question of making imaginary leaps or having a third eye. It’s a question of using the two eyes I have—and looking hard and close at things.
  • That kind of observation can be taught. I also try to teach them how to recognize a situation, what legitimately is a situation and what isn’t. Those are the only things that can be taught. I can’t teach a person style. I can’t teach him to write, in terms of language. But I can teach them that things look like other things.
  • Criers and Kibitzers, Kibitzers and Criers, a collection of short stories (1966)
  • junk jewelry’s meteorological condition—its Fall line and Spring.
  • I don’t believe that less is more. I believe that more is more. I believe that less is less, fat fat, thin thin and enough is enough.
  • particular existential writers?
  • the SELF takes precedence.
  • Camus
  • in the better restaurants.
  • Barth is wonderful, but the Barth I really admire is back there in the Golden Age of Barth.
  • Bellow I think is a magnificent writer—probably, with Gass, the best writer in America.
  • I think Gass is the best word-man in America.
  • There’s marvelous language in Pricksongs and Descants but it’s subsidiary to the experiment with structure. I tell you this for your own good, Bob. The reason I like Gass so much is that Gass is not fucking around with structure. He is fucking around with language. That to me is legitimate and acceptable, and the furthest out you can go is the best place to be. That’s what’s so magnificent about Shakespeare. Shakespeare wrote very conventional plays, but the language wasn’t conventional.
  • the great gift of fiction—is that it gives language an opportunity to happen.
  • palimpsest of metaphor right there on the page. One gets a notion of the conceit and one is inspired to work with it as a draftsman might work with some angle that he is interested in getting down correctly.
Nigel Coutts

Ten ideas from Eye on the Future - 50 views

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    On Saturday I had the opportunity to join a group of very enthusiastic teachers to hear Alan November and Carl Jarvis speak at North Turramurra Primary School. That so many educators from across Sydney were keen to give up a Saturday is a testament to their desire to improve their teaching but also a measure of the respect these speakers garner.
amberdewire

Educational Leadership:Feedback for Learning:Seven Keys to Effective Feedback - 87 views

  • Whether the feedback was in the observable effects or from other people, in every case the information received was not advice, nor was the performance evaluated. No one told me as a performer what to do differently or how "good" or "bad" my results were. (You might think that the reader of my writing was judging my work, but look at the words used again: She simply played back the effect my writing had on her as a reader.) Nor did any of the three people tell me what to do (which is what many people erroneously think feedback is—advice). Guidance would be premature; I first need to receive feedback on what I did or didn't do that would warrant such advice.
  • Decades of education research support the idea that by teaching less and providing more feedback, we can produce greater learning (see Bransford, Brown, & Cocking, 2000; Hattie, 2008; Marzano, Pickering, & Pollock, 2001).
  • Feedback Essentials
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  • Goal-Referenced
  • Tangible and Transparent
  • Actionable
  • User-Friendly
  • Timely
  • Ongoing
  • Consistent
  • Progress Toward a Goal
  • But There's No Time!"
  • remember that feedback does not need to come only from the teacher, or even from people at all. Technology is one powerful tool—part of the power of computer-assisted learning is unlimited, timely feedback and opportunities to use it.
  • learners are often unclear about the specific goal of a task or lesson, so it is crucial to remind them about the goal and the criteria by which they should self-assess
  • I recommend that all teachers videotape their own classes at least once a month. It was a transformative experience for me when I did it as a beginning teacher.
  • research shows that less teaching plus more feedback is the key to achieving greater learning.
  • Even if feedback is specific and accurate in the eyes of experts or bystanders, it is not of much value if the user cannot understand it or is overwhelmed by it.
  • Adjusting our performance depends on not only receiving feedback but also having opportunities to use it.
  • Clearly, performers can only adjust their performance successfully if the information fed back to them is stable, accurate, and trustworthy. In education, that means teachers have to be on the same page about what high-quality work is. Teachers need to look at student work together, becoming more consistent over time and formalizing their judgments in highly descriptive rubrics supported by anchor products and performances.
  • Score student work in the fall and winter against spring standards, use more pre-and post-assessments to measure progress toward these standards, and do the item analysis to note what each student needs to work on for better future performance.
  • Effective supervisors and coaches work hard to carefully observe and comment on what they observed, based on a clear statement of goals. That's why I always ask when visiting a class, "What would you like me to look for and perhaps count?"
  • . Less teaching, more feedback. Less feedback that comes only from you, and more tangible feedback designed into the performance itself.
  • how we are doing in our efforts to reach a goal.
  • get another opportunity to receive and learn from the feedback.
  • computer games
  • quickly adapt
  • ack, do you have some ideas about how to improve?" This approach will build greater autono
  • ck, do you have some ideas about how to improve?" This approach will build greater autono
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    Wiggins Advice, evaluation, grades-none of these provide the descriptive information that students need to reach their goals. What is true feedback-and how can it improve learning? Who would dispute the idea that feedback is a good thing? Both common sense and research make it clear: Formative assessment, consisting of lots of feedback and opportunities to use that feedback, enhances performance and achievement. Yet even John Hattie (2008), whose decades of research revealed that feedback was among the most powerful influences on achievement, acknowledges that he has "struggled to understand the concept" (p. 173). And many writings on the subject don't even attempt to define the term. To improve formative assessment practices among both teachers and assessment designers, we need to look more closely at just what feedback is-and isn't.
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    Effective Feedback - Grant Wiggins
D. S. Koelling

The Liberal Arts Are Work-Force Development - Do Your Job Better - The Chronicle of Hig... - 35 views

  • Now consider that, according to the American Association of Community Colleges, about half of all freshmen and sophomores are enrolled at the nation's 1,300 two-year colleges, and many of those students transfer to four-year institutions. For a large percentage of people who earn bachelor's degrees, then, the liberal-arts portion of their education was acquired at a two-year college. Next, factor in all of the community-college students who enter the work force after earning two-year degrees or certificates, and whose only exposure to the liberal arts occurred in whatever core courses their programs required. The conclusion becomes obvious: Two-year colleges are among the country's leading providers of liberal-arts education, although they seldom get credit for that role.
  • Employers rank communication and analytical skills among the most important attributes they seek in new hires, according to the National Association of Colleges and Employers. Perhaps those of us who teach those very skills at community colleges should embrace the integral role we play in preparing the nation's workers rather than rejecting the idea of work-force development as somehow beneath us.
  • More important, this new perspective could have a positive effect on student success. If we come to see ourselves as preparing students not just for transfer but ultimately for the work force, students may be more likely to understand the relevance of the skills that we teach them and better able to use those skills for some purpose other than just getting a passing grade.
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  • Require lots of writing. As the management guru Peter Drucker argued, communication is the one skill required of all professionals, regardless of field. "As soon as you take one step up the career ladder," he said, "your effectiveness depends on your ability to communicate your thoughts in writing and in speaking."
  • Clearly, one of the best things we can do for students is to require them to write—a lot.
  • Focus on critical thinking. A common complaint of employers, as reflected in the NACE survey, is that many workers have difficulty thinking for themselves. They may be thoroughly trained, having mastered all of the concepts in the textbooks, but, inevitably, situations arise that weren't covered in the books. When that happens, the ability to think critically, independently, and creatively becomes indispensable.
  • Bring the real world into the classroom. Another strategy we can adopt, if we want our courses to be more relevant, is to make our class discussions, case studies, experiments, and assignments as real-world-based as possible. For example, in my composition courses, I not only allow students to choose their own essay topics, but I also encourage them to write about issues related to their prospective majors. I also assign reading (in addition to the old textbook standbys) from newspapers, popular magazines, even the Internet.
  • Make the connection. Take advantage of every opportunity to connect what students are doing in class with what they will be doing some day as employees. My students hear the term "the real world" so much that, by the middle of the term, they're starting to roll their eyes. But it's important for them to understand that the work we're doing now in class isn't just a series of meaningless exercises, another set of hoops for them to jump through on their way to a degree. They're going to have to do these things for real one day—describe processes, do research to find solutions, draw comparisons—and my course may be the last time anyone ever actually teaches them how.
Maggie Tsai

The Classroom » Using Diigo for Organizing the Web for your Class - 13 views

  • Using Diigo for Organizing the Web for your Class 31 07 2007 A good friend of mine, Randy Lyseng, has been telling people of the tremendous power and educational value that can be gained from social bookmarking in the classroom. His personal favourite is Diigo. My preference is a social bookmarking tool called http://diigo.com. With diigo, you can highlight, add stick notes and make your comments private or public. (Randy Lyseng, Lyseng Tech: Social Bookmarking, November 2006) After listening to Randy praise Diigo at every opportunity, I finally started playing with the site (and corresponding program, more on that in a bit) this summer (I know Randy - I’m slow to catch on…)As I started to play with the system, my mind started reeling with all the possibilities. First off, like any other social bookmarking tool, Diigo allows you to put all your favorites/bookmarks in one “central” location. Students can access them from ANY computer in the world (talk about the new WWW: whatever, whenever, where ever). They just open up your Diigo page, and there are all the links. But that’s just the tip of the iceberg. Diigo’s power lies in it’s group annotations. That’s right, people can now write in the margins of webpages. You can highlight passages of interest, write notes, and even write a blog entry directly from another webpage, quoting passages right from the original text. Sounds great - but to do all that it must be complicated right? Nope. To use these advanced features all you need to do is run the Diigo software. This can either be done using a bookmarklet or by downloading and installing the Diigo toolbar. While both have basically the same features, the toobar is less finicky, and allows you to use contextual menus to access features quickly. I also find the toolbar’s highlighting and sticky notes to be easier to read. Ok fine… I can leave notes on webpages - so what? Here’s an example. I’m thinking about having my 7B’s record radio plays. I’ve looked them up online and found many scripts from all the old classics available. However many also contain the old endorsements from tobacco and other companies. So I go to a play that I’d like to my students to record and highlight the old commercial. If they’re using diigo when they access this page they’ll see the same text highlighted in pink, and when they mouse over the highlighted text they’ll get a hidden message from me - “I’d like you to write a new advertisement for this section. What other advertisement do you think we could write for here? Write an ad for a virtue or trait that you think is important. For example - “Here’s a news flash for every person in Canada. It’s about a sensational, new kind of personality that will make you the envy of all those around you. It’s call trustworthiness. Why with just a pinch of this great product….” They now have a writing assignment to go along with the recording of the radio play. Adding assignments is just one possibility. You can ask questions about the site, or have students carry on conversations about the text. Perhaps about the validity of some information. These notes can be made private (for your eyes only), public, or for a select group of people. You could use the same webpage for multiple classes, and have a different set of sticky notes for each one! Diigo will also create a separate webpage for each group you create, helping you organize your bookmarks/notes further! This technology is useful for any class, but I think is a must have for any group trying to organize something along the lines of the 1 to 1 project. I’m hoping to convince all the core teachers to set up a group page for their classes, and organize their book marks there! I’ve already started one for my 7B Language Arts Class! One of the first questions I was asked when I started looking at this site, and more importantly at the bookmarklets and toolbar was is it secure? Will it bring spyware onto our systems? How about stability? I’ve currently been running the Diigo bookmarklet and toolbar on 3 different browsers, Explorer, Firefox, and Safari (sorry, there’s no Safari toolbar yet), across 4 different computers and 2 different platforms with no problems. I’ve also run every virus and spyware scan I can think of, everything checks out clean. I’ve also done an extensive internet check, and can’t find any major problems reported by anyone else. To my mind it’s an absolutely fantastic tool for use in the classroom. Thanks Diigo! And thanks Randy for pointing me in the right direction!
Kris Cody

The Reading Brain in the Digital Age: The Science of Paper versus Screens: Scientific A... - 103 views

  • prevented them from zooming out to see a neighborhood, state or country
    • Monica Williams-Mitchell
       
      This explains, in real terms, why I've had so much struggle with online reading! Very interesting article.
  • Because of these preferences—and because getting away from multipurpose screens improves concentration—people consistently say that when they really want to dive into a text, they read it on paper
    • Kris Cody
       
      This is backed up by a recent article: Faris, Michael J., and Stuart A. Selber. "E-Book Issues In Composition: A Partial Assessment And Perspective For Teachers." Composition Forum 24.(2011): ERIC. Web. 31 Mar. 2013.
  • Surveys and consumer reports also suggest that the sensory experiences typically associated with reading—especially tactile experiences—matter to people more than one might assume.
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  • When reading a paper book, one can feel the paper and ink and smooth or fold a page with one's fingers; the pages make a distinctive sound when turned; and underlining or highlighting a sentence with ink permanently alters the paper's chemistry.
  • discernible size, shape and weight.
  • Although many old and recent studies conclude that people understand what they read on paper more thoroughly than what they read on screens, the differences are often small. Some experiments, however, suggest that researchers should look not just at immediate reading comprehension, but also at long-term memory.
  • When taking the quiz, volunteers who had read study material on a monitor relied much more on remembering than on knowing, whereas students who read on paper depended equally on remembering and knowing.
  • E-ink is easy on the eyes because it reflects ambient light just like a paper book, but computer screens, smartphones and tablets like the iPad shine light directly into people's faces.
  • the American Optometric Association officially recognizes computer vision syndrome.
  • People who took the test on a computer scored lower and reported higher levels of stress and tiredness than people who completed it on paper.
  • Although people in both groups performed equally well on the READ test, those who had to scroll through the continuous text did not do as well on the attention and working-memory tests.
  • Subconsciously, many people may think of reading on a computer or tablet as a less serious affair than reading on paper. Based on a detailed 2005 survey of 113 people in northern California, Ziming Liu of San Jose State University concluded that people reading on screens take a lot of shortcuts—they spend more time browsing, scanning and hunting for keywords compared with people reading on paper, and are more likely to read a document once, and only once.
  • When reading on screens, people seem less inclined to engage in what psychologists call metacognitive learning regulation—strategies such as setting specific goals, rereading difficult sections and checking how much one has understood along the way
  • Perhaps she and her peers will grow up without the subtle bias against screens that seems to lurk in the minds of older generations.
  • They think of using an e-book, not owning an e-book,"
  • Participants in her studies say that when they really like an electronic book, they go out and get the paper version.
  • When it comes to intensively reading long pieces of plain text, paper and ink may still have the advantage. But text is not the only way to read.
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    it is difficult to see any one passage in the context of the entire text.
  •  
    it is difficult to see any one passage in the context of the entire text.
Tracy Tuten

The real economics of massive online courses (essay) | Inside Higher Ed - 2 views

  • Is there a model out there, or an institution/student mix that could effectively utilize MOOCs in such a way as to get around this flaw? It’s hard to tell. Recent articles on Inside Higher Ed have suggested that distance education providers (like the University of Maryland’s University College – UMUC) may opt to certify the MOOCs that come out of these elite schools and bake them into their own online programs. Others suggest that MOOCs could be certified by other schools and embedded in prior learning portfolios.
  • The fatal flaw that I referred to earlier is pretty apparent:  the very notions of "mass, open" and selectivity just don’t lend themselves to a workable model that benefits both institutions and students. Our higher education system needs MOOCs to provide credentials in order for students to find it worthwhile to invest the effort, yet colleges can’t afford to provide MOOC credentials without sacrificing prestige, giving up control of the quality of the students who take their courses and running the risk of eventually diluting the value of their education brand in the eyes of the labor market.
  • In other words, as economists tell us, students themselves are an important input to education. The fact that no school uses a lottery system to determine who gets in means that determining who gets in matters a great deal to these schools, because it helps them control quality and head off the adverse effects of unqualified students either dropping out or performing poorly in career positions. For individual institutions, obtaining high quality inputs works to optimize the school’s objective function, which is maximizing prestige.
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  • We also know that there are plenty of low- to no-cost learning options available to people on a daily basis, from books on nearly every academic topic at the local library and on-the-job experience, to the television programming on the National Geographic, History and Discovery channels. If learning can and does take place everywhere, there has to be a specific reason that people would be willing to spend tens of thousands of dollars and several years of their life to get it from one particular source like a college. There is, of course, and again it’s the credential, because no matter how many years I spend diligently tuned to the History Channel, I’m simply not going to get a job as a high-school history teacher with “television watching” as the core of my resume, even if I both learned and retained far more information than I ever could have in a series of college history classes.
  •  
    On why MOOCs are flawed
Tracey Cole

Biography in Context - Document - 16 views

  • The outbreak of the war changed Emerson, who had disdained political parties, mistrusted philanthropic efforts, and once called himself "a seeing eye, not a helping hand." He labeled the war "a new glass to see all our old things through." It was "instructor," "searcher" "magnetizer" and "reconciler." Emerson the individualist and idealist may have bristled at the churning power of the machinery of war, but Emerson the patriot and realist welcomed the struggle for the birth of a new social order. "The War," Emerson realized, "is serving many good purposes .... War shatters everything flimsy and shifty, sets aside all false issues, and breaks through all that is not real as itself."
John Hendron

Many Eyes - 0 views

    • John Hendron
       
      Recommended by David Warlick
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