Skip to main content

Home/ Diigo In Education/ Group items tagged What will I do to engage students?

Rss Feed Group items tagged

Lisa C. Hurst

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

  •  
    "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
Jennifer Diaz

13 Strategies to Improve Student Classroom Discussions - 149 views

  • These 13-teacher and expert-tested strategies will strengthen your students' ability to find and use evidence from any text
  • Texts that inspire questions encourage students to return to the text and find support for their answers
  • starting with one overarching focus question
  • ...14 more annotations...
  • Require students to have evidence ready at the start of the discussion
  • "prove it"
  • evidence will actually open up a text to different interpretations
  • The challenge is getting students to expand and explain. To get students to explain why they choose a piece of evidence, provide them with a structure that moves from evidence to interpretation. Williams' students use a graphic organizer with three columns: They write their answer in the first column, note textual evidence in the second, and explain their evidence in the third.
    • Jennifer Diaz
       
      I want to do this!
  • Use sentence starters strategically
  • In the text ... the author mentions ...
  • the author uses this evidence to ... this lets us know that ...
  • Give students enough time to flip through and find just the right piece of evidence. If other students are getting antsy, choose one of your always-ready students to share, then loop back to the student who needed time with the text
    • Jennifer Diaz
       
      Good idea to keep the pace moving, while providing enough time to find better evidence.
    • deniseahlquist
       
      And if you encourage a collaborative atmosphere, having students ALL look for evidence related to each person's idea will mean they are all engaged in searching whenever anyone makes a claim. Either choose someone who has found it, or have them mark the page and keep searching for more evidence. Then have students ALL GO to the passage cited, so they can closely follow and respond with additional or conflicting evidence.
  • "Just because there's more than one right answer," says Riley, "doesn't mean there's no wrong answer."
    • deniseahlquist
       
      Part of what students do when they all look for evidence for each idea is to learn to weigh evidence for competing ideas and sift out "weaker" or unsupported answers from "stronger" claims. Brainstorming an idea that later doesn't pan out should not e seen as bad or wrong, but more accurately as the way idea-generating and sifting actually happens in many situations.
  • According to page
  • create an anchor chart
    • Jennifer Diaz
       
      Create and authentic anchor chart of student/teacher generated starters and prompts.
  • Listen for how students personalize the discussion, and encourage them to develop their own voice.
  • go back to the text
  • They answer the focus question a second time, explain whether or not they changed their answers, and reflect on how the evidence brought up during discussion impacted their thinking.
  •  
    Great ideas for 6th grade response to literature discussion and writing.
  •  
    I haven't taught sixth grade for 3 1/2 years now, but if I ever go back to ms, I'd incorporate this into my weekly plans. One way I get my second graders to grow their thinking is by having them respond to one another using the following prompts:  I agree with the part about…  Going back to what you said about…  One thing I noticed…  One thing I pictured…  It reminded me of…  I am not sure what you are saying. Could you say it in another way?  I agree with what you are saying because…  What you just said matches what is in my mind because…  I hear what you are saying, but I see it differently because…  If what you said is true, is it not also true that…  That is true, but… Or - That is true, and…  Could you say more?  Could you give me an example?  I would like to add on to what _________ said.  I have an example of what you just said.  I wonder why…  I was surprised to see…  Another thing that goes with that is…  So are you saying…
Jess Hazlewood

"Where's the Writer" TETYC March 2014 - 43 views

  • “Responders Are Taught, Not Born”
  • We contend that student writers will see greater value in peer response if they develop tools that allow them to participate more actively in the feedback process. With teaching suggestions like those above, writers can learn how to re-flect on their experiences with peer response. They can also learn to identify their needs as writers and how to ask questions that will solicit the feedback they need.
  • We like to limit each mock session to no more than seven minutes of back and forth between respondent and writer.
  • ...33 more annotations...
  • class suggests that the writer’s question
  • This becomes a teachable moment. When the respondent asks for assistance from the class, this break in the session becomes an opportunity for the class to assist the writer and the respondent. The writer appears stuck, not knowing what to ask. And the respondent appears perplexed, too.
  • we follow Carl Anderson’s suggestion to teach students how to ask questions about their writing through role-playing.
  • dynamic list that students freely update throughout the semester on the class classro
  • organize the questions within categories such as tone, content, evidence-based support, style, and logistics
  • The end result is a robust list of questions for writers to ask of their respondents.
  • in-class discussion about effective and less effective questions for writers
  • raft three to five questions they have about the assignment to ask of their peers as they prepare to write or revise their assignment. When appropriate, we can direct our students to the course text, where there are
  • : pointing, summarizing, and reflecting
  • Students’ comments often point to their struggle to position themselves in peer response.
  • “What would it take for you to be in-vested as writers in peer response?” Students’ typical responses include the following:>“I need to know what to ask.” >“I don’t know what to ask about my writing, except for things like punctua-tion and grammar.”>“Does the person reading my work really know what the assignment is? Bet-ter than I do?”>“I’m not really sure if I’m supposed to talk or ask questions when someone is giving me feedback about my work, so I don’t really do anything. They write stuff on my paper. Sometimes I read it if I can, but I don’t really know what to do with it.”
  • it is important to offer activities to ensure that both respondents and writers are able to articulate a clear purpose of what they are trying to accomplish. These activities, guided by the pedagogies used to prepare writing center consultants
  • devote more attention to the respondent than to the writer, we may unwit-tingly be encouraging writers to be bystanders, rather than active participants, in the response process.
  • , “Feedback: What Works for You and How Do You Get It?”
  • highlight the value of both giving and getting feedback:In 56 pages near the end of this book, we’ve explained all the good methods we know for getting feedback from classmates on your writing. . . . The ability to give responses to your classmates’ writing and to get their responses to your own writing may be the most important thing you learn from this book. (B
  • we question whether textbooks provide emergent writers with enough tools or explicit models to engage actively in peer response conversations.
  • While such questions are helpful to emerging writers, who depend on modeling, they lack explanation about what makes them “helpful” questions. As a result, emerging writers may perceive them as a prescriptive set of questions that must be answered (or worse, a set of questions to be “given over” to a respondent), rather than what they are intended to be: questions that could advance the writer’s thoughts and agenda.
  • this information is limited to the instructor’s manual
  • llustrates the difference be-tween vague and helpful questions, pointing out that helpful questions
  • You will need to train students to ask good questions, which will help reviewers target their attention.Questions like “How can I make this draft better?” “What grade do you think this will get?” and “What did you think?” are not helpful, as they are vague and don’t reflect anything about the writer’s own thoughts. Questions like “Am I getting off topic in the introduction when I talk about walking my sister to the corner on her first day of school?” or “Does my tone on page 3 seem harsh? I’m trying to be fair to the people who disagree with the decision I’m describing” help readers understand the writer’s purpose and will set up good conversations. (Harrington 14, emphasis added
  • uestions” when soliciting feedback (like the advice we found in many textbooks), she also provides explicit examples for doing so
  • he most explicit advice for writers about ask-ing questions and, in effect, setting up good conversations is buried in an instruc-tor’s manual for The Allyn & Bacon Guide to Writing. In thi
  • “Getting Response” chapter later in the book, they will benefit from the textbook authors’ instructions that they should in fact use questions that will help them solicit their feedback
  • dependent on what parts of the textbook they choose to read
  • point writers to a specific set of questions that they should ask of their respondents. Such instructions take a notable step toward shifting the locus of control from the respondent to helping writers engage their peers in conversation.
  • there is no mention that writers might use them for purposes of soliciting feedback.
  • we see an opportunity for modeling that is not fully realized.
  • we argue that Faigley offers respondents specific examples that empower them to actively engage the process and give feedback. We contend that emergent writers need a similar level of instruction if they are to be agents in response.
  • textbook authors offer few examples for how to get specific feedback
  • Peter Elbow and Pat Belanoff ’s first edition of A Community of Writers published in 1995, in which eleven “Sharing and Responding” techniques, d
  • we worked to understand how textbooks highlight the writer’s role in peer response.
  • We wanted to know what books tell writers about asking questions
  • lthough we do not discount the importance of teaching respondents how to give feedback, we argue that writers must also be taught how to request the feedback they desire.
  •  
    Writer's role in soliciting feedback during peer edit. Suggestions for modeling and training.
Maureen Greenbaum

The Future of College? - The Atlantic - 29 views

  • proprietary online platform developed to apply pedagogical practices that have been studied and vetted by one of the world’s foremost psychologists, a former Harvard dean named Stephen M. Kosslyn, who joined Minerva in 2012.
  • inductive reasoning
  • Minerva class extended no refuge for the timid, nor privilege for the garrulous. Within seconds, every student had to provide an answer, and Bonabeau displayed our choices so that we could be called upon to defend them.
  • ...45 more annotations...
  • subjecting us to pop quizzes, cold calls, and pedagogical tactics that during an in-the-flesh seminar would have taken precious minutes of class time to arrange.
  • felt decidedly unlike a normal classroom. For one thing, it was exhausting: a continuous period of forced engagement, with no relief in the form of time when my attention could flag
  • One educational psychologist, Ludy Benjamin, likens lectures to Velveeta cheese—something lots of people consume but no one considers either delicious or nourishing.)
  • because I had to answer a quiz question or articulate a position. I was forced, in effect, to learn
  • adically remake one of the most sclerotic sectors of the U.S. economy, one so shielded from the need for improvement that its biggest innovation in the past 30 years has been to double its costs and hire more administrators at higher salaries.
  • past half millennium, the technology of learning has hardly budge
  • fellow edu-nauts
  • Lectures are banned
  • attending class on Apple laptops
  • Lectures, Kosslyn says, are cost-effective but pedagogically unsound. “A great way to teach, but a terrible way to learn.”
  • Minerva boast is that it will strip the university experience down to the aspects that are shown to contribute directly to student learning. Lectures, gone. Tenure, gone. Gothic architecture, football, ivy crawling up the walls—gone, gone, gone.
  • “Your cash cow is the lecture, and the lecture is over,” he told a gathering of deans. “The lecture model ... will be obliterated.”
  • One imagines tumbleweeds rolling through abandoned quads and wrecking balls smashing through the windows of classrooms left empty by students who have plugged into new online platforms.
  • when you have a noncurated academic experience, you effectively don’t get educated.
  • Liberal-arts education is about developing the intellectual capacity of the individual, and learning to be a productive member of society. And you cannot do that without a curriculum.”
  • “The freshman year [as taught at traditional schools] should not exist,” Nelson says, suggesting that MOOCs can teach the basics. “Do your freshman year at home.”) Instead, Minerva’s first-year classes are designed to inculcate what Nelson calls “habits of mind” and “foundational concepts,” which are the basis for all sound systematic thought. In a science class, for example, students should develop a deep understanding of the need for controlled experiments. In a humanities class, they need to learn the classical techniques of rhetoric and develop basic persuasive skills. The curriculum then builds from that foundation.
  • What, he asks, does it mean to be educated?
  • methods will be tested against scientifically determined best practices
  • Subsidies, Nelson says, encourage universities to enroll even students who aren’t likely to thrive, and to raise tuition, since federal money is pegged to costs.
  • We have numerous sound, reproducible experiments that tell us how people learn, and what teachers can do to improve learning.” Some of the studies are ancient, by the standards of scientific research—and yet their lessons are almost wholly ignored.
  • memory of material is enhanced by “deep” cognitive tasks
  • he found the man’s view of education, in a word, faith-based
  • ask a student to explain a concept she has been studying, the very act of articulating it seems to lodge it in her memory. Forcing students to guess the answer to a problem, and to discuss their answers in small groups, seems to make them understand the problem better—even if they guess wrong.
  • e traditional concept of “cognitive styles”—visual versus aural learners, those who learn by doing versus those who learn by studying—is muddled and wrong.
  • pedagogical best practices Kosslyn has identified have been programmed into the Minerva platform so that they are easy for professors to apply. They are not only easy, in fact, but also compulsory, and professors will be trained intensively in how to use the platform.
  • Professors are able to sort students instantly, and by many metrics, for small-group work—
  • a pop quiz at the beginning of a class and (if the students are warned in advance) another one at a random moment later in the class greatly increases the durability of what is learned.
  • he could have alerted colleagues to best practices, but they most likely would have ignored them. “The classroom time is theirs, and it is sacrosanct,
  • Lectures, Kosslyn says, are pedagogically unsound,
  • I couldn’t wait for Minerva’s wrecking ball to demolish the ivory tower.
  • The MOOCs will eventually make lectures obsolete.”
  • Minerva’s model, Nelson says, will flourish in part because it will exploit free online content, rather than trying to compete with it, as traditional universities do.
  • The MOOCs will eventually make lectures obsolete.”
  • certain functions of universities have simply become less relevant as information has become more ubiquitous
  • Minerva challenges the field to return to first principles.
  • MOOCs will continue to get better, until eventually no one will pay Duke or Johns Hopkins for the possibility of a good lecture, when Coursera offers a reliably great one, with hundreds of thousands of five-star ratings, for free.
  • It took deep concentration,” he said. “It’s not some lecture class where you can just click ‘record’ on your tape.”
  • part of the process of education happens not just through good pedagogy but by having students in places where they see the scholars working and plying their trades.”
  • “hydraulic metaphor” of education—the idea that the main task of education is to increase the flow of knowledge into the student—an “old fallacy.”
  • I remembered what I was like as a teenager headed off to college, so ignorant of what college was and what it could be, and so reliant on the college itself to provide what I’d need in order to get a good education.
  • it is designed to convey not just information, as most MOOCs seem to, but whole mental tool kits that help students become morethoughtful citizens.
  • for all the high-minded talk of liberal education— of lighting fires and raising thoughtful citizens—is really just a credential, or an entry point to an old-boys network that gets you your first job and your first lunch with the machers at your alumni club.
  • Its seminar platform will challenge professors to stop thinking they’re using technology just because they lecture with PowerPoint.
  • professors and students increasingly separated geographically, mediated through technology that alters the nature of the student-teacher relationship
  • The idea that college will in two decades look exactly as it does today increasingly sounds like the forlorn, fingers-crossed hope of a higher-education dinosaur that retirement comes before extinction.
tapiatanova

A Social Network Can Be a Learning Network - The Digital Campus - The Chronicle of High... - 98 views

  • Sharing student work on a course blog is an example of what Randall Bass and Heidi Elmendorf, of Georgetown University, call "social pedagogies." They define these as "design approaches for teaching and learning that engage students with what we might call an 'authentic audience' (other than the teacher), where the representation of knowledge for an audience is absolutely central to the construction of knowledge in a course."
    • trisha_poole
       
      Very important - social pedagogies for authentic tasks - a key for integrating SNTs in the classroom.
    • Daniel Spielmann
       
      Agreed, for connectivism see also www.connectivism.ca
  • External audiences certainly motivate students to do their best work. But students can also serve as their own authentic audience when asked to create meaningful work to share with one another.
    • Daniel Spielmann
       
      The last sentence is especially important in institutional contexts where the staff voices their distrust against "open scholarship" (Weller 2011), web 2.0 and/or open education. Where "privacy" is deemed the most important thing in dealing with new technologies, advocates of an external audience have to be prepared for certain questions.
    • tapiatanova
       
      yes! nothing but barriers! However, it is unclear if the worries about pravacy are in regards to students or is it instructors who fear teaching in the open. everyone cites FERPA and protection of student identities, but I have yet to hear any student refusing to work in the open...
  • Students most likely won't find this difficult. After all, you're asking them to surf the Web and tag pages they like. That's something they do via Facebook every day. By having them share course-related content with their peers in the class, however, you'll tap into their desires to be part of your course's learning community. And you might be surprised by the resources they find and share.
  • ...9 more annotations...
  • back-channel conversations
  • While keynote speakers and session leaders are speaking, audience members are sharing highlights, asking questions, and conversing with colleagues on Twitter
    • trisha_poole
       
      An effective use of Twitter that can be translated to classrooms.
    • Daniel Spielmann
       
      All classrooms?
    • John Dorn
       
      classrooms where students are motivated to learn. Will this work in a HS classroom where kids just view their phones as a means to check up on people? Maybe if they can see "cool" class could be if they were responsible for the freedoms that would be needed to use twitter or other similar sites.
  • Ask your students to create accounts on Twitter or some other back-channel tool and share ideas that occur to them in your course. You might give them specific assignments, as does the University of Connecticut's Margaret Rubega, who asks students in her ornithology class to tweet about birds they see. During a face-to-face class session, you could have students discuss their reading in small groups and share observations on the back channel. Or you could simply ask them to post a single question about the week's reading they would like to discuss.
  • A back channel provides students a way to stay connected to the course and their fellow students. Students are often able to integrate back channels into their daily lives, checking for and sending updates on their smartphones, for instance. That helps the class become more of a community and gives students another way to learn from each other.
  • Deep learning is hard work, and students need to be well motivated in order to pursue it. Extrinsic factors like grades aren't sufficient—they motivate competitive students toward strategic learning and risk-averse students to surface learning.
  • Social pedagogies provide a way to tap into a set of intrinsic motivations that we often overlook: people's desire to be part of a community and to share what they know with that community.
  • Online, social pedagogies can play an important role in creating such a community. These are strong motivators, and we can make use of them in the courses we teach.
  • The papers they wrote for my course weren't just academic exercises; they were authentic expressions of learning, open to the world as part of their "digital footprints."
    • Daniel Spielmann
       
      Yes, but what is the relation between such writing and ("proper"?) academic writing?
  • Collaborative documents need not be text-based works. Sarah C. Stiles, a sociologist at Georgetown, has had her students create collaborative timelines showing the activities of characters in a text, using a presentation tool called Prezi.com. I used that tool to have my cryptography students create a map of the debate over security and privacy. They worked in small groups to brainstorm arguments, and contributed those arguments to a shared debate map synchronously during class.
  •  
    A great blog post on social pedagogies and how they can be incorporated in university/college classes. A good understanding of creating authentic learning experiences through social media.
  •  
    A great blog post on social pedagogies and how they can be incorporated in university/college classes. A good understanding of creating authentic learning experiences through social media.
  •  
    A great blog post on social pedagogies and how they can be incorporated in university/college classes. A good understanding of creating authentic learning experiences through social media.
J Yates

A Few Questions - View Annotations filter - 62 views

Just to answer my own question, I've just found that a moderator has the ability to delete individual comments on a page if viewing them from the expand button on the bookmark in the groups page (a...

annotation filter

Steven Szalaj

Raise the bar with national exam for teachers - chicagotribune.com - 53 views

  •  
    Editorial about a recommendation by the AFT Pres to develop a professional certification for teachers.  It's about time...
  • ...2 more comments...
  •  
    About time for what? For standardized tests to ruin the teaching profession like it has ruined our kids? For the government to control, from the top down, what education departments teach their students? Looks like a HUGE power grab and a very bad way for a Union, who professes to stand against standardized tests to act! Shame on them! Go to Fairtest.org to find out more about the scam of standardized testing. If you think a standardized test can improve education, you must also think you can fatten a calf by weighing it!
  •  
    Michelle is right. More standardized testing is not the answer for anything, least of all teacher certification. Come on, Steven .. use your critical thinking skills. Don't encourage the bean counters and bureaucrats who are so enamored of things that can be measured and filed into neat categories. The most valuable things cannot be measured in any "objective" way. To focus on what's measurable is to focus on what's shallow.
  •  
    Mark & Michelle, thank you for your comments. When I posted this I knew the words "standardized test" would be a flashpoint. It is for me too. With nearly 40 years in the classroom, teaching a creative art (music) to all different levels (kindergarten through college and well beyond), I have often railed against reducing any education, any student, to a number. Very little in what I have taught can be measured with a pencil-and-paper test. What I see here is different than this. It is the union that she is saying should be the "gate-keeper" to our profession, rather than some generic government standard test. Yes, tests would be a part of the certification, but from what I read, so would much more, including actual classroom work. The certification would be similar to the AMA for physicians or the Bar for attorneys. These are certifications designed and administered by the profession - not the government - and validate a candidate's readiness to practice. Yes, I too am strongly against the government, or any organization outside of our profession, to certify, to validate, a teacher's ability to do the job. But we have to admit there is a problem with teacher certification and validation. There are people who simply should not be in the classroom (haven't we all seen them?). It is very difficult to remove folks who are dragging the respect for our profession down. Yes, there is remediation. Yes, it should be a difficult process to remove someone in order to protect against administrative abuses. But what is talked about here is the profession policing itself - something that the teacher's unions, in general, have steadfastly refused to do. What the AFT Pres is suggesting is that the best thing we can do to raise the status of teaching as a profession is to take action ourselves to make it happen. Really, if we in the profession do not do this, then it will be imposed from those outside who do not know what we do, how we do it and why we do it.
  •  
    You are still talking about a standardized test. Let's face it--doctors have to have specific knowledge to do their job. Whether or not they are creative or engaging is not as important as their knowledge base. The same with lawyers--knowledge of the law is essential, and everything else is secondary. However, in teaching, although educational theory and knowledge of their subject area is important (and already tested, by the way) the most essential aspect of teaching is how you can creatively engage students, interact with parents and peers, and stay organized and motivated. These things CAN'T BE TESTED. Right now, teachers already go through extensive training, evaluation, and continuing education. Do you REALLY think that a standardized test will really improve teaching? I know a lot of university professors who can easily pass a test, but few of them can teach worth beans.
Jamie Menshouse

What We Learned: A 1:1 iPad Reflection | Edutopia - 185 views

  • One of the best decisions our team made last summer was to pre-install Casper (5) profiles on all of our iPads. We pulled the student IDs from our ASPEN (6) student information system, logged each student into Casper and installed the four profiles needed for our plan. The profiles took Safari web browser off the iPad.
  • As we progressed through the year, we discovered that these tools took a lot of time to create something we were trying to move away from in the first place. The reason for moving away from textbooks is that they offer a myopic vision of a world that is ever-changing. Simply viewing a textbook on an iPad does not change or innovate learning, nor does it use the iPad to its full potential. If your plan is to digitize a standard textbook, save your money and renew your textbook licenses.
  • This year we are incorporating K-12 digital portfolios along with revised information and digital literacy standards. Every BPS student will have a Google Apps for Education account that they will use in conjunction with the Blogger (15) application to begin creating their Life of Learning portfolio
  • ...8 more annotations...
    • Jeppe Egendal
       
      Digital portfolio og blogger
    • Jeppe Egendal
       
      Begrundelser for anvendelsen af iPads i undervisningen bevæger sig fra en forestilling om at erstatte tekstbøger til en forestilling om at kunne lærerne kan samarbejde med eleverne i skyen ved hjælp af værktøjer, der automatisk synkroniserer med eleverns iPads
  • The students that make it into help desk are those who not only enjoy working with technology in an educational context, but have a desire to serve, support and possibly solve problems in the school on a daily basis.
  • . Aside from simply troubleshooting, our students help their former teachers at the middle and elementary levels as well as create how-to scripts and videos for students, faculty and the Burlington community. Our students have not only helped within the BPS community, but have helped our Tech Team organize two major conferences in the past year:
    • Jeppe Egendal
       
      Eleverne hjælper som ressorucepersoner i skolen
  • You can have the most precisely calculated plan in place before you launch, but if you don't have the right support in place, your launch may stumble. I regard our IT department as one of the best I have ever worked with. I say this in all sincerity because I do "work with" this team. These guys not only manage a robust infrastructure, but they take part in the educational conversation and give our staff the best tools to create dynamic, engaging classrooms.
    • Jeppe Egendal
       
      Teknisk support er en del af løsningen og de skal deltage i den løbende pædagogisk/didaksike debet
  • However, we must work to incorporate information and digital literacy standards into the K-12 curriculum as early as possible. Students in Kindergarten should understand what it means to be nice to someone and how that will translate to writing and living on the Web. As students grow up through the educational pathways, they must be exposed to new and emerging technologies as early as possible in a safe, responsible manner. By doing so, we are preparing them for a global economy that requires these skills.
    • Jamie Menshouse
       
      Our middle school is adding character education to the arts and humanities curriculum. Teaching students at a young age to be thoughtful and responsible with technology will make it a much better experience inside the classroom.
Sharin Tebo

5 Reasons Why Reading Conferences Matter - Especially in High School English | Three Te... - 57 views

  • Reading Conferences
  • Every child needs one-on-one conversations with an adult as often as possible.
  • One way to show our adolescent students that we care is to talk with them. And face-to-face conversations about books and reading is a pretty safe way to do so, not to mention that we model authentic conversations about reading when we do.
  • ...12 more annotations...
  • The more we grow in empathy, the better relationship we’ll have with our friends, our families and all other people we associate with — at least the idealist in me will cling to that hope as I continue to talk to students about books and reading.
  • circles about engagement.
  • Try questions like: How’s it going? (Thanks, Carl Anderson) Why did you choose this book? Do you know anyone else who has read this book? What’d she think? How’d you find the time to read this week? What’s standing in the way of your reading time?
  • Try questions like: What character reminds you of yourself or someone you know? What part of the story is the most similar/different to your life? Why do you think the author makes that happen in the book? What does he want us to learn about life? How does this story/character/conflict/event make you think about life differently?
  • when I take the time to talk to each student individually, and reinforce the skill in a quick chat, the application of that skill some how seeps into their brains much deeper.
  • Try questions like: Tell me about _____ that we learned in class today. How does that relate to your book/character? Remember when we learned _____, tell me how/where you see that in your book. Think about when we practiced ___, where does the author do that in your book? You’ve improved with ___, how could you use that skill for _______?
  • We must provide opportunities for our students to grow into confident and competent readers and writers in order to handle the rigor and complexity of post high school education and beyond. We must remember to focus on literacy not on the literature
  • We must validate our readers, ask questions that spark confidence, avoid questions that demean or make the student defensive, and at the same time challenge our readers into more complex texts.
  • Try questions like: On a scale of 1 to 10 how complex is this book for you? Why? What do you do when the reading gets difficult? Of all the books you’ve read this year, which was the most challenging? Why? How’s it going finding vocabulary for your personal dictionary? Tell me how you are keeping track of the parallel storyline?
  • I ask students about their confidence levels in our little chats, and they tell me they know they have grown as a readers. This is the best kind of reward.
  • Try questions like: How has your confidence grown as you’ve read this year? What do you think is the one thing we’ve done in class that’s helped you improve so much as a reader? How will the habits you’ve created in class help you in the reading you’ll have to do in college? Why do you think you’ve grown so much as a reader the past few weeks? What’s different for you now in the way you learn than how you learned before? Describe for me the characteristics you have that make you a reader.
  • What kinds of questions work for you in your reading conferences?
Susie Simmons

Structure Matters: Twenty-One Teaching Strategies to Promote Student Engagement and Cul... - 125 views

  • Below are 21 simple teaching strategies that biology instructors can use to promote student engagement and cultivate classroom equity. To provide a framework for how these teaching strategies might be most useful to instructors, I have organized them into five sections, representing overarching goals instructors may have for their classrooms, including:
  •  
    "Below are 21 simple teaching strategies that biology instructors can use to promote student engagement and cultivate classroom equity. To provide a framework for how these teaching strategies might be most useful to instructors, I have organized them into five sections, representing overarching goals instructors may have for their classrooms, including:"
  •  
    Length article specifically dealing with biology classrooms and student engagement.
Mark Gleeson

Technology - Providing Incredible Opportunities for Students whether we want it to or not - 4 views

  •  
    If you believed the media shock jocks, every kid on the internet is either an idiot or in great peril. But I want to tell a different story starring my daughter, her best friend and a small group of friends ( including my opportunistic son!). This is a completely different story that highlights the amazing opportunities that today's available technology offers our students. It's also a story about how, if given the freedom, children will take what we 'make' them do at school and take it to a whole new level that the limited minds of us teachers don't even plan for. It explains why student led learning can be a success if we don't restrict our students from going beyond our stated objectives. It shows how true engagement doesn't need a teacher or a classroom for children to achieve great things and how technology can allow young students follow their dreams with the restrictions we had in the past.
Tracy Tuten

How Can We Make Assessments Meaningful? | Edutopia - 170 views

  • Criteria for a Meaningful Classroom Assessment To address these requirements, I ask myself the following guided questions: Does the assessment involve project-based learning? Does it allow for student choice of topics? Is it inquiry based? Does it ask that students use some level of internet literacy to find their answers? Does it involve independent problem solving? Does it incorporate the 4Cs? Do the students need to communicate their knowledge via writing in some way? Does the final draft or project require other modalities in its presentation? (visual, oral, data, etc...)
  • So how can high-stakes assessments be meaningful to students? For one thing, high-stakes tests shouldn't be so high-stakes. It's inauthentic. They should and still can be a mere snapshot of ability. Additionally, those occasional assessments need to take a back seat to the real learning and achievement going on in every day assessments observed by the teacher. The key here, however, is to assess everyday. Not in boring, multiple-choice daily quizzes, but in informal, engaging assessments that take more than just a snapshot of a student's knowledge at one moment in time. But frankly, any assessment that sounds cool can still be made meaningless. It's how the students interact with the test that makes it meaningful. Remember the 4 Cs and ask this: does the assessment allow for: Creativity Are they students creating or just regurgitating? Are they being given credit for presenting something other than what was described? Collaboration Have they spent some time working with others to formulate their thoughts, brainstorm, or seek feedback from peers? Critical Thinking Are the students doing more work than the teacher in seeking out information and problem solving? Communication Does the assessment emphasize the need to communicate the content well? Is there writing involved as well as other modalities? If asked to teach the content to other students, what methods will the student use to communicate the information and help embed it more deeply?
  • Another way to ensure that an assessment is meaningful, of course, is to simply ask the students what they thought. Design a survey after each major unit or assessment. Or, better yet, if you want to encourage students to really focus on the requirements on a rubric, add a row that's only for them to fill out for you. That way, the rubric's feedback is more of a give-and-take, and you get feedback on the assessment's level of meaningfulness as soon as possible.
  • ...1 more annotation...
  • Download the example (left) of a quick rubric I designed for a general writing assessment. I included a row that the participants could fill out that actually gave me quick feedback on how meaningful or helpful they believed the assessment was towards their own learning.
  •  
    Worthwhile article on designing meaningful assessments
Clint Heitz

Flipping the Classroom: A revolutionary approach to learning presents some pros and con... - 73 views

    • Clint Heitz
       
      Why not create multiple types of videos? YouTube allows "choose your own path" videos that can let you alter the video based on the responses during viewing.
    • Clint Heitz
       
      Great way to provide equitable access opportunities
  • Teachers need to figure out what they want to get out of a flipped classroom, says Marine City High’s Ming. “What’s the purpose of doing it? Is it because you’re looking for more time in your curriculum to do hands-on activities?” An AP government teacher told Ming the best part of teaching his class was holding class discussions. The flipped classroom helped him get through the material with time to spare for conversation.
  • ...9 more annotations...
    • Clint Heitz
       
      The purpose is always the key. Don't try to implement this "just because" or excessively. It is a great tool, but not always the right one.
  • Watching videos also means more sitting in front of devices. The American Academy of Pediatrics recommends kids limit “screen time” to two hours a day because too much exposure has been linked to obesity, irregular sleep, behavioral problems, violence, and less time for play.
    • Clint Heitz
       
      Why not flip it with podcasts that students can listen to while walking, driving, etc.
  • Students need to feel as though their teachers are guiding them to the best materials, not merely giving them a list of videos to watch, says Valenza
  • “Teachers should keep posing the ‘why,’” says Bob Schuetz, the technology director at Palatine High School in Illinois. “Why am I doing this? Why is it beneficial to students?”
  • “The teacher walks around and helps everyone. It’s not a get-out-of-jail-free card for teachers not to teach.” It’s also not a way for kids to get out of doing anything at home. “Flipping what the kid does means they do the work ahead of time, come to class, and debrief,” explains Michelle Luhtala (aka the
  • “The end goal is personalized education. The flipped classroom is just a means to that end.” Students can use the videos to learn at their own pace—any time or place, says Roberts. “These students can replay their teacher’s explanation of a new concept as many times as they need to without fear of holding up the rest of the class.”
  • a librarian at Bullis School in Potomac, MD, gives students videos, Web pages, and screenshots about the nuts and bolts of the library, which frees up more time to devote to their research projects.
  • ure, some kids will ignore the video. “The same kids who don’t currently do their homework will not watch the lecture,” says McCammon. “But as you start making your class more engaging, kids who don’t usually do their homework will start doing it because they want to participate in the class.” Kids write questions down while they’re watching the video, and then the first 10 minutes of class is for discussion of what they’ve seen.
Margaret FalerSweany

The Myths of Technology Series - "Technology equals engagement" - 73 views

  • The Myths of Technology Series – “Technology equals engagement”
  • As educators, we have to be able to differentiate between “novelty” and “engagement”; they often look the same at the beginning, but one will quickly fade.
  • Compliance – Do this because I told you. Engagement – Do this because you are excited. Empowerment – Do this because you have the power to do something meaningful for yourself.
  • ...1 more annotation...
  • engagement” should not be the highest bar we set for our students.  If we can develop meaningful learning opportunities that empower our students to make a difference, our impact will go beyond their time they spent in our classrooms.  Technology alone will never provide this.  We need great educators that think differently about the opportunities we now have in our world and will take advantage of what we have in front of us, and help to create these experiences for our students to do something powerful.
  •  
    One of a series of commentaries on the relationship between technology and learning. The comments here raise questions worth thinking about.
Christophe Gigon

elearnspace. Connectivism: A Learning Theory for the Digital Age - 17 views

  • Over the last twenty years, technology has reorganized how we live, how we communicate, and how we learn.
    • Rose Molter
       
      I aggree that as teachers we need to realize that technology has changed instruction and the way that our students learn and the way that we learn and instruct.
    • Orlando Gonzalez
       
      Technology has always changed the way we live. How did we respond to changes in the past? One thought is that some institutions, some businesses disappeared, while others, who took advantage of the new tech, appeared to replace the old. It will happen again and we as educators need to lead the way.
    • Maureen Curran
       
      With technology our students brains are wired differently and they can multi-task and learn in multiple virtual environments all at once. This should make us think about how we present lessons, structure learning and keep kids engaged.
    • Mike Burnett
       
      Rubbish. The idea that digital native are adept at multitasking is wrong. They may be doing many things but the quality and depth is reduced. There is a significant body of research to support this. Development of grit and determination are key attributes of successful people. Set and demand high standards. No one plays sport or an instrument because it is easy rather because they can clearly see a link between hard work and pleasure.
  • Information development was slow.
  • Many learners will move into a variety of different, possibly unrelated fields over the course of their lifetime.
  • ...41 more annotations...
  • Informal learning is a significant aspect of our learning experience.
  • Learning is a continual process, lasting for a lifetime.
  • Technology is altering (rewiring) our brains.
  • Connectivism is the integration of principles explored by chaos, network, and complexity and self-organization theories.
  • Principles of connectivism:
  • Learning and knowledge rests in diversity of opinions. Learning is a process of connecting specialized nodes or information sources. Learning may reside in non-human appliances. Capacity to know more is more critical than what is currently known Nurturing and maintaining connections is needed to facilitate continual learning. Ability to see connections between fields, ideas, and concepts is a core skill. Currency (accurate, up-to-date knowledge) is the intent of all connectivist learning activities. Decision-making is itself a learning process. Choosing what to learn and the meaning of incoming information is seen through the lens of a shifting reality. While there is a right answer now, it may be wrong tomorrow due to alterations in the information climate affecting the decision.
    • Rose Molter
       
      I think it is important for us to realize the importance of connections.
  • The organization and the individual are both learning organisms.
  • Classrooms which emulate the “fuzziness”
    • Maureen Curran
       
      So what does this look like? I feel that when I attempt this, evaluators and administrators don't necessarily understand. They want a neat, quiet, well-managed, orderly classroom.
    • Maureen Curran
       
      If new learning approaches are required, then why are we still being evaluated in a linear way?
  • John Seely Brown presents an interesting notion that the internet leverages the small efforts of many with the large efforts of few.
  • The pipe is more important than the content within the pipe. Our ability to learn what we need for tomorrow is more important than what we know today.
  • Knowledge is growing exponentially
  • amount of knowledge
  • is doubling every 18 months
  • To combat the shrinking half-life of knowledge, organizations have been forced to develop new methods of deploying instruction.”
  • (the understanding of where to find knowledge needed).
  • know-where
  • learning
  • a persisting change in human performance or performance potential…[which] must come about as a result of the learner’s experience and interaction with the world”
  • Learning theories are concerned with the actual process of learning, not with the value of what is being learned.
  • The ability to synthesize and recognize connections and patterns is a valuable skill.
  • knowledge is no longer acquired in the linear manner
  • What is the impact of chaos as a complex pattern recognition process on learning
  • An entirely new approach is needed.
  • Chaos is the breakdown of predictability, evidenced in complicated arrangements that initially defy order.
  • Meaning-making and forming connections between specialized communities are important activities.
  • Chaos, as a science, recognizes the connection of everything to everything.
  • If the underlying conditions used to make decisions change, the decision itself is no longer as correct as it was at the time it was made.
  • principle that people, groups, systems, nodes, entities can be connected to create an integrated whole.
  • Connections between disparate ideas and fields can create new innovations.
  • Learning is a process that occurs within nebulous environments of shifting core elements – not entirely under the control of the individual
  • decisions are based on rapidly altering foundations
  • The ability to draw distinctions between important and unimportant information is vital.
  • Behaviorism, cognitivism, and constructivism do not attempt to address the challenges of organizational knowledge and transference.
  • The health of the learning ecology of the organization depends on effective nurturing of information flow.
  • This cycle of knowledge development (personal to network to organization) allows learners to remain current in their field through the connections they have formed.
  • This amplification of learning, knowledge and understanding through the extension of a personal network is the epitome of connectivism.
  • Diverse teams of varying viewpoints are a critical structure for completely exploring ideas
  • An organizations ability to foster, nurture, and synthesize the impacts of varying views of information is critical to knowledge economy surviva
  • As knowledge continues to grow and evolve, access to what is needed is more important than what the learner currently possesses.
    • BalancEd Tech
       
      Access is not enough. Prior knowledge and understanding is needed. Processing is needed. Evaluation of processing and outputs is needed. Feeding that back into the "system" is needed.
  • learning is no longer an internal, individualistic activity
  • learning is no longer an internal, individualistic activity
ddavisfife

ASCD Express 11.06 - Use Mobile Tech to Challenge and Engage Students - 34 views

    • ddavisfife
       
      iMovie (dynamic videos) another option WeVideo
  • students were challenged to think deeply
  • I gave the students complete autonomy on how to execute the task, which also increased their excitement about the assignment.
  • ...12 more annotations...
  • Devices should drive engagement, pique curiosity, and encourage creativity.
  • If teachers design the activity well, students will be too absorbed in what they're doing to be off task.
  • one device to explore
  • another device, they posted
  • They posted their inferences to a shared Padlet wall so they could see one another's posts in real time.
  • they had 20 minutes to complete the activity, which was enough time for them to accomplish the task without getting bored or wandering off task.
  • Students have more opportunities to learn from one another, and they begin to value their peers as resources in the classroom.
  • It's hard for me to imagine that devices are a distraction if students are challenged and engaged.
  • This collaboration makes it hard for a student to be off task because the group relies on each member to contribute to the final product.
  • shared Google Document
  • dynamic videos
    • ddavisfife
       
      dynamic videos ~ WeVideo
Matt Renwick

Common Core Reading: Difficult, Dahl, Repeat : NPR Ed : NPR - 42 views

  • Ms. Wertheimer warms them up with a text-dependent question: "Are all of these native peoples nomadic?"
    • Matt Renwick
       
      "Warms them up" - That is not the descriptor I would use for that question.
  • "On page 6, paragraph 2," he says, "the first sentence: 'The Haida and Tlingit of the Northwest built permanent wooden homes called longhouses.' "
    • Matt Renwick
       
      How is this any different than the outdate practice of call and answer?
  • seems to engage the kids
    • Matt Renwick
       
      Because the hands shot up?
  • ...7 more annotations...
  • tiring work for the kids
    • Matt Renwick
       
      Why is it tiring? Shouldn't it be invigorating?
  • dives into the packet
    • Matt Renwick
       
      An oxymoron if I every saw one.
  • It's a way of labeling books based on the skill needed to read them.
    • Matt Renwick
       
      Or a way of labeling students, at least indirectly.
  • kids here have leveled libraries
  • counterbalance to the tough stuff
    • Matt Renwick
       
      Kids will challenge themselves, when the text invites learners to challenge it. The requires provocative reading.
  • seems to engage the kids
  • d. Or, to
Maureen Greenbaum

'Interactive Learning Spaces' at the center of Ball State U.'s faculty development prog... - 29 views

  • The rooms are part of a larger faculty development program intended to promote active learning techniques and cut down on lecturing
  • university is researching whether teaching at-risk students -- those withdrawing from or earning a D or F in a basic math course -- in the classrooms could improve academic outcomes and, eventually, graduation rates.
  • Pavlechko described the two spaces as “intake classrooms” -- faculty members who work in the development program are required to teach in them for two semesters. By the end of this academic year, the classrooms will have hosted 68 faculty members representing 29 of the university’s 48 departments and more than 3,500 students.
  • ...5 more annotations...
  • How do we set ourselves apart? In our case, by the development of these interactive learning space classrooms, we are demonstrating to everyone that we are committed to the concept of faculty development.”
  • researchers found at-risk students who took the course in classrooms that promoted active learning (which included some rooms other than the renovated ones) were 2.8 times more likely to succeed -- that is, to earn a grade higher than a D -- than students in traditional classrooms.
  • The company has surveyed hundreds of students and faculty members at the universities it has worked with, and says it has found a statistically significant correlation between classroom configuration and student engagement. The survey doesn't include any academic results.
  • “We actually found a fairly moderate to strong correlation between what they think of these areas and if they think they have the ability to get a higher grade -- or their motivation to attend class and also their engagement in class,”
  • “Perception-wise, students are telling us ‘I can do better when I’m in these spaces,’ ” Jones said. “Maybe that’s enough of a win?”
Susie Simmons

Student Engagement Strategies - Wake County Public School System - 65 views

  •  
    Pile of PDFs and documents about ways to engage your students organized by type of strategy. Put together by the Wake Country Public School system.
Roland Gesthuizen

Education Outrage: Back to School: A message to high school students who hate high scho... - 21 views

  • I say in this interview that the only way we can learn is by doing and to do that we must practice constantly. Schools rarely teach doing, mostly teaching abstract theories that will never matter to 99% of the population.
  • So, my advice. Know what matters to you. Learn that. Temporarily memorize nonsense if you want to graduate but have a proper perspective on it. Nothing you learn in high school will matter in your future life.
  •  
    "I believe that every single subject taught in high school is a mistake. What I write here will infuriate teachers, but teachers are not my enemy. It isn't their fault. They are cogs in a system over which they have no control. I believe there are many great teachers, and I believe that teaching and teachers are very important."
1 - 20 of 28 Next ›
Showing 20 items per page