Thank you! This is great information! James McKee wrote: > Shannon, > > I was recently referred to this video of Michael Wesch who teaches cultural anthropology at Kansas State University. He ...
Transdisciplinarity: literacy in and ability to understand concepts across multiple disciplines. More about transdisciplinarity.Virtual collaboration: ability to work productively, drive engagement, and demonstrate presence as a member of a virtual team. More about virtual collaboration.Sense-making: ability to determine the deeper meaning or significance of what is being expressed. More about sense-making.Social intelligence: ability to connect to others in a deep and direct way, to sense and stimulate reactions and desired interactions. More about social intelligence.Cross-cultural competency: ability to operate in different cultural settings. More about cross-cultural competency.Cognitive load management: ability to discriminate and filter information for importance, and to understand how to maximize cognitive functioning using a variety of tools and techniques. More about cognitive load management.Novel and adaptive thinking: proficiency at thinking and coming up with solutions and responses beyond that which is rote or rule-based. More about novel and adaptive thinking.Computational thinking: ability to translate vast amounts of data into abstract concepts and to understand data-based reasoning. More about computational thinking.New media literacy: ability to critically assess and develop content that uses new media forms, and to leverage these media for persuasive communication. More about new media literacy. More about new media literacy.Design mindset: ability to represent and develop tasks and work processes for desired outcomes. More about design mindset.
"Transdisciplinarity: literacy in and ability to understand concepts across multiple disciplines. More about transdisciplinarity.
Virtual collaboration: ability to work productively, drive engagement, and demonstrate presence as a member of a virtual team. More about virtual collaboration.
Sense-making: ability to determine the deeper meaning or significance of what is being expressed. More about sense-making.
Social intelligence: ability to connect to others in a deep and direct way, to sense and stimulate reactions and desired interactions. More about social intelligence.
Cross-cultural competency: ability to operate in different cultural settings. More about cross-cultural competency.
Cognitive load management: ability to discriminate and filter information for importance, and to understand how to maximize cognitive functioning using a variety of tools and techniques. More about cognitive load management.
Novel and adaptive thinking: proficiency at thinking and coming up with solutions and responses beyond that which is rote or rule-based. More about novel and adaptive thinking.
Computational thinking: ability to translate vast amounts of data into abstract concepts and to understand data-based reasoning. More about computational thinking.
New media literacy: ability to critically assess and develop content that uses new media forms, and to leverage these media for persuasive communication. More about new media literacy. More about new media literacy.
Design mindset: ability to represent and develop tasks and work processes for desired outcomes. More about design mindset."
First, students tend to lose interest in
whatever they’re learning. As motivation to get good grades goes up,
motivation to explore ideas tends to go down. Second, students try
to avoid challenging tasks whenever possible. More difficult
assignments, after all, would be seen as an impediment to getting a
top grade. Finally, the quality of students’ thinking is less
impressive. One study after another shows that creativity and even
long-term recall of facts are adversely affected by the use of
traditional grades.
Very true; especially the "avoiding challenging tasks" part.
Unhappily, assessment is sometimes driven by entirely
different objectives--for example, to motivate students (with grades
used as carrots and sticks to coerce them into working harder) or to
sort students (the point being not to help everyone learn but to
figure out who is better than whom)
Standardized tests often have the additional
disadvantages of being (a) produced and scored far away from the
classroom, (b) multiple choice in design (so students can’t generate
answers or explain their thinking), (c) timed (so speed matters more
than thoughtfulness) and (d) administered on a one-shot,
high-anxiety basis.
The test
designers will probably toss out an item that most students manage
to answer correctly.
the evidence suggests that five disturbing consequences are likely
to accompany an obsession with standards and achievement:
1. Students come to regard learning as a
chore.
intrinsic motivation and extrinsic motivation
tend to be inversely related: The more people are rewarded for doing
something, the more they tend to lose interest in whatever they had
to do to get the reward.
2. Students try to avoid challenging tasks.
they’re just being rational. They have
adapted to an environment where results, not intellectual
exploration, are what count. When school systems use traditional
grading systems--or, worse, when they add honor rolls and other
incentives to enhance the significance of grades--they are
unwittingly discouraging students from stretching themselves to see
what they’re capable of doing.
This is the reinforcement of a "fixed mindset" (vs. (growth mindset) as described by Carol Dweck.
They seem to be
fine as long as they are succeeding, but as soon as they hit a bump
they may regard themselves as failures and act as though they’re
helpless to do anything about it.
When the point isn’t to
figure things out but to prove how good you are, it’s often hard to
cope with being less than good.
It may be the systemic demand for high
achievement that led him to become debilitated when he failed, even
if the failure is only relative.
But even when better forms of assessment are
used, perceptive observers realize that a student’s score is less
important than why she thinks she got that score.
just smart
luck:
tried hard
task difficulty
It bodes well for the future
the punch line: When students are led to focus on
how well they are performing in school, they tend to explain their
performance not by how hard they tried but by how smart they are.
In their
study of academically advanced students, for example, the more that
teachers emphasized getting good grades, avoiding mistakes and
keeping up with everyone else, the more the students tended to
attribute poor performance to factors they thought were outside
their control, such as a lack of ability.
When students are made to
think constantly about how well they are doing, they are apt to
explain the outcome in terms of who they are rather than how hard
they tried.
And if children are encouraged to think of themselves as
"smart" when they succeed, doing poorly on a subsequent task will
bring down their achievement even though it doesn’t have that effect
on other kids.
The upshot of all this is that beliefs about
intelligence and about the causes of one’s own success and failure
matter a lot. They often make more of a difference than how
confident students are or what they’re truly capable of doing or how
they did on last week’s exam. If, like the cheerleaders for tougher
standards, we look only at the bottom line, only at the test scores
and grades, we’ll end up overlooking the ways that students make
sense of those results.
the problem with tests is not limited
to their content.
if too big a deal is made
about how students did, thus leading them (and their teachers) to
think less about learning and more about test outcomes.
As Martin
Maehr and Carol Midgley at the University of Michigan have
concluded, "An overemphasis on assessment can actually undermine the
pursuit of excellence."
Only now and then does it make sense for the
teacher to help them attend to how successful they’ve been and how
they can improve. On those occasions, the assessment can and should
be done without the use of traditional grades and standardized
tests. But most of the time, students should be immersed in
learning.
the findings
of the Colorado experiment make perfect sense: The more teachers are
thinking about test results and "raising the bar," the less well the
students actually perform--to say nothing of how their enthusiasm
for learning is apt to wane.
The underlying problem concerns
a fundamental distinction that has been at the center of some work
in educational psychology for a couple of decades now. It is the
difference between focusing on how well you’re doing something and
focusing on what you’re doing.
The two orientations aren’t mutually exclusive, of course,
but in practice they feel different and lead to different behaviors.
But when we get carried away with results, we wind up,
paradoxically, with results that are less than ideal.
Unfortunately,
common sense is in short supply today because assessment has come to
dominate the whole educational process. Worse, the purposes and
design of the most common forms of assessment--both within
classrooms and across schools--often lead to disastrous
consequences.
grades, which by their very
nature undermine learning. The proper occasion for outrage is not
that too many students are getting A’s, but that too many students
have been led to believe that getting A’s is the point of going to
school.
research indicates that the use of traditional
letter or number grades is reliably associated with three
consequences.
The message of Daniel Pinks book "Drive" applies here. Paying someone more, i.e. good grades, does not make them better thinkers, problems solvers, or general more motivated in what they are doing. thanks for sharing.
assumed they were more developed as writers than they actually were
initially corrected all errors
ttle emphasis to these errors in subsequent interactions
explored whether these were careless errors or whether the students had difficulty with particular aspects of writin
students assumed some responsibility for proofreading
cholarly writing in a thesis involves much more than a set of discrete writing tasks
heightened awareness of individual differences in students as writers
dependent writer
‘writer’s block’ that could be overcome by breaking writing down into subtasks
copious notes
detailed note‐taking limited her interaction
brief summary of the key points on my written response to her drafts
action plan
writing block initially posed a major ethical dilemma for me because the ethical guidelines of authorship restrict the writing that should be undertaken by a superviso
not writing per se that underpinned Denise’s writing block but a lack of knowledge about the content and organization of a particular writing task.
use of technology to produce tracked drafts/version control
resistant writer
acknowledged herself to be a poor write
writing supp
oral and written feedback
email guidance, sessions where writing was modeled and her writing scaffolded, and handouts on writing style.
specialist assistance
r lack of commitment to improving the quality of subsequent drafts
argumentative stance towards writing feedback
my colleague and I decided that we were no longer prepared to supervise Rita.
imited writing progress
, Rita had failed to adequately demonstrate her writing capability as a doctoral candidat
sporadic writer
repeatedly failed to meet negotiated deadlines
supervisor, it was difficult to maintain interest in and respond to Sherry’s work because of the time lag between each piece of writing
enlisted an experienced supervisor to act as my mentor
forewarned
Sherry’s approach to writing was likely to result in a lengthy completion time and she needed to accept the responsibility for managing her writing tasks.
emotional excitement of writing up a thesis and the ensuing motivation
lacked
This trail of documentation
importance of
highlighted student‐centred writing issues
dentified broader issues that also needed to be accommodated in supervision
confidence in writing does not necessarily equate with capability.
uture directions
upport students
ncouraging them to participate in activities designed to support scholarly writing,
There are three cognitive loads that impact the efficient formation of schemas. Extraneous cognitive load are those not directly required to master a task and have a negative impact on schema formation, reducing these is desirable and can be achieved through efficient design. Intrinsic cognitive load is that which is inherent in the task and for the most part cannot be reduced. Tasks with high intrinsic cognitive load are by nature more complex for an individual and in the long term are managed through equally complex schema. Germane cognitive load refers to the mental resources devoted to the efficient formation of schemas and is seen to have a positive effect on learning. Understanding these things will allow us to more effectively target our efforts as learners and teachers ensuring the cognitive load theory has a valuable role to play.
Discover tips on helpful ways to refresh your lessons, manage class assignments, make quick work of daily tasks, and share information with colleagues, students, and parents.
On the 19 April, in London CETIS are holding a meeting in London on Repositories and the Open Web. The theme of the meeting is how repositories and social sharing / web 2.0 web sites compare as hosts for learning materials: how well does each facilitate the tasks of resource discovery and resource management; what approaches to resource description do the different approaches take; and are there any lessons that users of one approach can draw from the other?
This site is a great online calendar tool for juggling life's tasks and events. Create and manage multiple calendars to view individually or on the same page.
http://www.dayviewer.com/
Teaching Wikipedia in 5 Easy Steps:
*Use it as background information
*Use it for technology terms
*Use it for current pop cultural literacy
*Use it for the Keywords
*Use it for the REFERENCES at the bottom of the page!
4 ways to use Wikipedia (hint: never cite it)
Teachers: Please stop prohibiting the use of Wikipedia
20 Little Known Ways to Use Wikipedia
Study: Wikipedia as accurate as Encyclopedia Britannica
Schiff, Stacy. “Know it all: Can Wikipedia conquer expertise?” The New Yorker, February 26, 2006
And:
Yes students, there’s a world beyond Wikipedia
**Several years ago, Nature magazine did a comparison of material available on Wikipedia and Brittanica and concluded that Brittanica was somewhat, but not overwhelmingly, more accurate than Wikipedia. Brittanica lodged a complaint, and here, you can see what it complained about as well as Nature’s response.
Nature compared articles from both organizations on various topics and sent them to experts to review. Per article, the averages were: 2.92 mistakes per article for Britannica and 3.86 for Wikipedia.
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By Valerie Strauss
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05:00 AM ET, 09/07/2011
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Excellent perspective on "The 'W' Word" - use it wisely for what it is - high school and college kids shouldn't be citing any general knowledge encyclopedias for serious research - but that doesn't mean there aren't some excellent uses for it.
"Few teachers are drawn to the profession for its administrative duties. But the reality of attendance taking, lesson planning, grading and parental communications is that they're a big part of the job.
These tasks, however, need not take over. With help from the many online services and mobile apps designed for teachers, it can be easy to efficiently organize and complete classroom management responsibilities.
Here are five of our favorite virtual tools for tackling some of the most common classroom chores."
Never forget a meeting or task ever again with this widely used to do list site. It works across many types of devices. Set yourself reminders by email and it integrates easily with Google calendars.
http://ictmagic.wikispaces.com/ICT+&+Web+Tools
There are keynote speakers—often the people who created the technology at hand or crafted a given language. There are the regular speakers, often paid not at all or in airfare, who present some idea or technique or approach. Then there are the panels, where a group of people are lined up in a row and forced into some semblance of interaction while the audience checks its e-mail.
Fewer than a fifth of undergraduate degrees in computer science awarded in 2012 went to women, according to the National Center for Women & Information Technology
The average programmer is moderately diligent, capable of basic mathematics, has a working knowledge of one or more programming languages, and can communicate what he or she is doing to management and his or her peers
The true measure of a language isn’t how it uses semicolons; it’s the standard library of each language. A language is software for making software. The standard library is a set of premade software that you can reuse and reapply.
A coder needs to be able to quickly examine and identify which giant, complex library is the one that’s the most recently and actively updated and the best match for his or her current needs. A coder needs to be a good listener.
Code isn’t just obscure commands in a file. It requires you to have a map in your head, to know where the good libraries, the best documentation, and the most helpful message boards are located. If you don’t know where those things are, you will spend all of your time searching, instead of building cool new things.
Some tools are better for certain jobs.
C is a simple language, simple like a shotgun that can blow off your foot. It allows you to manage every last part of a computer—the memory, files, a hard drive—which is great if you’re meticulous and dangerous if you’re sloppy
Object-oriented programming is, at its essence, a filing system for code.
Where C tried to make it easier to do computer things, Smalltalk tried to make it easier to do human things.
Style and usage matter; sometimes programmers recommend Strunk & White’s The Elements of Style—that’s right, the one about the English language. Its focus on efficient usage resonates with programmers. The idiom of a language is part of its communal identity.
Coding is a culture of blurters.
Programmers carve out a sliver of cognitive territory for themselves and go to conferences, and yet they know their position is vulnerable.
Programmers are often angry because they’re often scared.
Programming is a task that rewards intense focus and can be done with a small group or even in isolation.
For a truly gifted programmer, writing code is a side effect of thought
As a class, programmers are easily bored, love novelty, and are obsessed with various forms of productivity enhancement.
“Most programming languages are partly a way of expressing things in terms of other things and partly a basic set of given things.”
Of course, while we were trying to build a bookstore, we actually built the death of bookstores—that seems to happen a lot in the business. You set out to do something cool and end up destroying lots of things that came before.
students must also have tools to manage their own resources and evidence, not just during a course, but 24/7 while they are enrolled, including between semesters.
it's a cultural change in how we have been thinking even if we thought ourselves to be tech heavy. Tools to manage: Diigo can help...big time...using it already at HS level - :)
Speaking of cultural change, it is the first day of term break here, and I have just has a diigo alert that a student has commented on a page that I set as reading. She is behind, and needs reminding of the task. In the new culture of my classroom, my kids know that if they are working, so am I! I have my computer on anyway, and it only takes a moment to respond to her question. She's back on track.
Feed readers
are probably the most important digital tool for today's learner because they
make sifting through the amazing amount of content added to the Internet
easy. Also known as aggregators, feed readers are free tools that can
automatically check nearly any website for new content dozens of times a
day---saving ridiculous amounts of time and customizing learning experiences for
anyone.
Imagine
never having to go hunting for new information from your favorite sources
again. Learning goes from a frustrating search through thousands of
marginal links written by questionable characters to quickly browsing the
thoughts of writers that you trust, respect and enjoy.
Feed readers can
quickly and easily support blogging in the classroom, allowing teachers to
provide students with ready access to age-appropriate sites of interest that are
connected to the curriculum. By collecting sites in advance and organizing
them with a feed reader, teachers can make accessing information manageable for
their students.
Here are several
examples of feed readers in action:
Used specifically as
a part of one classroom project, this feed list contains information related to
global warming that students can use as a starting point for individual
research.
While there are literally dozens of different feed reader
programs to choose from (Bloglines andGoogle Reader are two
biggies), Pageflakes is a favorite of
many educators because it has a visual layout that is easy to read and
interesting to look at. It is also free and web-based. That
means that users can check accounts from any computer with an Internet
connection. Finally, Pageflakes makes it quick and easy to add new
websites to a growing feed list—and to get rid of any websites that users are no
longer interested in.
What's even
better: Pageflakes has been developinga teacher version of their tooljust for us that includes an online grade tracker,
a task list and a built in writing tutor. As Pageflakes works to perfect
its teacher product, this might become one of the first kid-friendly feed
readers on the market. Teacher Pageflakes users can actually blog and create a
discussion forum directly in their feed reader---making an all-in-one digital
home for students.
For more
information about the teacher version of Pageflakes, check out this
review: