Group items tagged

Engagement must be deliberately designed to improve student learning. This article talks specifically about technology, but I would challenge people to apply to any effort to "engage" learners.

The overall theme of this teacher-tested unit is using maps to understand borders and their impacts in Europe. The materials will help your middle school students to use maps to think about how borders intersect physical and human geographical features, and how those intersections can lead to cooperation and/or conflict. The educator resources provided in the unit include maps, multimedia, and case studies that will enable students to develop skills in map analysis and apply that analysis to specific situations. Other parts of the unit will invite you and your students to explore similar cases in Europe and your own community.

Tech training and PD should be about more than the device; it should have purpose. The key to professional learning is having an objective for your learning and then time to apply what you've learned. It does take time!

"The Stripling Inquiry Model has six phases; however, it's not a linear process but rather a recursive one in which the learner might revisit a previous stage to ask additional questions or organize information, as the need arises. Each phase involves critical thinking skills that empower young people to learn on their own and develop the thinking skills to be independent, lifelong learners. The phases are as follows: Connect: observe, experience, connect a subject to self and previous knowledge Wonder: predict, develop questions and hypotheses Investigate: find and evaluate information to answer questions, test hypotheses Construct: draw conclusions, arrive at new understandings Express: apply understandings to a new context, share learning with others Reflect: examine one's own learning and ask new questions (Stripling 2003, 8). Technology and, in particular, Web 2.0 tools and services can be used throughout the inquiry process to support the appropriate thinking skills. The key is to focus on student learning, not the Web 2.0 technology. The focus is on the phase(s) of inquiry at which students are concentrating and deciding which technology tool can best support the thinking processes and instructional strategies of that phase of inquiry. This increases the effectiveness of both the learning experience and the use of technology. An outline of the inquiry phases aligned with Web 2.0 technology tools and instructional strategies can be seen in Figure 2."

Behind the rhetoric and politics, education is about the outcomes it achieves for its learners. More than being about the nuances of technology, learning space design, curriculum structures and pedagogical practices schools should have effective answers to questions that focus on what they hope to achieve for their learners. How we answer this question should then dictate the measures we utilise to achieve these goals and it is to these ends that we must apply our efforts.

To celebrate Autism Awareness Month, Kindergarten.com is making all its Applied Behavior Analysis (ABA) flashcard apps free to download for the month of April.

"Staff and students are expected to be fully conversant with school email. Not only do users need to check their email regularly enough so that they don't miss important announcements but they also have to understand and apply the complex landscape of netiquette, respond to emails quickly (and politely) and action any instructions that they receive. Being on top of your email inbox has never been so important in schools. So why, whenever I help a member of staff or a student, do they have an email account that is bursting at the seams with often more than 1000 emails in their inbox? It seems that how email is managed in schools is, well, often not managed well."

For students creating presentation or visual data. Helps reinforce digital literacy and apply high-order thinking by creating the visual data rather than merely evaluating it. 

The author reflects on student evaluations, citing a study that asked students what they expect from their professors (also talks about how it applies to K-12 schools)

Mission: Leadership and opportunities in technology, innovation, design and engineering. Members apply STEM (science, technology, engineering and mathematics) concepts through co-curricular programs. Suggested by Deb Rottinger, 5/11/2012

This is a very relevant and interesting article about some research that applies in Australia as much as the rest of the world.

In this blog post, the story of Adora Svitak, the now 14 year old literacy prodigy is discussed in light of how her experiences growing up could be applied to developing every child's writing skills. The blog post challenges how we teach writing, how parents and teachers need to both support the learning of and expect more from children and how we need to develop good learning habits. 

Accelerate Learning Apply innovative technology based on more than 30 years of brain plasticity research to accelerate learning for students of all ages and abilities.

Do you have an idea for a school/community native plant garden, a forest improvement project, a streamside restoration plan, a recycling program, or energy conservation project for your students? Need funds to implement it? Apply for a Project Learning Tree GreenWorks! grant!

The Captain Planet Foundation primarily makes grants to U.S.-based schools and organizations with an annual operating budget of less than $3 million.

Any organization is eligible to apply... schools, non-profits, governmental agencies and others. The only criterion is that we can only provide funds to an organization not to an individual. If you are self-employed, you need to find a sponsoring organization.

The first year of teaching is a difficult challenge. If you are currently in your first year of teaching, the graph above probably applies to you. And you are most certainly not alone! Whether you are currently feeling extremely overwhelmed or abundantly triumphant, other first-year teachers are going through the same thing. The University of California Santa Cruz New Teacher Project has worked to support the efforts of new teachers.

Great insight and reflection on how we learn and how we expect our students to learn.

Main points are in a slideshow here: http://www.slideshare.net/sdimbert/relearn

The U-Pace instructional approach combines self-paced, mastery-based learning with instructor-initiated Amplified Assistance in an online learning environment. Extensive evaluation showed that, compared to conventional instruction approaches, U-Pace instruction facilitated greater learning and greater academic success for all students in Introduction to Psychology courses. In terms of resources, U-Pace requires only a learning management system (such as Blackboard, Desire2Learn, or Moodle). U-Pace can be applied in any course or discipline, and resources to help instructors adopt the U-Pace approach are freely available.