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Instead of reporting to parents only two or three times a year, teachers began regularly communicating using an online student portfolio system called Fresh Grade.

ritish education researchers Paul Black and Dylan Wiliam published a widely-cited article demonstrating how increasing descriptive feedback raises student academic achievement

Instead of Ms. Samson telling students how they are doing, they are expected to articulate to her what they learned in class, how it relates to their learning goals and where they’re struggling.

they were waiting for a time when the videotape material seemed less important and not likely to be on the test. Those students were using their metacognitive skills to decide when was a good time to be distracted and when it was important to focus

"focus" on classroom work for 15 minutes.

no need to be internally distracted since an opportunity to "check in" will be coming

Research comparing the two methods has consistently found that students over all perform better in active-learning courses than in traditional lecture courses. However, women, minorities, and low-income and first-generation students benefit more, on average, than white males from more affluent, educated families.

research has demonstrated that we learn new material by anchoring it to knowledge we already possess

low-stakes quiz at the start of each meeting of their introductory psychology course. Compared with students who took the same course in a more traditional format, the quizzed students attended class more often and achieved higher test scores; the intervention also reduced by 50 percent the achievement gap between more affluent and less affluent students.

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.

adults and students alike now share a platform for consuming and authoring information like our society has never seen

So how do we integrate standards and skillsets that prepare our K-12 students for an interconnected, digital world that can often be incendiary and hurtful?

Are in-depth group discussions provided during class time? Are students coached to question their thinking processes and those of their classmates? Are students afforded opportunities to evaluate their progress regularly? Are students encouraged to pose questions regularly in class? Are students provided with guides to help them reflect on their thinking (such as Bloom’s Taxonomy)? Do class projects engage students in analysis, synthesis, and evaluation? Are students given opportunities to consider various opinions and to justify their own beliefs?

Table 1 Bloom's Cognitive Taxonomy Competence Description Question/Prompt Knowledge Dates, events, formulas, other facts When did the United States become an independent country from England? What is the formula for area? Comprehension Recognize meaning, sequence, events, interpret information, compare ideas, make inferences, predict ideas What is the author's purpose? How are these numbers related? Is water of sunshine more critical to plant life? Human life? Application Use of information and concepts to solve problems Using your knowledge of calories and your physical makeup, calculate how much energy you must exert to lose three pounds per month. Demonstrate your understanding of how to create a Web site. Analysis Recognize patterns, parts, components Considering the stock market, examine which investments were the most lucrative this quarter. Organize these games by level of difficulty. Synthesis Use of information to create a new system, generalize, draw conclusions When did the United States become an independent country from England? What is the formula for area? Evaluation Assess concepts, weigh opinions for subjectivity, select items, judge Which type of dog would be best suited for your family, given your lifestyle and housing? Which local newspaper is written the most objectively?

Economists are trying to measure a home computer’s educational impact on schoolchildren in low-income households.

little or no educational benefit is found. Worse, computers seem to have further separated children in low-income households, whose test scores often decline after the machine arrives, from their more privileged counterparts.

few children whose families obtained computers said they used the machines for homework. What they were used for — daily — was playing games.

Good pedagogy is the product of instructors who respect, understand, and creatively engage their students.

make transparent

I am asking instructors to see the two questions that the new epistemology emblazons across the front of every classroom — "So what?" and "Who cares?" — and then to adjust their teaching accordingly.

5 fantastic ways to use Wallwisher in the classroom: Writing activities – Wallwisher has a 160 character limit for each comment/post that you leave on the wall. Which is, in a way, a good thing! It allows for short story/collaborative projects, essay plans, note-taking, memos, poems, etc… the writing possibilities are endless! Brainstorming activities – This is a great ice breaker for the beginning of class! And better yet, it’s a great way to post a homework assignment/food for thought for that evening and then discuss it the next day. Vocabulary/Grammar Activities – You could easily use Wallwisher for practicing tenses, definitions, vocabulary matching (you can even use audio or video!), or even find a theme and have the students fill the sticky notes with their ideas for the vocabulary theme! Speaking activities – I was never one to love speaking in front of people so Wallwisher is a great way to create short speaking activities to help students feel more comfortable in front of a group of people. These activities could be to talk about a photo or video for X minutes, create a story based upon X number of photos, or even put debate topics on a sticky note for the student to create. Notifications – That is the original thought, right? You could use Wallwisher for orientation information, classroom rules, student profiles, daily/weekly plan, or even fun messages to other students who might be out sick or on trips with their families.

Her presentation contained a slide that said academic dishonesty included plagiarizing yourself—i.e., taking a paper you had written for one course and turning it in for credit in another course. That, she explained, constituted a dishonest representation of your work for a course. "Unless," one of my colleagues chimed in at that point, "you're an academic, and you're presenting the same idea at a bunch of different conferences. Then it's clearly not dishonest."

So does the injunction against plagiarizing from yourself fall into the category of one of those hypocritical rules that we like to impose on our children: Drinking soda every day would be bad for your health, honey, but it's fine for me? If a categorical difference exists here between what we do and what we forbid our students to do, I confess, I have a hard time seeing it.