Group items tagged

A short video summarizing some of the most important characteristics of students today - how they learn, what they need to learn, their goals, hopes, dreams, what their lives will be like, and what kinds of changes they will experience in their lifetime. Created by Michael Wesch in collaboration with 200 students at Kansas State University. Wesch, M. (2007). A vision of students today [Video]. Retrieved from http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dGCJ46vyR9o

5 minute video summarizing the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks on New York City.

Is this progress?

"This feature is our annotated guide to the most useful websites for teaching U.S. history and social studies. We have carefully selected and screened each website for quality and provide a paragraph annotation that summarizes the site's content, notes its strengths and weaknesses, and emphasizes its utility for teachers. Information is provided on the type of website (Archive, Electronic Essay, Gateway, Journal, Organization, Syllabi/Assignments) and the type of resource (text, images, audio, and video). Browse sites by topic and time period or look through a list of some of our favorite sites on this page. The full search feature allows you to quickly locate WWW.History resources by topic, time period, keyword, or type."

"Conversation is key . Sawyer succinctly explains this principle: "Conversation leads to flow, and flow leads to creativity." When having students work in groups, consider what will spark rich conversation. The original researcher on flow, Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, found that rich conversation precedes and ignites flow more than any other activity.1 Tasks that require (or force) interaction lead to richer collaborative conceptualization. Set a clear but open-ended goal . Groups produce the richest ideas when they have a goal that will focus their interaction but also has fluid enough boundaries to allow for creativity. This is a challenge we often overlook. As teachers, we often have an idea of what a group's final product should look like (or sound like, or…). If we put students into groups to produce a predetermined outcome, we prevent creative thinking from finding an entry point. Try not announcing time limits. As teachers we often use a time limit as a "motivator" that we hope will keep group work focused. In reality, this may be a major detractor from quality group work. Deadlines, according to Sawyer, tend to impede flow and produce lower quality results. Groups produce their best work in low-pressure situations. Without a need to "keep one eye on the clock," the group's focus can be fully given to the task. Do not appoint a group "leader." In research studies, supervisors, or group leaders, tend to subvert flow unless they participate as an equal, listening and allowing the group's thoughts and decisions to guide the interaction. Keep it small. Groups with the minimum number of members that are needed to accomplish a task are more efficient and effective. Consider weaving together individual and group work. For additive tasks-tasks in whicha group is expectedtoproduce a list, adding one idea to another-research suggests that better results develop

Scott McLeod summarizes the reasons that technology is not used effectively in independent schools, and gives suggestions for how to do it better.

The report summarizes selected findings from two different national surveys-one of business and nonprofit leaders and another of current college students. Consistent with findings from 5 earlier surveys commissioned by AAC&U as part of its ongoing Liberal Education and America's Promise (LEAP) Initiative, employers overwhelmingly endorse broad learning and cross-cutting skills as the best preparation for long-term career success.

"Students and teachers are making trailers to do things like demonstrate their learning, explain vocabulary words, document experiments, preview novels or textbook chapters, summarize historical events and promote school activities. " Tony provides great tips on how to outline a trailer and student/teacher examples.

The Ultimate Research Assistant returns results.

The site bills itself as "an advanced Internet knowledge mining technology." It returns results and summarizes material.

Could be a great class project to summarize daily/weekly/unit concepts in a quick podcast which can be posted to the class website. Get students involved in scripting and recording the summary!

Who has used this successfully?

We are a mobile & web platform that effortlessly allows you to record and share audio for your friends, family or the rest of the world to hear.