It seems to me that some where along the line, we as the teaching profession lost the collective and professional will to challenge the stifling constraints of ‘health and safety’ and face-down the ‘nay-sayers whose obsession with ‘risk assessments’ vetoed almost every opportunity for children to experience real adventure.
"Adventure activities are every child's birthright. I also think they are every child's educational entitlement. And I think, like Maria Kutschera, we should be speaking truth to power and aver the rights of children to experience adventure even where parents (and politicians) will misguidedly negate them."
The particular software and services used to create these portfolios is a subject of some interest, to be sure, but it is secondary to the "big idea" itself: compiling a dynamic collection of information from many sources, in many forms and with many purposes, all aimed at presenting the most complete story possible of a student's learning experience.
a collection of Online Resources by
Subject Area. This list is NOT
exhaustive, but is a great start for
incorporating stimulating (online)
exercises into your teaching
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:
"eThemes is your source for content-rich, kid-safe online resources that will help enhance your teaching and save you time. eThemes provides free, fast access to over 2,500 collections of websites, on topics ranging from Aerodynamics to Zebras and everything in between!"
A superb collection of cross curricular games, activities and other resources for younger children, including a great set of maths and English language games.
http://ictmagic.wikispaces.com/Cross+Curricular
There are better forums for discussion than online discussion forums. The discussion forum is a ubiquitous component of every learning management system and online learning platform from Blackboard to Moodle to Coursera.
as though one relatively standardized interface can stand in for the many and varied modes of interaction we might have in a physical classroom
The point is not to reproduce what occurs in the physical classroom, but to provide support for discussion that takes advantage of the digital environment.
Too much of an idyllic view of the physical classrom. If what is said here about it where the case in the mayority of cases, the world would be a much better one.
While some might argue that the 140-character limit doesn’t allow for deep inquiry, we disagree. Twitter, rather, becomes a tool for a collective inquiry, creating depth through the metonymic relationship between tweets and between tweets and what they link to.
"There are better forums for discussion than online discussion forums. The discussion forum is a ubiquitous component of every learning management system and online learning platform from Blackboard to Moodle to Coursera."
mbedr is a free service that lets anyone create a custom playlist of videos from the top video sites on the web. Now start building that playlist of the best clips from Conan O'Brien that are spread throughout YouTube, MySpace, Vimeo, DailyMotion and more.
forecasters have little ability to predict how intense future El Niño episodes will be. According to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) it is also near impossible to pinpoint the exact dates that El Niño will begin.
Each year scholars may compete for a limited number of Long-term and Short-term Fellowships. Awardees are expected to be in continuous residence and to participate in the intellectual life of the Folger.
Technology companies are collecting a vast amount of data about students, touching every corner of their educational lives — with few controls on how those details are used.
growing parental concern that sensitive information about children — like data about learning disabilities, disciplinary problems or family trauma — might be disseminated and disclosed, potentially hampering college or career prospects.
Discusses laws proposed in 16 states "prohibiting educational sites, apps and cloud services used by schools from selling or disclosing personal information about students from kindergarten through high school; from using the children's data to market to them; and from compiling dossiers on them."
the skills students need in the 21st century are not new.
Critical thinking and problem solving, for example, have been components of human progress throughout history
What's actually new is the extent to which changes in our economy and the world mean that collective and individual success depends on having such skills
Many reform efforts, from reducing class size to improving reading instruction, have devolved into fads or been implemented with weak fidelity to their core intent. The 21st century skills movement faces the same risk.
some of the rhetoric we have heard surrounding this movement suggests that with so much new knowledge being created, content no longer matters; that ways of knowing information are now much more important than information itself. Such notions contradict what we know about teaching and learning and raise concerns that the 21st century skills movement will end up being a weak intervention for the very students—low-income students and students of color—who most need powerful schools as a matter of social equity.
First, educators and policymakers must ensure that the instructional program is complete and that content is not shortchanged for an ephemeral pursuit of skills
Second, states, school districts, and schools need to revamp how they think about human capital in education—in particular how teachers are trained
inally, we need new assessments that can accurately measure richer learning and more complex tasks
Skills and knowledge are not separate, however, but intertwined.
In some cases, knowledge helps us recognize the underlying structure of a problem.
At other times, we know that we have a particular thinking skill, but domain knowledge is necessary if we are to use it.
if skills are independent of content, we could reasonably conclude that we can develop these skills through the use of any content. For example, if students can learn how to think critically about science in the context of any scientific material, a teacher should select content that will engage students (for instance, the chemistry of candy), even if that content is not central to the field. But all content is not equally important to mathematics, or to science, or to literature. To think critically, students need the knowledge that is central to the domain.
The importance of content in the development of thinking creates several challenges
first is the temptation to emphasize advanced, conceptual thinking too early in training
Another curricular challenge is that we don't yet know how to teach self-direction, collaboration, creativity, and innovation the way we know how to teach long division.
But experience is not the same thing as practice. Experience means only that you use a skill; practice means that you try to improve by noticing what you are doing wrong and formulating strategies to do better. Practice also requires feedback, usually from someone more skilled than you are.
We must plan to teach skills in the context of particular content knowledge and to treat both as equally important.
education leaders must be realistic about which skills are teachable. If we deem that such skills as collaboration and self-direction are essential, we should launch a concerted effort to study how they can be taught effectively rather than blithely assume that mandating their teaching will result in students learning them.
teachers don't use them.
Even when class sizes are reduced, teachers do not change their teaching strategies or use these student-centered method
these methods pose classroom management problems for teachers.
These methods also demand that teachers be knowledgeable about a broad range of topics and are prepared to make in-the-moment decisions as the lesson plan progresses.
constant juggling act
greater collaboration among teachers.
But where will schools find the release time for such collaboration?
professional development is a massive undertaking.
Unfortunately, there is a widespread belief that teachers already know how to do this if only we could unleash them from today's stifling standards and accountability metrics. This notion romanticizes student-centered methods, underestimates the challenge of implementing such methods, and ignores the lack of capacity in the field today.
The first challenge is the cost.
measures that encourage greater creativity, show how students arrived at answers, and even allow for collaboration.
When students first encounter new ideas, their knowledge is shallow and their understanding is bound to specific examples. They need exposure to varied examples before their understanding of a concept becomes more abstract and they can successfully apply that understanding to novel situations.
Group items tagged 
Checklist to use before embarking on a blogging project with students
