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Common Core Curriculum Maps | - 152 views
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literary forms
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grasp the relationship between local concerns and universal questions
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Russian
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literature from around the world
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select three out of the four
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African/Middle Eastern
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flexibility
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Latin American
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Asian
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historical and cultural context
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The Costs of Overemphasizing Achievement - 83 views
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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.
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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)
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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.
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The test designers will probably toss out an item that most students manage to answer correctly.
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the evidence suggests that five disturbing consequences are likely to accompany an obsession with standards and achievement:
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1. Students come to regard learning as a chore.
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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.
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2. Students try to avoid challenging tasks.
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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.
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3. Students tend to think less deeply.
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4. Students may fall apart when they fail.
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5. Students value ability more than effort
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This is the reinforcement of a "fixed mindset" (vs. (growth mindset) as described by Carol Dweck.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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just smart
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luck:
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tried hard
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task difficulty
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It bodes well for the future
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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the problem with tests is not limited to their content.
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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.
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As Martin Maehr and Carol Midgley at the University of Michigan have concluded, "An overemphasis on assessment can actually undermine the pursuit of excellence."
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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.
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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.
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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.
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The two orientations aren’t mutually exclusive, of course, but in practice they feel different and lead to different behaviors.
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But when we get carried away with results, we wind up, paradoxically, with results that are less than ideal.
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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.
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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.
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research indicates that the use of traditional letter or number grades is reliably associated with three consequences.
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Iowa and Comprehensive Tests of Basic Skills,
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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. -
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The End of Theory: The Data Deluge Makes the Scientific Method Obsolete - 137 views
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sociology. Forget taxonomy, ontology, and psychology. Who knows why people do what they do? The point is they do it, and we can track and measure it with unprecedented fidelity. With enough data, the numbers speak for themselves.
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The big target here isn't advertising, though. It's science. The scientific method is built around testable hypotheses. These models, for the most part, are systems visualized in the minds of scientists. The models are then tested, and experiments confirm or falsify theoretical models of how the world works.
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But faced with massive data, this approach to science — hypothesize, model, test — is becoming obsolete.
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Petabytes allow us to say: "Correlation is enough."
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There's no reason to cling to our old ways. It's time to ask: What can science learn from Google?
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It's time to ask: What can science learn from Google?
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article discussing whether math models can replace other tools for understanding the world. -
I dissagree. Maybe for someone who can cope with the massive scale Google works with but for the average student bah humbug. As far as the students I see the scientific method still needs to be taught as they need a lot of help learning how to gather reliable information from the web. As far as google is concerned the students simplistic, unevaluated searches are as valuable as someone who actually understands what they are looking for or maybe more valuable because more students are doing almost thoughtless searches. The real need is a good course, hopefully online, to teach students how to do a reasoned search. agoogleaday is a start.
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Creating Custom Video Channels : The Moss-Free Stone - 62 views
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<div class="greet_block"><div class="greet_text"><div class="greet_image"><img src="http://randyrodgers.edublogs.org/wp-content/plugins/wp-greet-box/images/rss_icon.png"/></div>Hello there! If you are new here, you might want to <a href="http://randyrodgers.edublogs.org/feed/rss/" rel="nofollow"><strong>subscribe to the RSS feed</strong></a> for updates on this topic.<div style="clear:both"></div><div class="greet_block_powered_by"><a href="http://omninoggin.com/projects/wordpress-plugins/wp-greet-box-wordpress-plugin/">Powered by Greet Box</a></div></div></div><div style="clear:both"></div> One concern I have heard expressed by teachers with regard to the use of video sites such as YouTube, TeacherTube, etc. in the classroom is that students tend to
Report: Cellphones & Brain Tumors: 15 Reasons for Concern - 33 views
www.radiationresearch.org/...reasons_us.pdf
radiation cellphones children k12 technology education #eme5050 mobility edtech medical research
shared by Kelvin Thompson on 01 Dec 09
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Fakebook: Fakebook. Create educational games and quizzes at classtools.net - 144 views
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"Fakebook" allows teachers and students to create imaginary profile pages for study purposes. Looks pretty realistic. Would be a suitable substitute for Facebook without the concerns associated with the real site. -
I have been wanting something just like this! It's sooooooooo authentic looking and functioning... I LOVE IT!!!! -
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The Astro Banshees | Blog | Closing Argument - 0 views
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In Dennis Burgess article ‘ObesityPproblem stems from Laziness’, he adresses the root cause of obesity. Burgess claims the root of obesity to be laziness. He argues that America does not have an ‘obesity problem’, rather a ‘laziness problem’. More specifically, Burgess makes mention of the correlation between children and parents concerning obesity. ‘As a child, I would go outside and “play”. This involved getting up off the couch and exerting myself. But many of today’s children don’t participate in this type of play. And many of today’s parents sit on the couch right next to them’ (Dennis B. Burgess). Burgess makes the correlation by stating that the parents often times discourage active play by not setting the example. Parents would rather sit with their kids on the couch than take the initiative and go outside with their kids and take a walk or play ball. Parents do indeed play a role in their children’s health and ultimately have some effect on their children’s health. Healthy kids most often have healthy parents who encourage their kids good health by setting the example well and partaking in activity with their kids.
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Excellent work here, Lizzy. You stick nice and close to the quotation that you actually introduce. Then you reflect on it some. Then you offer your own position. This is a great job.
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Andrea Freeman addresses the issue of fast food in her article ‘Fast Food: Oppression Through Poor Nutrition.’ Freeman considers fast food in respects to low- income families. ‘Fast food has become a major source of nutrition in low- income, urban neighborhoods across the United States’ (Freeman, pg. 1). Less privelaged families must make do with their current financial situation. The easiest most convenient food source for low- income families is that of fast food. Therefore, parents have a direct effect on their children’s health.
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This quotation is less successful. You really don't reflect on Freeman's quotation at all.
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Lizzy - Closing Argument - 0 views
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In Dennis Burgess article ‘ObesityPproblem stems from Laziness’, he adresses the root cause of obesity. Burgess claims the root of obesity to be laziness. He argues that America does not have an ‘obesity problem’, rather a ‘laziness problem’. More specifically, Burgess makes mention of the correlation between children and parents concerning obesity. ‘As a child, I would go outside and “play”. This involved getting up off the couch and exerting myself. But many of today’s children don’t participate in this type of play. And many of today’s parents sit on the couch right next to them’ (Dennis B. Burgess).
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Excellent work here with your quotation. Now you've just got to work with double quotation marks, not singles.
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Parents do indeed play a role in their children’s health and ultimately have some effect on their children’s health. Healthy kids most often have healthy parents who encourage their kids good health by setting the example well and partaking in activity with their kids.
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Andrea Freeman addresses the issue of fast food in her article ‘Fast Food: Oppression Through Poor Nutrition.’ Freeman considers fast food in respects to low- income families. ‘Fast food has become a major source of nutrition in low- income, urban neighborhoods across the United States’ (Freeman, pg. 1).
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Your use of quotation here is less effective because you don't really come to terms with the quote. You just quote it, and then state your own position. Spend more time with the quotation.
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E-learning on the rise - 28 views
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E-learning is a growing trend at community colleges, according to survey results from the National Association for Community College Entrepreneurship (NACCE) and Hewlett-Packard (HP).
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E-learning is already used at 47 percent of community colleges and is expected to increase to 55 percent within two years. The survey of 578 community college faculty was conducted by Eric Liguori, an assistant professor at California State University.
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Eighty-four percent of respondents believe e-learning is a valuable educational tool.
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The top five benefits of e-learning identified by respondents are: It increases access through location and time-flexible learning. More resources and information are available to students 24/7. Teachers can use a wide variety of tools and methods for teaching. It is a good supplement to face-to-face curriculum. It can lead to a richer learning experience if integrated correctly, freeing up class time for more engaging activities. This experience is often referred to as “flipping the classroom.”
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When asked about the barriers to adopting online learning, faculty cited such concerns as doubt about its capability and reliability, acceptance by students and teachers, and lack of resources, such as time and technical support.
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Twenty-three percent of respondents said the effectiveness of e-learning depends on the resources available, including the format and features of courses. For example, e-learning is best when teachers are adequately trained to use it, there is high-quality content and curriculum design, it’s used in conjunction with real-world situations and there is opportunity for student-teacher interactions, discussion boards and collaborative projects.
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“Our survey looked at how community college faculty members are using e-learning as a cost-effective means” to increase completion rates and ensure that “students walk away with credentials that are meaningful in the workplace and that they are prepared for the careers they hope to pursue, including, for many, the start of entrepreneurial endeavors,” said NACCE President and CEO Heather Van Sickle.
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AJET 26(3) Drexler (2010) - The networked student model for construction of personal le... - 77 views
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Web application(networked studentcomponent) Tool usedin test case Student activitylevel of structure Social bookmarking (RSS) Delicioushttp://delicious.com/ Set up the account Subscribe to each others accounts Bookmark and read 10 reliable websites that reflect the content of chosen topic Add and read at least 3 additional sites each week. News and blog alert (RSS) Google Alerthttp://www.google.com/alerts Create a Google Alert of keywords associated with selected topic Read news and blogs on that topic that are delivered via email daily Subscribe to appropriate blogs in reader News and blog reader (RSS) Google Readerhttp://reader.google.com Search for blogs devoted to chosen topic Subscribe to blogs to keep track of updates Personal blog (RSS) Bloggerhttp://www.blogger.com Create a personal blog Post a personal reflection each day of the content found and experiences related to the use of personal learning environment Students subscribe to each others blogs in reader Internet search (information management, contacts, and synchronous communication) Google Scholarhttp://scholar.google.com/ Conduct searches in Google Scholar and library databases for scholarly works. Bookmark appropriate sites Consider making contact with expert for video conference Podcasts (RSS) iTunesUhttp://www.apple.com/itunes/whatson/itunesu.html Search iTunesU for podcasts related to topic Subscribe to at least 2 podcasts if possible Video conferencing (contacts and synchronous communication) Skypehttp://www.skype.com Identify at least one subject matter expert to invite to Skype with the class. Content gathering/ digital notebook Evernotehttp://evernote.com/ Set up account Use Evernote to take notes on all content collected via other tools Content synthesis Wikispaceshttp://www.wikispaces.com Post final project on personal page of class wiki The process and tools are overwhelming to students if presented all at once. As with any instructional design, the teacher determines the pace at which the students best assimilate each new learning tool. For this particular project, a new tool was introduced each day over two weeks. Once the construction process was complete, there were a number of personal web page aggregators that could have been selected to bring everything together in one place. Options at the time included iGoogle, PageFlakes, NetVibes, and Symbaloo. These sites offer a means to compile or pull together content from a variety of web applications. A web widget or gadget is a bit of code that is executed within the personal web page to pull up external content from other sites. The students in this case designed the personal web page using the gadgets needed in the format that best met their learning goals. Figure 3 is an instructor example of a personal webpage that includes the reader, email, personal blog, note taking program, and social bookmarks on one page. The personal learning environment can take the place of a traditional textbook, though does not preclude the student from using a textbook or accessing one or more numerous open source texts that may be available for the research topic. The goal is to access content from many sources to effectively meet the learning objectives. The next challenge is to determine whether those objectives have been met. Figure 3: Personal web page compiles learning tools
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Table 2: Personal learning environment toolset Web application (networked student component) Tool used in test case Student activity level of structure Social bookmarking (RSS) Delicious http://delicious.com/ Set up the account Subscribe to each others accounts Bookmark and read 10 reliable websites that reflect the content of chosen topic Add and read at least 3 additional sites each week. News and blog alert (RSS) Google Alert http://www.google.com/alerts Create a Google Alert of keywords associated with selected topic Read news and blogs on that topic that are delivered via email daily Subscribe to appropriate blogs in reader News and blog reader (RSS) Google Reader http://reader.google.com Search for blogs devoted to chosen topic Subscribe to blogs to keep track of updates Personal blog (RSS) Blogger http://www.blogger.com Create a personal blog Post a personal reflection each day of the content found and experiences related to the use of personal learning environment Students subscribe to each others blogs in reader Internet search (information management, contacts, and synchronous communication) Google Scholar http://scholar.google.com/ Conduct searches in Google Scholar and library databases for scholarly works. Bookmark appropriate sites Consider making contact with expert for video conference Podcasts (RSS) iTunesU http://www.apple.com/itunes/ whatson/itunesu.html Search iTunesU for podcasts related to topic Subscribe to at least 2 podcasts if possible Video conferencing (contacts and synchronous communication) Skype http://www.skype.com Identify at least one subject matter expert to invite to Skype with the class. Content gathering/ digital notebook Evernote http://evernote.com/ Set up account Use Evernote to take notes on all content collected via other tools Content synthesis Wikispaces http://www.wikispaces.com Post final project on personal page of class wiki The process and tools are overwhelming to students if presented all at once. As with any instructional design, the teacher determines the pace at which the students best assimilate each new learning tool. For this particular project, a new tool was introduced each day over two weeks. Once the construction process was complete, there were a number of personal web page aggregators that could have been selected to bring everything together in one place. Options at the time included iGoogle, PageFlakes, NetVibes, and Symbaloo. These sites offer a means to compile or pull together content from a variety of web applications. A web widget or gadget is a bit of code that is executed within the personal web page to pull up external content from other sites. The students in this case designed the personal web page using the gadgets needed in the format that best met their learning goals. Figure 3 is an instructor example of a personal webpage that includes the reader, email, personal blog, note taking program, and social bookmarks on one page.
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The personal learning environment can take the place of a traditional textbook, though does not preclude the student from using a textbook or accessing one or more numerous open source texts that may be available for the research topic. The goal is to access content from many sources to effectively meet the learning objectives. The next challenge is to determine whether those objectives have been met.
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AssessmentThere were four components of the assessment process for this test case of the Networked Student Model: (1) Ongoing performance assessment in the form of weekly assignments to facilitate the construction and maintenance of the personal learning environment, (2) rubric-based assessment of the personal learning environment at the end of the project, (3) written essay, and (4) multimedia synthesis of topic content. Points were earned for meeting the following requirements: Identify ten reliable resources and post to social bookmarking account. At least three new resources should be added each week. Subscribe and respond to at least 3 new blogs each week. Follow these blogs and news alerts using the reader. Subscribe to and listen to at least two podcasts (if available). Respectfully contact and request a video conference from a subject matter expert recognised in the field. Maintain daily notes and highlight resources as needed in digital notebook. Post at least a one-paragraph reflection in personal blog each day. At the end of the project, the personal learning environment was assessed with a rubric that encompassed each of the items listed above. The student's ability to synthesise the research was further evaluated with a reflective essay. Writing shapes thinking (Langer & Applebee, 1987), and the essay requirement was one more avenue through which the students demonstrated higher order learning. The personal blog provided an opportunity for regular reflection during the course of the project. The essay was the culmination of the reflections along with a thoughtful synthesis of the learning experience. Students were instructed to articulate what was learned about the selected topic and why others should care or be concerned. The essay provided an overview of everything learned about the contemporary issue. It was well organised, detailed, and long enough to serve as a resource for others who wished to learn from the work. As part of a final exam, the students were required to access the final projects of their classmates and reflect on what they learned from this exposure. The purpose of this activity was to give the students an additional opportunity to share and learn from each other. Creativity is considered a key 21st century skill (Partnership for 21st Century Skills, 2009). A number of emerging web applications support the academic creative process. Students in this project used web tools to combine text, video, audio, and photographs to teach the research topics to others. The final multimedia project was posted or embedded on the student's personal wiki page. Analysis and assessment of student work was facilitated by the very technologies in use by the students. In order to follow their progress, the teacher simply subscribed to student social bookmarking accounts, readers, and blogs. Clicking through daily contributions was relatively quick and efficient.
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Scholarly and important but also practical. Scroll down for an incredible chart of ideas that challenges older students to take charge of their own learning.
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Education Week: School Leaders: Don't Let Your Teachers Lose Heart - 51 views
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Survey teachers. In the spring, as you consider programs for the following year (or years), send out a survey to teachers asking them to rate the areas where they need help. Pick your programs accordingly. You won't please everyone, but this is a chance to address your teachers' real concerns.
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Take something off the table. Teachers are being asked to do more without letting go of something else. Surprise your teachers before school next year and strike a program that was assessed to be ineffective. Your teachers will love you for easing their load.
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Museum Box - 106 views
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anything from a text file to a movie. You can also view and comment on the museum boxes submitted by others. More... Our inspiration Thomas Clarkson The project was inspired by the anti-slavery campaigner - Thomas Clarkson, who did exactly as described above. Thomas Clarkson's Box He carried around a box of items (ranging from African produce to diagrams of transportation ships) to illustrate his arguments during his campaign. Create your own
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Create a box demonstrating what you know about any subject. Incorporate text, images, video or audio. Great for describing an artist, author, character, location... - ...5 more comments...
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Create a box demonstrating what you know about any subject. Incorporate text, images, video or audio. Great for describing an artist, author, character, location...
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Place files, images, text, movies, or sounds concerning a particular topic in a virtual box. -
Make a virtual collection of artifacts to interpret any topic, including yourself.
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This site provides the tools for you to build up an argument or description of an event, person or historical period by placing items in a virtual box. What items, for example, would you put in a box to describe your life; the life of a Victorian Servant or Roman soldier; or to show that slavery was wrong and unnecessary? You can display anything from a text file to a movie. You can also view and comment on the museum boxes submitted by others -
Their description ... provides the tools for you to build up an argument or description of an event, person or historical period by placing items in a virtual box. What items, for example, would you put in a box to describe your life; the life of a Victorian Servant or Roman soldier; or to show that slavery was wrong and unnecessary? You can display anything from a text file to a movie. You can also view and comment on the museum boxes submitted by others Shared by Kathy Walker with the following note: "Attached is a cool idea for projects & assessments that can be used with any subject area." -
This is a great social studies site for students to collect "artifacts" about an historical person or event. Site has some bugs, but the finished product is very unique! -
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U.S. Teenagers Really Don't Know the Value of a Dollar, Global Test Shows - Inside Scho... - 20 views
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"Financial literacy is concerned with the way individuals understand, manage and plan their own and their households' financial affairs, and with their awareness and understanding of the overall financial and economic landscape they live in,"
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Noam Chomsky on Democracy and Education in the 21st Century and Beyond - 38 views
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So a lot of public education was, in fact, concerned with trying to teach independent people to become workers in an industrial system.
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we have to train them in obedience and servility, so they're not going to think through the way the world works and come after our throats.
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One can at least be suspicious that skyrocketing student debt is a device of indoctrination
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My landlord in Edinburgh, Peter Sinclair, used to say that students do not protest these days because they all have loans to pay.
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"the failures of the institutions responsible for indoctrinating the young."
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It's not just you learned how a mosquito flies in the rain, but you learn how to be creative and why it's exciting to learn things and create things and make up new things. And that can be done from kindergarten on
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There are a lot of factors. And one of them, probably, is just that students are trapped
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First of all, the existence of the advertising industry is a sign of the unwillingness to let markets function. If you had markets, you wouldn't have advertising. Like, if somebody has something to sell, they say what it is and you buy it if you want. But when you have oligopolies, they want to stop price wars
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there's no real economic reason for high-priced higher education and skyrocketing student debt
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It doesn't matter how much you learn in school; it's whether you learn how to go on and do things by yourself
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With Tech Taking Over in Schools, Worries Rise - NYTimes.com - 43 views
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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.
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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.
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implications beyond education.
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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."
ERIC - papers concerning Diigo - 10 views
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Educational Leadership:Teaching for the 21st Century:21st Century Skills: The Challenge... - 119 views
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the skills students need in the 21st century are not new.
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Critical thinking and problem solving, for example, have been components of human progress throughout history
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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
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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.
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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.
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First, educators and policymakers must ensure that the instructional program is complete and that content is not shortchanged for an ephemeral pursuit of skills
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Second, states, school districts, and schools need to revamp how they think about human capital in education—in particular how teachers are trained
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inally, we need new assessments that can accurately measure richer learning and more complex tasks
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Skills and knowledge are not separate, however, but intertwined.
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In some cases, knowledge helps us recognize the underlying structure of a problem.
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At other times, we know that we have a particular thinking skill, but domain knowledge is necessary if we are to use it.
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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.
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The importance of content in the development of thinking creates several challenges
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first is the temptation to emphasize advanced, conceptual thinking too early in training
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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.
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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.
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We must plan to teach skills in the context of particular content knowledge and to treat both as equally important.
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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.
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teachers don't use them.
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Even when class sizes are reduced, teachers do not change their teaching strategies or use these student-centered method
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these methods pose classroom management problems for teachers.
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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.
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constant juggling act
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greater collaboration among teachers.
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But where will schools find the release time for such collaboration?
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professional development is a massive undertaking.
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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.
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The first challenge is the cost.
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measures that encourage greater creativity, show how students arrived at answers, and even allow for collaboration.
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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.
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Why A Badge Is Better Than an A+ - Getting Smart by Alison Anderson - badges, EdTech, I... - 61 views
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A traditional “A-F” report card doesn’t inspire that type of insight for the students or the people they need to share it with in order to get into high school or college or get a job. A collection of badges from classroombadges.com would be much more like sharing a personal “yearbook” of academic accomplishments. I love that idea.
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"I admit this title makes a pretty bold statement for a society that pretty much uses the first five letters of the alphabet to define every child from about age 5 until adulthood. But, I am hearing more and more about the use of badges in the classroom, especially in conversations about gamification and self motivation." -
I have been trying out some grading apps and am intrigued by ActivGrade because instead of being focused on a letter grade A-F, I could see students being more concerned with mastering a goal. Their "grade" is a color toward mastery of a standard. Red means I have a lot of work to do to master this, yellow means I'm making progress toward mastery and green means I've mastered this goal at this point. One grading algorithm to choose from in the app is a calculation which puts a 75% weight on the student's most recent assignment for a given concept. This means that as I get better at a skill, my most recent attempt at showing my mastery over the skill is worth more for my grade than my prior attempts. This seems like smart grading practice to me.
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Motivating the Child with Attention Deficit Disorder - 3 views
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live very much in the present. Therefore, long-term goals and rewards (e.g., grades and report cards) are often ineffective motivators.
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basically two time frames — now and not now.
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This Now/Not Now worldview causes great frustration for the child, his teachers, and his parents, and must be seriously considered when designing activities and approaches for motivating the child with ADD.
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respond more positively to a curriculum that allows him choices and options. He will also be more likely to participate actively in tasks when there is a degree of creativity and novelty
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the presentation should be creative, colorful, multimodal, and enjoyable.
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pervasive and complex disorder that impacts nearly all of the child's activities and interactions.
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The child's impulsivity ("Ready, fire, aim!") can present serious safety concerns; his distractibility makes it extraordinarily difficult for him to understand and follow instructions; his memory difficulties make even rote learning troublesome; his executive processing problems (ability to plan and prioritize) present great challenges when he attempts to plan simple daily activities; his organizational deficiencies cause him tremendous problems with homework, household tasks, and long-term projects.
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two most important words when dealing with these special children: "support" and "challenge."
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The adult should continually challenge the child by presenting him with activities designed to improve his behavior and his learning, while simultaneously providing him with the support that he requires to meet these goals. Support without challenge is meaningless. Challenge without support is equally ineffective.
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Among the specific teaching strategies that may foster the child's motivation are:
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Good description of the limitations they have and how it affects them in school.