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Jon Tanner

http://www.champlain.edu/Documents/cip/studentcentered.pdf - 38 views

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    Student Motivation: Traditionally three styles of motivation are recognized: goal-oriented, relationship-oriented, and learning-oriented. Your teaching should attempt to reach students who have any of these motivations. It's easy to engage students who are learning-oriented because they learn for the sake of learning. They are self-motivated and will work hard to understand and apply most anything offered to them. They may become frustrated when asked to create a finished product because this may be viewed as a cessation of learning. Students who are relationship-oriented usually engage in learning as a way to interact with others. They enjoy the social aspect of education. They often enjoy working in pairs and in groups. They want to connect with others. Some of these students want to connect with their peers, but some are looking for a close connection with their instructor - either to obtain approval or to feel noticed and appreciated. Be careful, relationship-oriented students can be led astray by peer influences. Several vocal students who are negative about your course or its content can sway these students to feel the same way. Goal-oriented students ask themselves, "What's in it for me?"
tapiatanova

A Social Network Can Be a Learning Network - The Digital Campus - The Chronicle of High... - 98 views

  • Sharing student work on a course blog is an example of what Randall Bass and Heidi Elmendorf, of Georgetown University, call "social pedagogies." They define these as "design approaches for teaching and learning that engage students with what we might call an 'authentic audience' (other than the teacher), where the representation of knowledge for an audience is absolutely central to the construction of knowledge in a course."
    • trisha_poole
       
      Very important - social pedagogies for authentic tasks - a key for integrating SNTs in the classroom.
    • Daniel Spielmann
       
      Agreed, for connectivism see also www.connectivism.ca
  • External audiences certainly motivate students to do their best work. But students can also serve as their own authentic audience when asked to create meaningful work to share with one another.
    • Daniel Spielmann
       
      The last sentence is especially important in institutional contexts where the staff voices their distrust against "open scholarship" (Weller 2011), web 2.0 and/or open education. Where "privacy" is deemed the most important thing in dealing with new technologies, advocates of an external audience have to be prepared for certain questions.
    • tapiatanova
       
      yes! nothing but barriers! However, it is unclear if the worries about pravacy are in regards to students or is it instructors who fear teaching in the open. everyone cites FERPA and protection of student identities, but I have yet to hear any student refusing to work in the open...
  • Students most likely won't find this difficult. After all, you're asking them to surf the Web and tag pages they like. That's something they do via Facebook every day. By having them share course-related content with their peers in the class, however, you'll tap into their desires to be part of your course's learning community. And you might be surprised by the resources they find and share.
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  • back-channel conversations
  • While keynote speakers and session leaders are speaking, audience members are sharing highlights, asking questions, and conversing with colleagues on Twitter
    • trisha_poole
       
      An effective use of Twitter that can be translated to classrooms.
    • Daniel Spielmann
       
      All classrooms?
    • John Dorn
       
      classrooms where students are motivated to learn. Will this work in a HS classroom where kids just view their phones as a means to check up on people? Maybe if they can see "cool" class could be if they were responsible for the freedoms that would be needed to use twitter or other similar sites.
  • Ask your students to create accounts on Twitter or some other back-channel tool and share ideas that occur to them in your course. You might give them specific assignments, as does the University of Connecticut's Margaret Rubega, who asks students in her ornithology class to tweet about birds they see. During a face-to-face class session, you could have students discuss their reading in small groups and share observations on the back channel. Or you could simply ask them to post a single question about the week's reading they would like to discuss.
  • A back channel provides students a way to stay connected to the course and their fellow students. Students are often able to integrate back channels into their daily lives, checking for and sending updates on their smartphones, for instance. That helps the class become more of a community and gives students another way to learn from each other.
  • Deep learning is hard work, and students need to be well motivated in order to pursue it. Extrinsic factors like grades aren't sufficient—they motivate competitive students toward strategic learning and risk-averse students to surface learning.
  • Social pedagogies provide a way to tap into a set of intrinsic motivations that we often overlook: people's desire to be part of a community and to share what they know with that community.
  • Online, social pedagogies can play an important role in creating such a community. These are strong motivators, and we can make use of them in the courses we teach.
  • The papers they wrote for my course weren't just academic exercises; they were authentic expressions of learning, open to the world as part of their "digital footprints."
    • Daniel Spielmann
       
      Yes, but what is the relation between such writing and ("proper"?) academic writing?
  • Collaborative documents need not be text-based works. Sarah C. Stiles, a sociologist at Georgetown, has had her students create collaborative timelines showing the activities of characters in a text, using a presentation tool called Prezi.com. I used that tool to have my cryptography students create a map of the debate over security and privacy. They worked in small groups to brainstorm arguments, and contributed those arguments to a shared debate map synchronously during class.
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    A great blog post on social pedagogies and how they can be incorporated in university/college classes. A good understanding of creating authentic learning experiences through social media.
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    A great blog post on social pedagogies and how they can be incorporated in university/college classes. A good understanding of creating authentic learning experiences through social media.
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    A great blog post on social pedagogies and how they can be incorporated in university/college classes. A good understanding of creating authentic learning experiences through social media.
Clint Heitz

Edu Leadership:Tech-Rich Learning:The Basics of Blended Instruction - 38 views

  • Blended learning, with its mix of technology and traditional face-to-face instruction, is a great approach. Blended learning combines classroom learning with online learning, in which students can, in part, control the time, pace, and place of their learning. I advocate a teacher-designed blended learning model, in which teachers determine the combination that's right for them and their students.
  • Tip 1: Think big, but start small.
  • Tip 2: Patience is a virtue when trying something new.
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  • Tip 3: Technology shouldn't be just a frill.
  • Tip 4: Weaving media together makes them stronger.
  • Tip 5: Students need to know where they can get online.
  • Student-centered classrooms are the goal of my teacher-designed blended learning model. Giving students control over the learning process requires that they know how to communicate, collaborate, and solve problems in groups, pairs, and individually. This work can be messy, loud, and disorganized, but in the end, the learning is much more meaningful.
  • Then I found Collaborize Classroom, a free, dynamic discussion platform. I used it to replace many of my pen-and-paper homework assignments with vibrant online debates, discussions, writing assignments, and collaborative group work.
  • Remember that mistakes lead to learning. The best resources I've designed and the most effective strategies I've developed were all born from and refined through mistakes.
  • I anticipated that students might hit some bumps as they navigated their first TED-Ed lesson, so I set up a TodaysMeet back channel so students could ask questions, make comments, and access a support network while going through the online lesson. A back-channel tool makes it possible for people to have a real-time conversation online while a live presentation or real-time discussion is taking place.
  • I asked students to reference specific details to support their assertions, as did one student who commented on the town's poverty by noting that the local doctor often took potatoes as payment for his work. She also showed how the characters nevertheless reflected the country's "cautious optimism" about its future: That same doctor was still able to support himself, she pointed out, and he enjoyed his work. Students posted their responses, complimenting strong points made, asking questions, and offering alternative perspectives.
  • I asked students to analyze examples of strong discussion posts and revise weaker posts. I also realized that I needed to embed directions into our discussion topics to remind students to respond to the questions and engage with their peers. I started requiring them to thoughtfully reply to at least two classmates' posts, in addition to posting their own response to the topic.
  • It's crucial for students to see that the work they do in the online space drives the work they do in the classroom so they recognize the value of the online conversations.
  • For example, during the To Kill a Mockingbird unit, we researched and discussed the death penalty in preparation for writing an argument essay. The students debated online such issues as cost, morality, and racial inequality and then delved into these topics more deeply face-to-face in class.
  • In the classroom, the teacher might give small groups various topics to research. Then he or she could ask students to go online to research and discuss their topic on a shared Google Doc and create a presentation using Glogster, Prezi, or Google Presentation Maker.
  • When we read Romeo and Juliet, I use this strategy to encourage students to research such topics as the monarchy, entertainment, and gender roles in Elizabethan England so they have a better understanding of the historical context in which Shakespeare wrote. Back in the classroom, each group then presents its findings through an oral presentation.
  • Compared with traditional in-class group work, which typically yields a disappointing finished product, online work provides the time necessary for students to complete quality work together.
  • Some teachers think that incorporating online work means they have to be available 24 hours a day. This is not the case. When students are connected online, they have a network of peers they can reach out to for support, and they begin to see one another as valuable resources in their class community.
  • I've embedded a Google map in my website that has pins dropped in all the locations on our campus and in our community where there are computers with public access to the Internet.
  • I even wrote the local computer recycling center to request a computer for my class.
rbatie19

Chronic Absenteeism Can Devastate K-12 Learning (Opinion) - 7 views

  • in a study of California students for Attendance Works, the organization that Hedy Chang oversees, only 17 percent of the students who were chronically absent in both kindergarten and 1st grade were reading proficiently by 3rd grade, compared with 64 percent of those with good attendance in the early years. Weak reading skills in the 3rd grade translate into academic trouble ahead: Students who aren’t reading well by that point are four times more likely to drop out of high school, according to a 2012 study released by the Annie E. Casey Foundation.
  • Chronic absence in middle school is another red flag that a student will drop out of high school. By high school, attendance is a better dropout indicator than test scores.
  • A recent report, “Absences Add Up,” also from Attendance Works, documents what many know from common sense: At every age, in every demographic, and in every state and city tested, students with poor attendance scored significantly lower on standardized tests. In our schools, this translates into weaker reading skills, failing grades, and higher dropout rates. Rather than looking at attendance as an administrative chore, schools can use the same data as a warning sign to change the trajectory.
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  • The results were significant. Students with mentors gained nine school days—almost two weeks—during the year. They were more likely to remain in school and maintain their grade point averages than similar students without mentors. The program worked at every K-12 level: elementary, middle, and high school, with the greatest impact on students struggling with poverty and homelessness.
  • The mentors had several simple but straightforward responsibilities. They greeted the students every day to let them know they were glad to see them at school. They called home if students were sick to find out what was happening. They connected the students and their families to resources to help address attendance barriers. Mentors participated in school-based teams that analyzed data and shared insights about students. And they also supported schoolwide activities, including assemblies, incentives, and contests, to encourage better attendance for all students.
  • Elementary schools set up attendance teams to identify and monitor the students with the worst attendance. Part-time social workers, hired with philanthropic and state dollars, connected with families. Principals and teachers promoted attendance at back-to-school nights, at parent-teacher conferences, and through regular calls home. This work led to a significant drop in absenteeism in all elementary grades, particularly in kindergarten. The percentage of chronically absent kindergartners fell from 30 percent in the 2011-12 school year to 13 percent in 2013-14. And reading scores began to climb.
Martin Leicht

Treehouse teaching and laundry art: Educators find creative ways to reach kids - 5 views

  • was also concerned about her students’ lack of engagement — so few were completing the assignments she emailed to parents
  • Playing with her family’s laundry marked the first time Maliah seemed happy — actually happy — since the start of the pandemic.
    • Martin Leicht
       
      NOTE - happy - happy is good. Happy kids want to learn or are more likely to learn.
  • Nobody should ever be penalized or put at a disadvantage for the supplies they don’t have,” Dillingham thought to herself. “But everyone’s got laundry!”
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  • Clark started an online fundraiser to pay for bikes. He raised more than $10,000, and neighbors donated dozens of bikes and helmets for the rides.
    • Martin Leicht
       
      NOTE - a little digital citizenship too mixed in with online fund raising.
  • She couldn’t be sure whether her kids were uninterested or whether they lacked the necessary pens, paper and crayons at home.
  • He decided he would take his students on socially distanced bike rides across the city. “It was a leap of faith. I got extremely nervous. I was trying to find a way to connect with kids,” Clark said.
  • her young students are musical detectives, in search of learning. She teaches most grade levels and the school chorus.
    • Martin Leicht
       
      NOTE - musical detectives searching for music.
  • t he’s found other ways to keep his students engaged and cycling the city. He invited students to a weekly entrepreneurship class for which they rode their bikes uptown from Dunbar to the gym where Clark works, Sweat DC. The students met with the owner of the gym and the owners of a nearby bar, Hook Hall, and the bagel shop Call Your Mother Deli to learn what it takes to run a business.
  • She wanted them to create their own composition, their own snowy-day song.
    • Martin Leicht
       
      NOTE - used flipgrid for this
  • When Clark wanted to teach them about resilience, he took them through the hilly streets of Georgetown.
  • In lessons for older students, some days there were makeshift drums involved or recorders that students had taken home.
  • she was able to use the treehouse as a key part of her lessons.
  • She lugged a bookshelf, desk and heater into the 5-by-7-foot space, and ran an Ethernet cable from the house so she’d have Internet.
    • Martin Leicht
       
      NOTE - properly set up
  • before climbing into what passes for her classroom in 2020: her daughters’ decade-old treehouse.
    • Martin Leicht
       
      NOTE - different locals - maybe something with changing backgrounds.
  • So as one class studied architecture this fall, Daney, 54, encouraged them to walk in their neighborhood to take photos of houses of different styles: ranch, colonial, Victorian.
    • Martin Leicht
       
      NOTE - use what you have around you.
  • nd he stuck with his usual method of helping students learn about the design process, asking them to prepare a meal. They started with ideas and research, made a plan, carried it out and evaluated it. The result: soups and pastas and pastries.
    • Martin Leicht
       
      NOTE - edTech class on engineering and design
  • Kids need connection, he said. “I think they’re starving for conversation,” including with adults.
  • In fifth grade, students are expected to learn how to add, subtract, multiply and divide with whole numbers, decimals and fractions. Through a computer application the students have, they can program the robot to move a certain distance, stop, maybe even turn.
    • Martin Leicht
       
      NOTE - use a robot or technology to achieve the same result.
  • With learning all-virtual, he packs a big Ziploc bag — for each student, each quarter — with things like fishing line, foam board, pipecleaners, magnets, Popsicle sticks and rubber bands. Whatever they will need for their projects.
  • And a lot of the math is a little sneaky. They think they are trying to get the robot to move, when they are actually measuring the angles to get it to move.”  
  • Others complete their math problems directly on the computer, which can lead to some troubles as they try to show their work.
    • Martin Leicht
       
      NOTE - will share screen be viable.
  • When Kristin Gavaza interviewed for the music teacher position at Dorothy I. Height Elementary in the summer, she told the principal she had some ideas for how to create a festive concert while students were scattered and learning from home.
    • Martin Leicht
       
      NOTE - picture references a complete teacher set up of a large screen and standing desk. Sure, she's video editing yet the concept carries to teaching class too.
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    Numerous creative examples to how educators promoted learning on line and worked to build engagement.
Mr. Eason

Educational Leadership:Reading: The Core Skill:The Challenge of Challenging Text - 131 views

  • The new standards instead propose that teachers move students purposefully through increasingly complex text to build skill and stamina.
  • higher-order thinking in reading depends heavily on knowledge of word meanings.
  • Students' ability to comprehend a piece of text depends on the number of unfamiliar domain-specific words and new general academic terms they encounter.
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  • If students are to interpret the meanings such complex sentence structures convey, they need to learn how to make sense of the conventions of text—phrasing, word order, punctuation, and language.
  • Students who are aware of the patterns authors use to communicate complex information have an advantage in making sense of text.
  • maintaining understanding across a text.
  • Students' background knowledge, including developmental, experiential, and cognitive factors, influences their ability to understand the explicit and inferential qualities of a text.
  • building skills, establishing purpose, and fostering motivation.
  • even students who have basic decoding skills sometimes struggle to deploy these skills easily and accurately enough to get a purchase on challenging text. To help these students develop reading fluency, teachers should give them lots of practice with reading the same text, as well as instruction to help them develop a stronger sense of where to pause in sentences, how to group words, and how their voices should rise or fall at various junctures when reading aloud.
  • A final determinant of text difficulty, however, depends on the reader's prior knowledge.
  • pair repeated readings of the same text with questions that require the student to read closely for detail and key ideas.
  • Ongoing, solid vocabulary instruction
  • also on general academic words.
  • also explore the connections among words,
  • In contrast, in reading history and literature, readers need to be concerned with not just the causes of events, but also the human intentions behind these causes.
  • teachers should not convey so much information that it spoils the reading or enables students to participate in class without completing the reading; rather, they should let students know what learning to expect from the reading.
  • Teachers may be tempted to try to make it easier for students by avoiding difficult texts. The problem is, easier work is less likely to make readers stronger.
  • You need to create successive successes.
  • Students experience success in the company of their teacher, who combines complex texts with effective instruction.
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    What makes text difficult and how to teach skills for successful comprehension.
Karen Balnis

Another Look at the Weaknesses of Online Learning - Innovations - The Chronicle of High... - 86 views

shared by Karen Balnis on 28 Jul 11 - No Cached
  • have been lucky enough to have taught the full range of our freshman / sophmore undergraduate offerings as both an onsite and online instructor. While I have thoroughly enjoyed both formats - and very much so - I must admit that my experiences online have been *much* more positive than onsite instruction. Let me try and elucidate:1. While in the onsite classroom you have the opportunity to think on your feet and challenge and be experiential on your feet to reactions to the students who speak, in the online classroom, you are able to meet *every* class member and challenge their minds and ideas. The students who would normally be lost in a classroom of 35-40 are met and developed each day or week at their level and pushed to consider ideas they might not have considered. 2. I am able to reach the entire class through multimedia exhibits in each of the weekly units - journal articles, non-copyrighted film clips (and many from our university's purchased collection under an agreement for both onsite classroom and online classroom use), photography, art, patents, etc, that the students would not see - or would otherwise ignore - in an onsite classroom. We incorporate this information into our discussions and make it part of the larger whole of history.3. Each student and I - on the phone during office hours or in e-mail - discuss the creation of their term papers - and discuss midterm and final "anxiety" issues - and as they are used to the online format, and regular communication with me through the discussion boards, they respond much more readily than onsite students, whom I have found I have to pressure to talk to me. 4. I am able to accommodate students from around the country - and around the world. I have had enrolled in my class students from Japan, Indonesia, India, England - and many other countries. As a result, I have set up a *very* specific Skype address *only* for use of my students. They are required to set up the time and day with me ahead of time and I need to approve that request, but for them (and for some of my students scattered all over the state and US), the face time is invaluable in helping them feel "connected" - and I am more than happy to offer it. 5. As the software upgrades, the possibilities of what I can offer become more and more amazing, and the ease of use for both me - and for the students -  becomes astronomically better. Many have never known the software, so they don't notice it - but those who have taken online courses before cheer it on. Software does not achieve backwards. As very few of these issues are met by the onsite classroom, I am leaning more and more toward the online classroom as the better mode of instruction. Yes, there are times I *really* miss the onsite opportunities, but then I think of the above distinctions and realize that yes, I am where I should be, and virtually *ALL* the students are getting far more for their money than they would get in an onsite classroom. This is the wave of the future, and it holds such amazing promise. Already I think we are seeing clear and fruitful results, and if academics receive effective - and continuing - instruction and support from the very beginning, I cannot imagine why one would ever go back. The only reason I can think of *not* doing this is if the instructor has his or her *own* fear of computers. Beyond that - please, please jump on the bandwagon, swallow your fears, and learn how to do this with vigor. I don't think you will ever be sorry.PhD2BinUS
  • have been lucky enough to have taught the full range of our freshman / sophmore undergraduate offerings as both an onsite and online instructor. While I have thoroughly enjoyed both formats - and very much so - I must admit that my experiences online have been *much* more positive than onsite instruction. Let me try and elucidate:
  • While I have thoroughly enjoyed both formats - and very much so - I must admit that my experiences online have been *much* more positive than onsite instruction. Let me try and elucidate:
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    I am a graduate student at Sam Houston State University and before I started grad school I never had taken an online course before. My opinion then was that online courses were a joke and you couldn't learn from taking a course online. Now my opinion has done a complete 180. The teachers post numerous youtube videos and other helpful tools for each assignment so that anyone can successfully complete the assignment no matter what their technology skill level is. I do not see much difference between online and face-to-face now because of the way the instructors teach the courses.
Frederick Eberhardt

Powerful Learning: Studies Show Deep Understanding Derives from Collaborative Methods |... - 85 views

  • In essence, students must learn how to learn, while responding to endlessly changing technologies and social, economic, and global conditions.
  • students learn more deeply if they have engaged in activities that require applying classroom-gathered knowledge to real-world problems.
  • developing inquiring minds
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  • Studies of problem-based learning suggest that it is comparable, though not always superior, to more traditional instruction in teaching facts and information. However, this approach has been found to be better in supporting flexible problem solving, reasoning skills, and generating accurate hypotheses and coherent explanations.
  • design challenges need to be carefully planned, and they emphasized the importance of dynamic feedback.
  • When students have no prior experience with inquiry learning, they can have difficulty generating meaningful driving questions and logical arguments and may lack background knowledge to make sense of the inquiry.
    • Adrienne Michetti
       
      Absolutely true. I discovered this when I used inquiry-based methods with my students in Qatar who were used to rote learning. They truly did not know where to start. They first needed to learn *how* to be inquisitive.
  • Requiring students to track and defend their thinking focused them on learning and connecting concepts in their design work
  • All the research arrives at the same conclusion: There are significant benefits for students who work together on learning activities.
  • groups outperform individuals on learning tasks and that individuals who work in groups do better on later individual assessments.
  • In successful group learning, teachers pay careful attention to the work process and interaction among students.
  • "It is not enough to simply tell students to work together. They must have a reason to take one another's achievement seriously.
  • She and her colleagues developed Complex Instruction, one of the best-known approaches, which uses carefully designed activities requiring diverse talents and interdependence among group members.
    • Adrienne Michetti
       
      Interesting... worth checking out.
  • They require changes in curriculum, instruction, and assessment practices -- changes that are often new for teachers and students.
  •  
    A scholarly article with tremendous real-world practical implications and suggestions. Love this.
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    A scholarly article with tremendous real-world practical implications and suggestions. Love this.
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    Vocational Education meets Research in the dynamic classroom of Linda Darling-Hammond, 2008. The students are doing the research, teaching and learning. They control their own destiny and they are taking the world by storm! They are not waiting to be taught, they are teaching each other and themselves as teams of researchers. Darling-Hammond, L. (2008). Powerful learning: what we know about teaching for understanding. San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass.
anonymous

The Coach in the Operating Room - The New Yorker - 37 views

  • I compared my results against national data, and I began beating the averages.
    • anonymous
       
      this is one of the most important reasons for data and using the data to help guide instruction
  • the obvious struck me as interesting: even Rafael Nadal has a coach. Nearly every élite tennis player in the world does. Professional athletes use coaches to make sure they are as good as they can be.
    • anonymous
       
      Why wouldn't we want a coach? Our supervisor or administrator often serves as an evaluator but might not have the time due to time constraints to serve as an effective and dedicated coach. Yet, a coach doesn't have to be an expert. Couldn't the coach just be a colleague with a different skill set?
  • They don’t even have to be good at the sport. The famous Olympic gymnastics coach Bela Karolyi couldn’t do a split if his life depended on it. Mainly, they observe, they judge, and they guide.
    • anonymous
       
      PROFOUND!!!
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  • always evolving
    • anonymous
       
      Please tell me what profession isn't always evolving? It something isn't evolving, it is dying! So, why doesn't everyone on the face of the earth - regardless of his/her profession or station in life - need coaching periodically to help them continue to grow and evolve?
  • We have to keep developing our capabilities and avoid falling behind.
  • no matter how well prepared people are in their formative years, few can achieve and maintain their best performance on their own.
  • outside ears, and eyes, are important
  • For decades, research has confirmed that the big factor in determining how much students learn is not class size or the extent of standardized testing but the quality of their teachers.
    • anonymous
       
      So, instead of having students take test after test after test, why don't we just have coaches who observe and sit and discuss and offer suggestions and divide the number of tests we give students in half and do away with half? Are we concerned about student knowledge? student performance? student ability? student growth or capacity for growth? What we really need to identify is what we value!
  • California researchers in the early nineteen-eighties conducted a five-year study of teacher-skill development in eighty schools, and noticed something interesting. Workshops led teachers to use new skills in the classroom only ten per cent of the time. Even when a practice session with demonstrations and personal feedback was added, fewer than twenty per cent made the change. But when coaching was introduced—when a colleague watched them try the new skills in their own classroom and provided suggestions—adoption rates passed ninety per cent. A spate of small randomized trials confirmed the effect. Coached teachers were more effective, and their students did better on tests.
    • anonymous
       
      Of course they are more effective! They have a trusted individual to guide them, mentor them, help sustain them. The coach can cheer and affirm what the teacher is already doing well and offer suggestions that are desired and sought in order to improve their 'game' and become more effective.
  • they did not necessarily have any special expertise in a content area, like math or science.
    • anonymous
       
      Knowledge of the content is one thing and expertise is yet another. Sometimes what makes us better teachers is simply strategies and techniques - not expertise in the content. Sometimes what makes us better teachers could simply be using a different tool or offering options for students to choose.
  • The coaches let the teachers choose the direction for coaching. They usually know better than anyone what their difficulties are.
    • anonymous
       
      The conversation with the coach and the coach listening and learning what the teacher would like to expand, improve, and grow is probably the most vital part! If the teacher doesn't have a clue, the coach could start anywhere and that might not be what the teacher adopts and owns. So, the teacher must have ownership and direction.
  • teaches coaches to observe a few specifics: whether the teacher has an effective plan for instruction; how many students are engaged in the material; whether they interact respectfully; whether they engage in high-level conversations; whether they understand how they are progressing, or failing to progress.
    • anonymous
       
      This could provide specific categories to offer teachers a choice in what direction they want to go toward improving - especially important for those who want broad improvement or are clueless at where to start.
  • must engage in “deliberate practice”—sustained, mindful efforts to develop the full range of abilities that success requires. You have to work at what you’re not good at.
  • most people do not know where to start or how to proceed. Expertise, as the formula goes, requires going from unconscious incompetence to conscious incompetence to conscious competence and finally to unconscious competence.
    • anonymous
       
      Progression
  • The coach provides the outside eyes and ears, and makes you aware of where you’re falling short.
    • anonymous
       
      The coach also makes you aware of where you are excelling!
  • So coaches use a variety of approaches—showing what other, respected colleagues do, for instance, or reviewing videos of the subject’s performance. The most common, however, is just conversation.
  • “What worked?”
    • anonymous
       
      Great way to open any coaching conversation!
  • “How could you help her?”
  • “What else did you notice?”
    • anonymous
       
      These questions are quite similar to what we ask little children when they are learning something new. How did that go? What else could you do? What could you do differently? What more is needed? What would help?
  • something to try.
    • anonymous
       
      Suggestions of something to try! Any colleague can offer this - so why don't we ask colleagues for ideas of something to try more often?
  • three colleagues on a lunch break
  • Good coaches, he said, speak with credibility, make a personal connection, and focus little on themselves.
    • anonymous
       
      I probably need this printed out and stuck to the monitor of my computer or tattooed on my hand!
  • “listened more than they talked,” Knight said. “They were one hundred per cent present in the conversation.”
    • anonymous
       
      patient, engaged listening
  • coaching has definitely changed how satisfying teaching is
  • trying to get residents to think—to think like surgeons—and his questions exposed how much we had to learn.
    • anonymous
       
      Encouraging people to think - it is important to teach and encourage thinking rather than teaching them WHAT to think!
  • a whole list of observations like this.
  • one twenty-minute discussion gave me more to consider and work on than I’d had in the past five years.
  • watch other colleagues operate in order to gather ideas about what I could do.
    • anonymous
       
      This is one of the greatest strategies to promote growth - ever!
  • routine, high-quality video recordings of operations could enable us to figure out why some patients fare better than others.
    • anonymous
       
      I always hate seeing a video of me teaching but I did learn so much about myself, my teaching, and my students that I could not learn in any other way!
  • I know that I’m learning again.
  • It’s teaching with a trendier name. Coaching aimed at improving the performance of people who are already professionals is less usual.
    • anonymous
       
      But it still works and is effective at nudging even those who are fabulous to be even better!
  • modern society increasingly depends on ordinary people taking responsibility for doing extraordinary things
  • coaching may prove essential to the success of modern society.
  • We care about results in sports, and if we care half as much about results in schools and in hospitals we may reach the same conclusion.
  •  
    Valuable points about coaching - makes me want my own coach!
Jason Finley

Diigo in Education - 108 views

Marie, my primary use and focus with Diigo is the social networking aspect that you mentioned. There is definitely truth to the statement that "Chance favors the connected mind." I've created a g...

Diigo

Leslie Raffelson

Weblogg-ed » Don't, Don't, Don't vs. Do, Do, Do - 57 views

  • “Do use our network to connect to other students and adults who share your passions with whom you can learn.” “Do use our network to help your teachers find experts and other teachers from around the world.” “Do use our network to publish your best work in text and multimedia for a global audience.” “Do use our network to explore your own creativity and passions, to ask questions and seek answers from other teachers online.” “Do use our network to download resources that you can use to remix and republish your own learning online.” “Do use our network to collaborate with others to change the world in meaningful, positive ways.”
    • Leslie Raffelson
       
      We have bandwidth issues and the issue of students just plain being distracted in school. I see that as a challenge to teachers to teach better rather than letting the teachers sit back and teach the same old way. Figure out a better way to engage students. 
  • Do some students watch the Kanye West dissing Taylor Swift video on YouTube when they should be doing their work? Of course they do. But this experience has shown me that THIS IS THE WAY students should be learning…
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  • ast year, my high school Current Events students told me that the more rules the school made, the more they, the students, would look for ways around the rules.
  •  
    The Doo's we need to tell our students to do in school instead of the Don'ts. How can we challenge students with these doo's?
Amy Roediger

Reading Strategies for 'Informational Text' - NYTimes.com - 172 views

  • Four Corners and Anticipation Guides:Both of these techniques “activate schema” by asking students to react in some way to a series of controversial statements about a topic they are about to study. In Four Corners, students move around the room to show their degree of agreement or disagreement with various statements — about, for instance, the health risks of tanning, or the purpose of college, or dystopian teen literature. An anticipation guide does the same thing, though generally students simply react in writing to a list of statements on a handout. In this warm-up to a lesson on some of the controversies currently raging over school reform, students can use the statements we provide in either of these ways.
  • Gallery Walks:A rich way to build background on a topic at the beginning of a unit (or showcase learning at the end), Gallery Walks for this purpose are usually teacher-created collections of images, articles, maps, quotations, graphs and other written and visual texts that can immerse students in information about a broad subject. Students circulate through the gallery, reading, writing and talking about what they see.
  • Graphic Organizers:
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  • Making Text-to-Text/Text-to-Self/Text-to-World connectionsCharting Debatable IssuesListing Facts/Questions/ResponsesIdentifying Cause and EffectSupporting Opinions With FactsTracking The Five W’s and an HIdentifying Multiple Points of ViewIdentifying a Problem and SolutionComparing With a Venn Diagram
  • The One-Pager:Almost any student can find a “way in” with this strategy, which involves reacting to a text by creating one page that shows an illustration, question and quote that sum up some key aspect of what a student learned.
  • “Popcorn Reads”:Invite students to choose significant words, phrases or whole sentences from a text or texts to read aloud in random fashion, without explanation. Though this may sound pointless until you try it, it is an excellent way for students to “hear” some of the high points or themes of a text emerge, and has the added benefit of being an activity any reader can participate in easily.
  • Illustrations:Have students create illustrations for texts they’re reading, either in the margins as they go along, or after they’ve finished. The point of the exercise is not, of course, to create beautiful drawings, but to help them understand and retain the information they learn.
  •  
    Update | Feb. 2012: We'll be exploring the new Common Core State Standards, and how teaching with The Times can address them, through a series of blog posts. You can find them all here, tagged "the NYT and the CCSS."
  •  
    A good list of reading strategies for informational text from the New York Times.
D. S. Koelling

The Liberal Arts Are Work-Force Development - Do Your Job Better - The Chronicle of Hig... - 35 views

  • Now consider that, according to the American Association of Community Colleges, about half of all freshmen and sophomores are enrolled at the nation's 1,300 two-year colleges, and many of those students transfer to four-year institutions. For a large percentage of people who earn bachelor's degrees, then, the liberal-arts portion of their education was acquired at a two-year college. Next, factor in all of the community-college students who enter the work force after earning two-year degrees or certificates, and whose only exposure to the liberal arts occurred in whatever core courses their programs required. The conclusion becomes obvious: Two-year colleges are among the country's leading providers of liberal-arts education, although they seldom get credit for that role.
  • Employers rank communication and analytical skills among the most important attributes they seek in new hires, according to the National Association of Colleges and Employers. Perhaps those of us who teach those very skills at community colleges should embrace the integral role we play in preparing the nation's workers rather than rejecting the idea of work-force development as somehow beneath us.
  • More important, this new perspective could have a positive effect on student success. If we come to see ourselves as preparing students not just for transfer but ultimately for the work force, students may be more likely to understand the relevance of the skills that we teach them and better able to use those skills for some purpose other than just getting a passing grade.
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  • Require lots of writing. As the management guru Peter Drucker argued, communication is the one skill required of all professionals, regardless of field. "As soon as you take one step up the career ladder," he said, "your effectiveness depends on your ability to communicate your thoughts in writing and in speaking."
  • Clearly, one of the best things we can do for students is to require them to write—a lot.
  • Focus on critical thinking. A common complaint of employers, as reflected in the NACE survey, is that many workers have difficulty thinking for themselves. They may be thoroughly trained, having mastered all of the concepts in the textbooks, but, inevitably, situations arise that weren't covered in the books. When that happens, the ability to think critically, independently, and creatively becomes indispensable.
  • Bring the real world into the classroom. Another strategy we can adopt, if we want our courses to be more relevant, is to make our class discussions, case studies, experiments, and assignments as real-world-based as possible. For example, in my composition courses, I not only allow students to choose their own essay topics, but I also encourage them to write about issues related to their prospective majors. I also assign reading (in addition to the old textbook standbys) from newspapers, popular magazines, even the Internet.
  • Make the connection. Take advantage of every opportunity to connect what students are doing in class with what they will be doing some day as employees. My students hear the term "the real world" so much that, by the middle of the term, they're starting to roll their eyes. But it's important for them to understand that the work we're doing now in class isn't just a series of meaningless exercises, another set of hoops for them to jump through on their way to a degree. They're going to have to do these things for real one day—describe processes, do research to find solutions, draw comparisons—and my course may be the last time anyone ever actually teaches them how.
Christophe Gigon

elearnspace. Connectivism: A Learning Theory for the Digital Age - 17 views

  • Over the last twenty years, technology has reorganized how we live, how we communicate, and how we learn.
    • Rose Molter
       
      I aggree that as teachers we need to realize that technology has changed instruction and the way that our students learn and the way that we learn and instruct.
    • Orlando Gonzalez
       
      Technology has always changed the way we live. How did we respond to changes in the past? One thought is that some institutions, some businesses disappeared, while others, who took advantage of the new tech, appeared to replace the old. It will happen again and we as educators need to lead the way.
    • Maureen Curran
       
      With technology our students brains are wired differently and they can multi-task and learn in multiple virtual environments all at once. This should make us think about how we present lessons, structure learning and keep kids engaged.
    • Mike Burnett
       
      Rubbish. The idea that digital native are adept at multitasking is wrong. They may be doing many things but the quality and depth is reduced. There is a significant body of research to support this. Development of grit and determination are key attributes of successful people. Set and demand high standards. No one plays sport or an instrument because it is easy rather because they can clearly see a link between hard work and pleasure.
  • Information development was slow.
  • Many learners will move into a variety of different, possibly unrelated fields over the course of their lifetime.
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  • Informal learning is a significant aspect of our learning experience.
  • Learning is a continual process, lasting for a lifetime.
  • Technology is altering (rewiring) our brains.
  • Connectivism is the integration of principles explored by chaos, network, and complexity and self-organization theories.
  • Principles of connectivism:
  • Learning and knowledge rests in diversity of opinions. Learning is a process of connecting specialized nodes or information sources. Learning may reside in non-human appliances. Capacity to know more is more critical than what is currently known Nurturing and maintaining connections is needed to facilitate continual learning. Ability to see connections between fields, ideas, and concepts is a core skill. Currency (accurate, up-to-date knowledge) is the intent of all connectivist learning activities. Decision-making is itself a learning process. Choosing what to learn and the meaning of incoming information is seen through the lens of a shifting reality. While there is a right answer now, it may be wrong tomorrow due to alterations in the information climate affecting the decision.
    • Rose Molter
       
      I think it is important for us to realize the importance of connections.
  • The organization and the individual are both learning organisms.
  • Classrooms which emulate the “fuzziness”
    • Maureen Curran
       
      So what does this look like? I feel that when I attempt this, evaluators and administrators don't necessarily understand. They want a neat, quiet, well-managed, orderly classroom.
    • Maureen Curran
       
      If new learning approaches are required, then why are we still being evaluated in a linear way?
  • John Seely Brown presents an interesting notion that the internet leverages the small efforts of many with the large efforts of few.
  • The pipe is more important than the content within the pipe. Our ability to learn what we need for tomorrow is more important than what we know today.
  • Knowledge is growing exponentially
  • amount of knowledge
  • is doubling every 18 months
  • To combat the shrinking half-life of knowledge, organizations have been forced to develop new methods of deploying instruction.”
  • (the understanding of where to find knowledge needed).
  • know-where
  • learning
  • a persisting change in human performance or performance potential…[which] must come about as a result of the learner’s experience and interaction with the world”
  • Learning theories are concerned with the actual process of learning, not with the value of what is being learned.
  • The ability to synthesize and recognize connections and patterns is a valuable skill.
  • knowledge is no longer acquired in the linear manner
  • What is the impact of chaos as a complex pattern recognition process on learning
  • An entirely new approach is needed.
  • Chaos is the breakdown of predictability, evidenced in complicated arrangements that initially defy order.
  • Meaning-making and forming connections between specialized communities are important activities.
  • Chaos, as a science, recognizes the connection of everything to everything.
  • If the underlying conditions used to make decisions change, the decision itself is no longer as correct as it was at the time it was made.
  • principle that people, groups, systems, nodes, entities can be connected to create an integrated whole.
  • Connections between disparate ideas and fields can create new innovations.
  • Learning is a process that occurs within nebulous environments of shifting core elements – not entirely under the control of the individual
  • decisions are based on rapidly altering foundations
  • The ability to draw distinctions between important and unimportant information is vital.
  • Behaviorism, cognitivism, and constructivism do not attempt to address the challenges of organizational knowledge and transference.
  • The health of the learning ecology of the organization depends on effective nurturing of information flow.
  • This cycle of knowledge development (personal to network to organization) allows learners to remain current in their field through the connections they have formed.
  • This amplification of learning, knowledge and understanding through the extension of a personal network is the epitome of connectivism.
  • Diverse teams of varying viewpoints are a critical structure for completely exploring ideas
  • An organizations ability to foster, nurture, and synthesize the impacts of varying views of information is critical to knowledge economy surviva
  • As knowledge continues to grow and evolve, access to what is needed is more important than what the learner currently possesses.
    • BalancEd Tech
       
      Access is not enough. Prior knowledge and understanding is needed. Processing is needed. Evaluation of processing and outputs is needed. Feeding that back into the "system" is needed.
  • learning is no longer an internal, individualistic activity
  • learning is no longer an internal, individualistic activity
Glenn Hervieux

7 Apps for Student Creators | Edutopia - 111 views

  •  
    "Creation-based tasks promote higher-order thinking, encourage collaboration, and connect students to real-world learning. Whether you're teaching in a project-based learning classroom, engaging students with authentic assessments, or committed to pushing students to analyze and synthesize, providing opportunities for creation is a must."
anonymous

Social Networking as a Tool for Student and Teacher Learning - 52 views

  • Online social networking includes much more than Facebook and Twitter. It is any online use of technology to connect people, enable them to collaborate with each other, and form virtual communities, says the Young Adult Library Services Association
  • Among students surveyed in a National School Boards Association study, 96 percent of those with online access reported using social networking, and half said they use it to discuss schoolwork. Despite this prevalence in everyday life, schools have been hesitant to adopt social networking as an education tool. A 2010 study into principals’ attitudes found that “schools are one of the last holdouts,” with many banning the most popular social networking sites for students and sometimes for staff.
  • Survey research confirms, however, that interest in harnessing social networking for educational purposes is high. As reported in School Principals and Social Networking in Education: Practices, Policies and Realities in 2010, a national survey of 1,200 principals, teachers and librarians found that most agreed that social networking sites can help educators share information and resources, create professional learning communities and improve schoolwide communications with students and staff. Those who had used social networks were more positive about potential benefits than those who had not. In an online discussion with 12 of the principals surveyed, most said, “social networking and online collaboration tools would make a substantive change in students’ educational experience.” They said these tools could improve student motivation and engagement, help students develop a more social/collaborative view of learning and create a connection to real-life learning.
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  • Most national, state and local policies have not yet addressed social networking specifically; by default, it often falls under existing acceptable use policies (AUPs). While AUPs usually provide clear language on obscenities, profanity and objectionable activities, they also leave out gray areas that could open students to harmful activities while excluding them from certain benefits of social networking. Likewise, boilerplate policies that ban specific applications, such as Twitter, may miss other potential threats while also limiting the ability of students to collaborate across schools, districts, states or countries. The challenge for districts is to write policies that address potentially harmful interactions without eliminating the technology’s beneficial uses.
Nigel Coutts

Student voice, choice, agency, partnerships and participation - The Learner's Way - 13 views

  •  
    This week I joined with teachers, students, researchers and policy writers at Melbourne University to discuss student voice. This conference was hosted by Social Education Victoria and made possible by the conference partners, The University of Melbourne, Education and Training Victoria, Foundation for Young Australians and Connect. Over three days, participants engaged in rigorous dialogue about the significance of student voice and what is required to ensure its benefits are maximised for all.
anonymous

Curriculum21 - Annotexting - 62 views

  • We would also like to share this DISCUSSION RUBRIC (2007) that you can use as students submit annotations and begin to draw conclusions about what their evidence is pointing to.
    • Sharin Tebo
       
      An idea or resource perhaps...
    • anonymous
       
      Start off modeling what you expect students to do.  Then, move more toward asking students to look at a text with a certain set of questions in mind.  Finally, just share a simple short list of terms or words which will guide student reading/annotating.
  • These annotations, rather than being on paper, can be collected with different web tools so that students can collaborate
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    • anonymous
       
      Great use of Diigo or Google documents!
  • Students submit their annotations via their smart phones or other digital devices, and then analyze each other’s notations collectively.  They could be looking for main ideas, thematic and literary elements, or big ideas from the work.   They could be looking for evidence of connections to other texts, their own experiences, or world issues. They could simply be searching for meaning to support them when reading complex texts.
    • anonymous
       
      Reading, analyzing, and collaborating about annotations helps open the eyes of readers and provides feedback which promotes even more thinking.
    • anonymous
       
      FABULOUS way to utilize Google docs and tools!
  • annotexting will allow students to engage with other audiences in tasks with an expanded purpose
    • anonymous
       
      Anytime something is shared and ideas are discussed and shared, there seems to be more of a 'real-life' purpose for digging in and completing the task.
  • In order to get students to own this process, we have to relinquish some control. Let them think, let them make mistakes and respond. Let them draw conclusions even they are not the conclusions we would have drawn. We can be there to coach them through misconceptions.
    • anonymous
       
      Step back!  It is amazing to learn from the student's perspective.  Then, if the thinking is not focused toward the goal or objective of the teacher's lesson, a bit of guidance and coaching is all that is needed to steer students toward that goal/objective.
Roland Gesthuizen

Education Week's Digital Directions: Schools Open Doors to Students' Mobile Devices - 44 views

  •  
    At Oak Hills High School in suburban Cincinnati, students returned from summer break to learn they were free not only to bring their mobile devices to school, but also to use them-at their teachers' discretion-to connect to the school's wireless network to do their work .. In Chicago, the Mikva Challenge's student-leadership branch suggested in an August report that the city's public schools allow students to use their own smartphones on campus for learning.
Nigel Coutts

Educational Disadvantage - Socio-economic Status and Education Pt 3 - The Learner's Way - 11 views

  •  
    Pedagogy and curriculum that engages students from low-socioeconomic backgrounds and is deemed personally relevant to the lives they live, are seen as important factors towards equality of outcome by Wrench, Hammond, McCallum and Price (2012). Their research involved designing a curriculum and pedagogy that would be highly engaging to students of low-socioeconomic status. 'The interventions involved curriculum redesigns that set meaningful, challenging learning task(s) (culminating in high quality learning products); strong connection to student life-worlds; and a performative expectation for student learning.' (Wrench et al 2012 p934)
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