Group items tagged

Captain Cannonball should find four or five key points in a shared reading to highlight and craft initial questions for other readers to consider

hallenging the thinking of peers in the conversation.  Directly responding to comments made by others, the Provocateur works to remind everyone that there are two sides to every story.    

for connections.  Middle Men

question statements made and conclusions drawn throughout a shared reading.

dentify important "takeaways" that a group can learn from

The Internet Archive’s Wayback Machine has a trove of cached web pages going back to 1996.

It is not just access to knowledge, but the knowledge itself that’s at stake.

Ephemerality is built into the very architecture of the web, which was intended to be a messaging system, not a library.

And yet there are no robust mechanisms for libraries and museums to acquire, and thus preserve, digital collections.

Vaughan was named a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in

The Internet is now considered a great oracle, a place where information lives and knowledge is stitched together.

Devices should drive engagement, pique curiosity, and encourage creativity.

If teachers design the activity well, students will be too absorbed in what they're doing to be off task.

they had 20 minutes to complete the activity, which was enough time for them to accomplish the task without getting bored or wandering off task.

Students have more opportunities to learn from one another, and they begin to value their peers as resources in the classroom.

It's hard for me to imagine that devices are a distraction if students are challenged and engaged.

This collaboration makes it hard for a student to be off task because the group relies on each member to contribute to the final product.

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.

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.