In this article from ESchool News, Florida professor and author Kevin Yee offers up 10 great suggestions for incorporating effective interactive learning approaches in the classroom.
1. Check with your state legislators and teachers’ unions about school day minimums and allowable teaching hours. Make sure that, legally, e-learning days are a possibility for your district.
It would sure be nice if State Departments of Education got rid of 'hours' and 'seat time' requirements and just acknowledged that it saves time and money if we have students who are already demonstrating and can show competency and proficiency without having to sit and get.
Just because students are not at school doesn't mean the learning stops. What instead of mandating kids have internet access at home, there are pre-made activities that don't foresee the dependency on the Internet and instead, can be approved by a parent/guardian signature that such learning activities took place during the day off school for whatever reason.
Online learning also helps teachers reduce their stress load. It provides a predictable avenue for educators to budget their curriculum goals with available teaching days. Finally, e-learning days provide students with academic consistency and predictability, eliminating any snow day confusion.
Devices are available and accessibility is at hand!
School and district administrators say that mobile technology, including tablets (41 percent), one-to-one programs (28 percent), mobile apps (22 percent), and BYOD (22 percent) have had a significant impact on teaching and learning,
South Korea trains teachers in digital learning and has broadband connectivity in all of its schools. Additionally, South Korea plans to phase out printed textbooks in the next two years.
Turkey has plans to distribute 10 million tablets to students by 2015, and Thailand’s government has similar aims, with plans to supply 13 million mobile devices to students by 2015
This reminds me of the Dual Language observations each month as part of the Principal PLCs. Very powerful experience and what an awesome amount of feedback for the classroom teacher and data to start conversations about instructional practice!
Could we in the United States create school cultures in which instructing colleagues on how they might improve performance is not a rare and emotion-laden event, but rather an accepted and valued mechanism in the development of desirable professional practice?
I think RARE is part of the issue. The fact that we don't often have observers in our classrooms, and we don't often talk about the practices that are effective makes for a feeling of being singled out if criticism is offered.
Schools are safe havens where children should be able to learn and grow in a supportive atmosphere. At home, parents have the ability to monitor their children’s intake of consumer products by limiting television and internet usage, and helping them engage critically with the content they see. But if we allow advertising in any form in our schools, we run directly counter to the message educational institutions are trying to promote: that these are places of learning, not selling.
peer-reviewed research in science, cognition, and pedagogy and distills valuable findings from journal articles to promote effective classroom practices