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Marianne Hart

The Creativity Crisis - Newsweek - 48 views

www.newsweek.com/...the-creativity-crisis.html

shared by Marianne Hart on 13 Jul 10 - Cached
  • there is one crucial difference between IQ and CQ scores. With intelligence, there is a phenomenon called the Flynn effect—each generation, scores go up about 10 points. Enriched environments are making kids smarter. With creativity, a reverse trend has just been identified and is being reported for the first time here: American creativity scores are falling.
  • “Creativity can be taught,”
  • it’s left to the luck of the draw who becomes creative: there’s no concerted effort to nurture the creativity of all children
    • Brian C. Smith
      Brian C. Smith on 26 Jul 10
       
      Students are labeled as "creative" if they display a knack for art or music, and sometimes in writing, however, they are rarely recognized as creative in math or science where a lot of creativity is not only needed, but excellent for learning within those very two disciplines.
    • Bill Genereux
      Bill Genereux on 23 Aug 10
       
      This is precisely why creativity education is important. It is needed everywhere, not just in the arts. Those teaching outside of arts education need to start recognizing the importance of creative thinking as well.
  • ...23 more annotations...
  • When faculty of a major Chinese university asked Plucker to identify trends in American education, he described our focus on standardized curriculum, rote memorization, and nationalized testing. “After my answer was translated, they just started laughing out loud,” Plucker says. “They said, ‘You’re racing toward our old model. But we’re racing toward your model, as fast as we can.’ ”
  • The argument that we can’t teach creativity because kids already have too much to learn is a false trade-off. Creativity isn’t about freedom from concrete facts. Rather, fact-finding and deep research are vital stages in the creative process.
  • When you try to solve a problem, you begin by concentrating on obvious facts and familiar solutions, to see if the answer lies there. This is a mostly left-brain stage of attack. If the answer doesn’t come, the right and left hemispheres of the brain activate together. Neural networks on the right side scan remote memories that could be vaguely relevant. A wide range of distant information that is normally tuned out becomes available to the left hemisphere, which searches for unseen patterns, alternative meanings, and high-level abstractions. Having glimpsed such a connection, the left brain must quickly lock in on it before it escapes. The attention system must radically reverse gears, going from defocused attention to extremely focused attention. In a flash, the brain pulls together these disparate shreds of thought and binds them into a new single idea that enters consciousness. This is the “aha!” moment of insight, often followed by a spark of pleasure as the brain recognizes the novelty of what it’s come up with. Now the brain must evaluate the idea it just generated. Is it worth pursuing? Creativity requires constant shifting, blender pulses of both divergent thinking and convergent thinking, to combine new information with old and forgotten ideas. Highly creative people are very good at marshaling their brains into bilateral mode, and the more creative they are, the more they dual-activate.
  • those who diligently practice creative activities learn to recruit their brains’ creative networks quicker and better
    • Ed Webb
      Ed Webb on 23 Jul 10
       
      Surely, "more quickly"?
  • Creativity has always been prized in American society, but it’s never really been understood. While our creativity scores decline unchecked, the current national strategy for creativity consists of little more than praying for a Greek muse to drop by our houses. The problems we face now, and in the future, simply demand that we do more than just hope for inspiration to strike. Fortunately, the science can help: we know the steps to lead that elusive muse right to our doors.
    • Brian C. Smith
      Brian C. Smith on 26 Jul 10
       
      Likely because it was out of necessity and the hardships of life. Not that we don't have hardships and necessities, but innovation has solved a lot of problems and automation has made skills and tasks easy.
  • What’s common about successful programs is they alternate maximum divergent thinking with bouts of intense convergent thinking, through several stages. Real improvement doesn’t happen in a weekend workshop. But when applied to the everyday process of work or school, brain function improves.
    • Brian C. Smith
      Brian C. Smith on 26 Jul 10
       
      Everyday process of work or school... over time, consistent and non-prescriptive.
  • kids demonstrated the very definition of creativity: alternating between divergent and convergent thinking, they arrived at original and useful ideas. And they’d unwittingly mastered Ohio’s required fifth-grade curriculum—from understanding sound waves to per-unit cost calculations to the art of persuasive writing. “You never see our kids saying, ‘I’ll never use this so I don’t need to learn it,’ ” says school administrator Maryann Wolowiec. “Instead, kids ask, ‘Do we have to leave school now?’ ” Two weeks ago, when the school received its results on the state’s achievement test, principal Traci Buckner was moved to tears. The raw scores indicate that, in its first year, the school has already become one of the top three schools in Akron, despite having open enrollment by lottery and 42 percent of its students living in poverty.
  • project-based learning
  • highly creative adults frequently grew up with hardship. Hardship by itself doesn’t lead to creativity, but it does force kids to become more flexible—and flexibility helps with creativity.
  • When creative children have a supportive teacher—someone tolerant of unconventional answers, occasional disruptions, or detours of curiosity—they tend to excel. When they don’t, they tend to underperform and drop out of high school or don’t finish college at high rates. They’re quitting because they’re discouraged and bored, not because they’re dark, depressed, anxious, or neurotic. It’s a myth that creative people have these traits. (Those traits actually shut down creativity; they make people less open to experience and less interested in novelty.) Rather, creative people, for the most part, exhibit active moods and positive affect. They’re not particularly happy—contentment is a kind of complacency creative people rarely have. But they’re engaged, motivated, and open to the world.
  • solutions emerge from a healthy marketplace of ideas, sustained by a populace constantly contributing original ideas and receptive to the ideas of others
  • The age-old belief that the arts have a special claim to creativity is unfounded.
  • When scholars gave creativity tasks to both engineering majors and music majors, their scores laid down on an identical spectrum, with the same high averages and standard deviations. Inside their brains, the same thing was happening—ideas were being generated and evaluated on the fly.
  • The lore of pop psychology is that creativity occurs on the right side of the brain. But we now know that if you tried to be creative using only the right side of your brain, it’d be like living with ideas perpetually at the tip of your tongue, just beyond reach
  • those who diligently practice creative activities learn to recruit their brains’ creative networks quicker and better. A lifetime of consistent habits gradually changes the neurological pattern.
  • The home-game version of this means no longer encouraging kids to spring straight ahead to the right answer
  • The new view is that creativity is part of normal brain function.
  • “As a child, I never had an identity as a ‘creative person,’ ” Schwarzrock recalls. “But now that I know, it helps explain a lot of what I felt and went through.”
  • In China there has been widespread education reform to extinguish the drill-and-kill teaching style. Instead, Chinese schools are also adopting a problem-based learning approach.
  • fact-finding
  • problem-finding
  • Next, idea-finding
  • there is one crucial difference between IQ and CQ scores. With intelligence, there is a phenomenon called the Flynn effect—each generation, scores go up about 10 points. Enriched environments are making kids smarter. With creativity, a reverse trend has just been identified and is being reported for the first time here: American creativity scores are falling.
  • Christian Howd on 13 Jul 10
     
    For the first time, research shows that American creativity is declining. What went wrong-and how we can fix it.
meghankelly492

Project MUSE - Learning from Masters of Music Creativity: Shaping Compositional Experie... - 7 views

muse.jhu.edu/224140

world Music

shared by meghankelly492 on 22 Jul 19 - No Cached
  • n contrast to others who are not as prone to divulge their feelings about their creative process
  • "Variation in style may have historical explanation but [End Page 94] no philosophical justification, for philosophy cannot discriminate between style and style."3
  • The testimonies of the composers concerned bear on questions about (a) the role of the conscious and the unconscious in music creativity, (b) how the compositional process gets started, and (c) how the compositional process moves forward
  • ...39 more annotations...
  • It is hoped that the themes that emerge by setting twentieth and twenty-first century professional composers' accounts of certain compositional experiences or phases of their creative processes against one another will provide a philosophical framework for teaching composition.
  • Furthermore, the knowledge of how professional composers compose offers the potential of finding the missing link in music education; that is, the writing of music by students within the school curriculum
  • Such involvement may deepen their understanding of musical relationships and how one articulates feelings through sounds beyond rudimentary improvisational and creative activities currently available
  • raw philosophical implications for music composition in schools from recognized composers' voices about their individual composing realities
  • It is hoped that the direct access to these composers' thoughts about the subjective experience of composing Western art music in the second half of the twentieth and the beginning of the twenty-first century may also promote the image of a fragmented culture whose ghettoization in music education is a serious impediment to the development of a comprehensive aesthetic education.
  • n other words, there is a striking unanimity among composers that the role of the unconscious is vital in order to start and/or to complete a work to their own satisfaction.
  • I need . . . to become involved, to come into a state where I do something without knowing why I do i
  • This is a complex problem and difficult to explain: all that one can say is that the unconscious plays an incalculable rol
  • Nonetheless, these self-observations about the complementary roles of the unconscious and conscious aspects of musical creativity do not cover the wide range of claims in psychological research on creativity
  • I strongly believe that, if we cannot explain this process, then we must acknowledge it as a mystery.25 Mysteries are not solved by encouraging us not to declare them to be mysteries
  • When Ligeti was commissioned to write a companion piece for Brahms' Horn Trio, he declared, "When the sound of an instrument or a group of instruments or the human voice finds an echo in me, in the musical idea within me, then I can sit down and compose. [O]therwise I canno
  • Extra-musical images may also provide the composer with ideas and material and contribute to musical creativity.
  • ome composers need to have something for it to react against.38 Xenakis, however, asserted that "all truly creative people escape this foolish side of work, the exaltation of sentiments. They are to be discarded like the fat surrounding meat before it is cooked."
  • as, as these examples show, dreams can also solve certain problems of the creative process.
  • In other words, to compose does not mean to merely carry out an initial idea. The composer reserves the right to change his or her mind after the conception of an idea.
  • n sum, self-imposed restrictions or "boundary conditions"55 seem to provide composers with a kind of pretext to choose from an otherwise chaotic multitude of compositional possibilities that, however, gradually disappears and gets absorbed into the process of composition which is characterized by the composers' aesthetic perceptions and choices.
  • Therefore, it is not surprising that influences from the musical world in which the composer lives play an important role in the creative process
  • Thereby the past is seen as being comprised by a static system of rules and techniques that needs to be innovated and emancipated during the composers' search for their own musical identity.
  • I strongly suggest that we play down basics like who influenced whom, and instead study the way the influence is transformed; in other words: how the artist made it his own.
  • Nothing I found was based on the "masterpiece," on the closed cycle, on passive contemplation or narrowly aesthetic pleasure.61
  • Furthermore, for some composers the musical influence can emerge from the development of computer technology.
  • In sum, the compositional process proceeds in a kind of personal and social tension. In many cases, composers are faced with the tensive conflict between staying with tradition and breaking new ground at each step in the process. Thus, one might conclude that the creative process springs from a systematic viewpoint determined by a number of choices in which certain beliefs, ideas, and influences—by no means isolated from the rest of the composer's life—play a dominant role in the search for new possibilities of expression.
  • If a general educational approach is to emerge from the alloy of composers' experiences of their music creativity, it rests on the realization that the creative process involves a diversity of idiosyncratic conscious and unconscious traits.
  • After all, the creative process is an elusive cultural activity with no recipes for making it happen.
  • n this light, the common thread of composers' idiosyncratic concerns and practices that captures the overall aura of their music creativity pertains to (a) the intangibility of the unconscious throughout the compositional process,68 (b) the development of musical individuality,69 and (c) the desire to transgress existing rules and codes, due to their personal and social conflict between tradition and innovation.70
  • In turn, by making student composers in different classroom settings grasp the essence of influential professional composers' creative concerns, even if they do not intend to become professional composers, we can help them immerse in learning experiences that respect the mysteries of their intuitions, liberate their own practices of critical thinking in music, and dare to create innovative music that expresses against-the-prevailing-grain musical beliefs and ideas.
  • Therefore, it is critical that the music teacher be seen as the facilitator of students' compositional processes helping students explore and continuously discover their own creative personalities and, thus, empowering their personal involvement with music. Any creative work needs individual attention and encouragement for each vision and personal experience are different.
  • After all, the quality of mystery is a common theme in nearly every composer's accoun
  • Failing this, musical creativity remains a predictable academic exercise
  • Music teachers need to possess the generosity to refuse to deny student composers the freedom to reflect their own insights back to them and, in turn, influence the teachers' musical reality
  • Indeed, it is important that music teachers try to establish students gradually as original, independent personalities who try to internalize sounds and, thus, unite themselves with their environment in a continuous creative process.
  • Music teachers, therefore, wishing student composers to express and exercise all their ideas, should grant them ample time to work on their compositions,
  • n sum, music knowledge or techniques and the activation of the student composers' desire for discovery and innovation should evolve together through balanced stimulation.
  • While music creativity has been a component of music education research for decades, some of the themes arising from professional composers' experiences of their creativity, such as the significance of the unconscious, the apprehension towards discovering ones' own musical language, or the personal and social tension between tradition and innovation, among others, have not been adequately recognized in the literature of music education
  • By doing this, I strongly believe that musical creativity in general and composing in particular run the risk of becoming a predictable academic exercise
  • which merely demands problem-solving skills on the part of the student composers (or alleged "critical thinkers").
  • . On the other hand, only few music educators appear to draw their composer students' attention to the importance of the personal and social conflict between staying within a tradition or code, even if it is the Western popular music tradition, and breaking new ground at each step in the creative process and, possibly, shaping new traditions or codes.
  • Culture is a precious human undertaking, and the host of musics, arts, languages, religions, myths, and rituals that comprise it need to be carefully transmitted to the young and transformed in the process."85
  • Nevertheless, further research is needed in which women's voices can be heard that may offer an emancipatory perspective for the instruction of composition in education which will "challenge the political domination of men."
Has Slone

Always Write: Cobett's "7 Elements of a Differentiated Writing Lesson" Resources - 10 views

www.corbettharrison.com/seven_elements.htm

shared by Has Slone on 09 Apr 12 - No Cached
    • Has Slone
      Has Slone on 09 Apr 12
       
      This is a neat way to start a writing class with the creating plot ideas....
  • One of the goals I ask teachers to set after my training is to find new ways to push students to analyze and evaluate as they learn to write.
  • As part of my teacher workshop on the writing process, we investigate multiple uses of student samples. One of my favorite techniques involves having student compare and contrast finished pieces of writing. During both pre-writing and and revision, this push for deeper student thinking both educates and inspires your students.
  • ...30 more annotations...
  • The handout has student writers analyze two fifth graders' published writing with a compare and contrast Venn diagram.
  • Revision is hard, and most teachers recognize it as an area of deficiency; the truth is, a lot of really great writing teachers I know still freely admit that revision is where they struggle the most.
  • revision shouldn't be the first of the seven elements to work on
  • When students like what they've written in rough draft form, they're ready to move to revision. My other six elements aim at helping students increase their pre-writing time so they both like and see more potential in their rough drafts
  • I believe in the power of collaboration and study teams,
  • Professional development research clearly cites the study team model as the most effective way to have learners not only understand new ideas but also implement them enough times so they become regular tools in a teacher's classroom.
  • Below, find three examples created by study teams during past workshops. I use them as models/exemplars when I set the study teams off to work.
  • My students learn to appreciate the act of writing, and they see it as a valuable life-skill.
  • In a perfect world, following my workshop,
  • follow-up tools.
  • I also use variations of these Post-its during my Critical Thinking Using the Writing Traits Workshop.
  • By far, the best success I've ever had while teaching revision was the one I experienced with the revision Post-its I created for my students
  • During my teacher workshop on the writing process, we practice with tools like the Revision Sprint (at right), which I designed to push students to use analysis and evaluation skills as they looked at their own drafts
  • I used to throw my kids into writing response groups way too fast. They weren't ready to provide critical thought for one another
  • The most important trick learned was this: be a writer too. During my first five years of teaching, I had assigned a lot of writing but never once had I written something I intended to show my students.
  • I have the following interactive plot element generator (which can be replicated with three coffee cans and index cards) to help my students feel in control of their options:
  • If you want to hear my take on graphic organizers in detail, you're going to have to hire me to come to present to you. If you can't do that, then I'll throw you a challenge that was thrown once at me, and completing the challenge helped me become a smarter designer of graphic organizers. The challenge came in two parts: 1) learn how to use tables and text boxes in Microsoft Word; 2) for practice, design a graphic organizer that would help students be successfully with the following trait-based skills:
  • "It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, etc," which is an interesting structure that students can borrow from to write about other topics, be they fiction or non-fiction.
  • Asking students to create daily journals from the perspective of other animals or even inanimate objects is a great way to borrow this book's idea.
  • it challenges students to analyze the author's word choice & voice skills: specifically his use of verbs, subtle alliteration, and dialogue.
  • Mentor Text Resource Page here at my website, because this topic has become such a big piece of learning to me. It deserved its own webpage.
  • Here are seven skills I can easily list for the organization trait. Organization is: 1) using a strong lead or hook, 2) using a variety of transition words correctly, 3) paragraphing correctly, 4) pacing the writing, 5) sequencing events/ideas logically, 6) concluding the writing in a satisfying way, 7) titling the writing interestingly and so that the title stands for the whole idea. Over the years, I have developed or found and adapted mini-lessons that have students practice these skills during my "Organization Month."
  • Now, let's talk differentiation:
  • The problem with focusing students on a product--instead of the writing process--is that the majority of the instructional time is spent teaching students to adhere to a formula.
  • the goal of writing instruction absolutely should be the helping students practice the three Bloom's levels above apply: analyze, evaluate, and create.
  • Click here to access the PowerPoint I use during the goal-setting portion of my workshop.
  • Improving one's ability to teach writing to all students is a long-term professional development goal; sticking with it requires diligence, and it requires having a more specific goal than "I want to improve writing
  • "Trying to get better at all seven elements at once doesn't work;
  • strive to make my workshops more about "make and take,
  • Robert Marzano's research convinced me years ago of the importance of having learners set personal goals as they learn to take responsibility for their own learning.
Elizabeth Resnick

Using "Music Writing" to Trigger Creativity, Awareness and Motivation | Edutopia - 7 views

www.edutopia.org/...gger-creativity-jeffrey-pflaum

music writing edutopia

shared by Elizabeth Resnick on 12 Apr 12 - No Cached
  • Elizabeth Resnick on 12 Apr 12
     
    The Contemplation Writing Project, as I came to call it, uses an innovative form of writing called "Music Writing" to develop intra- and interpersonal communication skills (EI), creative self-expression (journal or therapeutic writing), thinking, character education, identity and values clarification in young people through music, writing, discussion and self-assessments.
Josh Flores

Annotating the Model Content Frameworks for ELA/Literacy by PARCC - 9 views

www.parcconline.org/...content-frameworks-elaliteracy

PARCC commoncore framework tools resources

shared by Josh Flores on 12 Mar 13 - No Cached
    • Josh Flores
      Josh Flores on 12 Mar 13
       
      Quarterly Modules - but could be adjusted for your school's purposes.
    • Josh Flores
      Josh Flores on 12 Mar 13
       
      Ingredients!
  • shape the content within the modules in any way that suit their desired purposes
  • ...54 more annotations...
  • re-order
  • order in which the four modules may be used is not critical
  • ocus and emphasis on the types of texts
  • What changes
  • is the
  • analytic reading
  • examining its meaning
  • read and reread deliberately.
  • understand the central ideas
  • supporting details
  • entails the careful gathering of observations
  • overall understanding and judgment
  • omparison and synthesis of ideas
  • drawing on relevant prior knowledge
  • suggests that educators select a minimum number of grade-level-appropriate short texts
  • as well as one extended text
  • in lower grades, chosen texts should include content from across the disciplines.
  • upper grades, content-area teachers are encouraged to consider how best to implement informational reading across the disciplines
    • Josh Flores
      Josh Flores on 12 Mar 13
       
      The Nonfiction Split
    • Josh Flores
      Josh Flores on 12 Mar 13
       
      Elementary and Secodnary
    • Josh Flores
      Josh Flores on 12 Mar 13
       
      Selecting Multiple Texts
  • present their analyses in writing and speaking
    • Josh Flores
      Josh Flores on 12 Mar 13
       
      Listening and Speaking Tip: Class presentations with a rubric; allow class to complete rubric of their peers too and use video or text-to-speech based web 2.0 animation programs for shy students
  • all students need access to a wide range of materials on a variety of topics and genres
    • Josh Flores
      Josh Flores on 12 Mar 13
       
      INTERNETS: Open Resource Revolution!
  • students improve both their reading comprehension and their writing skills when writing in response to texts.
    • Josh Flores
      Josh Flores on 12 Mar 13
       
      I knew it!
  • notes, summaries, learning logs, writing to learn tasks, or even a response to a short text selection or an open-ended question.[9]
    • Josh Flores
      Josh Flores on 12 Mar 13
       
      Examples of Writing Practices
  • hese responses can vary in length based on the questions asked and tasks performed, from answering brief questions to crafting multiparagraph responses in upper grades.
  • narrative story and narrative description
    • Josh Flores
      Josh Flores on 12 Mar 13
       
      TWO TYPES OF NARRATIVE Writing
  • creative fiction, as well as memoirs, anecdotes, biographies, and autobiographies
  • include writing under time constraints
  • writing over multiple drafts
  • generate writing pieces in response to teacher-provided prompts and to their own prompts
    • Josh Flores
      Josh Flores on 12 Mar 13
       
      LEVEL Qs: Teach students to generate Academic Questions to explore
  • For reading and writing in each module
    • Josh Flores
      Josh Flores on 12 Mar 13
       
      Essential READING & WRITING Skills
    • Josh Flores
      Josh Flores on 12 Mar 13
       
      for ELA/Literacy
  • Understand and apply grammar:
  • Cite evidence and analyze content
  • Understand and apply vocabulary
  • Conduct discussions and report findings:
  • grades 3-5
  • two standards progression charts for each grade level
  • Writing
  • peaking and Listening
  • Graham, S., and M. A. Hebert. 2010. Writing to Read: Evidence for How Writing Can Improve Reading. A Carnegie Corporation Time to Act Report. Washington, D.C.: Alliance for Excellent Education.
  • suggests both the number and types
  • Students
  • offer one way of organizing the standards
  • quarterly modules
  • reflects the integrated nature
  • four sections
  • to express an opinion/make an argument or to inform/explain
  • write
  • citing evidence
  • analyzing
  • grammar
  • vocabulary
  • discussions
  • reporting
marlene hardin

BoomWriter | Read, Write, Compete... And Get Published! - 123 views

boomwriter.com

writing collaboration publishing edcampphilly

shared by marlene hardin on 28 Nov 11 - No Cached
  • chad even on 28 Nov 11
     
    Boom Writer blends creative writing and social media technology to provide a competitive writing platform that is integrated into the national education curriculum. The goal is to give schools a platform for a more engaging creative writing process, give teachers a tool that focuses their students on creative writing techniques and all the students have fun in the process. With a slick and easy to use interface, Boom Writer is a worth while tool for writing in the classroom.
Ross Davis

islt9440 - Group 7: Diigo for Education - About diigo.com - 86 views

islt9440.wikispaces.com/About+diigo.com

technology diigo

shared by Ross Davis on 15 Nov 10 - No Cached
  • Diigo highlighting tool allows the teacher or student to highlight in an article or a web page
  • The key concepts or vocabulary words could be highlighted to check for understanding. Some students have problems determining what should be highlighted in an article or passage. Teachers could use this tool to demonstrate how to correctly highlight and find the key points.
  • About diigo.com page Details and Tags Print Download PDF Backlinks Source Delete Rename Redirect Permissions Lock discussion history notify me Protected Details last edit by cmh459 Sunday, 7:53 pm - 36 revisions Tags none About diigo.comDiigo or Digest of Internet Information, Groups and Other stuff is a social bookmarking site that allows its users to bookmark and tag websites. Users are also able to highlight information and put sticky notes directly on the webpage as you are reading it. Your notes can be public which allows other users to view and comment on your notes and add their own or it can be private. Sites can be saved and stored for later reading and commenting. Users can also join groups with similar interests and follow specific people and sites. Teachers can register for an educator account that allows a teacher to create accounts for an entire class. In an education account, students are automatically set up as a Diigo group which allows for easy sharing of documents, pictures, videos, and articles with only your class group. There are also pre-set privacy settings so only the teacher and classmates can see the bookmarks and communications. This is a great way to ensure that your students and their comments are kept private from the rest of the Internet community. Diigo is a great tool for teachers to use to have students interact with material and to share that interaction with classmates. Best Practices for using Diigo tools Tagging Tool Teachers or students can tag a website that they want to bookmark for future reference. Teachers can research websites or articles that they want their students to view on a certain topic and tag them for the students. This tool is nice when researching a certain topic. The teacher can tag the websites that the students should use eliminating the extra time of searching for the sites that would be useful and appropriate for the project.Highlighting Tool Diigo highlighting tool allows the teacher or student to highlight in an article or a web page . 1The key concepts or vocabulary words could be highlighted to check for understanding. Some students have problems determining what should be highlighted in an article or passage. Teachers could use this tool to demonstrate how to correctly highlight and find the key points. Sticky Notes Tool The sticky note tool is a great addition to the tools of diigo. Students may add sticky notes to a passage as they are reading it. The sticky notes could be used to make notes or ask questions by the students. Teachers could postition the sticky notes in the passage for students to respond to various ideas as they are reading. Students could use sticky notes to peer edit and make comments on other student's work through Google docs. These are just a few ideas of how to apply the diigo tools to your teaching practices. Both students and teachers benefit form using these tools. The variety of uses or practices give both groups a hands on way of dealing with text while making it more efficient. Bookmark/Snapsho
  • ...10 more annotations...
  • islt9440 - Group 7: Diigo for Education guest · Join · Help · Sign In · Join this Wiki Recent Changes Manage Wiki Group 7 Project HomeDiigo RSS FeedsSample Lesson Plans Social Studies Spanish Math (Functions) Math (Geometry) Collaboration Pages Collaboration Home Job Assignments Project Info Lesson Plan Ideas About diigo.com page Details and Tags Print Download PDF Backlinks Source Delete Rename Redirect Permissions Lock discussion history notify me Protected Details last edit by cmh459 Sunday, 7:53 pm - 36 revisions Tags none About diigo.com Diigo or Digest of Internet Information, Groups and Other stuff is a social bookmarking site that allows its users to bookmark and tag websites. Users are also able to highlight information and put sticky notes directly on the webpage as you are reading it. Your notes can be public which allows other users to view and comment on your notes and add their own or it can be private. Sites can be saved and stored for later reading and commenting. Users can also join groups with si
  • Diigo or Digest of Internet Information, Groups and Other stuff is a social bookmarking site that allows its users to bookmark
  • and tag websites
  • Diigo highlighting tool allows the teacher or student to highlight in an article or a web page.
  • The key concepts or vocabulary words could be highlighted to check for understanding
  • Diigo highlighting tool allows the teacher or student to highlight in an article or a web page. The key concepts or vocabulary words could be highlighted to check for understanding
  • Diigo highlighting tool allows the teacher or student to highlight in an article or a web page. The key concepts or vocabulary words could be highlighted to check for understanding. Some students have problems determining what should be highlighted in an article or passage. Teachers could use this tool to demonstrate how to correctly highlight and find the key points.
  • Diigo highlighting tool allows the teacher or student to highlight in an article or a web page.
  • Teachers or students can tag a website that they want to bookmark for future reference. Teachers can research websites or articles that they want their students to view on a certain topic and tag them for the students.This tool is nice when researching a certain topic. The teacher can tag the websites that the students should use eliminating the extra time of searching for the sites that would be useful and appropriate for the project.
  • The sticky note tool is a great addition to the tools of diigo. Students may add sticky notes to a passage as they are reading it. The sticky notes could be used to make notes or ask questions by the students.Teachers could postition the sticky notes in the passage for students to respond to various ideas as they are reading.Students could use sticky notes to peer edit and make comments on other student's work through Google docs.
  • Chuck Baker on 15 Nov 10
     
    My group for my grad class, "Learning with the Internet" created this wiki about using and implementing Diigo in the classroom.
Mr. Stanley

Teaching Document Design, Not Formatting Requirements - ProfHacker - The Chronicle of H... - 69 views

chronicle.com/...29041

design teaching formatting document education publishing

shared by Mr. Stanley on 03 Dec 10 - No Cached
    • LuAnne Holder
      LuAnne Holder on 03 Dec 10
       
      This would be a great activity for introductions.
  • One of my colleagues asks her students to sketch their names using a typeface that conveys something about themselves
  • One thing I do is bring in the style manuals from different local companies and show students how each company expects different things
  • ...11 more annotations...
  • Students in all disciplines are more than capable of producing and analyzing visual work in amazingly rich and complex ways.
  • many faculty members continue to specify detailed formatting requirements for student writing.
  • Your paper must be double-spaced, 12 point Times New Roman, with one-inch margins.
  • Such draconian formatting requirements stifle students’ creativity and cut off any critical thinking about what should be a crucial part of any writing-intensive classroom, namely visual design.
  • Teaching Document Design, Not Formatting Requirements
  • well-meaning and thoughtful teachers establish hard and fast formatting rules that may make their lives easier, but do a disservice to their students.
  • By making these requirements, we are telling them not to think critically—or even at all—about the visual layout of their documents.
  • We are telling them we value conformity over creativity, practicality over originality, our needs over theirs.
  • It all starts with students recognizing that design is a part of what they do when they write.
  • the rules we give our students should be negotiable, and in order for them to be negotiable, we need to talk to our students about those rules, why they exist, what the consequences of breaking or following them are, and so on.
  • Your paper should be readable and take into consideration the needs of your audience.  Most importantly, though, you should have fun and be creative with your design.
  • Mr. Stanley on 05 Dec 10
     
    Teachers need to allow their students more room to creatively use visual design, and at the same time, teach students to be aware. Forcing students to follow exact formatting requirements is counterproductive.
anonymous

Shift to the Future: What Kids Say About Blogging - 6 views

www.shift2future.com/...t-kids-say-about-blogging.html

shared by anonymous on 17 Jan 13 - No Cached
    • anonymous
      anonymous on 17 Jan 13
       
      Writing becomes authentic and important because it is something that a 'real' audience is going to see!
  • The cool thing about this is that family members can far more easily be involved in her learning and in providing regular feedback than they could be if her writing was only contained in the traditional paper journal.
    • anonymous
      anonymous on 17 Jan 13
       
      What an easy way to have parental involvement!  This would solve some of that issue of parents not knowing what their children are doing at school or what is going on when the child gets older and more close-lipped.
  • ...5 more annotations...
    • anonymous
      anonymous on 17 Jan 13
       
      Don't we ALL benefit from somebody interacting with us and commenting on our thinking?
  • Grandparents and other relatives rarely have an opportunity to observe or see what their grandchildren are doing in school. The student blogs also allows them to be a part of our classroom community.
    • anonymous
      anonymous on 17 Jan 13
       
      What a wonderful way to connect to folks who are outside the realm of the classroom but still have an interest and care about the student!  :)
    • anonymous
      anonymous on 17 Jan 13
       
      Looked at this class blog.  Wouldn't this be a wonderful exercise?  The teacher could blog, the students could blog on personal level but also have a class blog which is a place for inspiration for writing exercises (thinking like a language arts/writing/reading teacher here) when students don't have their own inspiration/focus for creative writing.   This blog would also be a great place to steal ideas!  :)
    • anonymous
      anonymous on 17 Jan 13
       
      When I visit with teachers and suggest they have students create a web site or blog as an educational tool, often the teacher will tell me he/she doesn't have time to read/monitor that.  However, most teachers have students complete writing assignments and turn them in for a grade - lab reports, essays, reports, etc.  So, wouldn't this also be a way for students to create such assignments?
    • anonymous
      anonymous on 17 Jan 13
       
      This article shows the versatility of the 3rd grade students' blogs - one reported on planet studied, one on animal, etc.  So, it wouldn't have to just be a place for creative writing/online writer's notebook!
Brianna Crowley

At Risk of Losing Our Creativity - Finding Common Ground - Education Week - 6 views

blogs.edweek.org/..._of_losing_our_creativity.html

creativity education

shared by Brianna Crowley on 18 Apr 12 - No Cached
  • In the World is Flat by Thomas Friedman he said, "Those who are waiting for this recession to end so someone can again hand them work could have a long wait." In the book Out of Our Minds by Sir Ken Robinson, he writes, "Rebuilding the communities that have been left bereft by the recession will depend on imagination, creativity and innovation."
  • Brianna Crowley on 18 Apr 12
     
    Essay on how to not lose sight of the importance of creativity in the classroom--in spite of the current emphasis on testing.
Ed Webb

Please Sir, how do you re-tweet? - Twitter to be taught in UK primary schools - 2 views

uk.techcrunch.com/...e-taught-in-uk-primary-schools

twitter technology literacy education UK socialmedia

shared by Ed Webb on 25 Mar 09 - Cached
  • The British government is proposing that Twitter is to be taught in primary (elementary) schools as part of a wider push to make online communication and social media a permanent part of the UK’s education system. And that’s not all. Kids will be taught blogging, podcasting and how to use Wikipedia alongside Maths, English and Science.
  • Traditional education in areas like phonics, the chronology of history and mental arithmetic remain but modern media and web-based skills and environmental education now feature.
  • The skills that let kids use Internet technologies effectively also work in the real world: being able to evaluate resources critically, communicating well, being careful with strangers and your personal information, conducting yourself in a manner appropriate to your environment. Those things are, and should be, taught in schools. It’s also a good idea to teach kids how to use computers, including web browsers etc, and how those real-world skills translate online.
  • ...8 more annotations...
  • I think teaching kids HOW TO use Wikipedia is a step forward from ordering them NOT TO use it, as they presently do in many North American classrooms.
  • Open Source software is the future and therefore we need to concentrate on the wheels and not the vehicle!
  • Core skills is very important. Anyone and everyone can learn Photoshop & Word Processing at any stage of their life, but if core skills are missed from an early age, then evidence has shown that there has always been less chance that the missing knowledge could be learnt at a later stage in life.
  • Schools shouldn’t be about teaching content, but about learning to learn, getting the kind of critical skills that can be used in all kinds of contexts, and generating motivation for lifelong learning. Finnish schools are rated the best in the world according to the OECD/PISA ratings, and they have totally de-emphasised the role of content in the curriculum. Twitter could indeed help in the process as it helps children to learn to write in a precise, concise style - absolutely nothing wrong with that from a pedagogical point of view. Encouraging children to write is never a bad thing, no matter what the platform.
  • Front end stuff shouldn’t be taught. If anything it should be the back end gubbins that should be taught, databases and coding.
  • So what’s more important, to me at least, is not to know all kinds of useless facts, but to know the general info and to know how to think and how to search for information. In other words, I think children should get lessons in thinking and in information retrieval. Yes, they should still be taught about history, etc. Yes, it’s important they learn stuff that they could need ‘on the spot’ - like calculating skills. However, we can go a little bit easier on drilling the information in - by the time they’re 25, augmented reality will be a fact and not even a luxury.
  • Schools should focus more on teaching kids on how to think creatively so they can create innovative products like twitter rather then teaching on how to use it….
  • Schools should focus more on teaching kids on how to think creatively so they can create innovative products like twitter rather then teaching on how to use it….
  • Ed Webb on 25 Mar 09
     
    The British government is proposing that Twitter is to be taught in primary (elementary) schools as part of a wider push to make online communication and social media a permanent part of the UK's education system. And that's not all. Kids will be taught blogging, podcasting and how to use Wikipedia alongside Maths, English and Science.
Jjenna Andrews

Teaching Creativity - The Case for Mind Mapping - 83 views

www.emergingedtech.com/...vity-the-case-for-mind-mapping

mindmapping

shared by Jjenna Andrews on 15 Oct 13 - No Cached
  • Jjenna Andrews on 15 Oct 13
     
    "Essentially, digital (and physical) mind mapping allows students to view the entire forest instead of a single tree. As they create a mind map, they capture the wider ecosystem of information by visually connecting short keywords and phrases rather than writing complete sentences. Upon later review-for retention, exam preparation or papers-the mind map is like a CD. You jump right to the information that interests you. In contrast, linear notes are like audio tapes-you waste time wading line by line through the content in hopes of getting to what you want. This more efficient use of space (and time) lets students see how normally unconnected ideas might fit together. Thus, the mind maps doubles as a store of information and an engine of creativity. Using it in the classroom and even giving mind mapping assignments forces students to break the linearity of their earlier education."
pjt111 taylor

Taking Yourself Seriously: Processes of Research and Engagement - 9 views

cct.wikispaces.umb.edu/TYS4

research thinking writing tools group process graduate education

shared by pjt111 taylor on 18 Sep 11 - No Cached
  • pjt111 taylor on 18 Sep 11
     
    Taking Yourself Seriously: Processes of Research and Engagement is the working title of a book by Peter Taylor and Jeremy Szteiter that assembles the tools and processes from research and writing courses taught in the Graduate Program in Critical and Creative Thinking. The most up to date version of the book can be viewed at http://cct.wikispaces.umb.edu/TYS (and associated links, including a link to a full pdf of the book). "For your research and writing to progress well, your questions and ideas need to be in alignment with your aspirations, your ability to take or influence action, and your relationships with other people. Shorten these items to head, heart, hands, and human connections. Your efforts to bring these 4H's into alignment is what we mean when we invite you to take yourself seriously." Some comments from former students looking back on the influence of the research courses out of which this book has arisen: Jane, a healthcare professional and story-teller: I learned is to 'hold my ideas loosely', which means accepting my own idea as a valid one but always leaving the space open to take in the counterarguments. I learned to give myself permission to be circular and come back to previous steps or thoughts, and I actually became more comfortable doing so. I was able to get engaged in a project that I was able to actually use in work, which was extremely satisfying. The whole process encouraged me, and I felt very empowered as a change agent, which could be an exhilarating feeling.
D. S. Koelling

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

chronicle.com/...128149

student education liberal arts

shared by D. S. Koelling on 07 Jul 11 - No Cached
  • 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.
  • ...5 more annotations...
  • 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.
Cathy Stutzman

Op-Ed Columnist - The New Untouchables - NYTimes.com - 20 views

www.nytimes.com/...21friedman.html

21st Century Skills Public Schools Global Economy

shared by Cathy Stutzman on 24 Oct 09 - Cached
Gregory Louie liked it
  • “Our education failure is the largest contributing factor to the decline of the American worker’s global competitiveness, particularly at the middle and bottom ranges,”
  • But those who have the ability to imagine new services, new opportunities and new ways to recruit work were being retained. They are the new untouchables.
  • Those with the imagination to make themselves untouchables — to invent smarter ways to do old jobs, energy-saving ways to provide new services, new ways to attract old customers or new ways to combine existing technologies — will thrive.
  • ...2 more annotations...
  • the right education
  • So our schools have a doubly hard task now — not just improving reading, writing and arithmetic but entrepreneurship, innovation and creativity.
  • Cathy Stutzman on 24 Oct 09
     
    Article about public education and its role in fixing our economy through the teaching of entrepreneurship, innovation and creativity. 
John Evans

150 amazing images to help students write and think more creatively - HOME - ... - 150 views

www.edgalaxy.com/...-write-and-think-more-cre.html

amazing images students writing prompts ELA MY SY

shared by John Evans on 25 Oct 10 - No Cached
  • amazing images over a number of years and use them quite frequently with my own students and thought I would upload them to www.edgalaxy.com for all to share.
  • These images are great to use with students for creative writing as they contain humorous and action packed scenes from around the globe.
Javier E

The Default Major - Skating Through B-School - NYTimes.com - 41 views

www.nytimes.com/...edl-17business-t.html

education university business standards group learning

shared by Javier E on 15 Apr 11 - No Cached
  • Dr. Mason, who teaches economics at the University of North Florida, believes his students are just as intelligent as they’ve always been. But many of them don’t read their textbooks, or do much of anything else that their parents would have called studying. “We used to complain that K-12 schools didn’t hold students to high standards,” he says with a sigh. “And here we are doing the same thing ourselves.”
  • all evidence suggests that student disengagement is at its worst in Dr. Mason’s domain: undergraduate business education.
  • “Business education has come to be defined in the minds of students as a place for developing elite social networks and getting access to corporate recruiters,”
  • ...13 more annotations...
  • It’s an attitude that Dr. Khurana first saw in M.B.A. programs but has migrated, he says, to the undergraduate level.
  • Second, in management and marketing, no strong consensus has emerged about what students ought to learn or how they ought to learn it.
  • Gains on the C.L.A. closely parallel the amount of time students reported spending on homework. Another explanation is the heavy prevalence of group assignments in business courses: the more time students spent studying in groups, the weaker their gains in the kinds of skills the C.L.A. measures.
  • The pedagogical theory is that managers need to function in groups, so a management education without such experiences would be like medical training without a residency. While some group projects are genuinely challenging, the consensus among students and professors is that they are one of the elements of business that make it easy to skate through college.
  • “We’ve got students who don’t read, and grow up not reading,” he says. “There are too many other things competing for their time. The frequency and quantity of drinking keeps getting higher. We have issues with depression. Getting students alert and motivated — even getting them to class, to be honest with you — it’s a challenge.”
  • “A lot of classes I’ve been exposed to, you just go to class and they do the PowerPoint from the book,” he says. “It just seems kind of pointless to go when (a) you’re probably not going to be paying much attention anyway and (b) it would probably be worth more of your time just to sit with your book and read it.”
  • “It seems like now, every take-home test you get, you can just go and Google. If the question is from a test bank, you can just type the text in, and somebody out there will have it and you can just use that.”
  • This is not senioritis, he says: this is the way all four years have been. In a typical day, “I just play sports, maybe go to the gym. Eat. Probably drink a little bit. Just kind of goof around all day.” He says his grade-point average is 3.3.
  • concrete business skills tend to expire in five years or so as technology and organizations change.
  • History and philosophy, on the other hand, provide the kind of contextual knowledge and reasoning skills that are indispensable for business students.
  • when they hand in papers, they’re marked up twice: once for content by a professor with specialized expertise, and once for writing quality by a business-communication professor.
  • a national survey of 259 business professors who had been teaching for at least 10 years. On average, respondents said they had reduced the math and analytic-thinking requirements in their courses. In exchange, they had increased the number of requirements related to computer skills and group presentations.
  • what about employers? What do they want? According to national surveys, they want to hire 22-year-olds who can write coherently, think creatively and analyze quantitative data, and they’re perfectly happy to hire English or biology majors. Most Ivy League universities and elite liberal arts colleges, in fact, don’t even offer undergraduate business majors.
Maureen Greenbaum

L3D Philosophy - 36 views

l3d.cs.colorado.edu/philosophy.html

technology Education

shared by Maureen Greenbaum on 17 Jun 13 - Cached
  • uture is not out there to be "discovered": It has to be invented and designed.
  • Learning is a process of knowledge construction, not of knowledge recording or absorption. Learning is knowledge-dependent; people use their existing knowledge to construct new knowledge. Learning is highly tuned to the situation in which it takes place. Learning needs to account for distributed cognition requiring knowledge in the head to combined with knowledge in the world. Learning is affected as much by motivational issues as by cognitive issues.
  • previous notions of a divided lifetime-education followed by work-are no longer tenable.
  • ...18 more annotations...
  • Professional activity has become so knowledge-intensive and fluid in content that learning has become an integral and inseparable part of "adult" work activities.
  • require educational tools and environments whose primary aim is to help cultivate the desire to learn and create, and not to simply communicate subject matter divorced from meaningful and personalized activity.
  • current uses of technology in education: it is used as an add-on to existing practices rather than a catalyst for fundamentally rethinking what education should be about in the next century
  • information technologies have been used to mechanize old ways of doing business‹rather than fundamentally rethinking the underlying work processes and promoting new ways to create artifacts and knowledge.
  • important challenge is that the ?ld basic skillsº such as reading, writing, and arithmetic, once acquired, were relevant for the duration of a human life; modern ?asic skillsº (tied to rapidly changing technologies) will change over time.
  • We need computational environments to support "new" frameworks for education such as lifelong learning, integration of working and learning, learning on demand, authentic problems, self-directed learning, information contextualized to the task at hand, (intrinsic) motivation, collaborative learning, and organizational learning.
  • Instructionist approaches are not changed by the fact that information is disseminated by an intelligent tutoring system.
  • Lifelong learning is a continuous engagement in acquiring and applying knowledge and skills in the context of authentic, self-directed problems.
  • ubstantial empirical evidence that the chief impediments to learning are not cognitive. It is not that students cannot learn; it is that they are not well motivated to learn.
  • Most of what any individual "knows" today is not in her or his head, but is out in the world (e.g., in other human heads or embedded in media).
  • technology should provide ways to "say the 'right' thing at the 'right' time in the 'right' way
  • challenge of whether we can create learning environments in which learners work hard, not because they have to, but because they want to. We need to alter the perception that serious learning has to be unpleasant rather than personally meaningful, empowering, engaging, and even fun.
  • making information relevant to the task at hand, providing challenges matched to current skills, creating communities (among peers, over the net), and providing access to real practitioners and experts.
  • What "basic skills" are required in a world in which occupational knowledge and skills become obsolete in years rather than decades?
  • reduce the gap between school and workplace learning
  • How can schools (which currently rely on closed-book exams, the solving of given problems, and so forth) be changed so that learners are prepared to function in environments requiring collaboration, creativity, problem framing, and distributed cognition?
  • problem solving in the real world includes problem framing calls into question the practice of asking students to solve mostly given problems.
  • teachers should see themselves not as truth-tellers and oracles, but as coaches, facilitators, learners, and mentors engaging with learners
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