Group items tagged

We traditionally think of reading in terms of sounding out words, understanding the meaning of those words, and putting those words into some contextual understanding.

If the kind of text our students are encountering in these online travels is embedded with so many links and media, and if those texts are connected to other associated pages (with even more links and media), hosted by who-knows-whom, the act of reading online quickly becomes an act of hunting for treasure, with red herrings all over the place that can easily divert one’s attention.

As educators, we need to take a closer look at what online reading is all about and think about how we can help our students not only navigate with comprehension but also understand the underlying structure of this world.

effectively utilize the vast array of information that resides on the internet and who are capable of processing the information collaboratively

superior to traditional classroom teaching alone

what makes an effective app is one that does what you need it to do. And it's even better if it does it an inexpensive and engaging ways

Assigning students to teams: CATME Team-Maker Self and peer evaluations and rating team processes: CATME Peer Evaluation Training students to rate teamwork: CATME Rater Calibration Training students to work in teams: CATME Teamwork Training Making meetings more effective: CATME Meeting Support

Gather information from students and provide feedback to students. Understand their student teams’ processes, team-members’ contributions, and students’ perspectives on their team experience. Be aware of problems that are occurring on their students’ teams Hold students accountable for contributing to their teams. Use best practices when managing student team experiences.

We should be very careful in thinking about whether we’re working on the right problems. If we don’t, that ties into the problem that we don’t have experimental evidence that could move us forward. We're trying to develop theories that we use to find out which are good experiments to make, and these are the experiments that we build.   We build particle detectors and try to find dark matter; we build larger colliders in the hope of producing new particles; we shoot satellites into orbit and try to look back into the early universe, and we do that because we hope there’s something new to find there. We think there is because we have some idea from the theories that we’ve been working on that this would be something good to probe. If we are working with the wrong theories, we are making the wrong extrapolations, we have the wrong expectations, we make the wrong experiments, and then we don’t get any new data. We have no guidance to develop these theories. So, it’s a chicken and egg problem. We have to break the cycle. I don’t have a miracle cure to these problems. These are hard problems. It’s not clear what a good theory is to develop. I’m not any wiser than all the other 20,000 people in the field.

I’m still asking myself the same question that I asked myself ten years ago: "What is going on in my community?" I work in the foundations of physics, and I see a lot of strange things happening there. When I look at the papers that are being published, many of them seem to be produced simply because papers have to be produced. They don’t move us forward in any significant way. I get the impression that people are working on them not so much because it’s what they’re interested in but because they have to produce outcomes in a short amount of time. They sit on short-term positions and have short-term contracts, and papers must be produced.

The field that I mostly work in is the foundations of physics, which is, roughly speaking, composed of cosmology, the foundations of quantum mechanics, high-energy particle physics, and quantum gravity. It’s a peculiar field because there hasn’t been new data for almost four decades, since we established the Standard Model of particle physics. There has been, of course, the Higgs particle that was discovered at the LHC in 2012, and there have been some additions to the Standard Model, but there has not been a great new paradigm change, as Kuhn would have put it. We’re still using the same techniques, and we’re still working with the same theories as we did in the 1970s.

However, this investigation does present a promising music-assisted treatment approach.

Factors contributing to the lack of findings from the cognitive measures included small sample size and inconsequential performance conditions. The results of this pilot study found a non-statistically significant trend in reduced cognitive symptoms of anxiety.

. Though relaxation training home-practice was monitored informally (i.e., via review of relaxation record sheets), a more formal record of compliance data would have helped to determine the impact of treatment adherence on treatment outcome.

personalized instruction is getting renewed attention as schools in the northeast consider calling their experiments in the instructional model a failure.

During our first meeting of the school year, we jotted down on sticky notes what each of us wanted to accomplish in our weekly meetings. Three main ideas rose to the top and have driven our work together ever since: support for each other, help with pacing an overwhelming curriculum, and detailed plans to implement with our students. Everything we do as a group addresses one or more of these three objectives.

Talking about the issues and pressures of teaching—always in a solutions-focused way, of course—is cathartic itself.

PLCs must find ways to share the workload, not increase it.

Quizlet has become a great teaching tool that I have used for the past few years. I wrote this post a little while ago about easily adding images to Quizlet sets. For younger students, I have found a fun and easy way to use Quizlet flashcards plus a bingo tool for fun and effective review for all topics and subjects. This will even work for middle and high school students.

asked permission to hire an arts-integration teacher

and that year and subsequent years, the scores on the state assessments improved.

a compendium of 62 research studies that support the powerful positive academic and social effects of learning in and through the arts

to understand better how expectations operate as a cultural force in learning groups, we have to make a distinction between two types of expectations: directives and beliefs.

very clear standards for students about points, grades, and keeping score, one sees a belief that school is about work and that students must be coerced or bribed into learning through the use of grades

one sees the belief that learning algebra is primarily about acquiring knowledge of procedures rather than developing understanding, and that memorization and practice are the most effective tools for that job. This theory of action, “One learns through memorization and practice,” made it hard for Karen to bring out and facilitate students’ thinking. Instead, thinking existed as an add-on to the regular rhythm of the class, something she did as an “extra” to the regular work of the class. Through her strong focus on grades and passing the course, even if one is “no good at mathematics,” Karen sent the message that our abilities are largely fixed and that “getting by” was all that some could hope to accomplish. One might not understand algebra, but with effort one could at least pass the course. Finally, in her efforts to promote order and control, certainly worthwhile and important goals in any classroom, Karen tilted the balance toward students’ becoming passive learners who were dependent on her.

learning is a process which occurs within the mind of the individual as they process stimuli arriving from their sensory buffer from their environment (broadly speaking), into working memory and onward into long-term memory. 

self-guided learning or self-initiated learning

what is significant