9. Fail to provide training and additional resources needed for tech implementation. Training with an expert user is always a plus, even when using someone on staff as that expert. Even more important is providing time for the teacher to explore, experiment, and "play" with the technology. As far as resources, school leaders need to make sure teachers have all they need to implement new technologies: everything from powerbars to tables. Nothing can be more frustrating than having your greatest tech plans foiled by a lack of power outlets.
Group items tagged
7More
10 Things School Leaders Do to Kill a Teacher's Enthusiasm for Technology - 115 views
-
-
-
Very true! Research has shown that the most successful technology interests are those that have proper support and professional development.
-
-
5. Fail to provide adequate hardware and/or software. I've seen so many examples of this over the years. Teachers are encouraged to get students writing and engaging in online blogging, but they don't have access to computers. Another example is even more ludicrous; students being asked to create 21st century projects yet they aren't given anything but 20th century tools such a colored pencils and construction paper. It is the school leader's responsibility to ensure teachers have adequate hardware and software for implementing technology.
- ...3 more annotations...
-
-
So difficult to be innovative and relevant when using outdated tools and materials that can't even support the tools we want to use.
-
-
While school districts are obligated under CIPA and common sense to provide some level of protection for young students, a filtering system is inadequate or faulty when it dictates what teachers can and can't do with the technology.
-
-
This is especially difficult when only one person holds the key to the access. School leaders (i.e. principals) should be just as able to unblock access as the IT department.
-
-
"10 Things School Leaders Do to Kill a Teacher's Enthusiasm for Technology" from Tech & Learning
1More
Create a better learning environment with Enthusiasm - 52 views
1More
How NOT to Set Goals (Why S.M.A.R.T. goals are lame) - YouTube - 86 views
-
Brendon Burchard talks on how "SMART" Goals are limiting. Instead, why not work on D.U.M.B. goals? A different way to view how to grow and work with an abundance vs. a deficit mentality. Question: How do SMART goals in education limit our work, vision, and enthusiasm?
1More
Sudden interest in math -- how teachers can motivate pupils - 25 views
-
"The lack of interest in math or natural sciences is one of the most frequently voiced causes for concern in the debate surrounding education, at least in Germany. It has been seen time and again that pupils lose their enthusiasm for physics, chemistry and math once they reach eighth or ninth grade. But is this inevitable? And if not, how can teachers steer a different course?"
1More
Far from bust: five ways MOOCs are helping people get on in life - World leading higher... - 21 views
-
Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) - free, short courses made available to everybody online - were expected to herald the end of higher education as we knew it when they began. But the hype soon died away and critics bemoaned the fact that learners quickly lost enthusiasm and dropped out in large numbers.
1More
First Look: Adobe Captivate 5 by Joe Ganci : Learning Solutions Magazine - 10 views
Cached
-
Finally, for Mac now too!... After many weeks of waiting eagerly Adobe Captivate and eLearning Suite users may now download the free trials of Adobe Captivate 5. The release contains many significant enhancements that have Captivate and eLearning Suite users literally chomping at the bit to get their hands on it. You can also download the eLearning Suite here. Mac users are ecstatic as Captivate 5 and eLearning Suite 2 are now both available for the Mac OS, making the products the first major eLearning industry authoring packages to enter full force into support for the Apple Mac OS. Many Mac users have written, called and addressed me in person to wholeheartedly offer both encouragement and enthusiasm as we see Captivate and eLearning Suite move firmly into cross platform eLearning authoring tools. http://blogs.adobe.com/captivate/2010/07/free_downloads_of_adobe_captiv.html
7More
Does Easy Do It? Children, Games, and Learning - 29 views
-
The kind of product I shall pick on here has the form of a game: the player gets into situations that require an appropriate action in order to get on to the next situation along the road to the final goal. So far, this sounds like "tainment." The "edu" part comes from the fact that the actions are schoolish exercises such as those little addition or multiplication sums that schools are so fond of boring kids with. It is clear enough why people do this. Many who want to control children (for example, the less imaginative members of the teaching profession or parents obsessed with kids' grades) become green with envy when they see the energy children pour into computer games. So they say to themselves, "The kids like to play games, we want them to learn multiplication tables, so everyone will be happy if we make games that teach multiplication." The result is shown in a rash of ads that go like this: "Our Software Is So Much Fun That The Kids Don't Even Know That They Are Learning" or "Our Games Make Math Easy."
-
What is worst about school curriculum is the fragmentation of knowledge into little pieces. This is supposed to make learning easy, but often ends up depriving knowledge of personal meaning and making it boring. Ask a few kids: the reason most don't like school is not that the work is too hard, but that it is utterly boring.
-
game designers have a better take on the nature of learning than curriculum designers. They have to. Their livelihoods depend on millions of people being prepared to undertake the serious amount of learning needed to master a complex game. If their public failed to learn, they would go out of business. In the case of curriculum designers, the situation is reversed: their business is boosted whenever students fail to learn and schools clamor for a new curriculum!
- ...3 more annotations...
-
watching kids work at mastering games confirms what I know from my own experience: learning is essentially hard; it happens best when one is deeply engaged in hard and challenging activities.
-
The preoccupation in America with "Making It Easy" is self-defeating and cause for serious worry about the deterioration of the learning environment.
-
I have found that when they get the support and have access to suitable software systems, children's enthusiasm for playing games easily gives rise to an enthusiasm for making them, and this in turn leads to more sophisticated thinking about all aspects of games, including those aspects that we are discussing here. Of course, the games they can make generally lack the polish and the complexity of those made by professional designers. But the idea that children should draw, write stories and play music is not contradicted by the fact that their work is not of professional quality. I would predict that within a decade, making a computer game will be as much a part of children's culture as any of these art forms.
-
Dr. Seymour Papert describes ways in which gaming enhances learning. June, 1998.
1More
What Teachers That Use Technology Believe - - 61 views
-
What do teachers that use technology believe (as it pertains to teaching with technology)? This will read a lot like a pro-education technology post because it (more or less) is. I tried to get in the head of both teachers skeptical of "edtech" and teachers that have embraced it full-on. I've speculated before why some teachers are against technology in learning. This time I thought I'd take a look at the other side and see what kind of beliefs a teacher that uses technology with vision, expertise, or enthusiasm might believe. Of course, not all of these will be true for all teachers. Many of these can be thought of as underlying assumptions of technology use in learning. It doesn't mean, though, that these statements are all accurate. This is-as is all reality-a matter of interpretation.
1More
Book: How to be an Outstanding Primary School Teacher by @HeadTeachDunn - 9 views
-
"With so many expectations, requirements and scrutiny of primary school teachers, it is easy to become formulaic in your practice. This is a shame, as the initial enthusiasm for the job gets waned, and giving young students the opportunity to shine becomes less focused on whole-child development. However, to become an outstanding teacher demands consistency, focus and dedication. Outstanding teachers are always on the lookout for new ideas, but sometimes the tried-and-tested classroom activities and techniques can offer a strong system to help your pupils shine, despite curriculum restraints imposed."
1More
Top tips for re-engaging disengaged students - 33 views
-
"Ideas for re-engaging students who seemed disengaged acknowledged that disengagement is a mutli-dimensional construct and that it does not simply refer to behavioural engagement, but emotional / relational engagement (including relationship with peers, staff and home) and psychological and cognitive engagement (how challenging and relevant the content of the lesson is). Therefore, suggestions to improve engagement ranged from using music or movement at the start of the lesson to set a tone / pace and expected participation, to demonstrating your own enthusiasm or passion as a teacher, showing them ' you are there for them not the job…knowing them as a person" (@TheBenHornbury)"
1More
Learning about change from a home cooked meal. - The Learner's Way - 7 views
-
Last week I decided that a good home cooked meal was in order. Lacking inspiration it turned to a recipe book I had been gifted the previous Christmas and found what appeared to be a tasty and nutritious option. I read on with enthusiasm and was soon imaging myself dining on this wholesome meal. If the end result looked half as good as the glossy picture that accompanied the recipe, I would be in luck.
22More
Emerald | The loneliness of the long distance researcher - 1 views
-
cross a threshold in their understanding
-
being part of a writing group may necessitate a change in how the person thinks about their writing or themselves as a writer
-
-
acilitate a speedy response from a peer audience
-
factors of a CoP or CoW is the development of trust
- ...17 more annotations...
-
willingness to share knowledg
-
CoW break down the walls of these rooms and provide an open space or arena for collaboration?
-
virtual CoPs need to make good use of internet standard technologies and users need to possess ICT skills.
-
CoW members would need to develop a sense of belonging
-
After initial enthusiasm, where a number of co-authors introduced themselves, things fell quiet, and I myself was as guilty as anybody else in not checking the forum any more after a few weeks of inactivity
-
– the collaborative writing of the final chapter – was moved to Google docs,
-
used a blog and wiki to write a 1,500 word essay in her discipline online and in real time.
-
http://anessayevolves.blogspot.com/
-
On the wiki, topic-related material was explored and drafts were constructed
-
In the online environment contributions were overwhelmingly supportive, non-hierarchical and candid.
-
wiki as a framework to create a comprehensive online knowledge base which covers the entire veterinary curriculum.
-
As part of the wiki, students maintain a personal profile which allows them to reflect on the experience
-
COPYEDITING-L (https://listserv.indiana.edu/cgi-bin/wa-iub.exe?A0=COPYEDITING-L)
-
How would their writing contributions – often practice based – fit in a CoW inhabited by academics writing for scholarly publications?
-
. Firstly, the need to find a medium for your CoW that works, that is widely used, and with which the would-be participants are familiar and comfortabl
-
ow is a CoW initiated? Can it be self-perpetuating or does it need leaders/mentors to drive it?
-
degree of intervention.
-
Development of online writing communities, hosted by libraries. Covers emotional aspects of writing as well as technical
2More
Teaching with tablets: Will our children be using electronic textbooks to learn? | ITPr... - 0 views
-
Ever the technology pacesetter, South Korea announced earlier this year that it's committed to replacing paper textbooks with digital versions in classrooms within just three years – and that means tablet computers.
-
There is clearly caution about the use of tablets (72 per cent of schools want more evidence before adopting), but there is unstoppable enthusiasm; 82 per cent of teachers said their pupils had an interest in using tablets. Whether or not children are familiar with tablets and their touchscreen ilk isn’t doubted. Around 2.8 million children already have a smartphone, including almost a million – that's about a quarter – of eight to 12 year olds.
2More
Education 2011: A case study in seniority-and burn-out - Buffalo Spree - September 2011... - 74 views
-
The following year teachers are required to “map” curriculums, a long process with no apparent functional use. Teaching for Understanding and Cross Curriculum Literacy are two trendy new programs promoting the latest hot topic. Everyone reads Active Literacy before author Heidi Hayes Jacobs arrives amidst great fanfare to promote her comprehensive program, which administrators cherry-pick, then forget. By 2008 the latest buzz-phrase is Professional Learning Communities. The high school adopts this concept at considerable cost and strife. Three years later Principal Power moves on, and PLCs fizzle. With each new initiative Sara’s enthusiasm diminishes. She has twenty-two years of books, binders, and workshop folders stacked in a file drawer, representing hundreds of hours of abandoned work. Sara digs through the strata like a scientist noting geologic eras. She ponders the energy spent on each new program, technological advance, and philosophical shift, and decides the only way she’ll make it to retirement is to stop caring so much. President Obama introduces the Race to the Top Fund, and by 2010 New York has successfully secured its slice of the cash cow. Common Core Standards are developed in 2011, and a system is put into place to rate teachers based on student test scores. Epilogue In 2013 the anti-union movement hits NY State and teacher unions lose the right to collectively bargain. With the help of key Assembly members, New York Mayor Mike Bloomberg and Governor Andrew Cuomo push through legislation they had endorsed for years eliminating the time-honored practice of laying-off teachers by seniority—“last hired, first fired.” A new math teacher is hired at Sara’s school. Being young and unattached, Bob impresses the new principal, who sees to it that he is not assigned the “problem” kids. Sara remains a competent and dedicated teacher, but the fire is out. She is asked to mentor Bob, but feels no motivation to train the competition. Bob can’t help but notice that Sara shows little interest in the newest reform initiatives. In 2014 a math position is cut due to budget constraints. At half the pay, Bob is clearly the better choice. Sara is laid off, and at age fifty, with a son in college, she joins the unemployed.
-
this article seems to chronicle the last fifteen years of my career - but the characters names are all different.
3More
shared by Roland Gesthuizen on 28 Mar 12
- No Cached
UK Study: Parents, Not Teachers, Key to Education | Education News - 79 views
www.educationnews.org/...-not-teachers-key-to-education
study parenting education homeschooling homework research
shared by Roland Gesthuizen on 28 Mar 12
- No Cached
-
Children are influenced by everything around them, the way their parents act, what their parents say and do, and increasingly as they spend more time ‘with’ celebrity figures how these role models act.
-
A study by the Royal Economic Society, to be presented this week, finds that parental effect on test results is five times that of teachers' influence. This comes in the wake of warnings by Sir Michael Wilshaw last week that teachers were unable to properly do their own jobs because parents were expecting them to cover their own parenting skill shortfalls and to become surrogate family for the students.
-
It all happens well before school comes into the equation. If a child grows up in a literature rich, engaging environment with adults that spend quality time giving opportunities for great learning experiences in the world, the worst teachers still can't decoy that child's enthusiasm for learning. He can always learn at home. But if the child grows up neglected, not nurtured with rich learning experiences ( and I'm not talking about helicopter parents spending every waking moment ramming study down their throats - just quality conversation and hands on experiences )l doesn't get read to or taken out to shop, teachers are fighting an uphill battle with a disengaged individual. Parents, don't wait for school teachers to teach your kids. Start straight away..
2More
Activities | Computer Science Unplugged - 24 views
-
Each Unplugged activity is available to download in PDF format, with full instructions and worksheets. Background sections explain the significance of each activity to computer science, and answers are provided for all problems. All you need for most of these activities are curiousity and enthusiasm. There are photos and videos showing some of the activities in action, and we've collected links to other useful resources
44More
The Costs of Overemphasizing Achievement - 83 views
-
First, students tend to lose interest in whatever they’re learning. As motivation to get good grades goes up, motivation to explore ideas tends to go down. Second, students try to avoid challenging tasks whenever possible. More difficult assignments, after all, would be seen as an impediment to getting a top grade. Finally, the quality of students’ thinking is less impressive. One study after another shows that creativity and even long-term recall of facts are adversely affected by the use of traditional grades.
-
-
Unhappily, assessment is sometimes driven by entirely different objectives--for example, to motivate students (with grades used as carrots and sticks to coerce them into working harder) or to sort students (the point being not to help everyone learn but to figure out who is better than whom)
-
Standardized tests often have the additional disadvantages of being (a) produced and scored far away from the classroom, (b) multiple choice in design (so students can’t generate answers or explain their thinking), (c) timed (so speed matters more than thoughtfulness) and (d) administered on a one-shot, high-anxiety basis.
- ...36 more annotations...
-
The test designers will probably toss out an item that most students manage to answer correctly.
-
the evidence suggests that five disturbing consequences are likely to accompany an obsession with standards and achievement:
-
1. Students come to regard learning as a chore.
-
intrinsic motivation and extrinsic motivation tend to be inversely related: The more people are rewarded for doing something, the more they tend to lose interest in whatever they had to do to get the reward.
-
2. Students try to avoid challenging tasks.
-
they’re just being rational. They have adapted to an environment where results, not intellectual exploration, are what count. When school systems use traditional grading systems--or, worse, when they add honor rolls and other incentives to enhance the significance of grades--they are unwittingly discouraging students from stretching themselves to see what they’re capable of doing.
-
3. Students tend to think less deeply.
-
4. Students may fall apart when they fail.
-
5. Students value ability more than effort
-
-
This is the reinforcement of a "fixed mindset" (vs. (growth mindset) as described by Carol Dweck.
-
-
They seem to be fine as long as they are succeeding, but as soon as they hit a bump they may regard themselves as failures and act as though they’re helpless to do anything about it.
-
When the point isn’t to figure things out but to prove how good you are, it’s often hard to cope with being less than good.
-
It may be the systemic demand for high achievement that led him to become debilitated when he failed, even if the failure is only relative.
-
But even when better forms of assessment are used, perceptive observers realize that a student’s score is less important than why she thinks she got that score.
-
just smart
-
luck:
-
tried hard
-
task difficulty
-
It bodes well for the future
-
the punch line: When students are led to focus on how well they are performing in school, they tend to explain their performance not by how hard they tried but by how smart they are.
-
In their study of academically advanced students, for example, the more that teachers emphasized getting good grades, avoiding mistakes and keeping up with everyone else, the more the students tended to attribute poor performance to factors they thought were outside their control, such as a lack of ability.
-
When students are made to think constantly about how well they are doing, they are apt to explain the outcome in terms of who they are rather than how hard they tried.
-
And if children are encouraged to think of themselves as "smart" when they succeed, doing poorly on a subsequent task will bring down their achievement even though it doesn’t have that effect on other kids.
-
The upshot of all this is that beliefs about intelligence and about the causes of one’s own success and failure matter a lot. They often make more of a difference than how confident students are or what they’re truly capable of doing or how they did on last week’s exam. If, like the cheerleaders for tougher standards, we look only at the bottom line, only at the test scores and grades, we’ll end up overlooking the ways that students make sense of those results.
-
the problem with tests is not limited to their content.
-
if too big a deal is made about how students did, thus leading them (and their teachers) to think less about learning and more about test outcomes.
-
As Martin Maehr and Carol Midgley at the University of Michigan have concluded, "An overemphasis on assessment can actually undermine the pursuit of excellence."
-
Only now and then does it make sense for the teacher to help them attend to how successful they’ve been and how they can improve. On those occasions, the assessment can and should be done without the use of traditional grades and standardized tests. But most of the time, students should be immersed in learning.
-
the findings of the Colorado experiment make perfect sense: The more teachers are thinking about test results and "raising the bar," the less well the students actually perform--to say nothing of how their enthusiasm for learning is apt to wane.
-
The underlying problem concerns a fundamental distinction that has been at the center of some work in educational psychology for a couple of decades now. It is the difference between focusing on how well you’re doing something and focusing on what you’re doing.
-
The two orientations aren’t mutually exclusive, of course, but in practice they feel different and lead to different behaviors.
-
But when we get carried away with results, we wind up, paradoxically, with results that are less than ideal.
-
Unfortunately, common sense is in short supply today because assessment has come to dominate the whole educational process. Worse, the purposes and design of the most common forms of assessment--both within classrooms and across schools--often lead to disastrous consequences.
-
grades, which by their very nature undermine learning. The proper occasion for outrage is not that too many students are getting A’s, but that too many students have been led to believe that getting A’s is the point of going to school.
-
research indicates that the use of traditional letter or number grades is reliably associated with three consequences.
-
Iowa and Comprehensive Tests of Basic Skills,
-
-
The message of Daniel Pinks book "Drive" applies here. Paying someone more, i.e. good grades, does not make them better thinkers, problems solvers, or general more motivated in what they are doing. thanks for sharing. -
8More
Education Week: Fighting the Enemies of Personalized Learning - 57 views
-
Most educators agree that the one-size-fits-all curriculum needs addressing
-
emergence of technology in education has certainly created a renewed interest in personalizing learning and providing teachers with the tools necessary for differentiating curriculum.
-
True personalization requires more than just looking at achievement levels and trying to compensate for deficiencies
- ...5 more annotations...
-
differentiation of content requires adding more depth and complexity to the curriculum rather than transmitting more or easier factual material.
-
achievement levels, information about student interests, learning styles, and preferred modes of expression allow us to make decisions about personalization that take multiple dimensions of the learner into account.
-
Respect for learning-style variations can be achieved by using instructional strategies such as simulations, Socratic inquiry, problem-based learning, dramatizations, and individual and small-group investigations of real problems. Expression-style preferences can be accommodated by giving students opportunities to communicate visually, graphically, artistically, and through animatronics, multimedia, and various community-service involvements.
-
Our obsession with content mastery and Skinner's behavioral theory of learning are slowly but surely giving way to an interest in personalization and differentiation.
-
While it is understandable that our early use of technology was mainly an adaptation of Gutenberg-online and a teaching-machine mentality of what learning is all about, we now have both the pedagogical rationale and technological capability to use the many dimensions of student characteristics that clearly and unequivocally result in higher engagement, enjoyment, and enthusiasm for learning.
4More
What Are You Going To Do To Inspire Students? - 73 views
-
so we focus more on the stuff we can change: curriculum, assessment, and instruction.
-
Focusing on instruction is KEY! Teachers must change the way they teach… teaching straight from a text book- plowing through each chapter- isn't going to inspire students!
-
-
It can be marked by creativity, innovation, or curiosity.
-
(You’re not going to see a teacher-dominated classroom full of inspired students; the teacher’s enthusiasm is only useful as an initial catalyst.)