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Even if the student can solve optimization or related rates problems just like the ones in the book and in the lecture — but doesn’t know how to start if the optimization or related rates problem does not match their template — then the student hasn’t really learned calculus. At that point, those “applied” problems are just more mechanical processes.

Khan Academy is great for learning about lots of different subjects. But it’s not really adequate for learning those subjects on a level that really makes a difference in the world. Learning at these levels requires more than watching videos (or lectures) and doing exercises. It takes hard work (by both the learner and the instructor), difficult assignments that get students to work at these higher levels, open channels of communication that do not just go one way, and above all a relationship between learner and instructor that engenders trust.

Technology is too powerful to be confined to the walls of one classroom and not connect and reach a global audience and link learners across oceans and cultural differences and languages.

Technology is too powerful to continue in a failed system of bubble sheets and a single “right” answer; our kids deserve better systems of teaching and learning.

Technology is too powerful to not be leveraged for the benefit of our students.

In particular, students are encouraged to think about the key points of the lecture as they listen and take notes. At the end of the lecture, students write what they think the three most important ideas of the lecture were on an index card.

Example: lecture wrappers

Example: homework wrappers Before beginning a homework assignment, students answer a brief set of self-assessment questions focusing on skills they should be monitoring. Students complete the homework as usual, and then answer a follow-up set of self-assessment questions.

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.

A culture that accepts failure as a part of the learning process will need to take time to celebrate the steps taken towards learning as much as it celebrates the finished product.

A digital work of art, of music of writing is never truly finished, it grows and transforms over time. 

mistakes are a sign that the learning is not pitched at a level below the needs of the students; if the students are not making mistakes when they engage with new learning the expectation has been set too low.

What must be avoided is a belief that mistakes are to be accepted without an equal emphasis on identifying and understanding their causes.

Continuously upgrade educators' classroom technology skills as a pre-requisite of "highly effective" teaching

Home Advocacy Top Ten in '10: ISTE's Education Technology Priorities for 2010 Through a common focus on boosting student achievement and closing the achievement gap, policymakers and educators alike are now reiterating their commitment to the sorts of programs and instructional efforts that can have maximum effect on instruction and student outcomes. This commitment requires a keen understanding of both past accomplishment and strategies for future success. Regardless of the specific improvement paths a state or school district may chart, the use of technology in teaching and learning is non-negotiable if we are to make real and lasting change.  With growing anticipation for Race to the Top (RttT) and Investing in Innovation (i3) awards in 2010, states and school districts are seeing increased attention on educational improvement, backed by financial support through these grants. As we think about plans for the future, the International Society for Technology in Education (ISTE) has identified 10 priorities essential for making good on this commitment in 2010: 1. Establish technology in education as the backbone of school improvement . To truly improve our schools for the long term and ensure that all students are equipped with the knowledge and skills necessary to achieve in the 21st century, education technology must permeate every corner of the learning process. From years of research, we know that technology can serve as a primary driver for systemic school improvement, including school leadership, an improved learning culture and excellence in professional practice. We must ensure that technology is at the foundation of current education reform efforts, and is explicit and clear in its role, mission, and expected impact. 2. Leverage education technology as a gateway for college and career readiness . Last year, President Obama established a national goal of producing the highest percentage of college graduates in the world by the year 2020. To achieve this goal in the next 10 years, we must embrace new instructional approaches that both increase the college-going rates and the high school graduation rates. By effectively engaging learning through technology, teachers can demonstrate the relevance of 21st century education, keeping more children in the pipeline as they pursue a rigorous, interesting and pertinent PK-12 public education. 3. Ensure technology expertise is infused throughout our schools and classrooms.  In addition to providing all teachers with digital tools and content we must ensure technology experts are integrated throughout all schools, particularly as we increase focus and priority on STEM (science-technology-engineering-mathematics) instruction and expand distance and online learning opportunities for students. Just as we prioritize reading and math experts, so too must we place a premium on technology experts who can help the entire school maximize its resources and opportunities. To support these experts, as well as all educators who integrate technology into the overall curriculum, we must substantially increase our support for the federal Enhancing Education Through Technology (EETT) program.  EETT provides critical support for on-going professional development, implementation of data-driven decision-making, personalized learning opportunities, and increased parental involvement. EETT should be increased to $500 million in FY2011. 4. Continuously upgrade educators' classroom technology skills as a pre-requisite of "highly effective" teaching . As part of our nation's continued push to ensure every classroom is led by a qualified, highly effective teacher, we must commit that all P-12 educators have the skills to use modern information tools and digital content to support student learning in content areas and for student assessment. Effective teachers in the 21st Century should be, by definition, technologically savvy teachers. 5. Invest in pre-service education technology

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

students more engaged

productive learning is the learning process which engenders and reinforces wanting to learn more

manage, analyze, and synthesize multiple streams of simultaneous information,

attention literacy—the ability to exert some degree of mental control over our use of technology rather than simply being distracted by it

"learning ready,"

MIT Open Courseware or courses offered through Khan Academy will provide all the knowledge they need to pass a typical test on the subject

learn, MIT Open Courseware or courses offered through Khan Academy will provide all the knowledge they need to pass a typical test on the subject.

The reality is that I no longer need to send my children to a school to learn algebra, U.S. history, or French.

That doesn't mean that we throw all information and knowledge out of the curriculum. No question, all kids need to be able to read and write effectively, understand enough math to function in their daily lives, and have a basic understanding of science, history, and more. But we must be willing to consider that in a world full of access to knowledge and information, it may be more important to develop students who can take advantage of that knowledge when they need it than to develop students who memorize a slice of information that schools offer in case they might need it someday

But giving students devices and access is only a small part of the equation

The best integration training for teachers does not simply show them how to add technology to their what they are doing. "It helps them learn how to select digital content based on the needs and learning styles of their students, and infuse it into the curriculum

A professional development curriculum that helps teachers use technology for discovery learning, developing students' higher-order thinking skills, and communicating ideas is new and demanding and thus cannot be implemented in isolation (Guhlin, 1996)

teachers need access to follow-up discussion and collegial activities

The only way to ensure that all students have the same opportunities is to require all teachers to become proficient in the use of technology in content areas to support student learning.

An effective professional development program provides "sufficient time and follow-up support for teachers to master new content and strategies and to integrate them into their practice,

teachers need time to plan, practice skills, try out new ideas, collaborate, and reflect on ideas

The technology used for professional development should be the same as the technology used in the classroom. Funds should be available to provide teachers with technology that they can use at home or in private to become comfortable with the capabilities it offers.

he Commission suggests partnering with universities and forming teacher networks to help provide professional development activities at lower cost.

consists of three types: preformative evaluation, formative evaluation, and summative evaluation.

Preformative evaluation

formative evaluation,

summative evaluation,

Such a program gives teachers the skills they need to incorporate the strengths of technology into their lesson planning rather than merely to add technology to the way they have always done things.

School administrators may not provide adequate time and resources for high-quality technology implementation and the associated professional development. They may see professional development as a one-shot training session to impart skills in using specific equipment. Instead, professional development should be considered an ongoing process that helps teachers develop new methods of promoting engaged learning in the classroom using technology.