nteraction should be frequent
1More
Why choose Schoolshape for your next language lab? | Schoolshape - 35 views
-
We have decided to start using this online service as part of the online toolkit for our French courses. While some of its functions may be found in CMS systems and others in more narrowly focused website (i.e., VoiceThread), Schoolshape does so, so much more. In particular it duplicates or even surpasses the capabilities of traditional language lab software. The big differences are 1) its price (more than 1/10 the cost in our case), 2) greater flexibility in terms of use and format support and 3) user friendliness. From the corporate website: Schoolshape does everything offered by other language labs, and more besides: CD quality audio recording High quality video recording Audio broadcast Video broadcast One-to-one audio calls One-to-one video calls Audio bookmarking Audio group discussion Teacher-controlled pairing Random pairing Group text discussion (forum) Private messaging Pronunciation exercises Dialogue exercises Audio and video upload and download Supports mp3, flv, wav, wmv, mp4, ogg formats Supports pictures in jpg, gif, png formats Supports flash animations and games Supports YouTube video Download audio for use with mp3 players Supports Windows XP, Vista, 7, MacOS 10.4+, Linux, ChromeOS, iPad 2, Android 2.2+.
1More
VidBlaster - Video Production at Your Fingertips! - VidBlaster - Video Production at Yo... - 1 views
1More
SlideTalk - turn your presentations into engaging talking videos - 83 views
1More
Inside the School Silicon Valley Thinks Will Save Education | WIRED - 10 views
-
"AUTHOR: ISSIE LAPOWSKY. ISSIE LAPOWSKY DATE OF PUBLICATION: 05.04.15. 05.04.15 TIME OF PUBLICATION: 7:00 AM. 7:00 AM INSIDE THE SCHOOL SILICON VALLEY THINKS WILL SAVE EDUCATION Click to Open Overlay Gallery Students in the youngest class at the Fort Mason AltSchool help their teacher, Jennifer Aguilar, compile a list of what they know and what they want to know about butterflies. CHRISTIE HEMM KLOK/WIRED SO YOU'RE A parent, thinking about sending your 7-year-old to this rogue startup of a school you heard about from your friend's neighbor's sister. It's prospective parent information day, and you make the trek to San Francisco's South of Market neighborhood. You walk up to the second floor of the school, file into a glass-walled conference room overlooking a classroom, and take a seat alongside dozens of other parents who, like you, feel that public schools-with their endless bubble-filled tests, 38-kid classrooms, and antiquated approach to learning-just aren't cutting it. At the same time, you're thinking: this school is kind of weird. On one side of the glass is a cheery little scene, with two teachers leading two different middle school lessons on opposite ends of the room. But on the other side is something altogether unusual: an airy and open office with vaulted ceilings, sunlight streaming onto low-slung couches, and rows of hoodie-wearing employees typing away on their computers while munching on free snacks from the kitchen. And while you can't quite be sure, you think that might be a robot on wheels roaming about. Then there's the guy who's standing at the front of the conference room, the school's founder. Dressed in the San Francisco standard issue t-shirt and jeans, he's unlike any school administrator you've ever met. But the more he talks about how this school uses technology to enhance and individualize education, the more you start to like what he has to say. And so, if you are truly fed up with the school stat
26More
The Future of Learning: An Interview with Alfred Bork - 82 views
-
active environment maintains student interest for a long period of time, even with difficult learning material.
- ...23 more annotations...
-
the computer, keeping detailed records on student performance and using these records in making decisions about what is next to be presented to the student.
-
In our traditional learning environments, some students learn and some do not. It is this second group of students that we want to help.
-
, on a moment-to-moment basis, just what the student knows and just what learning problems are occurring
-
key concept for structuring highly interactive learning experiences is the Benjamin Bloom concept of mastery learning.
-
A student who has not learned in one way probably needs a different approach, rather than another go-round with the material that was not previously successful in assisting learning.
-
In such an environment, learning and evaluation are no longer separate activities but are part of the same process, intimately blended. So the student is not conscious of taking tests, and we avoid the problems of cheating.
-
highly interactive learning is intrinsically motivating. Motivation is particularly important in a distance-learning environment, since none of the "threats" of the classroom, such as low grades, are available.
-
mastery-based computer segment could also offer human contact. Small groups could work together, either locally or remotely via electronic communication.
-
existing authoring systems. Since they were, and still are, mostly directed toward supplying information, these were inadequate for creating highly interactive software.
-
Teaching faculty, in the sense that we know them today, may cease to exist, except for in smaller, advanced courses. But their skills and experiences will be important in the design of learning modules.
-
highly effective highly interactive distance-learning courses would have a large potential market, making them much cheaper per student than current courses, and if well developed, they will be much superior for almost all students
-
The typical approach is to give some released time to faculty and to give limited support for programming and media production. It is unlikely, almost impossible, that good learning material will be developed this way.
-
Universities are too stuck in their current ways of doing things to be able to compete with well-developed material from "outside." Most university faculty and administrators do not appreciate the current problems of learning and so are not prepared for these future directions.
6More
Deep Listening to the Musical World: EBSCOhost - 1 views
-
Deep-listening experiences, wrapped in a pedagogy of music listening, take students far beyond the surface of their barely noticeable surround-sound environment and into the nature of music and its workings.
-
Attentive-listening experiences occur when teachers point out specified points of focus, put questions or challenges to the listeners, or merge graphics or visuals with the sound experience itself. Graphs or maps of particular musical features can be helpful, since visual cues may enhance listening. Teachers can provide diagrams of the contours of the melody or depict rhythmic components of a piece through iconic symbols-staff notation, splotches of color, or geometric shapes, for example. Instruments, real or illustrated, can focus student attention on their entrance or continuing presence in the music.
-
Engaged listening invites listeners to enter into the groove or the flow of the music, pick a part to contribute, and consequently feel more involved in the music. A phenomenon of "participatory consciousness"[ 5] unfolds as engaged listeners find their place in the music, find something in the music to hang on to (a melody, a pulse, an ostinato, a groove), and select a contribution to make back to the music. In this way, they connect with the music, joining the recorded musicians and their live participant-colleagues in a musical team.
- ...3 more annotations...
-
The process of enactive listening is a pathway to the performance of music. The goal of this third level of a listening pedagogy is to continue ear training with a strong musicianship program by allowing the listening act to guide musicians to stylistically appropriate performance.[ 6] Not only can students learn the music of oral cultures aurally, but they can also effectively learn the nutated music of literate cultures by listening. In attempting to perform a musical selection, students gain from opportunities to hear a recording that allows them to concentrate on timbrai qualities, the dynamic How of a piece, its melodic and rhythmic components, and the interplay of its parts. Notation alone, whether from composed or transcribed works, can never fully depict all the musical nuances of a piece, and so listening is a helpful guide to performance.
-
Enactive listening takes time. It can be frustrating for those who have learned to use and value notation as an important means for music's transmission.
-
Young musicians can learn songs for solo or unison voices — as well as multipart songs and selections for percussion ensembles, strings groups, and gatherings of wind players — by ear.
55More
The Coach in the Operating Room - The New Yorker - 37 views
-
I compared my results against national data, and I began beating the averages.
-
the obvious struck me as interesting: even Rafael Nadal has a coach. Nearly every élite tennis player in the world does. Professional athletes use coaches to make sure they are as good as they can be.
-
They don’t even have to be good at the sport. The famous Olympic gymnastics coach Bela Karolyi couldn’t do a split if his life depended on it. Mainly, they observe, they judge, and they guide.
- ...31 more annotations...
-
always evolving
-
no matter how well prepared people are in their formative years, few can achieve and maintain their best performance on their own.
-
For decades, research has confirmed that the big factor in determining how much students learn is not class size or the extent of standardized testing but the quality of their teachers.
-
So, instead of having students take test after test after test, why don't we just have coaches who observe and sit and discuss and offer suggestions and divide the number of tests we give students in half and do away with half? Are we concerned about student knowledge? student performance? student ability? student growth or capacity for growth? What we really need to identify is what we value!
-
-
California researchers in the early nineteen-eighties conducted a five-year study of teacher-skill development in eighty schools, and noticed something interesting. Workshops led teachers to use new skills in the classroom only ten per cent of the time. Even when a practice session with demonstrations and personal feedback was added, fewer than twenty per cent made the change. But when coaching was introduced—when a colleague watched them try the new skills in their own classroom and provided suggestions—adoption rates passed ninety per cent. A spate of small randomized trials confirmed the effect. Coached teachers were more effective, and their students did better on tests.
-
they did not necessarily have any special expertise in a content area, like math or science.
-
The coaches let the teachers choose the direction for coaching. They usually know better than anyone what their difficulties are.
-
The conversation with the coach and the coach listening and learning what the teacher would like to expand, improve, and grow is probably the most vital part! If the teacher doesn't have a clue, the coach could start anywhere and that might not be what the teacher adopts and owns. So, the teacher must have ownership and direction.
-
-
teaches coaches to observe a few specifics: whether the teacher has an effective plan for instruction; how many students are engaged in the material; whether they interact respectfully; whether they engage in high-level conversations; whether they understand how they are progressing, or failing to progress.
-
must engage in “deliberate practice”—sustained, mindful efforts to develop the full range of abilities that success requires. You have to work at what you’re not good at.
-
most people do not know where to start or how to proceed. Expertise, as the formula goes, requires going from unconscious incompetence to conscious incompetence to conscious competence and finally to unconscious competence.
-
The coach provides the outside eyes and ears, and makes you aware of where you’re falling short.
-
So coaches use a variety of approaches—showing what other, respected colleagues do, for instance, or reviewing videos of the subject’s performance. The most common, however, is just conversation.
-
“What worked?”
-
“What else did you notice?”
-
something to try.
-
Good coaches, he said, speak with credibility, make a personal connection, and focus little on themselves.
-
“listened more than they talked,” Knight said. “They were one hundred per cent present in the conversation.”
-
trying to get residents to think—to think like surgeons—and his questions exposed how much we had to learn.
-
one twenty-minute discussion gave me more to consider and work on than I’d had in the past five years.
-
watch other colleagues operate in order to gather ideas about what I could do.
-
routine, high-quality video recordings of operations could enable us to figure out why some patients fare better than others.
-
It’s teaching with a trendier name. Coaching aimed at improving the performance of people who are already professionals is less usual.
-
modern society increasingly depends on ordinary people taking responsibility for doing extraordinary things
-
We care about results in sports, and if we care half as much about results in schools and in hospitals we may reach the same conclusion.
Defining Quality in Blended Programs | EDUCAUSE - 21 views
Research and Quality Assurance in Blended Learning | EDUCAUSE - 23 views
www.educause.edu/...213763
blended blended learning educause ELI recording slides quality dziuban moskal ucf
shared by Kelvin Thompson on 01 Jun 11
- No Cached
1More
T. S. Eliot on Idea Incubation, Inhibition, and the Mystical Quality of Creativity + a ... - 29 views
4More
The Trouble With Twitter - The Chronicle Review - The Chronicle of Higher Education - 0 views
-
To those who Twitter, the reporter who investigates a story before offering it to the public must also seem tediously ruminant. On Twitter, the notes become the story, devoid of even five minutes of reflection on the writer's way to the computer. I can see that there are times —an airplane landing in the Hudson, a presidential election in Iran—when this type of impromptu journalism becomes a necessity, and an exciting one at that. Luckily, reporters still exist to make sense of information bytes and expand upon them for readers—but for how much longer? I worry that microblogging cheats my students out of their trump card: a mindful attention to the subject in front of them, so that they can capture its sights and sounds, its smells and tactile qualities, to share with readers. How can Twittering stories from laptops and phones possibly replace the attentive journalist who tucks a digital recorder artfully under a notepad, pencil behind one ear, and gives full attention to the subject at hand?
-
I went home after the lecture and—hypocritically, I admit—updated my Facebook status and my blog to declare how much I despise Twitter.
-
Twitter serves as a source of links to longer news stories.
-
Which is one of its main uses in journalism. As Jay Rosen (@jayrosennyu) and others have put it, through services like Twitter and, indeed, Diigo we edit the web for one another. We can see it as acting as human filters, intelligent gatherers and sifters of information for the various networks in which we are nodes.
-
7More
The Atlantic Online | January/February 2010 | What Makes a Great Teacher? | Amanda Ripley - 82 views
-
embodies the most stunning finding to come out of education research in the past decade: more than any other variable in education—more than schools or curriculum—teachers matter.
-
Parents have always worried about where to send their children to school; but the school, statistically speaking, does not matter as much as which adult stands in front of their children. Teacher quality tends to vary more within schools—even supposedly good schools—than among schools
-
The results are specific and surprising. Things that you might think would help a new teacher achieve success in a poor school—like prior experience working in a low-income neighborhood—don’t seem to matter. Other things that may sound trifling—like a teacher’s extracurricular accomplishments in college—tend to predict greatness.
- ...3 more annotations...
-
What did predict success, interestingly, was a history of perseverance—not just an attitude, but a track record
3More
Google's Bing Sting - NYTimes.com - 37 views
-
Google says it caught Microsoft copying its search results and incorporating them into its own Bing service.
-
Short version: Google suspected that Microsoft was recording what Internet Explorer users typed into the Google search box and which search result they were clicking — and then using that information to adjust Bing’s results. To test this theory, Google engineers set up a sting operation.
-
Microsoft doesn’t deny its sleazy tactic; its bizarre defense is simply that the ripped-off Google results represent only one of many data points Bing considers.
9More
MB004/MB004: The Basics of Educational Podcasting: Enhancing the Student Learning Exper... - 5 views
-
Although there are numerous professional podcasting software packages currently available ($100 - $1000+), beginning podcasters may want to start with a freeware program. One of the most widely used free podcasting software programs is Audacity (http://audacity.sourceforge.net/), an open source sound recording and editing program with versions available for PC, Mac, and Linux operating systems. For Mac users another free podcasting program is GarageBand, found within the iLife package that comes with all new Mac OS X computers. Although older versions of GarageBand do not have the podcasting function, upgrades to the new, podcasting-ready GarageBand 4.1 are available in the iLife08 package for $90 (educational discounts available; http://www.apple.com/ilife/garageband/). For specific instructions on using GarageBand, an online video tutorial is available from Apple at http://www.apple.com/ilife/garageband/.
-
However, if the objective, for example, is to create a database of reusable lecture materials, then synchronizing the slides with the audio portion of the lecture and adding special effects (e.g., sound, video) may be required and will likely take at least as long as the lecture itself.
- ...3 more annotations...
-
For educators, podcasting offers an opportunity to bridge the traditional classroom setting with progressive state-of-the-art technologies. There are several advantages of bringing podcasting into the classroom for lectures and student assignments. First, podcasting is an exciting and novel means for students to take a more active role in their own learning experience. As students realize their podcast assignments may be published online with potentially hundreds of listeners through free podcast directories, their attention to the quality and detail of their assignments may improve. Second, podcasting is adaptable to the students' learning needs. Students can access the material whenever and as often as they would like, thereby reinforcing critical concepts or details they may have missed in the original classroom lecture. Finally, assignments that require students to generate, edit, and publish their own podcasts reinforce critical communication skills such as writing text that will be orally presented online or in a classroom.
-
These results clearly show students' perceptions of podcasting in the classroom dramatically improved after using this technology
-
Although podcasting was popular amongst most of the students, there was one student who opposed podcasting in the class