According to the National Center for Education Statistics in 2003, geometry was one area of weakness among American students.
Origami has been found to strengthen an understanding of geometric concepts, formulas, and labels, making them come alive.
Thinking Skills
Origami excites other modalities of learning. It has been shown to improve spatial visualization skills using hands-on learning.
Fractions
Folding paper can demonstrate the fractions in a tactile way.
Problem Solving
Often in assignments, there is one set answer and one way to get there. Origami provides children an opportunity to solve something that isn't prescribed and gives them a chance to make friends with failure (i.e. trial and error).
Origami is a fun way to explain physics concepts. A thin piece of paper is not very strong, but if you fold it like an accordion it will be.
Researchers have found that students who use origami in math perform better.
STEAM
While schools are still catching up to the idea of origami as a STEAM engine (the merging of these disciplines), origami is already being used to solve tough problems in technology.
Additionally, the National Science Foundation, one of the government's largest funding agencies, has supported a few programs that link engineers with artists to use origami in designs. The ideas range from medical forceps to foldable plastic solar panels.
Origami, the ancient art of paper folding, has applications in the modern-day classroom for teaching geometry, thinking skills, fractions, problem solving, and fun science.
The founding members of this wiki consist of "old" therapists, with over 200 years of experience working with special populations and technology. We hope that people will use this site to make informed decisions before downloading. Our purpose in creating this wiki is to foster collaboration around how applications can be used in unique ways to support learning in home, school, and therapy settings. If you have used iPad/iPod applications with special populations, please consider joining and contributing to this wiki by adding information to the charts on the various pages (see navigation pane on the left). You can also contribute without joining by adding entries on the discussion tabs for each page.
Deep roots classical antiquity. Socrates, in dialogue with his followers, asked directed questions that led his students to realize for themselves the weaknesses in their thinking.
I agree - context, and culture play a very important role. And this might change from corner to corner, it can change quickly, neighbours etc
Believed that constructivists such as Piaget had overlooked the essentially social nature of language and consequently failed to understand that learning is a collaborative process.
Constructivist learning environments provide multiple representations of reality
Multiple representations avoid oversimplification and represent the complexity of the real world
Constructivist learning environments emphasize authentic tasks in a meaningful context rather than abstract instruction out of context.
Constructivist learning environments provide learning environments such as real-world settings or case-based learnin
Constructivist learning environments encourage thoughtful reflection on experience.
Constructivist learning environments support "collaborative construction of knowledge through social negotiation, not competition among learners for recognition.
Jonassen (1994)
There is no absolute knowledge, just our interpretation of it. The acquisition of knowledge therefore requires the individual to consider the information and - based on their past experiences, personal views, and cultural background - construct an interpretation of the information that is being presented to them.
Teaching styles based on this approach therefore mark a conscious effort to move from these ‘traditional, objectivist models didactic, memory-oriented transmission models’ (Cannella & Reiff, 1994) to a more student-centred approach.
Students ‘construct’ their own meaning by building on their previous knowledge and experience. New ideas and experiences are matched against existing knowledge, and the learner constructs new or adapted rules to make sense of the world
John Dewey (1933/1998) is often cited as the philosophical founder of this approach
while Vygotsky (1978) is the major theorist among the social constructivists.
Bruner (1990) and Piaget (1972) are considered the chief theorists among the cogn
Dewey
Piaget
John Dewey rejected the notion that schools should focus on repetitive, rote memorization & proposed a method of "directed living" – students would engage in real-world, practical workshops in which they would demonstrate their knowledge through creativity and collaboration
Piaget rejected the idea that learning was the passive assimilation of given knowledge. Instead, he proposed that learning is a dynamic process comprising successive stages of adaption to reality during which learners actively construct knowledge by creating and testing their own theories of the world.
A common misunderstanding regarding constructivism is that instructors should never tell students anything directly but, instead, should always allow them to construct knowledge for themselves. This is actually confusing a theory of pedagogy (teaching) with a theory of knowing. Constructivism assumes that all knowledge is constructed from the learner’s previous knowledge, regardless of how one is taught. Thus, even listening to a lecture involves active attempts to construct new knowledge.
social interaction lay at the root of good learning.
Bruner builds on the Socratic tradition of learning through dialogue, encouraging the learner to come to enlighten themselves through reflection
Careful curriculum design is essential so that one area builds upon the other. Learning must therefore be a process of discovery where learners build their own knowledge, with the active dialogue of teachers, building on their existing knowledge.
Social constructivism was developed by Vygotsky. He rejected the assumption made by Piaget that it was possible to separate learning from its social context.
On Vgotsky`s side here - I don`t think you can forget the role of "social learning", peer to peer learning and the role of social interaction.
The basic tenet of constructivism is that students learn by doing rather than observing.
By the 1980s the research of Dewey and Vygotsky had blended with Piaget's work in developmental psychology into the broad approach of constructivism
1. Discovery Learning (Bruner)
In discovery learning, the student is placed in problem solving situations where they are required to draw on past experiences and existing knowledge to discover facts, relationships, and new information.
Students are more likely to retain knowledge attained by engaging real-world and contextualised problem-solving than by traditional transmission methods.
Models that are based upon discovery learning model include: guided discovery, problem-based learning, simulation-based learning, case-based learning, and incidental learning.
More and different types of learning and teaching are available in the digital environment. We must convince ourselves that we don’t yet understand digital education so we may open the doors more broadly to innovation and creativity
we shouldn’t set off on a cruise, and build the ship as we go
Are social networking applications you are talking about?
What we have is a series of online classes with no real infrastructure to support the work that students do on college campuses outside and between those classes
In physical schools that work have to be done on campus, because when students leave they become distant from each other. But that does not happen online: students are close together both inside and outside the "campus"; actually, they are simultaneously inside and outside campus.
Up to now, online learning has taken little notice of the web upon which it’s suspended
Today, the road to access doesn’t necessarily detour through the university, and anyone, of just about any age, can travel it.
This is, of course, an overstatement, as not everyone is prepared, given their development and living conditions, to take advantage of Internet.
We’ve created happy little caskets inside which learning fits too neatly and tidily (like forums, learning management systems, and web conferencing platforms). We’ve timed learning down to the second, developed draconian quality assurance measures, built analytics to track every bit of minutiae, and we’ve championed the stalest, most banal forms of interaction — interaction buried beneath rubrics and quantitative assessment — interaction that looks the same every time in every course with every new set of students.
"Teens gather in networked public spaces to negotiate identity, gossip, support one another, jockey for status, collaborate, share information, flirt, joke, and goof around,"
To the uninitiated, however, the photos, videos, and cryptic comments that kids post on their personal pages often appear as impenetrable as a tenth grader's cluttered locker. Because schools tend to block access to social-networking sites, many educators have a tough time harnessing their potential as a teaching tool and modeling appropriate networking-site behaviors.
a complicated and emotional question has arisen: has cheerleading become a true sport?
For many women
especially those who worked at the forefront of the push for equality in college sports, the answer for a long time was no
endorsing an embarrassing holdover from a time when girls in tight-fitting outfits were expected to do little more than yell support for boys
skeptical of high schools and universities that counted female cheerleaders as athletes as a way to evade their obligation to provide opportunities for women in more traditional sports, like softball and soccer
Why should cheerleading not be considered a sport when it required a complex set of technical skills, physical fitness and real guts?
A wiki is a space on the Web where you can share work and ideas, pictures
and links, videos and media — and anything else you can think of.
Wikispaces is special because we give you a visual editor and a bunch of
other tools to make sharing all kinds of content as easy for students as it
is for their teachers.
A Wikispaces Private Label site is a secure, dedicated wiki environment
— like a clone of Wikispaces.com, but with your organization’s DNA
mixed in. You get unlimited wikis (and everything you need to manage them),
plus tools to integrate the site with your other systems and support your
users.
A superb wiki/web hosting site with lets you create web pages for your class or school or use it as a Wiki and let your pupils/colleagues create and build the page together. The basic account is free and if you sign up as an educator you can get extra storage space.
http://ictmagic.wikispaces.com/ICT+&+Web+Tools
have been lucky
enough to have taught the full range of our freshman / sophmore undergraduate
offerings as both an onsite and online instructor. While I have
thoroughly enjoyed both formats - and very much so - I must admit that my
experiences online have been *much* more positive than onsite instruction. Let
me try and elucidate:1. While in the onsite classroom you have the
opportunity to think on your feet and challenge and be experiential on your feet
to reactions to the students who speak, in the online classroom, you are able to
meet *every* class member and challenge their minds and ideas. The students who
would normally be lost in a classroom of 35-40 are met and developed each day or
week at their level and pushed to consider ideas they might not have considered.
2. I am able to reach the entire class through multimedia exhibits in
each of the weekly units - journal articles, non-copyrighted film clips (and
many from our university's purchased collection under an agreement for both
onsite classroom and online classroom use), photography, art, patents, etc, that
the students would not see - or would otherwise ignore - in an onsite classroom.
We incorporate this information into our discussions and make it part of the
larger whole of history.3. Each student and I - on the phone during
office hours or in e-mail - discuss the creation of their term papers - and
discuss midterm and final "anxiety" issues - and as they are used to the online
format, and regular communication with me through the discussion boards, they
respond much more readily than onsite students, whom I have found I have to
pressure to talk to me. 4. I am able to accommodate students from around
the country - and around the world. I have had enrolled in my class students
from Japan, Indonesia, India, England - and many other countries. As a result, I
have set up a *very* specific Skype address *only* for use of my students. They
are required to set up the time and day with me ahead of time and I need to
approve that request, but for them (and for some of my students scattered all
over the state and US), the face time is invaluable in helping them feel
"connected" - and I am more than happy to offer it. 5. As the software
upgrades, the possibilities of what I can offer become more and more amazing,
and the ease of use for both me - and for the students - becomes
astronomically better. Many have never known the software, so they don't notice
it - but those who have taken online courses before cheer it on. Software does
not achieve backwards. As very few of these issues are met by the onsite
classroom, I am leaning more and more toward the online classroom as the better
mode of instruction. Yes, there are times I *really* miss the onsite
opportunities, but then I think of the above distinctions and realize that yes,
I am where I should be, and virtually *ALL* the students are getting far more
for their money than they would get in an onsite classroom. This is the
wave of the future, and it holds such amazing promise. Already I think we are
seeing clear and fruitful results, and if academics receive effective - and
continuing - instruction and support from the very beginning, I cannot imagine
why one would ever go back. The only reason I can think of *not* doing this is
if the instructor has his or her *own* fear of computers. Beyond that - please,
please jump on the bandwagon, swallow your fears, and learn how to do this with
vigor. I don't think you will ever be sorry.PhD2BinUS
have
been lucky
enough to have taught the full range of
our freshman / sophmore undergraduate
offerings
as both an onsite and online instructor.
While I
have
thoroughly enjoyed both formats - and very
much so - I must admit that my
experiences online have been *much* more
positive than onsite instruction. Let
me try and
elucidate:
While I have thoroughly enjoyed both formats - and very much so - I must admit that my experiences online have been *much* more positive than onsite instruction. Let me try and elucidate:
I am a graduate student at Sam Houston State University and before I started grad school I never had taken an online course before. My opinion then was that online courses were a joke and you couldn't learn from taking a course online. Now my opinion has done a complete 180. The teachers post numerous youtube videos and other helpful tools for each assignment so that anyone can successfully complete the assignment no matter what their technology skill level is. I do not see much difference between online and face-to-face now because of the way the instructors teach the courses.
Feed readers
are probably the most important digital tool for today's learner because they
make sifting through the amazing amount of content added to the Internet
easy. Also known as aggregators, feed readers are free tools that can
automatically check nearly any website for new content dozens of times a
day---saving ridiculous amounts of time and customizing learning experiences for
anyone.
Imagine
never having to go hunting for new information from your favorite sources
again. Learning goes from a frustrating search through thousands of
marginal links written by questionable characters to quickly browsing the
thoughts of writers that you trust, respect and enjoy.
Feed readers can
quickly and easily support blogging in the classroom, allowing teachers to
provide students with ready access to age-appropriate sites of interest that are
connected to the curriculum. By collecting sites in advance and organizing
them with a feed reader, teachers can make accessing information manageable for
their students.
Here are several
examples of feed readers in action:
Used specifically as
a part of one classroom project, this feed list contains information related to
global warming that students can use as a starting point for individual
research.
While there are literally dozens of different feed reader
programs to choose from (Bloglines andGoogle Reader are two
biggies), Pageflakes is a favorite of
many educators because it has a visual layout that is easy to read and
interesting to look at. It is also free and web-based. That
means that users can check accounts from any computer with an Internet
connection. Finally, Pageflakes makes it quick and easy to add new
websites to a growing feed list—and to get rid of any websites that users are no
longer interested in.
What's even
better: Pageflakes has been developinga teacher version of their tooljust for us that includes an online grade tracker,
a task list and a built in writing tutor. As Pageflakes works to perfect
its teacher product, this might become one of the first kid-friendly feed
readers on the market. Teacher Pageflakes users can actually blog and create a
discussion forum directly in their feed reader---making an all-in-one digital
home for students.
For more
information about the teacher version of Pageflakes, check out this
review:
a very popular web-based game design environment. Global Kids http://olpglobalkids.org/ is using it to run social benefits game design contests and badging programs. They are getting 100+ new game design entries per week. From the parents' guide: Gamestar Mechanic is currently supported by a partnership between the Institute of Play and E-Line Media. The game was originally developed by Gamelab in partnership with the Institute of Play and the Academic Advanced Distributed Learning Co-Lab (AADLC) at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Initial funding for the game and companion learning guides came from the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation.
The design of the game is based on research by some of the leading academics in the field including Katie Salen (Executive Director of the Institute of Play and curriculum author for the New York City Public School Quest To Learn) and James Paul Gee (author of What Video Games Have to Teach Us About Learning and Literacy).
This site has students creating games from scratch and putting them out into the world for feedback within the Gamestar Mechanic community. Students use math, problem solving, writing skills and more to make their games interesting. I think this could be used in the classroom as a theme-based project or just to get students interested in coding.
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.
Effective PLCs must focus on student learning. It's no use becoming bogged down in issues or procedures that are out of our control as classroom teachers.
To keep ourselves on track, we examine our students' strengths and weaknesses, creating plans that maximize student success.
Origami, the ancient art of paper folding, has applications in the modern-day classroom for teaching geometry, thinking skills, fractions, problem solving, and fun science.
