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Angela Hagan

Aspirin stimulates insulin - 6 views

  • AbstractNormal subjects and patients with adult-onset diabetes received 10 gm. of aspirin in four days. On the fourth day, the fasting serum glucose and the glucose response to oral glucose were decreased in both groups. These changes were associated with increased levels of serum insulin and pancreatic glucagon, although the glucagon responses to oral glucose were unchanged. In the diabetic patients, aspirin therapy was followed by a decreased glucose response to I.V. glucose and by the appearance of an early insulin peak, which could not be demonstrated before treatment. Aspirin did not affect the I.V. glucose tolerance in normal subjects, although it did enhance the early insulin peak. A decrease in the fasting levels of free fatty acids was noted in both groups, whereas the fasting level of triglycerides decreased only in the diabetic patients. Cholesterolemia did not change in either group. A few preliminary observations indicate that, in normal subjects, ibuprofen and ketoprofen, two other presumed prostaglandin inhibitors, did not affect fasting glycemia, glucose tolerance, or the insulin response to glucose. No changes were noted after the administration of placebo. Last A1C 4.8No Rx, Diet modification, exercise, Supps and HerbalsI am a retired HYPOGLYCEMIC Reply With Quote 11-08-2010 #2 trinitarian3n1 D.D. Family Moderator Join Date November 2007 Location In the mitten, USA Age 41 Posts > 100 About T2 dx 3/07, tx w/very lo carb D&E Met, bolus R Blog Entries 127 That's a hefty dose of aspirin. John C.A clean house is the sign of a broken computer.Last HgbA1c - 5.5% 2/2011 Reply With Quote 11-08-2010 #3 MCS D.D. Family Join Date August 2010 Posts > 100 About T2, trying to live a healthy life Yes it is, 650mg 4 times a day. I wonder if they did that to make sure they had a response and if there is a break point of some lower dose. I am on 325 once a day now. Been that high in the past for other things, lots of ringing in the ears when you get that high of a dose. Last A1C 4.8No Rx, Diet modification, exercise, Supps and HerbalsI am a retired HYPOGLYCEMIC Reply With Quote 11-08-2010 #4 furball64801 D.D. Family Join Date December 2009 Posts > 100 About type 2 25 yrs mother aunt type 2 thin 50 yrs Blog Entr
  • The therory is that it helps to regenerate the once turned off Beta cells, not over working the exiting ones. This is just one article I found, they are many, most of them concern Salsalate a drug used for arthritis. It works by lowering the inflammation of the liver and pancreas. Lowers IR, its a pretty interesting concept based largerly on inflammation of one muscles and organs. Originally Posted by jeanne wagner i know for heart health they recommend the baby 81 mg a day. I would think you wouldn't have a stomach lining left if you took that on a daily basis. Also just because it stimulates insulin doesn't mean it is a good thing. Sulfonyureas also overstimulate insulin and there is some thought they lead to beta cell burnout. I think it is better to find things like metformin that make you more sensitive to the insulin you naturally make. Last A1C 4.8No Rx, Diet modification, exercise, Supps and HerbalsI am a retired HYPOGLYCEMIC Reply With Quote 11-08-2010 #7 MCS D.D. Family Join Date August 2010 Posts > 100 About T2, trying to live a healthy life Here is a few more articles concerning NSAID's and insulin if you are interested.http://www.annals.org/content/152/6/346.abstracthttp://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/1...026.x/abstracthttp://www.theannals.com/cgi/content/abstract/44/7/1207 Last A1C 4.8No Rx, Diet modification, exercise, Supps and HerbalsI am a retired HYPOGLYCEMIC Reply With Quote MCS was thanked for this post by: Nan-OH 11-08-2010 #8 CalgaryDiabetic D.D. Family Join Date June 2009 Location Calgary,Canada Posts > 100 About diabetic since 1997, on insulin 2000 Guarantied tummy ulcer with so much aspirin. Reply With Quote 11-09-2010 #9 MCS
Mark Swartz

Role and Function of Theory in Online Education Development and Delivery - 3 views

  • According to Bonk and Reynolds (1997), to promote higher-order thinking on the Web, online learning must create challenging activities that enable learners to link new information to old, acquire meaningful knowledge, and use their metacognitive abilities; hence, it is the instructional strategy and not the technology tha
  • According to Bonk and Reynolds (1997), to promote higher-order thinking on the Web, online learning must create challenging activities that enable learners to link new information to old, acquire meaningful knowledge, and use their metacognitive abilities; hence, it is the instructional strategy and not the technology that influences the quality of learning.
  • However, it is not the computer per se that makes students learn, but the design of the real-life models and simulations, and the students' interaction with those models and simulations. The computer is merely the vehicle that provides the processing capability and delivers the instruction to learners (Clark, 2001).
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  • Online learning allows for flexibility of access, from anywhere and usually at anytime—essentially, it allows participants to collapse time and space (Cole, 2000)—however, the learning materials must be designed properly to engage the learner and promote learning.
  • Cognitive psychology claims that learning involves the use of memory, motivation, and thinking, and that reflection plays an important part in learning.
  • The development of effective online learning materials should be based on proven and sound learning theories.
  • Early computer learning systems were designed based on a behaviorist approach to learning. The behaviorist school of thought, influenced by Thorndike (1913), Pavlov (1927), and Skinner (1974), postulates that learning is a change in observable behavior caused by external stimuli in the environment (Skinner, 1974).
  • Therefore, before any learning materials are developed, educators must, tacitly or explicitly, know the principles of learning and how students learn.
  • Constructivist theorists claim that learners interpret information and the world according to their personal reality, and that they learn by observation, processing, and interpretation, and then personalize the information into personal knowledge (Cooper, 1993; Wilson, 1997).
  • The design of online learning materials can include principles from all three. According to Ertmer and Newby (1993), the three schools of thought can in fact be used as a taxonomy for learning. Behaviorists' strategies can be used to teach the “what” (facts), cognitive strategies can be used to teach the “how” (processes and principles), and constructivist strategies can be used to teach the “why” (higher level thinking that promotes personal meaning and situated and contextual learning).
  • The behaviorist school sees the mind as a “black box,” in the sense that a response to a stimulus can be observed quantitatively, totally ignoring the effect of thought processes occurring in the mind.
  • Learners should be told the explicit outcomes of the learning so that they can set expectations and can judge for themselves whether or not they have achieved the outcome of the online lesson. 2.  Learners must be tested to determine whether or not they have achieved the learning outcome. Online testing or other forms of testing and assessment should be integrated into the learning sequence to check the learner's achievement level and to provide appropriate feedback. 3.  Learning materials must be sequenced appropriately to promote learning. The sequencing could take the form of simple to complex, known to unknown, and knowledge to application. 4.  Learners must be provided with feedback so that they can monitor how they are doing and take corrective action if required.
  • Cognitivists see learning as an internal process that involves memory, thinking, reflection, abstraction, motivation, and meta-cognition.
  • Online instruction must use strategies to allow learners to attend to the learning materials so that they can be transferred from the senses to the sensory store and then to working memory.
  • Online learning strategies must present the materials and use strategies to enable students to process the materials efficiently.
  • information should be organized or chunked in pieces of appropriate size to facilitate processing.
  • Use advance organizers to activate an existing cognitive structure or to provide the information to incorporate the details of the lesson (Ausubel, 1960).
  • Use pre-instructional questions to set expectations and to activate the learners' existing knowledge structure.
  • Use prerequisite test questions to activate the prerequisite knowledge structure required for learning the new materials.
  • To facilitate deep processing, learners should be asked to generate the information maps during the learning process or as a summary activity after the lesson (Bonk & Reynolds, 1997).
  • The cognitive school recognizes the importance of individual differences, and of including a variety of learning strategies in online instruction to accommodate those differences
  • The Kolb Learning Style Inventory (LSI) (Kolb, 1984) looks at how learners perceive and process information, whereas the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (Myers, 1978) uses dichotomous scales to measure extroversion versus introversion, sensing versus intuition, thinking versus feeling, and judging versus perception. In the following discussion, we consider the Kolb Learning Style Inventory.
  • Attention: Capture the learners' attention at the start of the lesson and maintain it throughout the lesson. The online learning materials must include an activity at the start of the learning session to connect with the learners. Relevance: Inform learners of the importance of the lesson and how taking the lesson could benefit them. Strategies could include describing how learners will benefit from taking the lesson, and how they can use what they learn in real-life situations. This strategy helps to contextualize the learning and make it more meaningful, thereby maintaining interest throughout the learning session. Confidence: Use strategies such as designing for success and informing learners of the lesson expectations. Design for success by sequencing from simple to complex, or known to unknown, and use a competency-based approach where learners are given the opportunity to use different strategies to complete the lesson. Inform learners of the lesson outcome and provide ongoing encouragement to complete the lesson. Satisfaction: Provide feedback on performance and allow learners to apply what they learn in real-life situations. Learners like to know how they are doing, and they like to contextualize what they are learning by applying the information in real life.
  • Online strategies that facilitate the transfer of learning should be used to encourage application in different and real-life situations.
  • Constructivists see learners as being active rather than passive.
  • it is the individual learner's interpretation and processing of what is received through the senses that creates knowledge.
  • “the process of using a prior interpretation to construe a new or revised interpretation of the meaning of one's experience in order to guide future action” (p. 12).
  • Learning should be an active process. Keeping learners active doing meaningful activities results in high-level processing, which facilitates the creation of personalized meaning. Asking learners to apply the information in a practical situation is an active process, and facilitates personal interpretation and relevance.
  • Learners should construct their own knowledge rather than accepting that given by the instructor.
  • Collaborative and cooperative learning should be encouraged to facilitate constructivist learning (H
  • When assigning learners for group work, membership should be based on the expertise level and learning style of individual group members, so that individual team members can benefit from one another's strengths.
  •   Learners should be given control of the learning process
  • Learners should be given time and opportunity to reflect.
  • Learning should be made meaningful for learners. The learning materials should include examples that relate to students, so that they can make sense of the information.
  • Learning should be interactive to promote higher-level learning and social presence, and to help develop personal meaning. According to Heinich et al. (2002), learning is the development of new knowledge, skills, and attitudes as the learner interacts with information and the environment. Interaction is also critical to creating a sense of presence and a sense of community for online learners, and to promoting transformational learning (Murphy & Cifuentes, 2001). Learners receive the learning materials through the technology, process the information, and then personalize and contextualize the information.
  • Figure 1-6. Components of effective online learning.
  • Behaviorist strategies can be used to teach the facts (what); cognitivist strategies to teach the principles and processes (how); and constructivist strategies to teach the real-life and personal applications and contextual learning. There is a shift toward constructive learning, in which learners are given the opportunity to construct their own meaning from the information presented during the online sessions. The use of learning objects to promote flexibility and reuse of online materials to meet the needs of individual learners will become more common in the future. Online learning materials will be designed in small coherent segments, so that they can be redesigned for different learners and different contexts. Finally, online learning will be increasingly diverse to respond to different learning cultures, styles, and motivations.
  • Online instruction occurs when learners use the Web to go through the sequence of instruction, to complete the learning activities, and to achieve learning outcomes and objectives (Ally, 2002; Ritchie & Hoffman, 1997).
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    From:  FOUNDATIONS OF EDUCATIONAL THEORY FOR ONLINE LEARNING
Ed Webb

Please Sir, how do you re-tweet? - Twitter to be taught in UK primary schools - 2 views

  • The British government is proposing that Twitter is to be taught in primary (elementary) schools as part of a wider push to make online communication and social media a permanent part of the UK’s education system. And that’s not all. Kids will be taught blogging, podcasting and how to use Wikipedia alongside Maths, English and Science.
  • Traditional education in areas like phonics, the chronology of history and mental arithmetic remain but modern media and web-based skills and environmental education now feature.
  • The skills that let kids use Internet technologies effectively also work in the real world: being able to evaluate resources critically, communicating well, being careful with strangers and your personal information, conducting yourself in a manner appropriate to your environment. Those things are, and should be, taught in schools. It’s also a good idea to teach kids how to use computers, including web browsers etc, and how those real-world skills translate online.
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  • I think teaching kids HOW TO use Wikipedia is a step forward from ordering them NOT TO use it, as they presently do in many North American classrooms.
  • Open Source software is the future and therefore we need to concentrate on the wheels and not the vehicle!
  • Core skills is very important. Anyone and everyone can learn Photoshop & Word Processing at any stage of their life, but if core skills are missed from an early age, then evidence has shown that there has always been less chance that the missing knowledge could be learnt at a later stage in life.
  • Schools shouldn’t be about teaching content, but about learning to learn, getting the kind of critical skills that can be used in all kinds of contexts, and generating motivation for lifelong learning. Finnish schools are rated the best in the world according to the OECD/PISA ratings, and they have totally de-emphasised the role of content in the curriculum. Twitter could indeed help in the process as it helps children to learn to write in a precise, concise style - absolutely nothing wrong with that from a pedagogical point of view. Encouraging children to write is never a bad thing, no matter what the platform.
  • Front end stuff shouldn’t be taught. If anything it should be the back end gubbins that should be taught, databases and coding.
  • So what’s more important, to me at least, is not to know all kinds of useless facts, but to know the general info and to know how to think and how to search for information. In other words, I think children should get lessons in thinking and in information retrieval. Yes, they should still be taught about history, etc. Yes, it’s important they learn stuff that they could need ‘on the spot’ - like calculating skills. However, we can go a little bit easier on drilling the information in - by the time they’re 25, augmented reality will be a fact and not even a luxury.
  • Schools should focus more on teaching kids on how to think creatively so they can create innovative products like twitter rather then teaching on how to use it….
  • Schools should focus more on teaching kids on how to think creatively so they can create innovative products like twitter rather then teaching on how to use it….
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    The British government is proposing that Twitter is to be taught in primary (elementary) schools as part of a wider push to make online communication and social media a permanent part of the UK's education system. And that's not all. Kids will be taught blogging, podcasting and how to use Wikipedia alongside Maths, English and Science.
Marianne Hart

The Creativity Crisis - Newsweek - 48 views

  • 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.
  • “Creativity can be taught,”
  • it’s left to the luck of the draw who becomes creative: there’s no concerted effort to nurture the creativity of all children
    • Brian C. Smith
       
      Students are labeled as "creative" if they display a knack for art or music, and sometimes in writing, however, they are rarely recognized as creative in math or science where a lot of creativity is not only needed, but excellent for learning within those very two disciplines.
    • Bill Genereux
       
      This is precisely why creativity education is important. It is needed everywhere, not just in the arts. Those teaching outside of arts education need to start recognizing the importance of creative thinking as well.
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  • 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
    • Ed Webb
       
      Surely, "more quickly"?
  • 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.
    • Brian C. Smith
       
      Likely because it was out of necessity and the hardships of life. Not that we don't have hardships and necessities, but innovation has solved a lot of problems and automation has made skills and tasks easy.
  • 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.
    • Brian C. Smith
       
      Everyday process of work or school... over time, consistent and non-prescriptive.
  • 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.
  • The lore of pop psychology is that creativity occurs on the right side of the brain. But we now know that if you tried to be creative using only the right side of your brain, it’d be like living with ideas perpetually at the tip of your tongue, just beyond reach
  • 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.
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    For the first time, research shows that American creativity is declining. What went wrong-and how we can fix it.
Andy Whiteway

Need insight on what school IT depts want to know - 65 views

Great Toby, After we roll out the next major release, Phase II of Diigo Education Network will be next - ie. a dedicated education network only for educators and students! So, stay tun...

school firewall whitelist

Mr. Eason

Educational Leadership:Teaching for the 21st Century:21st Century Skills: The Challenge... - 119 views

  • the skills students need in the 21st century are not new.
  • Critical thinking and problem solving, for example, have been components of human progress throughout history
  • What's actually new is the extent to which changes in our economy and the world mean that collective and individual success depends on having such skills
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  • Many reform efforts, from reducing class size to improving reading instruction, have devolved into fads or been implemented with weak fidelity to their core intent. The 21st century skills movement faces the same risk.
  • some of the rhetoric we have heard surrounding this movement suggests that with so much new knowledge being created, content no longer matters; that ways of knowing information are now much more important than information itself. Such notions contradict what we know about teaching and learning and raise concerns that the 21st century skills movement will end up being a weak intervention for the very students—low-income students and students of color—who most need powerful schools as a matter of social equity.
  • First, educators and policymakers must ensure that the instructional program is complete and that content is not shortchanged for an ephemeral pursuit of skills
  • Second, states, school districts, and schools need to revamp how they think about human capital in education—in particular how teachers are trained
  • inally, we need new assessments that can accurately measure richer learning and more complex tasks
  • Skills and knowledge are not separate, however, but intertwined.
  • In some cases, knowledge helps us recognize the underlying structure of a problem.
  • At other times, we know that we have a particular thinking skill, but domain knowledge is necessary if we are to use it.
  • if skills are independent of content, we could reasonably conclude that we can develop these skills through the use of any content. For example, if students can learn how to think critically about science in the context of any scientific material, a teacher should select content that will engage students (for instance, the chemistry of candy), even if that content is not central to the field. But all content is not equally important to mathematics, or to science, or to literature. To think critically, students need the knowledge that is central to the domain.
  • The importance of content in the development of thinking creates several challenges
  • first is the temptation to emphasize advanced, conceptual thinking too early in training
  • Another curricular challenge is that we don't yet know how to teach self-direction, collaboration, creativity, and innovation the way we know how to teach long division.
  • But experience is not the same thing as practice. Experience means only that you use a skill; practice means that you try to improve by noticing what you are doing wrong and formulating strategies to do better. Practice also requires feedback, usually from someone more skilled than you are.
  • We must plan to teach skills in the context of particular content knowledge and to treat both as equally important.
  • education leaders must be realistic about which skills are teachable. If we deem that such skills as collaboration and self-direction are essential, we should launch a concerted effort to study how they can be taught effectively rather than blithely assume that mandating their teaching will result in students learning them.
  • teachers don't use them.
  • Even when class sizes are reduced, teachers do not change their teaching strategies or use these student-centered method
  • these methods pose classroom management problems for teachers.
  • These methods also demand that teachers be knowledgeable about a broad range of topics and are prepared to make in-the-moment decisions as the lesson plan progresses.
  • constant juggling act
  • greater collaboration among teachers.
  • But where will schools find the release time for such collaboration?
  • professional development is a massive undertaking.
  • Unfortunately, there is a widespread belief that teachers already know how to do this if only we could unleash them from today's stifling standards and accountability metrics. This notion romanticizes student-centered methods, underestimates the challenge of implementing such methods, and ignores the lack of capacity in the field today.
  • The first challenge is the cost.
  • measures that encourage greater creativity, show how students arrived at answers, and even allow for collaboration.
  • When students first encounter new ideas, their knowledge is shallow and their understanding is bound to specific examples. They need exposure to varied examples before their understanding of a concept becomes more abstract and they can successfully apply that understanding to novel situations.
Clint Heitz

ASCD Express 13.16 - The Keys to Content-Area Writing: Short, Frequent, and Shared - 17 views

  • Examine your students' background knowledge on a new topic of study by asking them to write about it. Pass out index cards and instruct students to fill only one side with their related thoughts and experiences. Provide a minute to write followed by a minute to discuss their ideas with a nearby partner. Collect the cards and set them aside until the end of the unit. Then, ask students to revisit their original notes and, on the backs of their cards, describe how their thinking has expanded or changed on this issue. The initial card writing gives you an insight into background knowledge, while the final card writing offers students insight into their thinking and learning.
  • If we continue to believe that we must collect and grade every piece of student writing, our exhaustion will result in students writing far less. Sure, if necessary, we can award points, checks, or stamps, but these should simply be records of whether the students gave a good-faith effort (full credit) or not (no credit), not grades that attempt to assess the writing (Vopat, 2009).
  • Offer students an intriguing content-area prompt. For example, if the topic was e-waste, you might ask students to write about the importance of e-devices in their own lives or you might project a photograph of a mountain of discarded, obsolete cell phones. Let students think and write for a minute or two. Then, working with a partner, have each student read aloud what they wrote and discuss their ideas. Another very social writing activity is written conversation. Starting in groups of three or four, students silently respond to a content-related prompt, writing for several minutes until most class members have about a third or half a page of writing. Then, within the group, students pass their papers to their right. Now, each student must read the previous writer's thoughts and expand the conversation by exploring ideas and asking questions. After a few minutes of writing, papers are passed again, and the conversation continues to blossom as more and more ideas and responses are added. When the paper returns to the owner after several passes, each student gets to read a very interesting conversation that began with their initial written response. Of course, this written conversation could continue as an out-loud discussion, as well.
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  • If you want students to be better readers, writers, and thinkers in every content area, then writing every day in every class is key. Be sure to make that informal and spontaneous writing short, frequent, and shared.
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    "Examine your students' background knowledge on a new topic of study by asking them to write about it. Pass out index cards and instruct students to fill only one side with their related thoughts and experiences. Provide a minute to write followed by a minute to discuss their ideas with a nearby partner. Collect the cards and set them aside until the end of the unit. Then, ask students to revisit their original notes and, on the backs of their cards, describe how their thinking has expanded or changed on this issue. The initial card writing gives you an insight into background knowledge, while the final card writing offers students insight into their thinking and learning."
onepulledthread

Teach the Web (MOOC) - 3 views

  •  
    Laura Hilliger blog zythepsary.com here discusses the mozilla Teach the web" MOOC to start may 2. content to include: Introduction to Webmaker is all about community, openness and collaboration. Remix and Contextualize is all about putting web literacy skills into other types of learning plans. Do and Share is about experimenting with collaborative, participatory learning spaces and using the online community to improve your practice. Within each topic are 3 subtopics - Those are the themes we'll be focusing on weekly. 9 themes, 9 week MOOC - nice how that worked out, don't cha think? For each theme, we'll be MAKING things to explore ideas because, you know, you learn lots when you make. We'll have a chance to look at each other's makes, give feedback, and hack on ideas throughout the 9 weeks. There will be several ways to follow along. Here's what we're thinking for communication channels: Sign up to the webmaker.org/teach list to participate Keep your eye on hivenyc.org/teachtheweb Submit your blog for aggregation Join G+ Webmaker Community Use #teachtheweb on Twitter Bookmark the Big Blue Button link for May 2nd, 23rd, and June 13th, 4pm UTC Check the calendar for Twitter chats and Big Blue Button sessions
Roland O'Daniel

Ending America's 'race to the bottom' - International Herald Tribune - 0 views

  • sophisticated examinations that better measure problem-solving and critical thinking.
    • Ed Webb
       
      Good. Devil in the detail, as always, of course.
    • Roland O'Daniel
       
      Interestingly, KY is looking to get rid of their sophisticated examinations because of political pressure, lack of comparibility, and $. In the 90s KY was a leader in attempting to change assessment and accountability, but for a plethora of reasons has fallen back in line. Not trying to be negative, but recognize the difficulty in the challenge and hope he's up to it.
  • Once charter schools have opened, it becomes politically difficult to close them, even in cases where they are bad or worse than their traditional counterparts.
    • Roland O'Daniel
       
      Ed, great example of how not to structure the change. Open more charter schools, make them have a 5 year evaluation plan, have an accountability plan in place that allows the school to stay true to their ideal, make changes that they feel will help them achieve their goals, even allow them additional time if results warrant, and then HOLD THEM ACCOUNTABLE. If they can't show they haven't at least held their own, then close them, but make that part of the evaluation plan from the beginning. The rub of that plan is that you can't hold them accountable at a level that you aren't going to hold everybody else to. What about traditional schools that aren't working, what do you do with those schools? Isn't that one of the big knocks on NCLB that they are 'being taken over' because of some testing system?
  • Congress will need to broaden and sustain those reforms in the upcoming reauthorization of the No Child Left Behind Act.
    • Ed Webb
       
      Why reauthorize? Why not tear it up and write something better?
    • Roland O'Daniel
       
      I disagree with tearing it up and starting over, isn't that what we do in education? Try something it doesn't work (for lots of reasons, including lack of implementation), and move on to the next shiny thing. Why not analyze the program, identify the aspects that have shown efficacy, identify the aspects that haven't achieved their goals, make changes that are informed and researchable, put them in place and hold people accountable for implementing. I think NCLB was well intentioned and represented the best thinking of a group of people (in education as in many areas i don't think you can say it represents the best thinking of everyone). I just don't like the idea of letting everyone off the hook by starting over. I believe it reinforces the concept that I don't have to worry about this project because it too will pass.
Nigel Coutts

The Power of Making Thinking Visible with Ron Ritchhart & Mark Church - The Learner's Way - 17 views

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    On Saturday PZ Sydney Network hosted Ron Ritchhart and Mark Church for a conversation about their new book, "The Power of Making Thinking Visible". What follows is a summary of some of the key messages from this conversation. You can watch the whole conversation above. For more learning opportunities like this visit the PZ Sydney Network or follow @pzsydnetwork on Twitter.
pjt111 taylor

Taking Yourself Seriously: Processes of Research and Engagement has been publ... - 3 views

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    This is a "field-book of tools and processes to help readers in all fields develop as researchers, writers, and agents of change." For more details and how to purchase: http://bit.ly/TYS2012. (Printing and distribution in Australia and Europe begins end of March.) Comments on the influence of this book's approach "I was able to get engaged in a project that I was able to actually use in work, which was extremely satisfying. The whole process encouraged me, and I felt very empowered as a change agent, which could be an exhilarating feeling." a healthcare professional and story-teller "I really had not been used to thinking about my own thinking, so learning to do that also helped me to slow down and start to look away from the career path that I had been taking for granted." a biologist-turned-web designer "I found that the experience helped me to accept feedback from other professionals. I am more comfortable with listening to why my own ideas might not work or need further evaluation. This even happens to the point where I find reasons now to seek out this kind of feedback." a teacher "I had viewed research as a process of collecting information into a sort of database and reviewing it effectively. I have now revised my notions to include a more broad understanding of interconnectedness between people and ideas. An important part of research is to keep relationships going." an adult educator "One of the most useful ideas was the use of dialogue, which helps to slow down the procedures used by the company. There's a tension between management's need to make quick decisions and desire to have real dialogue around proposed changes-changes to the internal company operational procedures as well as to evaluating the quality of what the company is doing with its publications." a teacher, currently working in publishing "I was asked to pay attention to what I actually could do instead of what I could not. This enabled me to (1) step back and let go of a huge technic
Roland Gesthuizen

What does John Hattie think about education? | David Didau: The Learning Spy - 6 views

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    "Hattie is very clear that the biggest difference made in education is teacher quality and expertise:"It really comes down to expertise, teacher expertise… How teachers think; how they make daily decisions and judgements. It's not necessarily what they do, it's not necessarily who they are; it's how they think.""
Roland Gesthuizen

Three Ways to Ask Better Questions in the Classroom | Faculty Focus - 31 views

  • We need to ask good questions so that students see the importance of questions—how they make us think and help us learn. Eventually students may start asking better questions themselves, including ones we can’t answer. And those are the best questions of all.
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    "Good questions make students think, they encourage participation and I think they improve the caliber of the answers students give and the questions they ask. To achieve those worthwhile outcomes more regularly, I'd like to recommend three actions that have the potential to improve our questioning."
Sharin Tebo

Creative Educator - Build Thinking Skills with Informational Text Projects - 38 views

  • This informational text piece lends itself to having students create an associative letter project versus a traditional report. In an associative letter project, students are assigned a letter that they must use to find words representing the text they’ve just read. For example, “R is for the Montgomery Bus Boycott” might lead a student to choose words like race, rights, or Rosa as the focus of a variety of paragraphs that describe the Montgomery Bus Boycott.
    • Sharin Tebo
       
      I like this associative activity!
  • By providing students with meaningful, thought-provoking experiences, you can turn informational text study into an exercise in creative and critical thinking!
  • Informational text isn’t going to bring about the death of creativity; rather, creativity depends upon what we ask students to do with the text once they’ve read it. If we ask students to read a non-fiction passage then fill out a worksheet about the passage, we are missing a chance to provide our students with an opportunity to create imaginative, artistic end products demonstrating critical thinking skills hard at work.
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  • Grades 6-8 Exemplar Informational Text: Freedom Walkers, the Story of the Montgomery Bus Boycott, by Russell Freedman Creative Thinking Approach: Associative Letter Project In Freedom Walkers,
taconi12

365 things to make you go "Hmmm..." | Thinking skills resources | Sparky Teaching - 7 views

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    perfect for registration, Circle Time, PSHE, Thinking Skills lessons, introductions, plenaries ...whenever you want to set your class off thinking).
Paul Bogush

Enhancing Critical-Thinking Skills in Children: Tips for Parents - Duke Gifted Letter - 55 views

  • Are in-depth group discussions provided during class time? Are students coached to question their thinking processes and those of their classmates? Are students afforded opportunities to evaluate their progress regularly? Are students encouraged to pose questions regularly in class? Are students provided with guides to help them reflect on their thinking (such as Bloom’s Taxonomy)? Do class projects engage students in analysis, synthesis, and evaluation? Are students given opportunities to consider various opinions and to justify their own beliefs?
  • Table 1 Bloom's Cognitive Taxonomy Competence Description Question/Prompt Knowledge Dates, events, formulas, other facts When did the United States become an independent country from England? What is the formula for area? Comprehension Recognize meaning, sequence, events, interpret information, compare ideas, make inferences, predict ideas What is the author's purpose? How are these numbers related? Is water of sunshine more critical to plant life? Human life? Application Use of information and concepts to solve problems Using your knowledge of calories and your physical makeup, calculate how much energy you must exert to lose three pounds per month. Demonstrate your understanding of how to create a Web site. Analysis Recognize patterns, parts, components Considering the stock market, examine which investments were the most lucrative this quarter. Organize these games by level of difficulty. Synthesis Use of information to create a new system, generalize, draw conclusions When did the United States become an independent country from England? What is the formula for area? Evaluation Assess concepts, weigh opinions for subjectivity, select items, judge Which type of dog would be best suited for your family, given your lifestyle and housing? Which local newspaper is written the most objectively?
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    Does your classroom enhance critical thinking?
Dan Bench

Process vs Product in Maker-centered Learning - The Learner's Way - 42 views

  • by ‘Making Thinking Visible’ (MTV) can help here. MTV strategies offer two advantages to teachers and learners. Importantly they provide structure to thinking and encourage a deeper engagement with concepts and ideas. They also allow the thinking that is occurring to be made visible and thus a part of the assessment process
  • mastery of the process that students are utilising as they solve the problems they encounter in their making. How do they deal with obstacles? How did they plan their solution? How effectively do they collaborate? What did they do to understand the problem and how did they monitor their progress?  
  • Students move through phases of thinking that include empathy, needs analysis, ideation, planning, prototyping and evaluation in patterns both linear and non-linear as needs require.
  • ...2 more annotations...
  • Failing is a part of the process and failing disrupts output based assessments. At the core of the maker philosophy is a process of ideation, iteration and emergence.
  • their Personal Passion Projects. Many of the projects fit neatly into the description of maker-centered learning. These are the projects where the students have identified a need and the solution is a product which they design and then prototype.
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    The maker movement and with it maker-centered learning brings new possibilities and challenges into the classroom. It has spawned makerspaces and students are busy designing and making products. The danger with all this frenzied making is that it is very easy to miss the point, to focus on the product and not the journey.  
Martin Burrett

Book: Learning with Leonardo by Ian Warwick & Ray Speakman via @JohnCattEd - 10 views

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    "From the outset, I want to be clear - Leonardo da Vinci, not Leonardo DiCaprio. But don't despair, there is a still a lot Mr da Vinci has to offer in our modern world, with many of seven key concepts that drove his inventive thinking still helping to influence our creative thinking. Ray Speakman and Ian Warwick, in their book, look closely at the seven key concepts that influenced da Vinci's life, and how they can make our own learning more original and thoughtful. The seven key concepts are no big secret, but the authors frame them into a modern narrative that makes understanding ourselves, nature and reality possible. Throughout, much is made of Leonardo's notebooks - the sanctuary where he noted his observations, thoughts and discoveries - where he was constantly pushing his understanding to the edges of what was possible during the period he lived. A lot can be learned from such an approach, as jotting down our thoughts, discoveries and inspirations can help us organise our minds - and could be beneficial for many young learners."
Maughn Gregory

The Elusive Big Idea - NYTimes.com - 51 views

  • If our ideas seem smaller nowadays, it’s not because we are dumber than our forebears but because we just don’t care as much about ideas as they did. In effect, we are living in an increasingly post-idea world — a world in which big, thought-provoking ideas that can’t instantly be monetized are of so little intrinsic value that fewer people are generating them and fewer outlets are disseminating them, the Internet notwithstanding. Bold ideas are almost passé.
  • we live in a post-Enlightenment age in which rationality, science, evidence, logical argument and debate have lost the battle in many sectors, and perhaps even in society generally, to superstition, faith, opinion and orthodoxy. While we continue to make giant technological advances, we may be the first generation to have turned back the epochal clock — to have gone backward intellectually from advanced modes of thinking into old modes of belief.
  • Post-Enlightenment refers to a style of thinking that no longer deploys the techniques of rational thought. Post-idea refers to thinking that is no longer done, regardless of the style.
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  • In the past, we collected information not simply to know things. That was only the beginning. We also collected information to convert it into something larger than facts and ultimately more useful — into ideas that made sense of the information. We sought not just to apprehend the world but to truly comprehend it, which is the primary function of ideas. Great ideas explain the world and one another to us.
  • These ideas enabled us to get our minds around our existence and attempt to answer the big, daunting questions of our lives.
  • But if information was once grist for ideas, over the last decade it has become competition for them.
  • In effect, we are living within the nimbus of an informational Gresham’s law in which trivial information pushes out significant information, but it is also an ideational Gresham’s law in which information, trivial or not, pushes out ideas.
  • We prefer knowing to thinking because knowing has more immediate value. It keeps us in the loop
  • For one thing, social networking sites are the primary form of communication among young people, and they are supplanting print, which is where ideas have typically gestated. For another, social networking sites engender habits of mind that are inimical to the kind of deliberate discourse that gives rise to ideas.
  • Indeed, the gab of social networking tends to shrink one’s universe to oneself and one’s friends, while thoughts organized in words, whether online or on the page, enlarge one’s focus.
  • But because they are scientists and empiricists rather than generalists in the humanities, the place from which ideas were customarily popularized, they suffer a double whammy: not only the whammy against ideas generally but the whammy against science, which is typically regarded in the media as mystifying at best, incomprehensible at worst. A generation ago, these men would have made their way into popular magazines and onto television screens.
  • there is a vast difference between profit-making inventions and intellectually challenging thoughts.
  • There won’t be anything we won’t know. But there will be no one thinking about it.
trisha_poole

Using Reading Prompts to Encourage Critical Thinking | Faculty Focus - 118 views

  • “Students can critically read in a variety of ways: When they raise vital questions and problems from the text, When they gather and assess relevant information and then offer plausible interpretations of that information, When they test their interpretations against previous knowledge or experience …, When they examine their assumptions and the implications of those assumptions, and When they use what they have read to communicate effectively with others or to develop potential solutions to complex problems.
  • Interpretation of evidence
  • Making connections
  • ...3 more annotations...
  • Identification of problem or issue
  • Challenging assumptions
  • Making application
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    A quick overview of using reading prompts to encourage critical thinking.
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