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.
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The Coach in the Operating Room - The New Yorker - 37 views
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I compared my results against national data, and I began beating the averages.
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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.
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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.
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always evolving
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no matter how well prepared people are in their formative years, few can achieve and maintain their best performance on their own.
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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.
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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!
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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.
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they did not necessarily have any special expertise in a content area, like math or science.
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The coaches let the teachers choose the direction for coaching. They usually know better than anyone what their difficulties are.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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The coach provides the outside eyes and ears, and makes you aware of where you’re falling short.
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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.
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“What worked?”
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“What else did you notice?”
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something to try.
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Good coaches, he said, speak with credibility, make a personal connection, and focus little on themselves.
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“listened more than they talked,” Knight said. “They were one hundred per cent present in the conversation.”
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trying to get residents to think—to think like surgeons—and his questions exposed how much we had to learn.
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one twenty-minute discussion gave me more to consider and work on than I’d had in the past five years.
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watch other colleagues operate in order to gather ideas about what I could do.
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routine, high-quality video recordings of operations could enable us to figure out why some patients fare better than others.
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It’s teaching with a trendier name. Coaching aimed at improving the performance of people who are already professionals is less usual.
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modern society increasingly depends on ordinary people taking responsibility for doing extraordinary things
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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.
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shared by H DeWaard on 22 Aug 15
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5 Reasons Why Origami Improves Students' Skills | Edutopia - 59 views
www.edutopia.org/...tudents-skills-ainissa-ramirez
origami STEAM edutopia skills STEM math makerspace
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This art form engages students and sneakily enhances their skills -- including improved spatial perception and logical and sequential thinking.
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According to the National Center for Education Statistics in 2003, geometry was one area of weakness among American students.
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Origami has been found to strengthen an understanding of geometric concepts, formulas, and labels, making them come alive.
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Origami excites other modalities of learning. It has been shown to improve spatial visualization skills using hands-on learning.
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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).
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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.
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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.
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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.
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PicMonkey - 107 views
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A superb image editing site. Just upload your image and choose your options until it's just right. http://ictmagic.wikispaces.com/Photos+%26+Images
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like picnic only better! There is a free trial right now for all the royal effects.
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Engrade - Login - 27 views
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How to Fix Our Math Education - NYTimes.com - 63 views
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the assumption that there is a single established body of mathematical skills that everyone needs to know to be prepared for 21st-century careers. This assumption is wrong. The truth is that different sets of math skills are useful for different careers, and our math education should be changed to reflect this fact.
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Today, American high schools offer a sequence of algebra, geometry, more algebra, pre-calculus and calculus (or a “reform” version in which these topics are interwoven). This has been codified by the Common Core State Standards, recently adopted by more than 40 states. This highly abstract curriculum is simply not the best way to prepare a vast majority of high school students for life.
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A math curriculum that focused on real-life problems would still expose students to the abstract tools of mathematics, especially the manipulation of unknown quantities. But there is a world of difference between teaching “pure” math, with no context, and teaching relevant problems that will lead students to appreciate how a mathematical formula models and clarifies real-world situations.
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For instance, how often do most adults encounter a situation in which they need to solve a quadratic equation? Do they need to know what constitutes a “group of transformations” or a “complex number”? Of course professional mathematicians, physicists and engineers need to know all this, but most citizens would be better served by studying how mortgages are priced, how computers are programmed and how the statistical results of a medical trial are to be understood.
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Imagine replacing the sequence of algebra, geometry and calculus with a sequence of finance, data and basic engineering.
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Traditionalists will object that the standard curriculum teaches valuable abstract reasoning, even if the specific skills acquired are not immediately useful in later life. A generation ago, traditionalists were also arguing that studying Latin, though it had no practical application, helped students develop unique linguistic skills. We believe that studying applied math, like learning living languages, provides both useable knowledge and abstract skills.
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In math, what we need is “quantitative literacy,” the ability to make quantitative connections whenever life requires (as when we are confronted with conflicting medical test results but need to decide whether to undergo a further procedure) and “mathematical modeling,” the ability to move practically between everyday problems and mathematical formulations (as when we decide whether it is better to buy or lease a new car).
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Avalon Project - Documents in Law, History and Diplomacy - 30 views
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The Avalon Project is a site from Harvard University that contains thousands of documents relevant to Law, History, Economics, Politics, Diplomacy and Government. These documents also include links to supporting documents that were referred to in the text. The documents are sorted by date range and go all the way back to 4000BC. The documents are fully searchable and are also sorted by collections such as American Revolution, Jefferson Papers, Geneva Convention, the Middle East, and more. There are even transcripts of witness testimony in the Nuremberg Trials. Pretty amazing stuff. This is a priceless resource for any educator or student, teaching or learning, reading or researching these topics. These documents are primary sources and can be used for a variety of learning.
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The Avalon Project will mount digital documents relevant to the fields of Law, History, Economics, Politics, Diplomacy and Government. We do not intend to mount only static text but rather to add value to the text by linking to supporting documents expressly referred to in the body of the text. The Avalon Project will no doubt contain controversial documents. Their inclusion does not indicate endorsement of their contents nor sympathy with the ideology, doctrines, or means employed by their authors. They are included for the sake of completeness and balance and because in many cases they are by our definition a supporting document.
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Meditation Research FAQ - 1 views
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What I can say is that the MBSR program has been around for 30 years and there have been hundreds of clinical trials indicating that it is effective for reducing stress and many (though not all) clinical symptoms.
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All the participants in our study went through the Mindfulness Based Stress Reduction course (MBSR) developed at the Center for Mindfulness
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I can't stop thinking/my mind won't calm down/"Unusual phenomena" bother me when I meditate/I can't meditate—what should I do? OR When I meditate, I experience "unusual phenomena". What is going on? Is this an advanced state?
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The Buddha compared the mind to the strings of a lute (a guitar-like instrument): the lute can not be played if the strings are too tight or too loose. Similarly when attention is either too tight or too loose, you can't properly meditate. When attention is too loose, the mind wanders and you get lost in thought. Try narrowing your focus in different ways (e.g. just inhales instead of the whole breath, focus on a smaller area around your nose). Some people do a few minutes of yoga or loving kindness (metta) practice at the start of their meditation period to focus the mind, before switching to breath awareness meditation. Some people find focusing on sounds easier than focusing on breathing.
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The goal is not to try to change anything, but to be aware of the desire to change it and then see if we can just relax and be ok with it even if it doesn't change. Are we trying to quiet the storm, or are we trying to find peace within the storm?
Box.net | Select Your Plan - Free, Individual, Business, or Enterprise ~ Free Trial for... - 1 views
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Great Expectations - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia - 0 views
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Miss Havisham and her family Miss Havisham, wealthy spinster who takes Pip on as a companion and whom Pip suspects is his benefactor. Miss Havisham does not discourage this as it fits into her own spiteful plans. She later apologizes to him as she's overtaken by guilt. He accepts her apology and she is badly burnt when her dress catches aflame from a spark which leapt from the fire. Pip saves her, but she later dies from her injuries. Estella (Havisham), Miss Havisham's adopted daughter, whom Pip pursues romantically throughout the novel. She is secretly the daughter of Molly, Jaggers' housekeeper, and Abel Magwitch, Pip's convict, but was given up to Miss Havisham after a murder trial. Estella represents the life of wealth and culture for which Pip strives. Since her ability to love has been ruined by Miss Havisham, she is unable to return Pip's passion. She warns Pip of this repeatedly, but he is unwilling or unable to believe her. At one point, Estella is walking up some iron stairs representing how she is of a higher class than Pip when in fact she is of the same class. Arthur (Havisham), Miss Havisham's half-brother, who felt he was shortchanged in his inheritance by their father's preference for his daughter. He joined with Compeyson in the scheme to cheat Miss Havisham of large sums of money by gaining Miss Havisham's trust through promise of marriage to Compeyson. Arthur is haunted by the memory of the scheme and sickens and dies in a delirium, imagining that the still-living Miss Havisham is in his room, coming to kill him. Arthur has died before the beginning of the novel and gambled heavily, being drunk quite often. Matthew Pocket, a cousin of Miss Havisham's. He is the patriarch of the Pocket family, but unlike others of her relatives he is not greedy for Havisham's wealth. Matthew Pocket has a family of nine children, two nurses, a housekeeper, a cook, and a pretty but useless wife (named Belinda). He also tutors young gentlemen, such as Bentley Drummle, Startop, Pip, and his own son Herbert, who live on his estate. Herbert Pocket, a member of the Pocket family, Miss Havisham's presumed heirs, whom Pip first meets as a "pale young gentleman" who challenges Pip to a fist fight at Miss Havisham's house when both are children. He is the son of Matthew Pocket, Pip's tutor in the "gentlemanly" arts, and shares his apartment with Pip in London, becoming Pip's fast friend who is there to share Pip's happiness as well as his troubles. He is in love with a girl called Clara. Herbert keeps it secret because he knows his mother would say she is below his "station". Camilla, an ageing, talkative relative of Miss Havisham who does not care much for Miss Havisham and only wants her money. She is one of the many relatives who hang around Miss Havisham "like flies" for her wealth. Cousin Raymond, another ageing relative of Miss Havisham who is only interested in her money. He is married to Camilla. Georgiana, an ageing relative of Miss Havisham who is only interested in her money. Sarah Pocket, "a dry, brown corrugated old woman, with a small face that might have been made out of walnut shells, and a large mouth like a cat's without the whiskers." Another ageing relative of Miss Havisham who is only interested in her money
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Characters from Pip's youth The Convict, an escapee from a prison ship, whom Pip treats kindly, and who turns out to be his benefactor, at which time his real name is revealed to be Abel Magwitch, but who is also known as Provis and Mr. Campbell in parts of the story to protect his identity. Pip also covers him as his uncle in order that no one recognizes him as a convict sent to Australia years before. Abel Magwitch, the convict's given name, who is also Pip's benefactor. Provis, a name that Abel Magwitch uses when he returns to London, to conceal his identity. Pip also says that "Provis" is his uncle visiting from out of town. Mr. Campbell, a name that Abel Magwitch uses after he is discovered in London by his enemy. Mr. and Mrs. Hubble, simple folk who think they are more important than they really are. They live in Pip's village. Mr. Wopsle, the clerk of the church in Pip's village. He later gives up the church work and moves to London to pursue his ambition to be an actor, even though he is not very good. Mr. Waldengarver, the stage name that Mr. Wopsle adopts as an actor in London. Biddy, Mr. Wopsle's second cousin; she runs an evening school from her home in Pip's village and becomes Pip's teacher. A kind and intelligent but poor young woman, she is, like Pip and Estella, an orphan. She is the opposite of Estella. Pip ignores her obvious love for him as he fruitlessly pursues Estella. After he realizes the error of his life choices, he returns to claim Biddy as his bride, only to find out she has married Joe Gargery. Biddy and Joe later have two children, one named after Pip whom Estella mistakes as Pip's child in the original ending. Orlick was attracted to her, but his affection was unreciprocated
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Buying Copyrights, Then Patrolling the Web for Infringement - NYTimes.com - 55 views
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“I was shocked,” Mr. Hill said. “I thought maybe it was a joke or something to scare me. I didn’t know the picture was copyrighted.”
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Free Online Lesson Planbook Software for Teachers - 114 views
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A simple online lesson planner site. Get the premium account free for 14 days. Reverts to free basic account after that time. http://ictmagic.wikispaces.com/ICT+&+Web+Tools
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