Wenger argues that there are three crucial characteristics of a community of practice:
domain: a common interest that connects and holds together the community
community: a community is bound by the shared activities they pursue (for example, meetings, discussions) around their common domain
practice: members of a community of practice are practitioners; what they do informs their participation in the community; and what they learn from the community affects what they do.
Goerge Barkouris (62), who found himself homeless for the first time in his life during the massive wave of unemployment in 2010, lost his home last November.
Barkuris had worked for over 25 years in music and radio production but lost a contract with the public sector due to cuts in 2001. He then worked as a freelancer until 2008, but "when the crisis hit it was impossible to make money to pay for my house," he said.
He has now found shelter in Klimaka’s hostel for homeless people in exchange for contributing to its street work program, which consists of riding Klimaka’s van around the streets of Athens, handing out food and other assistance to people in need.
"The municipality, in cooperation with private entrepreneurs, plans to open big hotels that had previously been shut down because of the crisis and transform them into one-night shelters."
She believes this process will be fast-tracked and happen in a non-transparent manner, raising questions about how municipal authorities open up space to private entities and tackle social issues like poverty
On Feb. 8, Eurostat published a report estimating that 27.7 percent of the active workforce, aged 18-64 years old, currently lives on the poverty line.
On Feb. 8, Eurostat published a report estimating that 27.7 percent of the active workforce, aged 18-64 years old, currently lives on the poverty line.
On Feb. 8, Eurostat published a report estimating that 27.7 percent of the active workforce, aged 18-64 years old, currently lives on the poverty line.
Mixbook
(or Mixbook for Educators) is a
photo-based creation platform that offers
hundreds of layouts and backgrounds to choose from
along with customizable frames and text to make your book beautiful.
Just pick a layout, drag-and-drop your photos into the photo slots, and
edit to your heart's content.
Though the site's examples suggest using the books to gather wedding,
travel, and baby albums, this program can absolutely used to create
stories around historic photographs and artifacts, original art, to
produce a class yearbook, to share an oral or personal history or
journey, to tell the story of a field trip. Mixbook
for Educators now offers a secure collaborative environment for
sharing their ebooks, as well as discounts on printed products, should
you choose to print. (A similar option is Scrapblog.)
Storybird,
a collaborative storybook building space designed for ages 3-13,
inspires young writers to create text around the work of professional
artists and the collection of art is growing.
Two (or more) people create a Storybird
in a round robin fashion by writing their own text and inserting
pictures. They then have the option of sharing their Storybird
privately or publicly on the network. The final product can be
printed (soon), watched on screen, played with like a toy, or shared
through a worldwide library. Storybird is also a simple
publishing platform for writers and artists that allows them to
experiment, publish their stories, and connect with their fans.
Myth and Legend Creator 2 shares a collection of traditional stories from England and
around the world to hear and read. The site offers historical
context for each story, story time lines and maps, ideas for use of the
story in the classroom, and student work inspired by the story. The Story Creator--with
its libraries of backgrounds, characters, props, text bubbles, sound
and video recording tools, and options to upload--provides students
easy opportunities to create their own versions of traditional stories.
The Historic
Tale Construction Kit is similar in that it helps students
construct stories around a theme, in this case stories set in the middle
ages with movable, scalable beasts, folks, braves, buildings. and
old-style text.
Tikatok is a platform devoted to kid book publishing at a variety of levels. Children have the option of exploring a collection of interactive
story templates called StorySparks prompts, personalizing an existing
book with their own names in Books2Go, with their own names, or
starting from scratch in Create Your Own Book. Tikatok’s Classroom Program allows teachers to share lesson plans, view and edit students' work online, encourage collaboration,
and track
writing progress.
Big Universe is both an online library and a publishing and sharing community for grades K through 8. Using Big Universe Author, students may create, research, and collaborate on books using a library of more than 7000 images and interactive tools.
"School-based services delivered by teachers and other school-based professionals can help reduce mental health problems in elementary-aged children, reports a study published in the March 2018 issue of the Journal of the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry (JAACAP).
"Given the limited accessibility of traditional mental health services for children-particularly for children from minority and economically disadvantaged backgrounds-school-based mental health services are a tremendous vehicle for overcoming barriers to mental health care and meaningfully expanding the reach of supports and services for so many children in need. Treating children in schools can powerfully overcome issues of cost, transportation, and stigma that typically restrict broad utilization of mental health services" said lead author Amanda Sanchez, MS, of the Center for Children and Families at Florida International University."
Every semester, professor Dr. Josie Ahlquist challenges her Leadership in the Digital Age students at Florida State University with a unique task. "Unplug from social-based platforms for 7 days," she says to a class of hesitant college students. Allowing room for negotiation, Dr. Ahlquist has seen her challenges run for as few as two days and as many as seven, and she requests that students document their experience throughout. The results showcase a facinating journey of self-discovery and reflection as these students shed social media for the duration of the challenge.
The NETS help guide technology planning and curriculum development for all grade levels and provide a roadmap for digital age learning, teaching and leadership ..
Recently, educators working on a NETS web page for staff and students tackled the challenge by translating the NETS for Students into action verbs .. Here's what they've come up with:"
"As I started a go-to list of the best educational iPad apps for kids, the list got so long, I split up my posts into categories. So, today we'll start with my favorite iPad apps for literacy - reading and writing for toddlers, preschoolers, and elementary-age kids. Also, I've included special needs iPad app resources at the end of this post."
Cheating Justice in the Digital Age. This is a case study of what not to do when accused of plagiarism and an object lesson for everyone about the durability of the digital tattoo. Feedback welcome.
An iPad and junior version of the well know programming platform Scratch. The app has been designed for 5+ year olds and boosts simplified versions features of the more mature version. Children still snap programming blocks together to build amazingly creative things.
http://ictmagic.wikispaces.com/ICT+%26+Web+Tools
"Coding is the new literacy! With ScratchJr, young children (ages 5-7) can program their own interactive stories and games. In the process, they learn to solve problems, design projects, and express themselves creatively on the computer."
Although we find ourselves as travelers in the age of over sharing, it turns out we remain quite adept at avoiding the really tough topics.
Google’s Eric Schmidt recently stated that every two days we create as much information as we did from the beginning of civilization through 2003. Perhaps the sheer bulk of data makes it easier to suppress that information which we find overly unpleasant. Who’s got time for a victim in Afghanistan or end-of-life issues with all these Tweets coming in?
Between reality TV, 24-hour news, and the constant hammering of the stream, I am less likely to tackle seriously uncomfortable topics. I can bury myself in a mountain of incoming information. And if my stream is any indication, I’m not alone. For me, repression used to be a one man show. Now I am part of a broader movement — mass avoidance through social media.
A must-read:
"Although we find ourselves as travelers in the age of over sharing, it turns out we remain quite adept at avoiding the really tough topics."
Educational Videos dot com is a site devoted to finding you the best educational videos on the web. We intend to create an environment where students from all ages can learn while watching Educational Videos.
Music inexperience, changed pattern of practice and performance anxiety are associated with playing-related problems in child instrumentalists and are therefore important issues for music education.
Research on adult musicians has adopted these models and identified individual intrinsic factors such as age and gender, music performance anxiety and enjoyment, extrinsic factors such as music practice habits and type of instrument played and intrinsic–extrinsic interaction factors such as playing posture, technique and student–teacher interaction which influence the development of PRMP.
The aim of this study was to describe the music practice of child instrumentalists and determine their associations with playing-related musculoskeletal problems (PRMP), accounting for gender and age
Symptoms of performance anxiety are generally categorized into cognitive (e.g. catastrophic thoughts), behavioral (e.g. avoidance of performance/auditions) and physiological (e.g. dry mouth, shaking arms/hands, increased heart rate) (Plaut, 1990; Salmon, 1990).
Shoup (1995) reported performance anxiety negatively affected performance in 55% (234/425) junior high and high school instrumentalists.
Over a third of students (36%, 263) reported they experienced the feeling of butterflies most times to always when playing in a concert or competition (Table 1).
There was a significant association between gender and the experience of butterflies (χ2 = 32.32, df (4), p < .001) with more females reporting the experience of butterflies than males. There was a significant association between age and reported experience of the feeling of butterflies (F = 9.012, df (3), p < .001), with older children reporting the experience of butterflies more than younger children.
Literature for adults, YA, and kids--videos on interviews with authors, sections on For Writers and Audio & Video, and more for booklovers of all ages.
Third-grade students at the Upper Pittsgrove School mastered fractions in Mrs. Markert class Friday afternoon not by memorization or flash cards, but with Apple iPads.
School districts throughout Salem County have now entered the age of technology using the touch sensitive innovative device as a learning tool for students.
Superintendents say they are attracted to the devices for two reasons: It's user friendly and inexpensive compared to other technology like laptops.
Kidd, who also moderates a district-wide blog, said he was amazed with how user
friendly the technology is, even for severely challenged students.
He said he remembered the first time he let one of the autistic students in the school use the iPad.
"One of the students showed interest and when I gave it to her she sat for over 20 minutes engaged in the device," said Kidd. "Her teacher said she has never sat for that long in the classroom."
The most obvious takeaway, he said, was that "the age of the computer lab is kind of out," in which students travel out of their classrooms to log on.
The idea kids can access tools for learning 24 hours a day and can access learning not bound by the walls of the school is critical," Hobbs said. "It's indicative of what we mean by a 21st-century education."
Erikson’s Stages of Development
Erik Erikson, a German psychoanalyst heavily influenced by Sigmund Freud, explored three aspects of identity: the ego identity (self), personal identity (the personal idiosyncrasies that distinguish a person from another, social/cultural identity (the collection of social roles a person might play).
Erikson’s psychosocial theory of development considers the impact of external factors, parents and society on personality development from childhood to adulthood. According to Erikson’s theory, every person must pass through a series of eight interrelated stages over the entire life cycle.
Infant (Hope) – Basic Trust vs. Mistrust
Toddler (Will) – Autonomy vs. Shame
Preschooler (Purpose) – Initiative vs. Guilt
School-Age Child (Competence) – Industry vs. Inferiority
Adolescent (Fidelity) – Identity vs. Identity Diffusion
Young Adult (Love) – Intimacy vs. Isolation
Middle-aged Adult (Care) – Generativity vs. Self-absorption
Older Adult (Wisdom) – Integrity vs. Despair
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:
"Photos For Class
Search now to download properly attributed, Creative Commons photos for school!"
Age appropriate images
Automatic citation
Creative Commons
Teaching in a Digital Age'. http://opentextbc.ca/teachinginadigitalage/
