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The Prime Minister wants all school students to study an Asian language to secure Australia's future in the Asian Century.

Completely deluded. Even here in Singapore, surrounded supposedly by chinese speakers the international schools are not getting it right and success stories are unusual ...

An excellent article by Terry Heick on TeachThought about the development of critical thinking skills, how to infer and how to learn to infer, all of which lead to the identification and establishment of essential questions. A great read!

"Transdisciplinarity: literacy in and ability to understand concepts across multiple disciplines. More about transdisciplinarity. Virtual collaboration: ability to work productively, drive engagement, and demonstrate presence as a member of a virtual team. More about virtual collaboration. Sense-making: ability to determine the deeper meaning or significance of what is being expressed. More about sense-making. Social intelligence: ability to connect to others in a deep and direct way, to sense and stimulate reactions and desired interactions. More about social intelligence. Cross-cultural competency: ability to operate in different cultural settings. More about cross-cultural competency. Cognitive load management: ability to discriminate and filter information for importance, and to understand how to maximize cognitive functioning using a variety of tools and techniques. More about cognitive load management. Novel and adaptive thinking: proficiency at thinking and coming up with solutions and responses beyond that which is rote or rule-based. More about novel and adaptive thinking. Computational thinking: ability to translate vast amounts of data into abstract concepts and to understand data-based reasoning. More about computational thinking. New media literacy: ability to critically assess and develop content that uses new media forms, and to leverage these media for persuasive communication. More about new media literacy. More about new media literacy. Design mindset: ability to represent and develop tasks and work processes for desired outcomes. More about design mindset."

by Marc Prensky Our children today are being socialized in a way that is vastly different from their parents. The numbers are overwhelming: over 10,000 hours playing videogames, over 200,000 emails and instant messages sent and received; over 10,000 hours talking on digital cell phones; over 20,000 hours watching TV (a high percentage fast speed MTV), over 500,000 commercials seen-all before the kids leave college. And, maybe, at the very most, 5,000 hours of book reading. These are today's ―Digital Native‖ students. 1 In Digital Natives, Digital Immigrants: Part I, I discussed how the differences between our Digital Native students and their Digital Immigrant teachers lie at the root of a great many of today's educational problems. I suggested that Digital Natives' brains are likely physically different as a result of the digital input they received growing up. And I submitted that learning via digital games is one good way to reach Digital Natives in their ―native language.‖ Here I present evidence for why I think this is so. It comes from neurobiology, social psychology, and from studies done on children using games for learning.

by Marc Prensky Our children today are being socialized in a way that is vastly different from their parents. The numbers are overwhelming: over 10,000 hours playing videogames, over 200,000 emails and instant messages sent and received; over 10,000 hours talking on digital cell phones; over 20,000 hours watching TV (a high percentage fast speed MTV), over 500,000 commercials seen-all before the kids leave college. And, maybe, at the very most, 5,000 hours of book reading. These are today's ―Digital Native‖ students. 1 In Digital Natives, Digital Immigrants: Part I, I discussed how the differences between our Digital Native students and their Digital Immigrant teachers lie at the root of a great many of today's educational problems. I suggested that Digital Natives' brains are likely physically different as a result of the digital input they received growing up. And I submitted that learning via digital games is one good way to reach Digital Natives in their ―native language.‖ Here I present evidence for why I think this is so. It comes from neurobiology, social psychology, and from studies done on children using games for learning.

Hi. I wrote a paper about digital natives as part of an anthropology assignment for a doctoral course. Researchers from around the world have empirically proven that Prensky's theories are false. Additionally, while neuroscience has shown that brains do change as a result of neuroplasticity, to argue that it is generational is also a false claim. Though cognitive theory shows that learners bring their prior experiences to the interpretation of new educational opportunities - impacting attention and interpretation - all generations have had this occur. There is merit to the point that we should take learner's prior experience into consideration when designing instruction; however, Prensky's digital native claims may have done more to create tension between students and teachers than to provide instructional support. If you would like any of the scholarly studies, I have a published reference list at http://brholland.com/reference-list. Beth

Stealing Theme Ideas

"Social networking may have been born in a dorm room. But when it comes to equipping students with the social media skills demanded by today's jobs, colleges are failing miserably."

"The research Pink references shows that, once basic financial needs are met, autonomy, mastery and purpose - not money - are better motivators of performance. Pink points out that engagement and motivation come from a sense of self-direction - of trust, and of ownership. The message for managers here is that it's time to get out of the way."

I am concerned with whether Schools are protecting themselves OR schools are protecting children…when it comes to digital media... Some thoughts...

important for all us educators to remember: knowledge and extractive industries do not mix. "Across all U.S. metros, the share of workers in resource and extractive industries had no correlation whatsoever to four key measures of regional development: economic output per capita, average wages per capita, income, or median household income (the correlations range from -.08 to .09, none being statistically significant). Conversely, the share of workers employed in idea-based knowledge and creative industries was strongly associated with all four regional development measures (with correlations ranging from .53 to .74). In line with the resource curse hypothesis, the share of employment in resource and extractive industries was negatively associated with share of employment in knowledge industries and also with the share of adults with college degrees, a key measure of skill and human capital which economists uniformly find to be a key driver of short and long-run economic prosperity."

Gamifying blogging. Floats some students' boats. Extrinsic motivation, can it become internal? I think some of my kids a few years ago really got into the number of edits/editing status as top editor on the wiki, then moved on to just being productive for its own sake. BUT, I bet there are other badges that you could come up with that would be more meaningful (Questioner, Connector, Etc.) AND they could be bestowed by the kids on each other.

We are a search engine for free photos. These come from many sources and are license-specific. You can view a photo's license by clicking on the license icon, below and left of photos. Membership is free and allows you to rate, tag, collect and comment on photos.

"The term "Flipped Classroom" is being thrown around a lot lately in both positive and negative light. I think the term is a bit ambiguous and does not fully do justice to all that is being done under the guise of the Flipped Classroom. My colleague, Jon Bergmann, and I have a book coming out soon that I hope brings clarity to what most of us mean by "The Flipped Classroom." In the mean time, I hope to shed some light on some of the confusion, critique, and hype. "

Are you as smart as a 2 year old when it comes to geography? Check out this video - it will really surprise you and challenge you to be more familiar with world geography. Students will love this!

In the United States, at least 9% of school-aged children have been diagnosed with ADHD, and are taking pharmaceutical medications. In France, the percentage of kids diagnosed and medicated for ADHD is less than .5%. How come the epidemic of ADHD-which has become firmly established in the United States-has almost completely passed over children in France?

"So, congratulations! Perhaps you're the owner of a new iPad this holiday season. If so, you've come to the right place. Apple's tablet is incredibly easy to use, but there are still plenty of ways to set up and optimize your iPad to take advantage of everything it has to offer. Some of these suggestions may be obvious; others might not."

Checklists are tools that we the teachers and educators use probably on everyday basis.Obviously, they have several advantages as shown below and I personally love them. Educational Technology and Mobile Learning has been publishing some great checklists over the last couple of years. We have decided to go through all of them and come up with the list below. Some of the checklists are new and have been included here for the first time.

Starting an online learning program is a daunting task which often can be overwhelming. If you have come to this web site, you probably already know this. The information and resources provided here have been compiled and organized to help you feel less overwhelmed.

1. OWNERSHIP is key. For this project, the students were not listening to me on why Twain was or was not a racist, they were showing me and the rest of class what they thought. They were invested in winning their argument. They knew that their work was going to determine if he was guilty or not. Although I gave the assignment, the students were in charge the rest of the way. It was their project and they wanted to do it win. When students feel they own what they are doing, they will work harder. When the audience is larger, they want to impress everyone. These are not crazy ideas, they are the results of owning the work they are doing. OWNERSHIP is a major factor in the value of PBL. 2. CREATIVITY is the another major part of the PBL and is closely linked with OWNERSHIP. Students were allowed to be creative in their work as a lawyer or witness. Witnesses needed to stay within character, but could add their own elements on the witness stand. Allowing the students to create gives them a bigger sense of OWNERSHIP. 3. Another part of the PBL is the COLLABORATION. Students were working with each other trying to decide the best plan of attack. Witnesses would meet with their lawyers and discuss how the questions they were going to ask and how they should dress. The Jury worked on group projects researching the previous public opinions on Twain and his writing. Students were sharing ideas freely with one another. I had three sections of American Lit at the time, so I had three trails running. Lawyers would help others in the other classes and trash talk the opposing lawyers as well. It was all in good fun, but the collaboration had students working hard with one another to accomplish this goal. 4. Depending on how you set up your project, CRITICAL THINKING, is also an important part of PBL. With my Twain Trail, students needed to think about both sides of the argument. Students needed to prepare their witnesses for potential cross-examination questions. They needed to

"When it comes to deciding how or whether to use iPads, schools typically focus on budget issues, apps, networking logistics, check-in and check-out procedures, school and district tech-use policies, hardware precautions, and aspects of classroom management. But it's also important to think about instructional use, and to that end, consider the following questions."