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"The quality of the discussion forum depends on the ability to develop a sense of community, the clarity of the discussion questions, and the use of a grading rubric that includes standards of performance."

"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."

Strangely, no surprises. We know full well that unless the learners DO something to process and make sense of information, all they end up with are the lecurer's notes, not learning.

John Kotter wrote the books (literally) on how to lead change. He laid out six important areas for effecting change: creating a sense of urgency, creating a compelling vision, forming a guiding coalition, communicating widely to gain alignment, gaining short-term wins and momentum, and integrating the changes into the culture.  His advice is invaluable for understanding the process and leadership of change.

Sharing and collecting student work in Google Drive takes some work when manually creating folders. gClassFolders makes that process easier for both students & teachers. View the demo video to get a sense of the process. This is a free way to get the job done. You may also want to look at Hapara, which has bells and whistles that'll surprise you!

"What a kid needs is not more… he needs different," says Dr. John Hattie. At the time, Hattie was talking about student retention, but his words make sense in many areas of education, including education technology.

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

Paying banks to lower SPED costs?  Sure, I can see how that makes sense.  Paying the schools to serve the students sure has been a silly solution for all these years, and so simple Thank goodness that the DOE and the banks have made this clearer.

"Good video that introduces the free eSmart and Cybersafety toolkit by Common Sense Media"

This article explains how children create their perceptions only on their experiences because that is meaningful to them.  Teachers must allow students to explore to make sense of science through experience.

Educational tool ratings, from the people behind Common Sense media.

Social Media, Social Life: How Teens View Their Digital Lives, from Common Sense Media's Program for the Study of Children and Media, surveyed more than 1,000 13- to 17-year olds to uncover the latest insights on teens' use of media and technology and how they perceive it affects their relationships and feelings about themselves.

Teens, social life, and social media infographic

Free resource teaching digital citizenship and online safety.  Educators and sign-up and have student accounts.  3-5th grade

Thanks for sharing this. We have been cobbling together a variety of sources to teach our fourth graders digital savvy, safety, and citizenship. Common Sense Media seems to have a comprehensive and engaging program.

Your welcome. Common Sense Media is a great place to go. As an educator you can create an account for free and then download lessons. It's important to teach students from the beginning about digital citizenship, online behavior, etc.

Common Sense media reviews

Why I Like Prezi In my life, I have given a *lot* of presentations. In high school, they were presentations on group projects. In university, they were presentations on research projects. At Google, they're presentations on how to use our APIs. When I first started giving presentations, I used Powerpoint, like everyone else. But I kept thinking there must be a better way, and I experimented with other options - flash interfaces, interactive Javascript apps. Then I discovered Prezi, and it has become my presentation tool of choice. Prezi is an online tool for creating presentations - but it's not just a Powerpoint clone, like the Zoho or Google offering. When you first create a Prezi, you're greeted with a blank canvas and a small toolbox. You can write text, insert images, and draw arrows. You can draw frames (visible or hidden) around bits of content, and then you can define a path from one frame to the next frame. That path is your presentation. It's like being able to draw your thoughts on a whiteboard, and then instructing a camera where to go and what to zoom into. It's a simple idea, but I love it. Here's why: It forces me to "shape" my presentation. A slide deck is always linear in form, with no obvious structure of ideas inside of it. Each of my Prezis has a structure, and each structure is different. The structure is visual, but it supports a conceptual structure. One structure might be 3 main ideas, with rows of ideas for each one. Another might be 1 main idea, with a circular branching of subideas. Having a structure helps me to have more of a point to my presentations, and to realize the core ideas of them. It makes it easy to go from brainstorming stage to presentation stage, all in the same tool. I can write a bunch of thoughts, insert some images, and easily move them around, cluster them, re-order them, etc. I can figure out the structure of my presentation by looking at what I have laid out, and seeing how they fit together. Some people do this

How Teens View Their Digital LIves Social Media-Social Life

"I am struck by both how resilient and fragile life can be. More so than in another other year, I have a stronger sense that learning matters and that I matter as a teacher So, with a mixed first week, I'm still struck by the lingering question: What does it mean to be a great teacher?"