Group items tagged

he job of teaching * Join in the discussion reddit this Comments (1) Wendy Berliner Guardian Professional, Monday 3 October 2011 18.30 BST Article history Teacher Daniel Hartley from Chulmleigh Community College, Devon. Photograph: Apex Back in the summer we decided here at GTN HQ that, with our membership rocketing, it was the right time to mark our first six months in operation with a survey to find out what members thought about teaching today. There were questions across a wide spectrum of topics and, at the end, we left a free text box for teachers to add any comments they wanted to share. It was the dying days of the summer holiday - August 25 - when it went out just after lunch. We knew the survey would take ten or 15 minutes to complete so we weren't quite expecting what happened next, but within those first few hours after its release, we realised you had started something big. By 10.30pm that night we'd had several hundred questionnaires back, which in itself was impressive with many teachers perhaps still away on holiday or back but busy preparing for the new term. The most impressive thing of all was the content of those text boxes. There was just so much of it. Some people wrote several hundred words at a time, speaking clearly from the heart and arguing cogently against the things they felt were going wrong in education. A love of teaching and vocational pleasure felt working with children and young people emerged but it was emerging from a fog caused by far less pleasant aspects of the job - disrespect from society and governments, bullying by senior management, other teachers, parents and students, despair at the parenting skills of some homes and despair with government targets and league tables that were funnelling education into an ever thinner tube feeding stuff that improved Sats and exam results rather than nourishing a lifelong love of learning. One former solicitor questioning the sense of the switch into teaching said: " M

"This series guides you step by step through the process of class and student blogging. Each step provides class blog examples so you can check out how they are used by educators.  Many of the examples are from primary grades but the same principles apply regardless of student age (including adult learners). The activities can be completed at your own pace and in any order!"

Another great post from Richard Byrne that offers ideas and links for teachers who want to create interesting and dynamic experiences for their students

5 Edmodo Activities for the First Day of School http://t.co/PWSm6HqI

Blog with play game activities for young children. Australian teacher group blog. Inspiration for teachers.

"The iPad Project at York St John University aims to provide opportunities for staff to be innovative and to increase student engagement in the classroom. It will focus on exploring the benefits of using iPads in group work and collaborative learning activities."

Blog post from techchef4u on how Infographics might be incorporated into classroom activities

"The OKCast is a weekly open source blog and podcast with the goal to explore, connect, use and inspire open knowledge projects around the world to develop the public commons, improve organization and government transparency and communication, and advocate for social justice and social activism."

From edJEWcon5773.1. (20130 A post that shared a student activity that was self-directed and offered students an authentic learning experience. Videos by Silvia Rosenthal Tolisano accompany the post.

"Do Now is a new series of activities for students to respond to current issues through the use KQED's award-winning online media resources and social media tools like Twitter."

Khan Academy has just launched this new project designed to engage maths, science and media teachers, as well as young filmmakers. "Pixar In A Box" is an new online curriculum that "analyzes how the studio fuses art, tech, science, engineering, and math to develop top-shelf animated cinema. Created with middle and high school students in mind but available to everyone, Pixar In A Box's interactive exercises, in-depth video lessons, and hands-on activities are an informative addition to Khan Academy's extensive educational resources. The curriculum spans the pipeline of the production process.

Presentation that contrasts linear design with "fresh" approach that involves rapid prototype and learner input with "experiences" that produce learning via activities or games. By Patrick Dunn.

Presentation that contrasts linear design with "fresh" approach that involves rapid prototype and learner input to "experiences" that produce learning via activities or games. By Patrick Dunn.

"Not even one decade ago, educators considered cell phones and laptops a most egregious classroom distraction. These days, though, many tech-savvy teachers actively try to incorporate them into engaging lessons rather than snatching them away. While tablets, smartphones, and other mobile computing devices have yet to enjoy universal implementation, many in the business adore exploring emerging technologies to unlock their full potential as learning tools. Such as these folks, listed in no particular order!"

The X-Ray Goggles make it easy to see and mess around with the building blocks that make up the web. Activate the Goggles to inspect the code behind any web page, from the New York Times to your own blog. Then remix elements with a single click, swapping in your own text, images and more.  Recommended by Doug Belshaw

Santos is not an enigma, but he is misunderstood. Santos sends approximately 125 texts per day. He sneaks his phone into his classes either in his book bag or his jacket and is online just about all day. He posts messages to Facebook during class. He looks up answers to definitions of words online. He checks sports scores, plays games, posts his location so his friends can find him easily, and streams music through an app on his phone. His teachers use technology as an event. Outside of school, he doesn't separate technology from other activities. For him, it is air or water, something that he doesn't really think about because it's always available.

"There is one iOS "tip" that I keep hearing and it is wrong. Worse, I keep hearing it from supposedly authoritative sources. I have even heard it from the lips of Apple "Geniuses" in stores. Here is the advice - and remember it is wrong: All those apps in the multitasking bar on your iOS device are currently active and slowing it down, filling the device's memory or using up your battery. To maximise performance and battery life, you should kill them all manually. Wrong. Wrong. Wrong. Wrong. Wrong. Wrong. Wrong. There are caveats to this but anyone dispensing the advice above is clearly uninformed enough that they will certainly not be aware of these subtleties."

"My colleague, Silvana Meneghini, and I have been working on developing a Professional Development framework for embedding technology use and modern learning litercies based on Ruben Puentedura's SAMR model. The template consists of 4 Focus Areas. Each stage of the SAMR model consists of 4 focus areas in the template, that support vision, planning, and evaluation in activity  and task design as well as a professional development framework."

Another useful post from Richard Byrne with some good ideas about using PicCollage with students. With the app you can arrange pictures, video, text, and stickers into collages very easily. "From the app you can share your collage to Google Drive, Instagram, Facebook, Dropbox, and many other file sharing services" He has also included a video where he demonstrates how to use the tool without creating a PicCollage account. It is a free tool and available as an Android or iPad app.