Group items tagged

This app would be a great addition to any problem-solving unit. Compatible with iOS, it provides a structure that students can follow, learn and implement.

For those with an iPad/iPod, this is a list of problem-solving apps for kids up to 7 years old.

A website designed for problem solving about environmental issues.  There are many activities to browse through.

This website is a problem solving software example for math. This matrix logic puzzle website is a great way to get students to solve word problems with math. Each word problem is a different situation and the website gives the students a matrix to use to solve each logic puzzle. It gives the students clues and they can check their answers as they go along to see how they are doing.

The Big6 model is designed to help build information problem-solving and decision making skills, and is "completely transferable to any grade level, subject area, or workplace."

Webmath is a math-help web site that generates answers to specific math questions and problems, as entered by a user, at any particular moment. The math answers are generated and displayed real-time, at the moment a web user types in their math problem and clicks "solve."

In this article, Wenger defines Communities of Practice (COP) as a "tribe learning to survive," (p. 1) although learning isn't always the goal of the group but can be an outcome. Members are committed to their community and create a shared practice of networking for a specific purpose. Originally associations and groups, the Internet is extending the reach of COPs and increasing the flow of information.

For those who have never heard of communities of practice, this resource explains it well. What are communities of practice, what do communities of practice look like, where does the concept come from and how it is being applied is all covered.

This is a brief but comprehensive introduction as to what communities of practice are by Etienne Wenger. One important aspect addressed is that learning is a product of a community of practice whether intentionally or not. It also gives multiple examples of what a common community of practice can look like such as problem solving, discussing developments, and visits. The concept came to be as a learning model by Wenger and Jean Lave. The concepts has many applications but a couple common places these communities are seen are organizations, government, education, and technology.

One of the articles in the resources for Module 2 mentioned collaborative learning vs. cooperative learning, so I wanted to read this article about the differences. This article details cooperative, collaborative and problem based learning in these areas: origins of the approach, definitions, essential features, goals, specific strategies and techniques and research that supports it. While there are multiple definitions, the authors say that "cooperative learning combines active and social learning via peer interaction in small groups," but that this also applies to collaborative learning. In contrast, cooperative learning emphasizes interdependence, where collaborative learning focuses more on discovery, understanding and producing knowledge. Collaborative learning also involves the teacher as well, working together with students to learn. In problem based learning, students work in small groups to solve a problem, often a real world problem. This type of learning does also involve cooperation and collaboration. There is a table on page 33 that summarizes the 3 approaches.

This is a Voicthread slide show  that incorporated groups solving math problems.  This is a great idea.

Literacy, finance, problem solving simulations

An adventure series and website based on NCTM standards, designed to help kids develop mathematical problem solving and reasoning skills.

Ashley Leneway Week 2, Link 1

Great problem-solving, simulation, game for business students. The object is to become the Carnival Manager: A local fun-filled carnival / theme-park urgently requires a virtual managing director to oversee ride and attraction construction, the hiring of staff, general park management, strategic planning, and financial budgeting.

This site includes some good ideas on quantitative problems to give students to solve using spreadsheets in non-math classes. It also contains examples using PowerPoints with embedded spreadsheets.

Throughout this website, Etienne Wenger describes Communities of Practice as "groups of people who share a concern or a passion for something they do and learn how to do it better as they interact regularly." It strongly conveys the importance of working together and emphasizes teamwork as a vital component for success. I could not agree more.

This short summary did a really good job of making this concept simple to understand. It explains that you need three things for a COP: a domain, a community and practice. Great short explanation

This article is an overview of CoPs. The highlight for me is that it must be a collaboration over time, not a one-time Professional Development.

Ethereum has the chances of becoming the first public blockchain on hyperledger if the technical steering committee of the open-source consortium approves a proposal to adopt the Pantheon project which is backed by ConsenSys. ConsenSys is a blockchain software company which operates on the mission of building platforms, applications, and tools to solve real-world problems with Ethereum blockchain solutions.

This 2011, Communities of Practice: A Brief Introduction, by Etienne Wenger distills earlier writings and discussions about communities of practice and outlines some characteristics and guidelines. Wegner's definition, "Communities of practice are groups of people who share a concern or a passion for something they do and learn how to do it better as they interact regularly." There are 3 characteristics: the domain of shared interest, the community shares information, activities and relationships and the practice of practioners who share resources, experiences, stories, tools and problem solving. Communities of practice can be for problem solving, information requests, experience seeking, reusing assets, coordination and synergy, documentation projects, visits and mapping knowledge. They can be small or vast, online or face to face. The theory of communities of practice has spilled over into organizations, businesses, government, education, associations, social sectors, international development and the web.

KM stands for knowledge management. This article talks about CoPs in terms of the need to do away with canonical practice because the rules and procedures inhibit problem solving abilities. There is something I cannot identify that annoys me with this article. I do like the " Empowerment is key to learning" statement.

This article looks at Communities of practice and the implications to knowledge management. Communities of practice is a term originally developed by Lave and Wenger (1991). It describes a learning theory with a strong relationship to the social construction of knowledge. http://www.knowledge-management-tools.net/communities-of-practice.html

"Communities of practice is a term originally developed by Lave and Wenger (1991)." A community of practice is a group with common goals and interests. It is important to note that they are not a team. The goal is not to acquire specific information but to be part of a group to share information. It is unstructured dialog which leads to problem-solving and innovation.

In this article, we will talk about how blockchain can solve existing food supply problems. Furthermore, we will see how blockchain is growing exponentially, creating ample opportunities for all.

Teachers often face the question, "When are we going to use this?" This project is great because it gets students answering that question themselves. Students take a picture of something they see in the world and write their own math problem relating to the picture. This gets students thinking about why math is useful and pushes their problem-solving ability by making them formulate a good question. Once the student okays the project with the teacher, they are free to post with the class Instagram tag where other students can engage in a conversation about the problem. This is a great way to get students to engage in practical mathematics and it is easy to organize because it is almost entirely student-driven. This is a cool project that could be running year round. I could see myself setting this up and building a real-world problem bank with my classes.

This article discusses communities of practice from a business perspective, which I found interesting because CoPs truly to exist in all professions; they aren't strictly and education trend. The merit of CoPs, according to the author, is that people share their experiences and knowledge in free-flowing, creative ways that foster new approaches to solving problems. They discuss the various benefits of CoPs and then examine why they aren't more prevalent, concluding that though the concept has been around for centuries, it hasn't been widely accepted yet and therefore companies (and education) haven't spent a long time cultivating them and helping people learn to effectively develop them. They refer to CoPs as the new frontier and predict that they will become a more and more important part of knowledge acquisition for professionals in the future.

This is a great resource that focuses specifically on the use of communities of practice in business environments. However, the information is easily transferred to other areas of industry or academia. It addresses the fact that CoPs are different than the traditional approach of working in teams in that their success and usefulness can be difficult to measure. The author gives tips for how to evaluate the success of a CoP through the sytematic gathering of anecdotal evidence.

This is a great resource for businesses to gain insights into the use of Communities of Practice. In this article, Wenger and Snyder discuss Communities of Practice and their value for organizations.