Shouldn’t our real goal be to increase intellectual engagement so that we are developing kids with a love or learning? And if we are really targeting academic engagement, what about our socially engaged learners who are on the bubble and considering dropping out of school?
An important post from a friend and colleague, David Jakes, technology director for a major Chicago school district. This may help you see just how much some schools ARE moving forward while others are sitting on the sidelines due to lack of vision, understanding, and participation.
Teachers expert in inspiring long-term, personally meaningful and interdisciplinary projects or thematic instruction regularly exceed the standards, but that realization is lost on facilitators.
New teachers have little or no experience with classroom centers, independent work, student projects and the sorts of agency that allow children to enjoy the “flow” experiences that build upon their obsessions and lead to understanding. Even when teachers are not lecturing from bell-to-bell, the classroom agenda is top-down and leaves little chance for serendipity or student initiative.
Great teachers know their students in deeper ways than any data can provide. They ask kids about their weekends. They chat about what kids are reading and console them when their hamster dies
They learn continuously for themselves and their students. Teachers share their love of reading and are patrons of the arts. They are active citizens and engage students in current events. Outstanding teachers are not afraid to appear silly or create a whimsical classroom environment. They play in the snow with kindergarteners like Maria Knee.
great teachers need to be passionate, competent and interesting humans beyond the scope and sequence of the curriculum.
oday, new teachers truly are facilitators. They are “trained” to manage classrooms and deliver the curriculum handed to them.
If you want to have your thinking pushed regarding teaching and technology, Ira Socol's blog here is one to subscribe to. This post is a prime example that challenges many of our assumptions about learning, school, and technology.
Yes, you can use photos of students successfully in online spaces without showing faces. There are a few nice sample teacher permission slips here to take a look at. Taking photos is so easy today. Even studens can take them for blog posts. Cropping off or blurring faces if necessary is also easily done.
physical spaces in all states of maintenance are by necessity temporal spaces; we orient
Time is a background-level context that we assume is there.
there are some spaces – and indeed, some object – that we perceive as more temporally-laden than others, regardless of whether or not those spaces and objects are in a state of ruin
Books are another object that we tend to perceive as temporally-laden
books have time, and the reasons for this have a tremendous amount to do with our cultural history of books and what books are.
Books exist within these spaces; books are also of these spaces. Contemporary mass-market paperbacks aside, the default quintessential Book is old, hard-bound, possibly large and heavy, frequently dusty
It took a lot of time to make books, and books themselves contained a lot of time within them as part of their content. Though none of the books we read now are produced in that way, the past of books still works to shape our present imagining of them.
When we hold an ereader, we are aware – if only subconsciously – that time is not there in the same way that it is with a dead tree book. It doesn’t connect to all the temporally-laden ideas of Bookness that we carry around in our collective cultural memory.
"We already have a guitar. I can learn on my own and with my friends." Me: "It seems like you should get lessons for the basics." Her: "Mom, that's what the Internet is for." It turns out she's already been practicing with the help of YouTube tutorials.
because of the abundance of knowledge and social connections
balancing the competitive pressures of college-readiness, the need for unstructured learning and socializing, and the role of the Internet in all of that
Trends indicate that families with the means to do so are investing more and more in enrichment activities to give their kids a leg up
padding resumes for college
an arms race in achievement
the Internet has been a lifeline for self-directed learning and connection to peers.
parents more often than not have a negative view of the role of the Internet in learning, but young people almost always have a positive one
Young people are desperate for learning that is relevant and part of the fabric of their social lives, where they are making choices about how, when, and what to learn, without it all being mapped for them in advance
Learning on the Internet is about posting a burning question on a forum like Quora or Stack Exchange, searching for a how to video on YouTube or Vimeo, or browsing a site like Instructables, Skillshare, and Mentormob for a new project to pick up.
but I'm also delighted that she finds the time to cultivate interests in a self-directed way that is about contributing to her community of peers
This is a great piece that captures much of the essence of how many (teens are the focus, but not exclusive to the points made) are seeing learning today... really important to understand.
A simple and popular workaround for awkward or potentially unprofessional interactions is to use Facebook pages, groups or separate accounts in the classroom. Pages are essentially separate profiles that students can Like in order to receive updates, and you can add students to groups in order to stay connected. Creating a separate profile for yourself is an easy way to prevent students from seeing any personal information that you would normally have on Facebook.
When you set a social media policy for your classroom, it’s important to delineate clear guidelines with your students on how they should and should not interact with you.
“During the term, I perceive that friending a student creates uncomfortable boundaries for the student-professor relationship,” she says. “After all, students post information about their personal lives and vice versa.”
"Google makes broad-based knowledge more important, not less. A good education is the true key to effective search. But until our kids have that, let's make sure they don't always take PageRank at its word."
"When you're on a site like Facebook, you get lots of posts about what people are doing. That sets up social comparison — you maybe feel your life is not as full and rich as those people you see on Facebook," he says.
"It suggests that when you are engaging in social interactions a lot, you're more aware of what others are doing and, consequently, you might be more sensitized about what's happening on Facebook and comparing that to your own life,"
The prescription for Facebook despair is less Facebook. Researchers found that face-to-face or phone interaction — those outmoded, analog ways of communication — had the opposite effect. Direct interactions with other human beings led people to feel better.