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Vicki Davis

What If? - grownupdigital - 0 views

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    Many commonalities are emerging in these NetGen videos -- one of which is the importance of harnessing the power of mobiles in learning. Whether or not you agree or feel that the students are being "whiney" (as many educators often think with such videos) -- there is a point to be made. I have particularly noticed how kids keep gravitating to the itouch and iphone as useful in school - it has reappeared over and over in these student videos. They were given free reign to picture improvements in THEIR education based upon the research of their generation and they keep coming back here. It has me thinking -- no conclusions yet, but really, they are teaching me.
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    Common trends of cell phones and mobiles in the classroom.
Vicki Davis

I Am What I Learn video competition for US students - 0 views

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    Starting on Sept 8, the US dept of education will ask students to respond to the President's Back to school challenge to create videos, up to 2 minutes in length describing steps that they will take to improve their education. This will be the website for the Iam what I learn website.
Victor Hugo Rojas B.

GTZ. Peru: Reforming financial policy in the education sector - 0 views

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    Money alone is not enough to improve a country's education system. But without adequate funding for school buildings, technical equipment, teaching materials and teacher training, education reform is doomed to failure from the very outset. The Peruvian Government is well aware of this: for its planned reform of the education system, it has put a new distribution key for budgetary funds at the top of the agenda.
David Hilton

High School History Student Network - 8 views

Most of us are aware of the power of social networking for teachers to improve their knowledge, gain ideas and make connections with other like-minded educators from around the world. I believe thi...

history curriculum edu_trends techintegrator highschool network

started by David Hilton on 20 Oct 09 no follow-up yet
Martin Burrett

Reading and Learning - 0 views

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    "Reading and learning seem to go together, but a shift in reading habits is changing the way we consume information and changing our relationship with a book. Should schools embrace this change, or celebrate a traditional model of reading and paper books? How are books being used in today's classrooms, and how could they be used better? What are the reading habits of teachers and how do educators use books to improve their teaching?"
Martin Burrett

Resource: Yoga Exercise Cards - 2 views

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    "The benefits of Yoga are often stated by fans of the discipline, with many schools using some of the basic exercises with pupils to focus children. There are many reported benefits such as: Improving flexibility; building muscle strength; perfecting posture; relaxing your system, and so on."
Martin Burrett

Ploys for Boys by @mikeyambrose - 2 views

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    "With 20 years' teaching experience in a wide variety of schools, I've frequently encountered staff who despair at the behaviour of boys in their classes. Frankly, I love teaching boys, and perhaps my experiences as a P.E. teacher, often teaching single-sex groups, prepared me well for managing the classroom behaviours of boys. Perhaps being (at the very least) a cheeky student myself, frequently preferring attention-seeking behaviours to concentrating in class, I am able to relate to much of what is seen in classes every day. Or maybe I was just under-stimulated and over-confident. Regardless of the circumstances, I certainly have some successful strategies for teaching boys and am happy to share them. So here are my tips on improving behaviour, engagement and outcomes for boys."
Martin Burrett

@Digicoled's Digest - Computing, for all? - 2 views

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    "Evidence gathered from The Royal Society showed that "pedagogies for computing in schools remain less developed than those for other subjects", and that "the provision of the subject at GCSE was sporadic". Recommendations from the report suggest a push to realise the ambition of recent curriculum and qualifications reforms, to improve gender balance in computing, and ensure there is a strong supply of computing teachers entering the profession."
Martin Burrett

The state of Religious Education needs to be improved - 2 views

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    "A new report by the National Association of Teachers of RE (NATRE) and Religious Education Council for England and Wales, based on Freedom of Information Data gathered by the Department for Education in 2015, has found that more than a quarter of secondary schools in the UK are not teaching their pupils any religious education (RE)."
Martin Burrett

Exercising at own pace boosts a child's ability to learn - 1 views

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    "A child's attention and memory improves after exercise according to new research conducted by primary school pupils and supported by the Universities of Stirling and Edinburgh. Researchers found that pupils' best responses to tests came after physical activity that was set at their own pace, as opposed to exhaustive exercise."
Martin Burrett

Book: Vocabulary Ninja: Mastering Vocabulary by @MrJenningsA via @BloomsburyEd - 2 views

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    "Building a rich vocabulary, across the curriculum, is one of the main aims for most teachers. Not only does a rich vocabulary help to create strong writing skills, but also can help with improving access to all areas of the curriculum. In his book, Andrew Jennings explains why vocabulary should be a focus in your classroom, providing resources and inspiration to help optimise vocabulary learning. Resources include a focus on SPaG facts, key vocab words that support various popular primary topics, an etymology section to inspire pupils, and looking at various grammatical features that can help build a repertoire of rich vocabulary. Throughout, the book provides other resources that can be copied for classroom use, or be used to take home to help build vocabulary skills away from the school setting."
anonymous

Building a Better Teacher - NYTimes.com - 7 views

  • There was no shortage of prescriptions at the time for how to cure the poor performance that plagued so many American schools. Proponents of No Child Left Behind saw standardized testing as a solution. President Bush also championed a billion-dollar program to encourage schools to adopt reading curriculums with an emphasis on phonics. Others argued for smaller classes or more parental involvement or more state financing.
  • This record encouraged a belief in some people that good teaching must be purely instinctive, a kind of magic performed by born superstars.
Dave Truss

ELT notes: IWBs and the Fallacy of Integration - 7 views

  • motivation and control. One seems to need the other, apparently. Keep the students motivated and you are a great teacher in control of the learning process. But we miss the point. Motivation has a short-term effect. New things will be old again. If we equal motivation with learning we will cling too much to it and direct our best efforts (and school budget) to gaining back control. A useless cycle that can lead us to consider extremely double-edged ideas like paying students to keep them learning.
  • We need autonomous, self-motivated students in love with the process of how humanity has learnt.
  • There is a underlying idea in the framing of our questions that needs unlearning. The belief that there are "levels", layers of complexity, hierarchies that we can detect and... well, control. But wait! Isn't that the very old way we want to truly change with new technologies?
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  • We already know it's about shifting power. Tight teacher control is a hindrance to foster empowered students who own their learning paths. We need to be aware of the old way finding its way to surface in what we question.
  • Tech is tech no matter what it does. It's innovative in its nature.
  • We can tell by the huge resistance to it. If there is no resistance in the process, we are probably facing improvements and weighing their gains in efficiency points. Good enough, only it is not an innovation. Innovation is not about "more or better", it's about "different".
  • What is the school picture today? What does my working context look like?I see an illusion that technology is to be bought, taught, used in class and then we can expect everyone to be happy. This false assumption seems to be guiding managerial decisions. This is the same old story behind the idea of technology "integration".
  • I doubt formal courses can make people adopt informal ways of learning. Courses could change teacher behaviour and leave their mindset untouched.
  • students are not digital natives. They know very little about educational uses of the technology they have been using for entertainment purposes only. They are quite ready to resist thoughtful, time consuming uses of the same technology. Particularly if they have had no part in choosing or deciding together with the teacher how we would use it.
  • First things first. Stay out of the tug-of-war. It is not a moment to think if the school is wrong in imposing it and teachers are right in resisting it. It's probably the moment to get together and go ahead purposefully. This is short-term thinking, though. Somehow teachers need to communicate to managers that the buy-don't-ask is an unhealthy approach from now on.
  • Ideally, we should envision a future where authorities engage teachers in conversations before buying.
  • Innovative teaching practices require innovative management practices. Let's think of adoption models that rely on having one-to-one conversations with teachers, experimenting together, asking them how far they feel they need mentoring, identifying what makes teachers happy at work.
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    We need autonomous, self-motivated students in love with the process of how humanity has learnt.
Brendan Murphy

Teacher Magazine: Taking Back School Reform: A Conversation Between Diane Ravitch and M... - 5 views

  • deep-seated wish to create escape routes from public education.
    • Brendan Murphy
       
      Does supporting vouchers mean we are giving up on schools?
  • Since there is no way to know who will be an effective teacher
    • Brendan Murphy
       
      It is possible to determine if someone will be or is a good teachers through oberservation and coaching, which costs money and time and has rarely been used effectively in the past.
  • What if we could channel the financial and human resources spent on the machinery of high-stakes testing into a robust, widely distributed program of professional development?
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  • He told them that the more they know about the particulars of instruction, the less effective they’ll be, for that nitty-gritty knowledge will blur their perception of the problem
    • Brendan Murphy
       
      I suppose if all you care about is the budget then that is the correct attitude.
  • children from every background will respond to a curriculum that respects their minds and feeds them with rich experiences.
    • Brendan Murphy
       
      Of course they will. Is your curriculum rich?
  • It is not just policy makers needing to spend time in schools. It is teachers needing to spend time in the policy making environment - yes, Dept of Ed has teacher ambassador program, but I would also suggest state legislators, Congressmen and Senators look more aggressively to having fellows on their staffs who are professional educators - it would save a LOT of problems downstream on both sides
  • Modeling modeling.asu.edu. This program shows improvement in both teacher and student understanding of physics.
  • CIMM which is a spin off of Modeling and is attacking the math problems in lower grades
Gaby Richard-Harrington

Working Toward Student Self-Direction and Personal Efficacy as Educational Goals - 2 views

    • Gaby Richard-Harrington
       
      I think that this is worth listening to. It gives a really different reason for conferences.
  • she observes student-led parent/student conferences.
    • Gaby Richard-Harrington
       
      I think this is worth listening to. It gives a whole new perspective on conferences.
  • improvement of instruction and for evaluation,
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  • mutually-enhancing learning process.
  • In traditional classrooms the teacher is seen as the information giver; knowledge flows only one way from teacher to student. In contrast, the methods used in a collaborative classroom emphasize shared knowledge and decision making.
  • Teachers may have a great deal of difficulty learning how to share control of instruction with students.
  • helping students make their own decisions will conflict with some teachers' learned experiences as well as their feelings about being in charge.
  • For some teachers this is a most difficult challenge
  • Similarly, students who are used to relying on teachers to give them so much structure, direction and information will have to learn to start asking themselves
  • "What can I do before I ask an adult?"
  • Some psychologists point out that fostering self-determination and personal efficacy can conflict with our goals for collaborative work (Sigel) unless we find ways to mold both goals into our instructional programs
  • self-direction can refer not only to the individual but to a group, a class of students, that decides upon goals, designs strategies and collaboratively evaluates progress on a group basis. As Vygotsky (1978) notes,
  • learning to think occurs within a social context; group speech gradually becomes internalized as personal self-talk about confronting life's difficult, complex situations.
  • Finally, personal efficacy means taking control of one's destiny
  • school restructuring and change
  • Some critics (Apple, 1979) suggest that schools help students reproduce knowledge of a dominant social, economic class, and not engage in producing for their own knowledge.
  • Further, many parents are concerned that a reorientation toward student self-direction and personal efficacy will diminish the influence of home and school and inadequately prepare students for the work force.
Ed Webb

Mind - Research Upends Traditional Thinking on Study Habits - NYTimes.com - 3 views

  • instead of sticking to one study location, simply alternating the room where a person studies improves retention. So does studying distinct but related skills or concepts in one sitting, rather than focusing intensely on a single thing. “We have known these principles for some time, and it’s intriguing that schools don’t pick them up, or that people don’t learn them by trial and error,” said Robert A. Bjork, a psychologist at the University of California, Los Angeles. “Instead, we walk around with all sorts of unexamined beliefs about what works that are mistaken.”
  • The brain makes subtle associations between what it is studying and the background sensations it has at the time, the authors say, regardless of whether those perceptions are conscious. It colors the terms of the Versailles Treaty with the wasted fluorescent glow of the dorm study room, say; or the elements of the Marshall Plan with the jade-curtain shade of the willow tree in the backyard. Forcing the brain to make multiple associations with the same material may, in effect, give that information more neural scaffolding.
  • Cognitive scientists do not deny that honest-to-goodness cramming can lead to a better grade on a given exam. But hurriedly jam-packing a brain is akin to speed-packing a cheap suitcase, as most students quickly learn — it holds its new load for a while, then most everything falls out. “With many students, it’s not like they can’t remember the material” when they move to a more advanced class, said Henry L. Roediger III, a psychologist at Washington University in St. Louis. “It’s like they’ve never seen it before.”
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  • cognitive scientists see testing itself — or practice tests and quizzes — as a powerful tool of learning, rather than merely assessment. The process of retrieving an idea is not like pulling a book from a shelf; it seems to fundamentally alter the way the information is subsequently stored, making it far more accessible in the future.
  • “The idea is that forgetting is the friend of learning,” said Dr. Kornell. “When you forget something, it allows you to relearn, and do so effectively, the next time you see it.”
  • An hour of study tonight, an hour on the weekend, another session a week from now: such so-called spacing improves later recall, without requiring students to put in more overall study effort or pay more attention, dozens of studies have found.
  • “Testing not only measures knowledge but changes it,” he says — and, happily, in the direction of more certainty, not less.
  • “Testing has such bad connotation; people think of standardized testing or teaching to the test,” Dr. Roediger said. “Maybe we need to call it something else, but this is one of the most powerful learning tools we have.”
  • The harder it is to remember something, the harder it is to later forget. This effect, which researchers call “desirable difficulty,”
Jackie Gerstein

Tucson Schools Enhance Learning with the Arts | Edutopia - 0 views

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    Brain-based research supports an effort to improve student achievement through an interdisciplinary curriculum that combines creative pursuits and academic subjects.
Maggie Verster

Creating Rubrics - TeacherVision.com - 0 views

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    Rubrics can be used in many ways. Once created, an established rubric can be used or slightly modified and applied to many activities. Reviewing, reconceptualizing, and revisiting the same concepts from different angles improves understanding of the lesson for students. Think of a writing rubric - good writing does not change with the project. Because the essentials remain constant, it is not necessary to create a completely new rubric for every activity. This five-part series explores how one teacher designs, refines, and implements rubrics in a variety of subject areas.
Dave Truss

Top News - Analysis: How multimedia can improve learning - 0 views

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    Analysis: How multimedia can improve learning\nNew research sheds light on students' ability to process multiple modes of learning
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    An analysis of existing research supports a notion that already has begun to transform instruction in schools from coast to coast: that multimodal learning--using many modes and strategies that cater to individual learners' needs and capacities--is more effective than traditional, unimodal learning, which uses a single mode or strategy.
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    Important research about multimodal learning
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    adding visuals to verbal (textual and/or auditory) instruction can result in significant gains in basic or higher-order learning, if applied appropriately. Students using a well-designed combination of visuals and text learn more than students who use only text, the report says.
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