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Adrienne Michetti

OLPC Human Interface Guidelines/Design Fundamentals/Key Design Principles - OLPC - 0 views

  • n which provides a low floor to the inexperienced, but doesn't impose a ceiling upon those who are.
  • tailored to the needs of children in the context of their learning
  • n activity ring that contains icons representing each instance of an open activity
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  • limitations
  • mphasis on discoverability and usability
  • the actual behavior of the activities, the layout of the buttons and tools, and the feedback that the interface provides to the children when they interact with it
  • there is no substitute for user testing
  • imple doesn't necessarily mean limited
  • simple—even minimal—controls can have great expressive power.
  • a "fail-soft" approach to their designs
  • five categories of "bad things" software can do: damaging the laptop; compromising privacy; damaging the children's data; doing bad things to other people; and impersonating the child.
  • without the use of menus, pop-up boxes, passwords, etc., as these approaches are meaningless to most people.
  • no noticeable side-effects
  • When children know they have a fallback plan—a way back to the current state of things—they will much more frequently go beyond their comfortable boundaries and experiment with new tools and new creative means of expression
  • the ability to undo one's actions.
  • Interoperability
  • Towards this end, a view source key has been added to the laptop keyboards, providing them with instant access to the code that enables the activities that they use from day to day. This key will allow those interested to peel away layers of abstraction, digging deeper into the codebase as they learn.
  • (without a mouse or trackpad)
Dave Truss

Blogging Rubric | Remote Access - 28 views

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    With a nod to the ever-brilliant-and-willing-to-share Kim Cofino, here is the rubric I've lately begun to use in my classroom for grading student blog posts. This is an experiment in action and depending on how this tool works, it is very likely that it will come under some revision.
Dave Truss

Connecting Assessment | Remote Access - 12 views

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    I've been working on another assessment to help students think about the connections and global understandings they are establishing. I've developed a rubric and a checklist to use in a classroom with middle school students.
Dave Truss

SpeEdChange: When rethinking the school itself... - 17 views

  • He talked about wide hallways where students could gather. He talked about attendance policies which allowed students to sign into classes from elsewhere in the building if that made them more comfortable. He talked about multiple projection screens in every classroom to break "single focus learning." He talked about dropping text books for authentic materials and the acceptance of multiple - and student chosen - ways of demonstrating knowledge. He even talked about having big windows in classrooms both to the outside and the school corridors - "We're not hiding from the world or hiding the world from our students" he told us.
  • And then we listened to teachers and students, we wandered the building, and we saw. In newly built additions classroom doors were centered on one wall, projectors, aimed from the middle of the ceiling, pointed to two corners. Window walls opened outside, big windows allowed views to/from the halls. In most rooms the two projectors were in use, showing different things. In most rooms, students gathered in clusters, often passing tablet boards around.
  • All in all what I saw was a 1:1 initiative that had been shaped by a commitment to rethinking school, and centering the form of school on what students need now - collaboration, access to and effective use of global information, trust in students, belief in leveraging the world of today rather than avoiding it, and universal design.
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  • This was no cost-be-damned private school experience. It was reasonable, it was logical, and it was technology chosen for education, not technology chosen for technology.
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    What happens if you really begin to rethink what your school looks like? No, I'm not talking about rethink from a wildly radical viewpoint - like mine or say, Neil Postman's - but just if a dedicated set of educators stops "tinkering" with little changes and wonders what school might be like...
Andrew Barras

Students Weigh In On Characteristics of Effective Teachers : Educational Technology Guy - 18 views

  • The first comment made by a student was that students don't like, and will become unmotivated to do work, when a teacher doesn't have a plan, is unprepared, and "wings it" each day for lessons.
  • they like it when a teacher posts the homework ahead of time so that they can start it early if need be.
  • they absolutely hate when teachers don't get work or tests graded and back to the students in a timely fashion.
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  • the best teachers are enthusiastic and excited about what they teach, make it fun and interesting, use projects in class, and make their classroom a safe place to be.
  • Projects were listed as something they all loved.
  • they learned more through projects than just listening to a teacher talk or doing homework.
  • most students saw Facebook as a social thing, not necessarily for education. They did like when teachers use web sites and email though and want teachers to be accessible via email for help.
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    What student think make good teachers
Ben Rimes

A Call for Technology Leadership - 3 views

  • Once a leader in a smaller district knows where he or she wants to go, change can happen more quickly than in a mid- or large-size district.
    • Ben Rimes
       
      I wonder what would denote a small or mid-size district. Obviously the number of enrolled students, but there's some flexibility there.
  • Freeman, who uses a blog to communicate with students and parents, points out that her own active use of technology in the 4,200-student district has helped create a norm for others to follow.
    • Ben Rimes
       
      Lead by example, nice.
  • “The kind of learning we expect 21st-century teachers to achieve is the intersection of content pedagogy and technology,” Moran insists.
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  • “You can no longer take on a professional development agenda without a technology component,” Kimball argues. “We know that professional learning communities are not effective without everything—from access to student data to the tools to analyze it.”
  • Freeman says. “We’re still trying to find ways to assess what we know we morally should. We know that students need to be competitive in a global environment.”
Brendan Murphy

Masters degrees don't produce better teachers - Page 2 - Baltimore Sun - 15 views

  • Because their primary motivation is to preserve their teaching license and advance up the salary ladder, busy teachers often pursue the fastest, cheapest and most accessible path to earn these degrees, and not necessarily the education that might lead to improved student outcomes.
    • Brendan Murphy
       
      So what you are saying is if teachers take graduate courses in an effort to improve themselves they might actually do some good.
anonymous

The best Free teacher resources = collection of great websites - 18 views

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    "The web is rich with resources that can inspire and support our teaching; however, navigating the web can be akin to swimming around an endless abyss." The goal of this collection of websites is to give teachers quick access to pages and info that can make them stronger teachers.
Suzie Nestico

Using Diigo in the Classroom - Student Learning with Diigo - 42 views

  • Save important websites and access them on any computer. Categorize websites by titles, notes, keyword tags, lists and groups. Search through bookmarks to quickly find desired information. Save a screenshot of a website and see how it has changed over time. Annotate websites with highlighting or virtual "sticky notes." View any annotations made by others on any website visited. Share websites with groups or the entire Diigo social network. Comment on the bookmarks of others or solicit comments to your shared bookmarks.
  • Professional Development Beyond extended student learning, Diigo can be used as a form of professional development. Diigo has several educator groups that are active in sharing and collaborating on bookmarks relevant to education. This group has almost 10,000 members. You can find over 200 other Diigo K-12 education groups here.
Ed Webb

Tenured Radical - The Chronicle of Higher Education - 3 views

  • there is little to no attention being paid to giving full-time faculty the training to teach students who have a wide range of capacities when it comes to what counts for normal classroom discipline:  sitting still for an hour and taking notes, being in crowded rooms where they risk being bumped and touched, overcoming obsessive behavior to get to class or hand in a paper on time, working in small groups with other students, or being in large classes with crowds of strangers.  It is also happening in a context in which being full-time faculty is becoming anomalous, and the financial “flexibility” of running higher education on per-course labor makes it unlikely that the vast majority of faculty will be eligible, or open to making unpaid time available, for the training that would make their classrooms accessible to autistic students
  • People with autism, Gilman notes, also tend to have disordered sleep, affecting the capacity to function at high-stress times of the semester when we assume that most students are pulling all-nighters.  They have difficulty relating to someone they are intimate with (much less an impatient, overworked faculty member who wants all students to act like the adults they appear to be), what they are experiencing and what is wrong, which would make even the most generous office hours not useful. So when we are putting together arguments for hiring full-time faculty in the next round of budget cuts and declarations from foundations that tenure is holding us back, think about adding this one in.  The demands on faculty to be well-trained, knowledgeable, creative and flexible teachers are growing — not subsiding — and attention to this will make all the difference in keeping our classrooms truly inclusive
  • colleges and universities don't have the infrastructure to replicate what these students have relied upon in high school
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  • please don't generalize from specific autistic traits to all the students on the spectrum. Our autistic daughter isn't a visual learner, she's a voracious reader. Still, the number of times people have assumed that she learns in a visual or tactile way, in the style of Temple Grandin? Too many to count.
  • a good first step would be to listen to autistic undergraduates themselves and to put the needs they express first instead of responding primarily to the perspective of the neurotypical parents of autistic children. The perspective of autistic undergraduates, which seems to me to be the most important on the subject, is entirely missing from this post
Claude Almansi

CEC | Ask Arne: A Conversation with the Council for Exceptional Children's (CEC) Member... - 0 views

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    "As I have travelled across the country visiting schools and classrooms and talking with teachers and parents, I have heard many questions about our plans at the U.S. Department of Education to support children with disabilities, their families, and the teachers who educate them and fight for them daily. To hear more about the issues affecting students with disabilities and their teachers, I asked CEC to contact members through an e-mail blast. Your response was overwhelming. Though CEC received more questions than we could possibly answer here, I have worked with your leadership to identify some of the central questions for educators of children with disabilities, and I have worked with my staff at the Department so that we can address them in this document. I would like to thank CEC members and all teachers of children with disabilities for their outstanding compassion and commitment and for the range of complex skills and talents you bring to teaching your students every day."
Claude Almansi

The KYVL for Kids Research Portal - How to do research Home Base - 1 views

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    "The Kentucky Virtual Library presents: How to do research! Step 1: Plan your project Plan your project tutorial Define your subject Brainstorm What do you already know? Group similar ideas Identify key words and phrases Make a quest strategy Gather your tools Step 2: Search for information Search for information tutorial The Kentucky Virtual Library The library catalog Encyclopedia Reference books: table of contents and index Magazines and newspaper articles Dictionary Search the World Wide Web What if you can't find anything? Step 3: Take Notes Take notes tutorial The KWL method Fact finder method Data sheets Clustering method (also called mapping or webbing) Venn diagram method Note cards Prints and photocopies Bibliography page Step 4: Use the information Use the information tutorial Scan the page first The five finger test Is the information true or bogus? Put it in your own words Organize the information Compare and contrast Put the information in order Add your own conclusions Step 5: Report Share what you've learned tutorial Step 6: Evaluate Ask yourself, "How did I do?" Glossary Back to the introduction page Portal | Home Base (Site Map) | Plan | Search | The Web | Take Notes | Use | Report | Glossary Teacher's Toolbox | Flash Version | Text Only Version Kentucky Virtual Library"
Claude Almansi

The Last Man on Earth (with Audio Description) - YouTube - 0 views

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    "Uploaded by moviesfortheblind1 on Aug 16, 2011 Audio description added for people who are vision-impaired or learning English: Vincent Price stars as a survivor of a worldwide plague, spending his days trying to protect himself against victims who have risen from the grave. Contains violence. 1964. Edited audio version in Movies For the Blind episodes 26 and 27. Licence: CC BY-NC-SA 3.0 moviesfortheblind.com"
Claude Almansi

BBC News - Cinema subtitle glasses give promise to deaf film fans - 0 views

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    "25 August 2011 Last updated at 02:17 GMT Help People who are deaf or hard of hearing have long complained that going to watch a film can be an unsatisfactory experience, with subtitled films on at unsociable times and often suffering from technical problems. But a solution could soon available in the form of special glasses which allow the wearer to see subtitles directly in front of their eyes, giving them the freedom of choice afforded to hearing people. Graham Satchell reports."
Claude Almansi

Education Week: Digital Edition: E-Learning for Special Populations - 0 views

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    "This special report examines the growing e-learning opportunities for students with disabilities, English-language learners, gifted and talented students, and those at risk of failing in school. Download the digital edition. (Login or FREE registration required.) You can read the complete online version of the report here. "
Suzie Nestico

Teaching with Evernote: A 6th and 8th Grade Science Teacher Shares His Top Ti... - 27 views

  • For extending the classroom beyond school walls I put up a daily itinerary on the whiteboard for my students to see what we’ll be working on that day. For anyone who isn’t in class, I snap a photo of it and put it in Evernote. You can see all of the past daily itineraries in my Shared Notebook. I use JotNot to take those shots, which integrates really well with Evern
  • vernote’s Shared Notebooks became a simple way for me to give students a way to access class notes, worksheets, PowerPoints and labs. Even though they couldn’t make it to class, they didn’t fall behind.
Claude Almansi

Dorothy Bishop - OSCCI - Oxford university page - 2 views

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    "I am Professor of Developmental Neuropsychology and a Wellcome Principal Research Fellow at the Department of Experimental Psychology in Oxford and Adjunct Professor at The University of Western Australia, Perth. The primary aim of my research is to increase our understanding of why some children have specific language impairment (SLI), a condition diagnosed when the child has unusual difficulty in language acquisition, despite normal development in other areas. The approach taken in this programme is to obtain convergent evidence using a range of methods and populations. The question can be addressed at three levels: behavioural, neurological, and etiological. At th"
Nelly Cardinale

Free Remote Access for Home and Personal Use from LogMeIn - 0 views

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    Use this free site to log in to your computers from anywhere
Maggie Verster

Next Generation User Skills Working, Learning & Living Online in 2013 - 0 views

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    In order to ensure the relevance and influence the ongoing enhancement of user ICT provision and the associated awards, Digital 2010 (the regional digital skills partnership for Yorkshire & Humber) and the Scottish Qualifications Authority jointly commissioned Sero Consulting Ltd in spring 2008 to undertake research in ICT User skills. The focus was exclusively on the vision for ICT user skills in 2013 - referenced as 'Next Generation User Skills' - taking account of: * Skills that all employers will need, which they may not currently recognise - including web presence, information productivity, market research, infrastructure management * Skills that people (especially young people) will already have, but which may not be recognised or accredited * Generic occupational skills that people will need - such as remote working, online communication, information research, lifelong learning and, not least, management of their digital environment * Essential skills for living and learning in a digital age - including communication, accessing public services and underpinning personal econfidence
Fabian Aguilar

What Do School Tests Measure? - Room for Debate Blog - NYTimes.com - 1 views

  • According to a New York Times analysis, New York City students have steadily improved their performance on statewide tests since Mayor Michael Bloomberg took control of the public schools seven years ago.
  • Critics say the results are proof only that it is possible to “teach to the test.” What do the results mean? Are tests a good way to prepare students for future success?
  • Tests covering what students were expected to learn (guided by an agreed-upon curriculum) serve a useful purpose — to provide evidence of student effort, of student learning, of what teachers taught, and of what teachers may have failed to teach.
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  • More serious questions arise about “teaching to the test.” If the test requires students to do something academically valuable — to demonstrate comprehension of high quality reading passages at an appropriate level of complexity and difficulty for the students’ grade, for example — then, of course, “teaching to the test” is appropriate.
  • Reading is the crucial subject in the curriculum, affecting all the others, as we know.
  • An almost exclusive focus on raising test scores usually leads to teaching to the test, denies rich academic content and fails to promote the pleasure in learning, and to motivate students to take responsibility for their own learning, behavior, discipline and perseverance to succeed in school and in life.
  • Test driven, or force-fed, learning can not enrich and promote the traits necessary for life success. Indeed, it is dangerous to focus on raising test scores without reducing school drop out, crime and dependency rates, or improving the quality of the workforce and community life.
  • Students, families and groups that have been marginalized in the past are hurt most when the true purposes of education are not addressed.
  • lein. Mayor Bloomberg claims that more than two-thirds of the city’s students are now proficient readers. But, according to federal education officials, only 25 percent cleared the proficient-achievement hurdle after taking the National Assessment of Education Progress, a more reliable and secure test in 2007.
  • The major lesson is that officials in all states — from New York to Mississippi — have succumbed to heavy political pressure to somehow show progress. They lower the proficiency bar, dumb down tests and distribute curricular guides to teachers filled with study questions that mirror state exams.
  • This is why the Obama administration has nudged 47 states to come around the table to define what a proficient student truly knows.
  • Test score gains among New York City students are important because research finds that how well one performs on cognitive tests matters more to one’s life chances than ever before. Mastery of reading and math, in particular, are significant because they provide the gateway to higher learning and critical thinking.
  • First, just because students are trained to do well on a particular test doesn’t mean they’ve mastered certain skills.
  • Second, whatever the test score results, children in high poverty schools like the Promise Academy are still cut off from networks of students, and students’ parents, who can ease access to employment.
  • Reliable and valid standardized tests can be one way to measure what some students have learned. Although they may be indicators of future academic success, they don’t “prepare” students for future success.
  • Since standardized testing can accurately assess the “whole” student, low test scores can be a real indicator of student knowledge and deficiencies.
  • Many teachers at high-performing, high-poverty schools have said they use student test scores as diagnostic tools to address student weaknesses and raise achievement.
  • The bigger problem with standardized tests is their emphasis on the achievement of only minimal proficiency.
  • While it is imperative that even the least accomplished students have sufficient reading and calculating skills to become self-supporting, these are nonetheless the students with, overall, the fewest opportunities in the working world.
  • Regardless of how high or low we choose to set the proficiency bar, standardized test scores are the most objective and best way of measuring it.
  • The gap between proficiency and true comprehension would be especially wide in the case of the brightest students. These would be the ones least well-served by high-stakes testing.
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