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Ruth Howard

I'm sure I'm doing it wrong | Ideas and Thoughts from an EdTech - 8 views

  • According to many definitions of good teaching, I don’t qualify: I don’t clearly state objectives If I do state them, they are as fuzzy as all get out I have a hard time measuring student progress My course syllabus changes almost daily I never use tests I constantly stray off topic
  • I do constantly question whether or not I need to be more structured.  Do I need to be able to define my outcomes more succinctly than this? Students will learn that: Learning is social and connected Learning is personal and self-directed Learning is shared and transparent Learning is rich in content and diversity
  • I do provide rubrics, build criteria together, emphasis and utilize descriptive feedback.  Providing supports and the odd insight best describes my role.  I’m of total confidence they are learning. Just read their blogs.
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  •   I’ve read, listen and thought  more about assessment than most and yet it still baffles me. Mostly because the kind of assessment that makes most sense (immediate and descriptive feedback) isn’t really valued in schools.
Qien Kuen

A chat with Stephen Downes on OER - Creative Commons - 3 views

  • My mission is to make it so that every person around the world has full access to educational opportunities and equal opportunity to make the most of their lives. Open educational resources are an important part of that because, of course, access to open materials enables all of that
  • In order to learn, we have to be active. You have to do things; we have to create things. So learning, whether it occurs in the classroom, in a formal situation or informal situation, it involves not only accessing, but remaking, remixing, repurposing, and rewriting learning resources; the creation of learning resources; the redistribution of them.
Dave Truss

Online Learning Communities Flourish Best If Individual Learners Have Self-governance - 4 views

  • However, in designing courses, educators must recognize that although self-governance is an individual, internal factor, not all learners will respond well to the online or community-led approach to education. Factors, such as personal goals, communication skills, information technology skills, and study environment, will also affect success.
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    The research will answer two crucial questions. First, in the learning process, is it better to design courses that are learner centered or community centered? Second, how can the development of critical thinking skills be most effectively developed in an online learning community?
Vicki Davis

What kind of intelligence are you? - 14 views

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    Take this intelligence test to determine your intelligences and realize that not all intelligence is measured on an iq test.
Vicki Davis

Findings - Ethnographic Study Looks at Gossip in the Workplace - NYTimes.com - 4 views

  • once someone made a negative comment about a person who wasn’t there, the conversation would get meaner unless someone immediately defended the target.
  • gossip in the workplace also tended to be overwhelmingly negative, but the insults were more subtle and the conversations less predictable, says Tim Hallett, a sociologist at Indiana University.
  • Office gossip can be a form of reputational warfare
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  • Dr. Hallett found that the teachers became so comfortable with him and his camera that they would freely insult their bosses during one-on-one interviews. But at the teachers’ formal group meetings, where they knew that another teacher might report their insults to the principal, they were more discreet.
  • they sometimes offered obliquely sarcastic comments to test the water
  • praise the predecessor
  • The teachers’ gossip never got as blatantly mean as the teenage girls’
  • The principal felt that her authority was being undermined by gossip and retaliated against teachers she suspected (correctly) of criticizing her.
  • in this case it was also a form of warfare that brought everyone down
  • it is more realistic to try managing it.
  • That simple question, a dare made in a pleasant voice
  • “Don’t we have some work to do here?”
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    Office gossip (this study on an elementary school and their gossip against a principal) hurts EVERYONE including your school and in this case, test scores declined. Remember that when you gossip, you also hurt yourself and if you didn't already know this, take a read here about office gossip and how to intervene and stop it.
Dean Mantz

Pogoplug, Your Personal Cloud: Free Software and Award-Winning Devices - 24 views

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    Download & install software.  Start sharing music, videos, and photos with others. 
Kelly Faulkner

The PLE Conference 2011 | 11-13th July 2011, Southampton. - 7 views

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    resources and presentation materials from the PLE conference 2011, southampton, uk
Suzie Nestico

Google Plus Tips & Shortcuts - 11 views

  • According to Picasa, If you’ve signed up for Google+ photos up to 2048 x 2048 pixels and videos up to 15 minutes won’t count towards your free storage. (hat tip to Greg Grothaus)
  • To add people who have added you to their circles, but you haven’t add them, go to the “People who’ve added you” tab and select “Not yet in circles” from the sort menu.  All the people not in your circles will be listed first (hat tip to Owen Prater)
  • Right click on a circle and select “View circle in tab”. This is a terrific way to see who’s in a circle and allows you to do neat things like drag all the people inside it to another circle.
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  • If you have a lot of Circles and/or a lot of people in your various Circles views (e.g. “People in your circles”, “People who’ve added you”, etc.”), Mac users can use the pinch functionality to make the Circles section smaller so you can view all of your Circles.
  • Order of Circles in Left-Hand Nav: Default Circles appear first in this order – Friends, Family, Following, and Acquaintances. Then your personal circles are arranged alphabetically. You can rename any of the circles, including the default ones, and renaming a default one makes it part of the normal alphabetized list. Put an underscore in front of one that you want at the top of the list. You could also delete the default circles and start over in the order that you want.(hat tip to Donna Fontenont and Joe Hall)
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    List of links and shortcuts for working/playing with the various functions and features of Google+
Deron Durflinger

Niall Ferguson: How American Civilization Can Avoid Collapse - The Daily Beast - 4 views

  • “killer applications
  • Competition
  • The Scientific Revolution
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  • Modern Medicine
  • The Consumer Society
  • The Work Ethic
  • The Rule of Law and Representative Government.
  • these killer apps were essentially monopolized by Europeans and their cousins who settled in North America and Australasia
  • the great divergence
  • They also grew more powerful
  • 20th century, just a dozen Western empires—-including the United States—controlled 58 percent of the world’s land surface and population, and a staggering 74 percent of the global economy.
  • tendency of Western societies to delete their own killer apps.
  • But there is a second, more insidious cause of the “great reconvergence,” which I do deplore—and that is the
  • Ask yourself: who’s got the work ethic now? The average South Korean works about 39 percent more hours per week than the average American. The school year in South Korea is 220 days long, compared with 180 days here. And you don’t have to spend too long at any major U.S. university to know which students really drive themselves: the Asians and Asian-Americans
  • Yet life expectancy in the U.S. has risen from 70 to 78 in the past 50 years, compared with leaps from 68 to 83 in Japan and from 43 to 73 in China.
  • On no fewer than 15 of 16 different issues relating to property rights and governance, the United States fares worse than Hong Kong. Indeed, the U.S. makes the global top 20 in only one area: investor protection
  • The future belongs not to them but to today’s teenagers
  • The latest data on “mathematical literacy” reveal that the gap between the world leaders—the students of Shanghai and Singapore—and their American counterparts is now as big as the gap between U.S. kids and teenagers in Albania and Tunisia.
  • Yet statistics from the World Intellectual Property Organization show that already more patents originate in Japan than in the U.S., that South Korea overtook Germany to take third place in 2005, and that China is poised to overtake Germany too
  • the United States’ average competitiveness score has fallen from 5.82 to 5.43, one of the steepest declines among developed economies. China’s score, meanwhile, has leapt up from 4.29 to 4.90.
  • Perhaps more disturbing is the decline of meaningful competition at home, as the social mobility of the postwar era has given way to an extraordinary social polarization. You don’t have to be an Occupy Wall Street leftist to believe that the American super-rich elite—the 1 percent that collects 20 percent of the income—has become dangerously divorced from the rest of society, especially from the underclass at the bottom of the income distribution.
  • Far more than in Europe, most Americans remain instinctively loyal to the killer applications of Western ascendancy, from competition all the way through to the work ethic. They know the country has the right software. They just can’t understand why it’s running so damn slowly.
  • What we need to do is to delete the viruses that have crept into our system: the anticompetitive quasi monopolies that blight everything from banking to public education; the politically correct pseudosciences and soft subjects that deflect good students away from hard science; the lobbyists who subvert the rule of law for the sake of the special interests they represent—to say nothing of our crazily dysfunctional system of health care, our overleveraged personal finances, and our newfound unemployment ethic
  • And finally we need to reboot our whole system.
  • If what we are risking is not decline but downright collapse, then the time frame may be even tighter than one election cycle
  • Western Civilization's Killer Apps
  • COMPETITION
  • THE SCIENTIFIC REVOLUTION
  • THE RULE OF LAW
  • MODERN MEDICINE
  • THE CONSUMER SOCIETY
  • THE WORK ETHIC
Fabian Aguilar

Educational Leadership:Literacy 2.0:Orchestrating the Media Collage - 1 views

  • Public narrative embraces a number of specialty literacies, including math literacy, research literacy, and even citizenship literacy, to name a few. Understanding the evolving nature of literacy is important because it enables us to understand the emerging nature of illiteracy as well. After all, regardless of the literacy under consideration, the illiterate get left out.
  • Modern literacy has always meant being able to both read and write narrative in the media forms of the day, whatever they may be. Just being able to read is not sufficient.
  • The act of creating original media forces students to lift the hood, so to speak, and see media's intricate workings that conspire to do one thing above all others: make the final media product appear smooth, effortless, and natural. "Writing media" compels reflection about reading media, which is crucial in an era in which professional media makers view young people largely in terms of market share.
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  • As part of their own intellectual retooling in the era of the media collage, teachers can begin by experimenting with a wide range of new media to determine how they best serve their own and their students' educational interests. A simple video can demonstrate a science process; a blog can generate an organic, integrated discussion about a piece of literature; new media in the form of games, documentaries, and digital stories can inform the study of complex social issues; and so on. Thus, a corollary to this guideline is simply, "Experiment fearlessly." Although experts may claim to understand the pedagogical implications of media, the reality is that media are evolving so quickly that teachers should trust their instincts as they explore what works. We are all learning together.
  • Both essay writing and blog writing are important, and for that reason, they should support rather than conflict with each other. Essays, such as the one you are reading right now, are suited for detailed argument development, whereas blog writing helps with prioritization, brevity, and clarity. The underlying shift here is one of audience: Only a small portion of readers read essays, whereas a large portion of the public reads Web material. Thus, the pressure is on for students to think and write clearly and precisely if they are to be effective contributors to the collective narrative of the Web.
  • The demands of digital literacy make clear that both research reports and stories represent important approaches to thinking and communicating; students need to be able to understand and use both forms. One of the more exciting pedagogical frontiers that awaits us is learning how to combine the two, blending the critical thinking of the former with the engagement of the latter. The report–story continuum is rich with opportunity to blend research and storytelling in interesting, effective ways within the domain of new media.
  • The new media collage depends on a combination of individual and collective thinking and creative endeavor. It requires all of us to express ourselves clearly as individuals, while merging our expression into the domain of public narrative. This can include everything from expecting students to craft a collaborative media collage project in language arts classes to requiring them to contribute to international wikis and collective research projects about global warming with colleagues they have never seen. What is key here is that these are now "normal" kinds of expression that carry over into the world of work and creative personal expression beyond school.
  • Students need to be media literate to understand how media technique influences perception and thinking. They also need to understand larger social issues that are inextricably linked to digital citizenship, such as security, environmental degradation, digital equity, and living in a multicultural, networked world. We want our students to use technology not only effectively and creatively, but also wisely, to be concerned with not just how to use digital tools, but also when to use them and why.
  • Fluency is the ability to practice literacy at the advanced levels required for sophisticated communication within social and workplace environments. Digital fluency facilitates the language of leadership and innovation that enables us to translate our ideas into compelling professional practice. The fluent will lead, the literate will follow, and the rest will get left behind.
  • Digital fluency is much more of a perspective than a technical skill set. Teachers who are truly digitally fluent will blend creativity and innovation into lesson plans, assignments, and projects and understand the role that digital tools can play in creating academic expectations that are authentically connected, both locally and globally, to their students' lives.
  • Focus on expression first and technology second—and everything will fall into place.
Felix Gryffeth

6 Tips for Avoiding the Worst Student Loan Repayment Traps - The New York Times - 2 views

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    aI added this link to the Student Personal Finance Internet Library http://www.textbooksfree.org/Students%20Personal%20Finance%20Internet%20Library.htm
Ed Webb

Why hard work and specialising early is not a recipe for success - The Correspondent - 0 views

  • dispelling nonsense is much harder than spreading nonsense.
  • a worldwide cult of the head start – a fetish for precociousness. The intuitive opinion that dedicated, focused specialists are superior to doubting, daydreaming Jacks-of-all-trades is winning
  • astonishing sacrifices made in the quest for efficiency, specialisation and excellence
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  • Most things that people want to learn do not resemble language, golf or chess, but rather a game in which the generalist has an advantage. A hostile learning environment
  • Seemingly inefficient things are productive: expanding your horizons, giving yourself time, switching professions. 
  • early specialisation is a good idea if you want to become successful in certain fields, sports or professions. In fact, in some cases, it’s the only option. Take chess, for example: if you don’t start early, you won’t stand a chance at glory.
  • learning chess is not a good model for learning other things. Epstein explains this using the work of psychologist Robin Hogarth, who makes the distinction between friendly (kind) and unfriendly or hostile (wicked) learning environments.
  • In a friendly learning environment, such as chess, the rules are clear, the information is complete (all pieces are visible on the board), and you can (ultimately) determine the quality of every move. In other words, the feedback loop
  • friendly learning environments are the exception. The world is not as clear-cut as golf or chess. So early specialisation is often a bad idea. 
  • In hostile learning environments without repetitive patterns, mastery is much harder to achieve. The feedback loop is insidious. Unlike chess, experience does not necessarily make you better. You may stick with the wrong approach because you’re convinced it’s the right one. 
  • The better a teacher scored on their own subject (i.e., the higher the grades their students got in that subject), the more mediocre students’ scores were across the complete programme (all modules). The explanation? Those teachers gave their students rigidly defined education, purely focused on passing exams. The students passed their tests with high marks – and rated their teachers highly in surveys – but would fail later on. 
  • In learning environments without repetitive patterns, where cause and effect are not always clear, early specialisation and spending countless hours does not guarantee success. Quite the opposite, Epstein argues. Generalists have the advantage: they have a wider range of experiences and a greater ability to associate and improvise. (The world has more in common with jazz than classical music, Epstein explains in a chapter on music.)
  • Many modern professions aren’t so much about applying specific solutions than they are about recognising the nature of a problem, and only then coming up with an approach. That becomes possible when you learn to see analogies with other fields, according to psychologist Dedre Gentner, who has made this subject her life’s work.
  • Another advantage generalists and late specialists have is more concrete: you are more likely to pick a suitable study, sport or profession if you first orient yourself broadly before you make a choice.
  • Greater enjoyment of the game is one of the benefits associated with late specialisation, along with fewer injuries and more creativity.
  • which child, teenager or person in their 20s knows what they will be doing for the rest of their lives?
  • Persevering along a chosen path can also lead to other problems: frustrations about failure. If practice makes perfect, why am I not a genius? In a critical review,
  • The tricky thing about generalist long-term thinking versus specialist short-term thinking is that the latter produces faster and more visible results.
  • specialising in short-term success gets in the way of long-term success. This also applies to education.
  • (Another example: the on-going worry about whether or not students’ degree choices are "labour market relevant".)
  • Teachers who taught more broadly – who did not teach students readymade "prescribed lessons” but instilled "principles" – were not rated as highly in their own subject, but had the most sustainable effect on learning. However, this was not reflected in the results. These teachers were awarded – logically but tragically – lower ratings by their students.
  • the 10,000 hour gang has considerable power with their message "quitters never win, winners never quit".Epstein’s more wholesome message seems weak and boring in comparison. Some things are simply not meant for everyone, doubt is understandable and even meaningful, you can give up and change your choice of work, sports or hobby, and an early lead can actually be a structural disadvantage. 
  • "Don’t feel behind." Don’t worry if others seem to be moving faster, harder or better. Winners often quit.
Ed Webb

7 Major Learning Styles and the 1 Big Mistake Everyone Makes - LearnDash - 1 views

  • while the learning style theory—that individual students might have a style that helps them learn better—may be complete bunk, presenting material in a variety of ways does have a lot of merit.
  • just because a person learns one item of information according to a certain style doesn’t mean they can only learn through that style, or that that style is their best learning tool.
  • important not to conflate preferential learning styles with diagnosable learning disabilities. Someone who is dyslexic doesn’t have an aural learning style, they have a reading disorder that hinders them from being able to process textual information rapidly. Similar can be said of learners with visual or auditory impairments. They will need to access your content through a variety of different methods, not because they prefer one style over another, but because they are unable to consume certain kinds of content.
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  • you shouldn’t try to optimize material for one kind of learning style over another, but rather, you should present course materials in a range of learning styles so that all learners can engage with it on multiple fronts.
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