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Art Gelwicks

The Beatings Will Continue Until Morale Improves - Practical Theory - 0 views

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    Interesting discussion going on about the pros and cons of a strict school environment
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    This article is dealing with a school and a social environment that has deteriorated past the ability to self-regulate through a series of stated guidelines. Both your school and ours are able to maintain their levels of operation through similar sets of guidelines, but in viewing the situation in the article I can completely understand how that school would need to take those steps to regain control over what had become an unmanageable situation. Looking at examples from the article of students who receive detention for failing to carry their ID after being reminded of it the previous day is not an unusual policy in most public schools. Denial of the "pleasant" aspects of school life for students who struggle academically or behaviorally is also nothing new. In this case they have made it a core part of the students life. Think about it this way: how many of these students who learn through these hard lessons of personal responsibility are going to be come parents who pass along to their children the values of personal responsibility? Some of the parents at CCS have a saying..."It's good to be in the bubble." There is a safe, easily maintained environment at the school, reinforced by clear guidelines and rules with defined penalties for failure to comply. To those who would think this too strict or limiting I would refer you to the number of students returning to our school after venturing into the "real world" and realizing "the bubble" is a better place for them. This is very similar to what I saw at SLA when I visited. Your students are committed to attending the school. They have a personal investment in their futures and the future of the school, something many mandatory schools lack. It's that personal investment that makes respect mean something to them and carry the weight it should in balancing their actions and behaviors with the greater good. For those of us "in the bubble" it can be disturbing to observe the tactics necessary to restore, or in some
cory plough

Fair use and transformativeness: It may shake your world - NeverEndingSearch - Blog on ... - 0 views

  • I learned on Friday night that the critical test for fairness in terms of educational use of media is transformative use. When a user of copyrighted materials adds value to, or repurposes materials for a use different from that for which it was originally intended, it will likely be considered transformative use; it will also likely be considered fair use. Fair use embraces the modifying of existing media content, placing it in new context. 
  • Here's what I think I learned on Friday about fair use:
  • According to Jaszi, Copyright law is friendlier to good teaching than many teachers now realize. Fair use is like a muscle that needs to be exercised.  People can't exercise it in a climate of fear and uncertainty.
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  • Permission is not necessary to satisfy fair use.
  • Fair use is a doctrine within copyright law that allows use of copyrighted material for educational purposes without permission from the the owners or creators. It is designed to balance rights of users with the rights of owners by encouraging widespread and flexible use of cultural products for the purposes of education and the advancement of knowledge.
  • My new understanding: I learned on Friday night that the critical test for fairness in terms of educational use of media is transformative use. When a user of copyrighted materials adds value to, or repurposes materials for a use different from that for which it was originally intended, it will likely be considered transformative use; it will also likely be considered fair use. Fair use embraces the modifying of existing media content, placing it in new context.  Examples of transformativeness might include: using campaign video in a lesson exploring media strategies or rhetoric, using music videos to explore such themes as urban violence, using commercial advertisements to explore messages relating to body image or the various different ways beer makers sell beer, remixing a popular song to create a new artistic expression.
  • Long ago, I learned that educational use of media had to pass four tests to be appropriate and fair according to U.S. Code Title 17 107: the purpose and character of the use, including whether the use is commercial or nonprofit the nature of the use the amount of the use the effect of the use on the potential market for the copyrighted work.
  • --A Conversation about Media Literacy, Copyright and Fair Use--stirred up more cognitive disonance than I've experienced in years
  • the discussion was one of several to be held around the country designed to clear up widespread confusion and to: develop a shared understanding of how copyright and fair use applies to the creative media work that our students create and our own use of copyrighted materials as educators, practitioners, advocates and curriculum developers.
  • national code of practice
  • Jaszi points to Bill Graham Archives vs.Dorling Kindersley (2006) as a clear example of how courts liberally interpret fair use even with a commercial publisher.
  • The publisher added value in its use of the posters. And such use was transformative.
  • Here's what I think I learned on Friday about fair use: The Multimedia Fair Use Guidelines describe minimum rules for fair use, but were never intended as specific rules or designed to exhaust the universe of educational practice.  They were meant as a dynamic, rather than static doctrine, supposed to expand with time, technology, changes in practice.  Arbitrary rules regarding proportion or time periods of use (for instance, 30-second or 45-day rules) have no legal status.  The fact that permission has been sought but not granted is irrelevant.  Permission is not necessary to satisfy fair use. Fair use is fair use without regard to program or platform. What is fair, because it is transformative, is fair regardless of place of use. If a student has repurposed and added value to copyrighted material, she should be able to use it beyond the classroom (on YouTube, for instance) as well as within it.  Not every student use of media is fair, but many uses are. One use not likely to be fair, is the use of a music soundtrack merely as an aesthetic addition to a student video project. Students need to somehow recreate to add value.  Is the music used simply a nice aesthetic addition or does the new use give the piece different meaning? Are students adding value, engaging the music, reflecting, somehow commenting on.the music? Not everything that is rationalized as educationally beneficial is necessarily fair use.  For instance, photocopying a text book because it is not affordable is still not fair use.
  • Copyright law is friendlier to good teaching than many teachers now realize. Fair use is like a muscle that needs to be exercised.  People can't exercise it in a climate of fear and uncertainty
Vicki Davis

Once Upon A School - 0 views

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    This from my email: "This is Natasha Dantzig for the TED (Technology, Entertainment and Design) Conference. I'm writing to let you know that organizers of the TED Prize have announced an open challenge in support of author and philanthropist Dave Eggers and his 2008 TED Prize wish to collect 1,000 stories of private citizens engaged in their local public schools. Each year, three individuals are granted the TED Prize, which provides winners with a wish to change the world, $100,000 in seed money, and the support of the TED community in making the wish come true. As an extension of Eggers initial wish, the open challenge asks individuals to design and implement new projects for local public school students. The three winning entries will receive a pass to the sold out TED2009 Conference to be held in Long Beach, California on February 4-7, 2009. " Good luck with sharing. I find it interesting that the projects that are emerging between public and private schools and crossing the lines and boundaries between us (which is what we should be doing) could only be submitted by a public school person and then, may not be considered because it can only be for public school students. In some ways, the writing of the proposal itself is limiting because it doesn't see the vision of what is truly happening in education.
Vicki Davis

YouTube - Broadcast Yourself. - 0 views

  • YouTube is not for pornography or sexually explicit content. If this describes your video, even if it's a video of yourself, don't post it on YouTube. Also, be advised that we work closely with law enforcement and we report child exploitation. Please read our Safety Tips and stay safe on YouTube. Don't post videos showing bad stuff like animal abuse, drug abuse, under-age drinking and smoking, or bomb making. Graphic or gratuitous violence is not allowed. If your video shows someone being physically hurt, attacked, or humiliated, don't post it. YouTube is not a shock site. Don't post gross-out videos of accidents, dead bodies or similar things intended to shock or disgust.
  • Only upload videos that you made or that you are authorized to use.
  • revealing other people’s personal information,
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    Many people have not read the Youtube Community Guidelines. You should report any videos that break these rules to youtube - everyone should have a youtube account and be able to do this. Today, a student had a bad video linked to hers -- I had to go to another place to report the other video but you can do this! Guidelines: "Don't Cross the Line Here are some common-sense rules that will help you steer clear of trouble: * YouTube is not for pornography or sexually explicit content. If this describes your video, even if it's a video of yourself, don't post it on YouTube. Also, be advised that we work closely with law enforcement and we report child exploitation. Please read our Safety Tips and stay safe on YouTube. * Don't post videos showing bad stuff like animal abuse, drug abuse, under-age drinking and smoking, or bomb making. * Graphic or gratuitous violence is not allowed. If your video shows someone being physically hurt, attacked, or humiliated, don't post it. * YouTube is not a shock site. Don't post gross-out videos of accidents, dead bodies or similar things intended to shock or disgust. * Respect copyright. Only upload videos that you made or that you are authorized to use. This means don't upload videos you didn't make, or use content in your videos that someone else owns the copyright to, such as music tracks, snippets of copyrighted programs, or videos made by other users, without necessary authorizations. Read our Copyright Tips for more information. * We encourage free speech and defend everyone's right to express unpopular points of view. But we don't permit hate speech (speech which attacks or demeans a group based on race or ethnic origin, religion, disability, gender, age, veteran status, and sexual orientation/gender identity). * Things like predatory behavior, stalking, threats, harassment, intimidation, invading privacy, revealing other people's personal information, and inciting others to commit violent act
Ruth Howard

High Scalability - High Scalability - The Amazing Collective Compute Power of... - 4 views

  • Earlier we talked about how a single botnet could harness more compute power than our largest super computers. Well, that's just the start of it. The amount of computer power available to the Ambient Cloud will be truly astounding.
  • By 2014 one estimate is there will be 2 billion PCs. That's a giant reservoir of power to exploit, especially considering these new boxes are stuffed with multiple powerful processors and gigabytes of memory. 7 Billion Smartphones By now it's common wisdom smartphones are the computing platform of the future. It's plausible to assume the total number of mobile phones in use will roughly equal the number of people on earth. That's 7 billion smartphones. Smartphones aren't just tiny little wannabe computers anymore either. They are real computers and are getting more capable all the time.
  • One Google exec estimates that in 12 years an iPod will be able to store all the video ever produced.
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  • But all the compute power in the world is of little use if the cores can't talk to each other.
  • Inductive chargers will also make it easier to continually charge devices. Nokia is working on wireless charging. And devices will start harvesting energy from the surroundings. So it looks like the revolution will be fully powered.
  • . Literally billions of dollars are being invested into developing a giant sensor grids to manage power. Other grids will be set up for water, climate, pollution, terrorist attacks, traffic, and virtually everything else you can think to measure and control.
  • . Others predict the smart grid could be 1,000 times larger than the Internet.
  • Clearly this technology has obvious health and medical uses, and it may also figure into consumer and personal entertainment.
  • What if instead smartphones become the cloud?
  • In the future compute capacity will be everywhere. This is one of the amazing gifts of computer technology and also why virtualization has become such a hot datacenter trend.
  • It's out of that collective capacity that an Ambient Cloud can be formed, like a galaxy is formed from interstellar dust. We need to find a more systematic way of putting it to good use.
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    digital citizenship headed for the clouds...
Darren Kuropatwa

NASSP - Shifting Ground - 14 views

  • Moreover—and perhaps most damning—by blocking and banning many of the tools and Web sites that form the cornerstone of teenagers’ experiences, educators deny themselves access to the conversations that students are having about how to use these tools intelligently, ethically, and well. And given the overwhelming flow of information that students can access using such tools, it is essential that educators become part of those conversations.
  • Districts have spent thousands of dollars installing interactive whiteboards—which are a more powerful, more engaging chalkboard. And yes, they are a tool with some very useful functions, and yes, we have them at the Science Leadership Academy in Philadelphia, where I am principal. But let me be clear: interactive whiteboards only enable a teacher-centric style of teaching to be more engaging than it would have been with a traditional chalkboard. Much of the prepackaged educational gaming similarly makes the same mistake.
    • Dave Truss
       
      I've just never bought into these as a good way to spend money other than perhaps in Kindergarten and Grade 1 where students can interact and engage with text and shapes in front of their peers.
    • Darren Kuropatwa
       
      I disagree with both you and Chris here. If you use an IWB to teach in a teacher centric way then *maybe* it'll be more engaging for students than it was before the IWB but I doubt it; I think kids are smarter than that. Teachers who teach in student centred ways find IWBs amplify not just engagement with the teacher, but with each other and the content they are wrestling with; they learn more deeply because we can bring a more multifaceted perspective to bear on every issue/problem discussed in class. When the full content of the internet can be brought to bear on every classroom discussion (including my twitter and skype networks) we are able to concretely illustrate the interconnectedness of all things. We don't have to tell kids this, they see it as it happens, every day. You might be able to do something like this without an IWB but it would be a little more clunky in execution.
  • The single greatest challenge schools face is helping students make sense of the world today. Schools have gone from information scarcity to information overload. This is why classes must be inquiry driven. Merely providing content is not enough, nor is it enough to simply present students with a problem to solve. Schools must create ways for students to come together as a community to ask powerful questions and dare them to bring all of their talents to bear on real-world problems.
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  • Schools can and must be empowering—what held down the progressive school movements of the past 100 years was not that the ideas were wrong, but rather that it often just took too long to create the authentic examples of learning.
  • The idea of community has changed dramatically in the past 10 years, and that idea should be reflected in classrooms.
  • Once students have worked together, the question must become, What can they create?
  • But it is not enough for educators to simply be aware of social networking; they have an obligation to teach students the difference between social networking and academic networking
  • Educators can help them understand how to paint a digital portrait of themselves online that includes the work they do in school and help them network, both locally and globally, to enrich themselves as students.
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    by blocking and banning many of the tools and Web sites that form the cornerstone of teenagers' experiences, educators deny themselves access to the conversations that students are having about how to use these tools intelligently, ethically, and well. And given the overwhelming flow of information that students can access using such tools, it is essential that educators become part of those conversations.
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    by blocking and banning many of the tools and Web sites that form the cornerstone of teenagers' experiences, educators deny themselves access to the conversations that students are having about how to use these tools intelligently, ethically, and well. And given the overwhelming flow of information that students can access using such tools, it is essential that educators become part of those conversations.
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
Ed Webb

Seventy-One Stories About Being Trans in School - 0 views

  • (a) some of the biggest challenges trans students face are infrastructural, both bricks-and-mortar structures (the housing of trans students; bathroom facilities), and digital architecture (course information software, transcripts, diplomas and email databases all routinely misidentify students);(b) an overwhelming majority of students and graduates described the experience of being misgendered and/or deadnamed by their professors as an extremely common experience.
  • I do think there’s real value in hearing stories of what it feels like to be misgendered or deadnamed
  • Anti-trans academics who claim that their rights are being infringed are heard far more frequently in the mainstream media than are the students who are apparently doing the infringing.
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  • academic freedom is a value of deep institutional importance to the independence of the University from entrenched power. Free speech demands no such institutional defense, and is rightly deprioritized when in conflict with other interests such as equity of access to education, or the health and wellbeing of students
  • To listen to trans students and graduates is to be sure that, whatever the British gender critical academics argue, the training of the professoriate on this issue is woefully inadequate
  • Many trans and non-binary students reported challenges finding built environments where they could feel safe at college. “They keep housing me with men,” wrote one trans woman; another trans woman reported that, despite being roomed with “transphobic students,” her administrators “weren’t, in general, willing to cut me a whole lot of slack because I hadn’t legally changed my gender marker.” A trans man reported being “placed on an all-girls floor even though I stated clearly on my housing form that I’m a trans guy.” Another student described the non-accommodation of trans students as an official policy: “my school matches roommate based on assigned sex, and refuses to accommodate trans students.”
  • Many students wrote with great enthusiasm about LGBTQ support centers on campus, which provide trans students with community and guidance. One writes that “younger uni empoyees and employees who were queer or allies were actually pretty great”; another says “the campus LGBT centers at two of the institutions where I experienced […] discrimination were amazing”; another writes that “the gender equality center is really working to help students and we have queer profs and Pride programming.” Another describes the vibe at the LGBTQ center as “quite tumblr but very supportive.” Students reported valuing the opportunity to invite speakers and guests themselves, though some report a wish that more resources for such programming were available.
  • A number of students wrote to express their dismay at the poverty of counselling resources for trans students
  • A large majority of respondents – close to all - explicitly reported experiences with “deadnaming” and “misgendering” by their academic advisors – their professors and mentors. Some of these instances were “deliberate,” “malicious,” “continued,” or “transphobic,” while others were merely “ignorant” or “accidental.” One respondent reported having been taught by two kinds of teacher: “profs who never asked for pronouns and always misgendered me, and profs who asked for pronouns but would still misgender me every time and apologize every time under the guise of ‘trying their best’.”
  • Sometimes being misgendered at a key moment in one’s school career throws students into emotional disarray at an inopportune moment.
  • colleges and universities are failing to establish adequate infrastructure for trans and non-binary students (especially in respect of digital architecture, which perhaps receives less attention than bricks-and-mortar)
  • staff and faculty, far from being the mindwiped drones of the gender critical academics’ fantasy, are mostly pretty incompetent at addressing and discussing trans students
  • I have a responsibility as a teacher to ensure minimum standards of care and equitable access to education for all my trans students, but also that I have a responsibility to push back against those institutional disincentives
Vicki Davis

ASCD - 0 views

  • first 60 seconds of your presentation is
    • Vicki Davis
       
      How many of us emphasize the first 60 seconds of a presentation students give?
  • Summers and other leaders from various companies were not necessarily complaining about young people's poor grammar, punctuation, or spelling—the things we spend so much time teaching and testing in our schools
  • the complaints I heard most frequently were about fuzzy thinking and young people not knowing how to write with a real voice.
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  • Employees in the 21st century have to manage an astronomical amount of information daily.
  • There is so much information available that it is almost too much, and if people aren't prepared to process the information effectively it almost freezes them in their steps.”
    • Vicki Davis
       
      Buidling a PLN using an RSS Reader is ESSENTIAL to managing information. THis is part of what I teach and do and so important!
  • rapidly the information is changing.
  • half-life of knowledge in the humanities is 10 years, and in math and science, it's only two or three years
    • Vicki Davis
       
      Personal learning networks and RSS readers ARE a HUGE issue here. We need to be customing portals and helping students manage information.
  • “People who've learned to ask great questions and have learned to be inquisitive are the ones who move the fastest in our environment because they solve the biggest problems in ways that have the most impact on innovation.”
    • Vicki Davis
       
      How do we reward students who question teachers -- not their authority but WHAT They are teaching? Do we reward students who question? Who inquire? Who theorize? Or do we spit them out and punish them? I don't know... I'm questioning.
  • want unique products and services:
  • developing young people's capacities for imagination, creativity, and empathy will be increasingly important for maintaining the United States' competitive advantage in the future.
    • Vicki Davis
       
      IN a typical year, how often are your students asked to invent something from scratch?
  • The three look at one another blankly, and the student who has been doing all the speaking looks at me and shrugs.
    • Vicki Davis
       
      When teachers tell students WHY withouth making them investigate, then we are denying them a learning opportunity. STOP BEING THE SAGE ON THE STAGE!.
  • The test contains 80 multiple-choice questions related to the functions and branches of the federal government.
  • Let me tell you how to answer this one
    • Vicki Davis
       
      Drill and test is what we've made. Mindless robots is what we'll reap. What are we doing?
  • reading from her notes,
  • Each group will try to develop at least two different ways to solve this problem. After all the groups have finished, I'll randomly choose someone from each group who will write one of your proofs on the board, and I'll ask that person to explain the process your group used.”
    • Vicki Davis
       
      Every time I do a team project, the "random selection" is part of it. Randomly select -- classtools.net has a random name generator -- great tool - and it adds randomness to it.
  • a lesson in which students are learning a number of the seven survival skills while also mastering academic content?
  • students are given a complex, multi-step problem that is different from any they've seen in the past
  • how the group solved the problem, each student in every group is held accountable.
  • ncreasingly, there is only one curriculum: test prep. Of the hundreds of classes that I've observed in recent years, fewer than 1 in 20 were engaged in instruction designed to teach students to think instead of merely drilling for the test.
    • Vicki Davis
       
      Not in my class, but in many classes - yes. I wonder how I'd teach differently if someone made me have a master "test" for my students at the end of the year. I'd be teaching to the test b/c I"m a type "A" driven to succeed kind of person. Beware what you measure lest that determine how you grow.
  • . It is working with colleagues to ensure that all students master the skills they need to succeed as lifelong learners, workers, and citizens.
  • I have yet to talk to a recent graduate, college teacher, community leader, or business leader who said that not knowing enough academic content was a problem.
  • critical thinking, communication skills, and collaboration.
  • seven survival skills every day, at every grade level, and in every class.
  • College and Work Readiness Assessment (www.cae.org)—that measure students' analytic-reasoning, critical-thinking, problem-solving, and writing skills.
    • Vicki Davis
       
      Would like to look more at this test, however, also doing massive global collaborative projects requiring higher order thinking is something that is helpful, I think.
  • 2. Collaboration and Leadership
  • 3. Agility and Adaptability
  • Today's students need to master seven survival skills to thrive in the new world of work.
  • 4. Initiative and Entrepreneurialism
  • 6. Accessing and Analyzing Information
  • 7. Curiosity and Imagination
  • I conducted research beginning with conversations with several hundred business, nonprofit, philanthropic, and education leaders. With a clearer picture of the skills young people need, I then set out to learn whether U.S. schools are teaching and testing the skills that matter most.
    • Vicki Davis
       
      Background on the research done by Tony Wagner.
  • “First and foremost, I look for someone who asks good questions,” Parker responded. “We can teach them the technical stuff, but we can't teach them how to ask good questions—how to think.”
    • Vicki Davis
       
      This is a great aspect of project based learning. Although when we allow students to have individual research topics, some teachers are frustrated because they cannot "can" their approach (especially tough if the class sizes are TOO LARGE,) students in this environment CAN and MUST ask individualized questions. This is TOUGH to do as the students who haven't developed critical thinking skills, whether because their parents have done their tough work for them (like writing their papers) or teachers have always given answers because they couldn't stand to see the student struggle -- sometimes tough love means the teacher DOESN'T give the child the answer -- as long as they are encouraged just enough to keep them going.
  • “I want people who can engage in good discussion—who can look me in the eye and have a give and take. All of our work is done in teams. You have to know how to work well with other
    • Vicki Davis
       
      Last Saturday, my son met Bill Curry, a football coach and player that he respects. Just before meeting him, my husband reviewed with my son how to meet people. HE told my son, "Look the man in his eyes and let him know your hand is there!" After shaking his hand, as Mr. Curry was signing my son's book, he said, "That is quite a handshake, son, someone has taught you well." Yes -- shaking hands and looking a person in the eye are important and must be taught. This is an essential thing to come from parents AND teachers -- I teach this with my juniors and seniors when we write resumes.
  • how to engage customers
    • Vicki Davis
       
      Engagi ng customers requires that a person stops thinking about their own selfish needs and looks at things through the eyes of the customer!!! The classic issue in marketing is that people think they are marketing to themselves. This happens over and over. Role playing, virtual worlds, and many other experiences can give people a chance to look at things through the eyes of others. I see this happen on the Ning of our projects all the time.
  • the world of work has changed profoundly.
    • Vicki Davis
       
      Work has changed, school hasn't. In fact, I would argue that schools are more industrial age than ever with testing and manufacturing of common knowledge (which is often outdated by the time the test is given) at an all time high. Let them create!
  • Over and over, executives told me that the heart of critical thinking and problem solving is the ability to ask the right questions. As one senior executive from Dell said, “Yesterday's answers won't solve today's problems.”
    • Vicki Davis
       
      We give students our critical questions -- how often do we let them ask the questions.
  • I say to my employees, if you try five things and get all five of them right, you may be failing. If you try 10 things, and get eight of them right, you're a hero. You'll never be blamed for failing to reach a stretch goal, but you will be blamed for not trying.
    • Vicki Davis
       
      If our students get eight out of 10 right, they are a low "B" student. Do we have projects where students can experiement and fail without "ruining their lives." Can they venture out and try new, risky things?
  • risk aversion
    • Vicki Davis
       
      He says risk aversion is a problem in companies -- YES it is. Although upper management SAYS they want people willing to take risks -- from my experience in the corporate world, what they SAY and what they REWARD are two different things, just ask a wall street broker who took a risky investment and lost money.
Vicki Davis

This morning I came here before I went to twitter. This seems to be the place to be rig... - 1 views

  • Lisa Parisi This morning I came here before I went to twitter. This seems to be the place to be right now. Still not sure of all the groupings, taggings, etc. Reading what everyone writes and hoping to get it soon
  • Will play on Sunday with Karen McMillan and Alice Barr. Anyone else want to join? Anyone want to teach?
  • Ryan Bretag I'll join in the fun if you'll have me. Let me know time when you know.
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  • I was going to present 20 minutes on Del.icio.us, but I may show Diigo instead - or both - or 20 minutes is not enough....
  • This new version "appears" to have fixed that issue, plus I've been impressed with the new features.
  • Caroline Obannon I'm second guessing teaching only del.icio.us myself, too.
  • Liz Davis I'm wondering if Diigo is too much for the newbie. Delicious is so simple and obviously useful. I'm afraid Diigo would scare some people away. I'm still inclined to start with delicious and save Diigo for my more advanced users (of which I have very few).
  • Maybe overwhelming would describe my feelings.
  • However, I can defely think of quite a few people who would balk at it, too and favor the simplicity of Del.icio.us.
  • but most likely wouldn't participate in the social/sharing aspects they offer.
  • The nice thing about the Diigo toolbar is that you can select which buttons to see, so for those who might find the extra choices of tools overwhelming, it can at least be customized.
  • I'm feeling a Diigo obsession building. As soon as Explorer comes up I check to see if there are any messages in Diigo. How nice of them to put that number right on my toolbar!
  • I created my very first List last night,
  • Kristin Hokanson Liz I think it may be too much ially for the newbie and I will continue to send to delicious.
  • There is one feature that I REALLY like and that is that you can EMAIL something you are tagging so for folks who LIKE to get those sites emailed, you can still meet their needs without an extra step yourself
  • I second that. I like Diigo, but del.icio.us simplicity is so inviting.
  • The value of Diigo is that it brings a number of tools together allowing for multiple entry points. The old training model is show them a tool from start to finish that goes over every single detail. With Diigo, why show everything to those new to all this? It is rather easy to click into your bookmarks. From there, teachers have a space they can grow. It also provides a wonderful opportunity to differentiate with your teachers -- the whole multiple points of entry.
  • still I will have fun, exploring it and making effective use of it.
  • it is the ease of integration with blogging and twitter -- I annotated a page yesterday and pulled it directly into my blog. I can twitter bookmark that is important quickly -- AND I can use the tagging standards for the horizon project without having to remember the darn tags -- tag dictionaries are the most useful things to have been invented in a LONG time -- we need to set them up within one of our educational groups!
  • I don' t think I would not teach delicious. But perhaps starting with delicious and saving Diigo for later is a good idea.
  • I do find this site to be much more powerful and useful than delicious. I never really used delicious to its full potential. The fact that I am here just chatting with folks makes me want to stay and contribute to the collective knowledge.
  • We are conversing about the usefulness of diigo and I thought you might like to be included.
  • Maggie Tsai has invited Wade Ren to this conversation
  • Are you guys planning a Sunday get-together? If so, please advise the time - I'd love to join you and help answering any question.
  • Howdy! Wow, what can I say? Diigo is a lot more than delicious. If CoolCat Vicki hadn't written about Diigo again, I probably would have stuck with Delicious...and,if I hadn't been using Twitter, blogs, played around with Facebook, the social networking side of Diigo would have been just so much MORE to learn.
  • my concern would be to NOT limit learners in workshop sessions to the path I followed in learning these tools. Simply, folks, here is a tool that will grow as you grow and learn more about living and contributing in an interconnected world. The ability to have conversations like this, to annotate web pages, to share relevant quotes and tweet as needed...makes me wonder at the need for blogs at all.
  • A few folks are considering exploring Diigo on Sunday morning and having a conversation about it now...join in and learn with us!
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    This is a very honest, open discussion between educators about why diigo or delicious -- I think the fact we can have this conversation within diigo at all says a lot for the usefulness of the tool. Diigo is an emerging tool for social bookmarking and collective intelligence.
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    This%20is%20an%20annotated%20discussion%20of%20our%20discussion%20here%20on%20Diigo.%20%20Look%20how%20deep%20the%20conversation%20can%20go%20now!%20%20WE%20can%20analyze%20ourselves%20and%20extract%20meaning.
Vicki Davis

ThinkQuest - 0 views

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    Opportunity for teachers to become involved in a global collaborative project by being a judge. Definitely a best practice to review.
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    This fascinating project needs judges (oh and horizon still does too!) -- hat tip to David Warlick for this link. The student web site entries are due in tomorrow (April 2) for the 2008 competition, and ThinkQuest needs people to judge these entries. To be a judge, you must be employed as a teacher or have a minimum of five years experience in the field of education; be proficient in the English language; and be able to, and have the time to evaluate and score websites based on the provided criteria.
Duane Sharrock

Metacognition: An Overview - 7 views

  • Metacognition refers to higher order thinking which involves active control over the cognitive processes engaged in learning. Activities such as planning how to approach a given learning task, monitoring comprehension, and evaluating progress toward the completion of a task are metacognitive in nature.
  • "Metacognition" is often simply defined as "thinking about thinking."
  • While there are some distinctions between definitions (see Van Zile-Tamsen, 1994, 1996 for a full discussion), all emphasize the role of executive processes in the overseeing and regulation of cognitive processes.
  • ...14 more annotations...
  • Most definitions of metacognition include both knowledge and strategy components
  • According to Flavell (1979, 1987), metacognition consists of both metacognitive knowledge and metacognitive experiences or regulation. Metacognitive knowledge refers to acquired knowledge about cognitive processes, knowledge that can be used to control cognitive processes. Flavell further divides metacognitive knowledge into three categories: knowledge of person variables, task variables and strategy variables.
  • These processes help to regulate and oversee learning, and consist of planning and monitoring cognitive activities, as well as checking the outcomes of those activities.
  • What is the difference between a cognitive and a metacognitive strategy?
  • Cognitive strategies are used to help an individual achieve a particular goal (e.g., understanding a text) while metacognitive strategies are used to ensure that the goal has been reached (e.g., quizzing oneself to evaluate one's understanding of that text).
  • Metacognitive and cognitive strategies may overlap in that the same strategy, such as questioning, could be regarded as either a cognitive or a metacognitive strategy depending on what the purpose for using that strategy may be.
  • Metacognition, or the ability to control one's cognitive processes (self-regulation) has been linked to intelligence
  • Knowledge is considered to be metacognitive if it is actively used in a strategic manner to ensure that a goal is met.
  • Sternberg refers to these executive processes as "metacomponents" in his triarchic theory of intelligence (Sternberg, 1984, 1986a, 1986b). Metacomponents are executive processes that control other cognitive components as well as receive feedback from these components. According to Sternberg, metacomponents are responsible for "figuring out how to do a particular task or set of tasks, and then making sure that the task or set of tasks are done correctly" (Sternberg, 1986b, p. 24). These executive processes involve planning, evaluating and monitoring problem-solving activities. Sternberg maintains that the ability to appropriately allocate cognitive resources, such as deciding how and when a given task should be accomplished, is central to intelligence.
  • Cognitive Strategy Instruction
  • Cognitive Strategy Instruction
  • Those with greater metacognitive abilities tend to be more successful in their cognitive endeavors.
  • CSI) is an instructional approach which emphasizes the development of thinking skills and processes as a means to enhance learning. The objective of CSI is to enable all students to become more strategic, self-reliant, flexible, and productive in their learning endeavors (Scheid, 1993)
  • Metacognition enables students to benefit from instruction (Carr, Kurtz, Schneider, Turner & Borkowski, 1989; Van Zile-Tamsen, 1996) and influences the use and maintenance of cognitive strategies
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    "According to Flavell (1979, 1987), metacognition consists of both metacognitive knowledge and metacognitive experiences or regulation. Metacognitive knowledge refers to acquired knowledge about cognitive processes, knowledge that can be used to control cognitive processes. Flavell further divides metacognitive knowledge into three categories: knowledge of person variables, task variables and strategy variables."
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    Sternberg defined intelligence as mental activity central to one's life in real-world environments; individuals "succeed" in life when they use mental skills to adapt to, select, and shape external environments. Correspondingly, in the late 1990s, Sternberg changed the name of the theory to the Theory of Successful Intelligence. As per its original name, the theory comprises three types of intelligence: analytical (also referred to as componential); practical (also referred to as contextual) and creative (also referred to as experiential).
Vicki Davis

Let's kill technology journalism | Jamie Kelly - 3 views

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    Jamie Kelly does a nice job of dissecting much of what is wrong with technology journalism - going for the trending topic instead of saying "this topic is trending because of misinformation" (i.e. Instagram terms of service changes). I think these points are excellent and can also apply to much of what happens in the education circles as well -- if everybody is talking about ___, then everyone is searching about ____, then everyone is writing about ____ so they will be found. Sometimes it is good not to be everybody but to be somebody who is different and more importantly, who goes through the hype to be as accurate as possible.
Vicki Davis

The New Habitudes - More Lessons, More Learning, and More to Come | Angela Maiers, Spea... - 6 views

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    We've been doing an incredible professional development with Angela Maiers. You start with what you want to "be" before you talk about what you want to "do." This model is powerful and transformative, but honestly it took me the first 3-4 hours of the 10 hour training before the light bulb went on and I went 'oh" - Oh, my goodness, I"ve been doing some of this, but we need a common language. We start with what we want to be "scientists" "a learer" "risk takers" "bold" "Models and mentors" - -she challenged us to "be the learner, leader, citizen you wish your children to be."
Vicki Davis

Bard High School Early College, a Second Chance for Disadvantaged Youth in Newark - NYT... - 0 views

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    College / high school is being done in Georgia with the ACCELL program. I think the biggest issue is that it is accelerating classes and perhaps might be ahead of high school, but I promise, it isn't college. I have some concerns but am glad that it is helping people get started towards college. I just think care must be taken to ensure the quality and calibre of teaching and content, particularly if transfer credits are being required in state.
Vicki Davis

Top 10 Adobe Flash Player for the new iPad 3 - 12 views

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    One of the concerns about ipads is the inability to use flash or javascript. This can be done. Here are the top 10 flash players. If you limit down to those that can do Flash AND java - the options are a bit pricey - Cloud Browse does both but only lets you have 10 minute browsing sessions. Virtual Firefox ($4.99) and Virtual Browser for Chrome (19.99) each can allow Java and Flash and also bookmark/sync services with your desktop browser (5.99 and .99 respectively.) This may be a tad expensive but show it can be done. The highest rated is virtual browser for chrome. I think the chrome browser is a tad pricey. You do have to be 17 to download these apps, I guess because you can use them to access video. 
Vicki Davis

Twitter Itself Will Soon Decide the Value of Your Tweets - 0 views

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    Twitter is going to "rate" your tweets in the hopes of giving you and developers better content. Again, those late to the game may have trouble being heard, but I'd like to think there is always a way to be valuable. Never assume that because everyone is following someone that they have something worth saying - decide who YOU want to follow and that is enough. Of course, when this happens, expect the usual uproar of those who are valued and not valued, as for me, I hope I can resist the urge to start comparing in sharing and just try to stay helpful. From Mashable..."The value judgements will be assigned to the public metadata of tweeters' posts, and used by Twitter's streaming API to help developers more selectively curate massive amounts of status updates. Designations of "none," "low" and "medium" will most likely debut on Feb. 20, according to a post by developer advocate Arne Roomann-Kurrik on the Twitter developers' blog. A "high" value option will be rolled out sometime after the initial batch."
Vicki Davis

What is digital fluency? | - 12 views

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    "Crucially, the outcome of being digitally fluent relates to issues of responsibility, equity and access. We all have the right to fully participate in a digitally-enabled education system and in an increasingly digitised society. If we work with fluency in the way we use technologies, we are able to keep ourselves safe online and take full advantage of life chance opportunities such as being able to apply for work, manage our finances, or be part of our local community). "In the years ahead, digital fluency will become a prerequisite for obtaining jobs, participating meaningfully in society, and learning throughout a lifetime. (Resnick, 2002, p. 33) [via White, 2013]" As more services - health, civil, safety, even voting - move online, it has never been more important to ensure citizens are not disenfranchised from accessing services that are central to the well-being of all."
Vicki Davis

Intro to Inquiry Learning | YouthLearn - 5 views

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    As I'm reading on inquiry based learning, I came across another article, I'd like to share. In this article, it discusses how inquiry-based learning projects are driven by students. This very much aligns with the questions we ask on the Flat Classroom and other projects. The one point of meaning that I'm working to understand (and finding different answers depending upon the site) is that some differentiate that students should develop the questions rather than teachers "handing them" the questions. I have a lesson plan I sent through Diigo where the instructor designed a lesson around the question "Can there be giants?" and called in inquiry based. Under this article, it may not be called true inquiry based, and yet, I'm wondering if the question is intriguing and of interest and can be used in a way to teach if it really matters where the question originates.  My class is a mix of student-created inquiries (Freshman project) and project-generated inquiries (Digiteen, Flat Classroom). Interesting. Look forward to reading and understanding more (and sharing with you.) This is another nice article on the topic. Feel free to share yours. "Inquiry-based learning" is one of many terms used to describe educational approaches that are driven more by a learner's questions than by a teacher's lessons. It is inspired by what is sometimes called a constructivist approach to education, which posits that there are many ways of constructing meaning from the building blocks of knowledge and that imparting the skills of "how to learn" is more important than any particular information being presented. Not all inquiry-based learning is constructivist, nor are all constructivist approaches inquiry-based, but the two have similarities and grow from similar philosophies.
Vicki Davis

Teaching ate me alive - Salon.com - 20 views

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    Heartwrenching, heartaching, upsetting, but all too true. For those who want to see inside the life of many US public school teachers, Peter Hirzel has a gutsy, edgy post on salon and says many of the things that are often whispered and said in email. But there is a part that I want EVERY teacher to hear because it reflects something I say a lot to teachers: "When we have each others' backs, we are invincible. So I hope all the teachers continue to be kind to one another, because one kind word was very, very often the only thing that got me through the day." BE KIND TO EACH OTHER. Encourage each other. Smile. Say hello. You are fellow journeyman and deserve each other's respect and kindness. Please hear this. Don't be discouraged, but if you're in edreform and don't read this post, you shouldn't be in edreform because you don't get the conflicting emotions plaguing the psyche of so many teachers today.
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