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Vicki Davis

Seth's Blog: (What you get) - (What you were hoping for) - 5 views

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    Great article by Seth Godin. We need to apply this to education. If people remember the last thing - are we giving them a great final experience in high school. Most likely -- no. "[One really important amplification: Research shows us that what people remember is far more important than what they experience. What's remembered: --the peak of the experience (bad or good) and, --the last part of the experience. The easiest way to amplify customer satisfaction, then, is to underpromise, then increase the positive peak and make sure it happens near the end of the experience you provide. Easy to say, but rarely done.]"  - Seth Godin
Patricia Cone

You Can't Stop the Rain « Educational Discourse - 10 views

  • So often when we talk about schools, students, parents and teachers, we discuss things in arm-lengths type of way. We discuss how they need to have richer and more meaningful learning experiences, how we need to provide them with the opportunities to use the technological tools in authentic learning experiences. What we don’t discuss is how schools need to be places of living not just of learning. They need to be places of community where children can experience life-lessons not just academic lessons. The story that follows is about one such event that took place at our school this past year.
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    So often when we talk about schools, students, parents and teachers, we discuss things in arm-lengths type of way. We discuss how they need to have richer and more meaningful learning experiences, how we need to provide them with the opportunities to use the technological tools in authentic learning experiences. What we don't discuss is how schools need to be places of living not just of learning. They need to be places of community where children can experience life-lessons not just academic lessons. The story that follows is about one such event that took place at our school this past year.
Vicki Davis

Colorful Convection Currents at Steve Spangler Science - 3 views

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    I know Steve Spangler sells a lot of science things on his website, but I just enjoy him. I like how he explains things and how he uses colorful, attractive things in his science experiments. If you're a science teacher, I think you'll enjoy browsing the experiments on his website. Here is one on convection currents. He shares how to do all of the experiments, so you don't have to buy anything from him. This is a great example of how you can be helpful and people want to buy from you.
Dave Truss

The first question @djakes - 2 views

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    This is my first question if I know every kid has a device: "What should the student learning experience be?" That's a question that can be addressed through design. And like any design provocation, you begin by deeply understanding the needs of humans first, in this case, the learner. And then you make sense of that, you find what you want to design around by developing a set of design drivers (such as skills, habits of the mind, the physical and digital learning spaces, etc.) and then you ideate, ideate and ideate. Ask a second, third, fourth question … Yes … and … what if … how might we? Ask those questions. Prototype an experience, put it out there, find out what works, what doesn't, and refine and adjust. Make it better. Place the student and the learning at the center of the first question that you ask. Make it about them and what they should experience in your school as a learner. Don't make it about whether or not the device supports Shockwave.
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    Retired math teacher who has a model that tries to answer your question. Suggestions welcome. http://www.textbooksfree.org/Educating%20the%20Class%20of%202030.htm
Ed Webb

What's Wrong With the Teenage Mind? - WSJ.com - 19 views

  • Adolescence has always been troubled, but for reasons that are somewhat mysterious, puberty is now kicking in at an earlier and earlier age. A leading theory points to changes in energy balance as children eat more and move less.
  • Recent studies in the neuroscientist B.J. Casey's lab at Cornell University suggest that adolescents aren't reckless because they underestimate risks, but because they overestimate rewards—or, rather, find rewards more rewarding than adults do. The reward centers of the adolescent brain are much more active than those of either children or adults. Think about the incomparable intensity of first love, the never-to-be-recaptured glory of the high-school basketball championship. What teenagers want most of all are social rewards, especially the respect of their peers. In a recent study by the developmental psychologist Laurence Steinberg at Temple University, teenagers did a simulated high-risk driving task while they were lying in an fMRI brain-imaging machine. The reward system of their brains lighted up much more when they thought another teenager was watching what they did—and they took more risks.
  • What happens when children reach puberty earlier and adulthood later? The answer is: a good deal of teenage weirdness. Fortunately, developmental psychologists and neuroscientists are starting to explain the foundations of that weirdness.
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  • contemporary children have very little experience with the kinds of tasks that they'll have to perform as grown-ups. Children have increasingly little chance to practice even basic skills like cooking and caregiving. Contemporary adolescents and pre-adolescents often don't do much of anything except go to school. Even the paper route and the baby-sitting job have largely disappeared.
  • first with the industrial revolution and then even more dramatically with the information revolution, children have come to take on adult roles later and later. Five hundred years ago, Shakespeare knew that the emotionally intense combination of teenage sexuality and peer-induced risk could be tragic—witness "Romeo and Juliet." But, on the other hand, if not for fate, 13-year-old Juliet would have become a wife and mother within a year or two.
  • This control system depends much more on learning. It becomes increasingly effective throughout childhood and continues to develop during adolescence and adulthood, as we gain more experience. You come to make better decisions by making not-so-good decisions and then correcting them. You get to be a good planner by making plans, implementing them and seeing the results again and again. Expertise comes with experience.
  • Wide-ranging, flexible and broad learning, the kind we encourage in high-school and college, may actually be in tension with the ability to develop finely-honed, controlled, focused expertise in a particular skill, the kind of learning that once routinely took place in human societies. For most of our history, children have started their internships when they were seven, not 27
  • experience shapes the brain. People often think that if some ability is located in a particular part of the brain, that must mean that it's "hard-wired" and inflexible. But, in fact, the brain is so powerful precisely because it is so sensitive to experience. It's as true to say that our experience of controlling our impulses make the prefrontal cortex develop as it is to say that prefrontal development makes us better at controlling our impulses. Our social and cultural life shapes our biology.
Vicki Davis

ECRP. Vol 4 No 1. Moving up the Grades: Relationship between Preschool Model and Later ... - 2 views

  • This trend is especially prevalent in programs that serve low-income children. Compensatory early childhood programs such as Head Start and state-sponsored pre-kindergarten for low-income families and preschoolers with special needs are designed to help children acquire skills needed for later school success.
  • Beginning in the 1980s, leading early childhood experts expressed concern about the wisdom of overly didactic, formal instructional practices for young children (e.g., Elkind, 1986; Zigler, 1987). They feared that short-term academic gains would be offset by long-term stifling of children's motivation and self-initiated learning. Later research suggests that these early concerns were warranted
  • They cautioned that early academic gains in reading skills associated with didactic instruction of preschoolers "come with some costs" that could have long-term negative effects on achievement.
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  • imilarly, when the highly didactic Direct Instructional System for the Teaching of Arithmetic and Reading (DISTAR) was discontinued after third grade, children's previously high achievement in reading and mathematics declined
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    Interesting study of children, preschool and later school success. "Children's later school success appears to have been enhanced by more active, child-initiated early learning experiences. Their progress may have been slowed by overly academic preschool experiences that introduced formalized learning experiences too early for most children's developmental status."
Vicki Davis

The Civil War Augmented Reality Project - 20 views

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    Civil War Augmented Reality project -- just in my inbox. You civil war buffs and history teachers may really get a "kick" out of this. Speaking of "kick" they are trying to get a grant that requires people to vote for them. Take a look: "This message is from a group of educators in Pennsylvania who have developed a Social Studies project that is in the process of raising a modest amount of money to build prototypes for gathering additional partners. Our project, the Civil War Augmented Reality Project, is intended to enhance the experiences of students visiting Civil War sites. It is also intended to increase attendance and revenue for historic sites by offering both "high" and "low" tech experiences to best reach the majority of the population. We feel that our project is fulfilling a need that educators, park workers, technology enthusiasts, and Civil War enthusiasts have discussed in the past: How can historic sites both raise educational value and public interest in their institutions though technology, while not alienating the non-technical history fans? We have worked hard on the answer, and are interested in promoting our creative solutions. We would like to make clear that the project is not intended solely for Pennsylvania. It is our hope that the project will expand to other venues, as we feel that we have the ability to use our ideas to enhance the experiences of all students at historic sites."
Marisa P

John Dewey: School and Society: Chapter 4: The Psychology of Elementary Education - 0 views

  • To refuse to try, to stick (97) blindly to tradition, because the search for the truth involves experimentation in the region of the unknown, is to refuse the only step which can introduce rational conviction into education.
    • Marisa P
       
      great quote
  • It should also be stated that practically it has not as yet been possible, in many cases, to act adequately upon the best ideas obtained, because of administrative difficulties, due to lack of funds —difficulties centering in the lack of a proper building and appliances, and in inability to pay the amounts necessary to secure the complete time of teachers in some important lines. Indeed, with the growth of the school in numbers, and in the age and maturity of pupils, it is becoming a grave question how long it is fair to the experiment to carry it on without more adequate facilities.
  • The aim, then, is not for the child to go to school as a place apart, but rather in the school so to recapitulate typical phases of his experience outside of school, as to enlarge, enrich, and gradually formulate it.
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  • Since the aim is not "covering the ground," but knowledge of social processes used to secure social results, no attempt is made to go over the entire history, in chronological order, of America
  • His experiments are modes of active doing—almost as much so as his play and games. Later he tries to find out how various materials or agencies are manipulated in order to give certain results. It is thus clearly distinguished from experimentation in the scientific sense—such as is appropriate to the secondary period —where the aim is the discovery of facts and verification of principles.
  • means to ends
  • These subjects are social in a double sense. They represent the tools which society has evolved in the past as the instruments of its intellectual pursuits. They represent the keys which will unlock to the child the wealth of social capital which lies beyond the possible range of his limited individual experience. While these two points of view must always give these arts a highly important place in education, they also make it necessary that certain conditions should be observed in their introduction and use. In a wholesale and direct application of the studies no account is taken of these conditions. The chief problem at present relating to the three R's is recognition of these conditions and the adaptation of work to them.
  • 1) The need that the child shall have in his own personal (105) and vital experience a varied background of contact and acquaintance with realities, social and physical. This is necessary to prevent symbols from becoming a purely second-hand and conventional substitute for reality.
  • The need that the more ordinary, direct, and personal experience of the child shall furnish problems, motives, and interests that necessitate recourse to books for their solution, satisfaction, and pursuit. Otherwise, the child approaches the book without intellectual hunger, without alertness, without a questioning attitude, and the result is the one so deplorably common: such abject dependence upon books as weakens and cripples vigor of thought and inquiry, combined with reading for mere random stimulation of fancy, emotional indulgence, and flight from the world of reality into a make-belief land.
  • The final use of the symbols, whether in reading, calculation, or composition, is more intelligent, less mechanical; more active, less passively receptive; more an increase of power, less a mere mode of enjoyment.
  • third period of elementary education
  • the second period
yc c

Reeko's Mad Scientist Science Experiments - Science Experiments for Kids - 14 views

  • Crazy Stats Number of insects born on the planet since this page loaded: 51,105 bugs Want more real-time statistics? Check out the Reeko's World Stats Counter.
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    Some cool projects here - Source of free science projects and experiments for parents, teachers, and children of all ages.
Nspire IT Jobs

Team Leader (Windows Server) Permanent ACT $95,000 - $120,000 + super - 2 views

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    What's the catch you ask? Well it's simply, all you need is the skill set/experience and in return we have this golden job opportunity. Salary is open and our client will offer an attractive package to suit. What we need from you: 1. 3-5 years experience working as a Technical Lead/Consultant within Federal Government or Consulting - Windows Server environment 2. Highly Protect or above Clearance - mandatory 3. Consulting experience and staff/team management 4. Ability to lead a small team and drive project milestones from inception to completion 5. available to commence work immediately or within 4-5 weeks 6. Support and/or engineer background 7. Technical industry certifications Note: only suitable applicants will be contacted. Thank you for your interest.
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    Spammer, what are you doing on an education list?
Dave Truss

25 Awesome Virtual Learning Experiences Online - Virtual Education Websites | AceOnline... - 0 views

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    Just because you're online doesn't mean that you can't experience the world first-hand - or as close to first-hand as possible. Here are websites that feature virtual learning experiences, exposing online visitors to everything from history to geography, astronomy to anatomy, literature to government.
Martin Burrett

Quality playground experience matters - 0 views

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    "Playtime, or break, periods can offer physical, cognitive, social and emotional benefits to primary school children, but those benefits are tied closely to the quality of the playground experience. Playground safety, access to play equipment, peer conflict resolution and quality engagement between adults and students are among the factors that contribute to a quality recess experience, new research from Oregon State University (USA) shows."
Martin Burrett

13 Science Experiments by @ICTmagic - 1 views

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    "A set of 13 fun science experiments that you can do in your classroom with easily available materials."
Tony Richards

The Atlantic Online | January/February 2010 | What Makes a Great Teacher? | Amanda Ripley - 14 views

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    "What Makes a Great Teacher? Image credit: Veronika Lukasova Also in our Special Report: National: "How America Can Rise Again" Is the nation in terminal decline? Not necessarily. But securing the future will require fixing a system that has become a joke. Video: "One Nation, On Edge" James Fallows talks to Atlantic editor James Bennet about a uniquely American tradition-cycles of despair followed by triumphant rebirths. Interactive Graphic: "The State of the Union Is ..." ... thrifty, overextended, admired, twitchy, filthy, and clean: the nation in numbers. By Rachael Brown Chart: "The Happiness Index" Times were tough in 2009. But according to a cool Facebook app, people were happier. By Justin Miller On August 25, 2008, two little boys walked into public elementary schools in Southeast Washington, D.C. Both boys were African American fifth-graders. The previous spring, both had tested below grade level in math. One walked into Kimball Elementary School and climbed the stairs to Mr. William Taylor's math classroom, a tidy, powder-blue space in which neither the clocks nor most of the electrical outlets worked. The other walked into a very similar classroom a mile away at Plummer Elementary School. In both schools, more than 80 percent of the children received free or reduced-price lunches. At night, all the children went home to the same urban ecosystem, a zip code in which almost a quarter of the families lived below the poverty line and a police district in which somebody was murdered every week or so. Video: Four teachers in Four different classrooms demonstrate methods that work (Courtesy of Teach for America's video archive, available in February at teachingasleadership.org) At the end of the school year, both little boys took the same standardized test given at all D.C. public schools-not a perfect test of their learning, to be sure, but a relatively objective one (and, it's worth noting, not a very hard one). After a year in Mr. Taylo
Zhang Luke

The Impact of Quantum Learning - 0 views

  • The FADE model—Foundation, Atmosphere, Design, Environment—creates the context of Quantum Learning. We know when the context is strong, it 'fades' into the background and creates the structure for learning to occur.
  • The Quantum Learning framework for student learning is expressed in 5 Tenets of Learning: Everything Speaks: Everything, from surroundings and tone of voice to distribution of materials, conveys an important message about learning. Everything is On Purpose: Everything we do has an intended purpose. Experience Before Label: Students make meaning and transfer new content into long-term memory by connecting to existing schema. Learning is best facilitated when students experience the information in some aspect before they acquire labels for what is being learned. Acknowledge Every Effort: Acknowledgment of each student's effort encourages learning and experimentation. If It's Worth Learning, It's Worth Celebrating!: Celebration provides feedback regarding progress and increases positive emotional associations with the learning.
  • Quantum Learning
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  • Quantum Learning
  • Enroll—Use teacher moves that capture the interest, curiosity and attention of the students. Experience—Create or elicit a common experience, or tap into common knowledge to which all learners can relate. Experience before Label creates schema on which to build new content. Learn & Label—Present, sequence and define the main content. Students learn labels, thinking skills and academic strategies. Students add new content to their existing schema. Demonstrate—Give students an opportunity to demonstrate and apply their new learning. Review and Reflect—Use a variety of effective, multi-sensory review strategies and empower students to process their new content through reflection. Celebration—Acknowledge the learning. It cements the content and adds a sense of completion.
Vicki Davis

Hunkin's Experiments (over 200 home experiments) - 1 views

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    Cool website with home experiments.
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    Cool experiement site that I'll be using this summer with my children.
Steve J. Moore

InformIT: The Business of Understanding > Ode to Ignorance - 1 views

    • Steve J. Moore
       
      This is what all of public education is struggling with right now. How do we legitimize the asking of questions and the pursuit of understanding rather than the bubbling in of "answers" we don't really get?
  • I'm a success when I do something that I myself can truly understand
  • the most essential prerequisite to understanding is to be able to admit when you don't understand something
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  • Giving yourself permission not to know everything will make you relax
  • preconceptions
    • Steve J. Moore
       
      In technical writing, we must sort out all prior knowledge and place it before us and then step away from it so we can recreate it anew.
  • binary choice: I could teach about what I already knew, or I could teach about what I would like to learn
  • My expertise has always been my ignorance, my admission and acceptance of not knowing. My work comes from questions, not from answers.
  • The focus on bravado and competition in our society has helped breed into us the idea that it is impolitic, or at least impolite, to say, "I don't understand."
  • Understanding should be thought of as a continuum from data to wisdom
  • at this end of the spectrum, understanding gets increasingly personal until it is so intimate that it cannot truly be shared with others
    • Steve J. Moore
       
      So, is "technical writing" about creating information out of data (a set message) or structuring data so that others can interpret their own information from it (a personalizable message)?
  • "One of the best ways of communicating knowledge is through stories, because good stories are richly textured with details, allowing the narrative to convey a stable ground on which to build the experience."
  • Without context, information cannot exist, and the context in question must relate not only to the data's environment (where it came from, why it's being communicated, how it's arranged, etc.), but also from the context and intent of the person interpreting it.
  • rganization creates, or at least, shapes meaning
    • Steve J. Moore
       
      How do we tell "data" from "info" in our teaching practice? What does this paragraph tell you about assessing student learning and work?
  • Technology forms a near-disastrous distraction from real information and knowledge issues.
    • Steve J. Moore
       
      What is it about technology or tools that distract us from teaching kids how to learn skills in a "technical" setting?
  • complexity
  • education is so notoriously difficult: because one cannot count on one person's knowledge to transfer to another
  • This is what education should be about, but too often it is only focused on information—and worse, data—simply because those are the only forms that are easy to measure.
    • Steve J. Moore
       
      THIS.
  • Knowledge
  • experience design
  • discover processes for creating these experiences
  • Without the opportunity, willingness, or openness to interact on a personal level, much of the power of these experiences are not made available to us.
  • Wisdom is as personal as understanding gets—intimate, in fact—and it is a difficult level for many people to reach
  • sharing of wisdom is next to impossible.
  • What can only be shared is the experiences that form the building blocks for wisdom, but these need to be communicated with even more understanding of the personal contexts of our audience than with information or knowledge.
  • We cannot trick ourselves into becoming wise, and we cannot allow someone else to do it.
    • Steve J. Moore
       
      What is one piece of wisdom you have learned about yourself in your own learning?
  • we need to expose people to the processes of introspection, pattern-matching, contemplation, retrospection, and interpretation so that they will have the beginnings of the tools to create wisdom
kim tufts

Looking for people to share their web 2.0 teaching experience - 151 views

Hi - I use diigo for my classroom. I teach 6-8 computer studies and we work on Public Service Announcements for a media literacy project. I make lists of the websites I would like the students to ...

web2.0 pedagogy design

Dennis OConnor

Online Learning (Rowman & Littlefield Education) - 8 views

  • "Online education programs at the high school, undergraduate, and graduate levels represent one of the fastest growing trends in education today. However, online classes are completely different from any other educational endeavor and require a new set of skills. Bowman, who currently teaches online undergraduate and graduate courses, and her fellow contributors provide an excellent down-to-earth guide for anyone who is thinking about or participating in an online education program. This well-written and understandable book covers some theories of learning styles but focuses on the nuts-and-bolts skills needed to be successful. Each chapter explores a particular aspect of learning online and gives practical advice about how to participate successfully in an online learning environment. Verdict: Bowman and the other contributors have several years' experience helping students learn online, and their perspectives make this a practical and helpful guide to a prevalent and growing practice."— June 2010, Library Journal Starred Review
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    I've known Leslie Bowman for over a decade. She's a great online teacher. Her book is filled with the wisdom of experience. Check it out! ~ Dennis "Online education programs at the high school, undergraduate, and graduate levels represent one of the fastest growing trends in education today. However, online classes are completely different from any other educational endeavor and require a new set of skills. Bowman, who currently teaches online undergraduate and graduate courses, and her fellow contributors provide an excellent down-to-earth guide for anyone who is thinking about or participating in an online education program. This well-written and understandable book covers some theories of learning styles but focuses on the nuts-and-bolts skills needed to be successful. Each chapter explores a particular aspect of learning online and gives practical advice about how to participate successfully in an online learning environment. Verdict: Bowman and the other contributors have several years' experience helping students learn online, and their perspectives make this a practical and helpful guide to a prevalent and growing practice."- June 2010, Library Journal Starred Review "
Vicki Davis

What are creative ways we can create symbiotic learning relationships between different... - 2 views

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    This is a fascinating conversation about connecting, symbiotic relationships and more with some powerful, spot on answers. The teachers in our current Flat Classroom 12-1 cohort are amazing (and we have another cohort starting soon -- here's what we've been talking about this week. "This is happening now. Live Mocha and other sites have tandem learning - each learner teaches the other a different language. In my classroom, I have the older students teach younger students about computer hardware. But we could be doing so much more. Some professors like Dr. Leigh Zeitz (his students have served as expert advisors) and Dr. Eva Brown (her students helped run Eracism last year) are flattening their college classrooms with preservice teachers by having the teachers connect with high school and younger classrooms. These preservice teachers are understanding the nuances of the global collaborative classroom before graduating from college! There are so many ways we could be creating these types of learning relationships. This week, let's publicly talk about our ideas and also experiences in creating these experiences. We can learn more and do more in this area and technology opens up limitless possibilities. What do you think?"
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