Group items tagged

I agree with Audrey Watters -- we need a way to QUESTION TED talks. Good ideas worth spreading are worth interrogating and discussing. There is NO platform for that and a growing issue, I think that TED MUST address if it is going to live long and prosper. Good educators, good leaders always question and are curious. We try things out and we wonder. We want solutions but solutions packaged in a cute 15 minute presentation aren't ever really as simple as they seem. There is a different between a sound byte and a bit of something I can REALLY use.  I agree with Audrey - READ her post. My worry is that we're spreading ideas that haven't, perhaps, been tested and gone through full examination. IF we didn't learn anything from the Mortensen "3 cups of tea" fiasco then education deserves to be mislead again. We should examine and have transparency with the speeches and be able to continue the conversation. "But I have questions. I have questions about this history of schooling as Mitra (and others) tell it, about colonialism and neo-colonialism. I have questions about the funding of the initial "Hole in the Wall" project (it came from NIIT, an India-based "enterprise learning solution" company that offers 2- and 4-year IT diplomas). I have questions about these commercial interests in "child-driven education" (As Ellen Seitler asks, "can the customer base be expanded to reach people without a computer, without literacy, and without any formal teaching whatsoever?"). I have questions about the research from the "Hole in the Wall" project - the research, not the 15 minute TED spiel about it. I have questions about girls' lack of participation in the kiosks. I have questions about project's usage of retired British schoolteachers - "grannies" - to interact with Indian children via Skype. I have questions about community support. I have questions about what happens when we dismantle public institutions like schools - questions about

Collaboration between teachers after discussion at ISTE. I'll use this as a jumping off point at a "Teaching Beyond the Classroom Walls" workship I'm giving.

This from Angela Maiers - two videos that share the concept of Ideapaint. This video shows you how to do it. I need to show you pictures of my wall - I wanted to "wiki" the walls of my room and used brightly colored duct tape to designate areas where the students could share information. Perhaps with ideapaint I could do something similar. I love this idea. I think that perhaps next year (or maybe even over Break) I'll use ideapaint to make my whole room writeable - oh so cool!)

Make your whole room a place to write! What a great idea!

This looks absolutely amazing. Every classroom should have at least one wall of this stuff.

Dr Sugata Mitra on how children teach themselves. I've not been able to stop thinking about his ideas since seeing a video lecture a few days ago...shocking in a provocatively inspiring way.

Forget whining about access, never mind the slow speed of change, get over the obstacles! Go after meaningful results. Engage and empower students. Be a leader and a role model.

create any size wall posters from any size images Totally Free To Use! Upload an image from your computer and choose how many sheets wide you would like your poster to be once printed

In a huge turn of irony, at least if one considers how Bill Gates began his programming career, a spat over Office 365 coming to the ipad and Apple's desire to get 30% commissions for anyone signing up for the service if it originates on the ipad, may mean that office 365 won't come to the ipad at all. The evolution of the platform to tablet devices is critical to software companies and yet, many balk at the steep cut some like Apple take. It is interesting to watch, but there is a bigger issue here. Microsoft continues to have the best Office suite, but, as with Google Drive, many move because of a lack of ubiquity and collaborative ability driven by the walls erected by Microsoft in their traditional, but understandable proprietary system. I have to think that there are bigger issues at stake for Microsoft here. These are interesting times, to say the least, as I sit here watching Batman on my Apple TV streaming via the wifi and read this article on my ipad as I blog in the den using a bluetooth logitech keyboard.

I have some sample "Magic erase sheets" in my classroom and LOVE THEM. You can stick them to ANY wall. They make them gridded or plain and they stick everywhere. I've been using dry erase boards but the problem was they wouldn't stick. So, now, I can use these and stick them anywhere. I love them. I'd get a box of sheets and use them in the classroom. Very cool.

"Whilst unpacking the idea of Conscious Competence and Skillset, Toolset, Mindset with teachers, we came to realise many of them were having difficulty applying these concepts to their own learning, beyond a superficial level (assumption one - not all teachers are reflective learners). We found this quite provocative and decided to create a visual on our Leadership Provocation Wall."

Displays can take up vast areas of wall space and many hours of adults' time, therefore teachers and leaders must be sure of the impact that they are having on learning so that what is on display is justified and not simply a waste of time and space.  Put simply, before a display goes up, we must ask: What will this display do to improve outcomes for children?  For this to be answered with any sort of reliability, the question must be framed within a sound knowledge of how children learn and what learning is - a change in long-term memory...

Spin-off from the Facebook group with the same name which some teachers created last year. Most of us are teachers at Escuelas Oficiales de Idiomas, and we like to share ideas, links and debate in Facebook, but we thought that all these posts would be better organized if we had a group so they wouldn't be lost among other entries in our personal Facebook wall. When the group started to grow (there are 92 of us already), we realized that we were missing some kind of categorization, so we thought a blog would do the trick. And here we are. We choose the ideas that are more popular among the posts in our group in Facebook and write a post here.

A great new resource from the creator of 'A Maths Dictionary for Kids'. Download and print beautifully designed and wonderfully useful maths posters on a good range of topics. Your classroom walls will never be the same again. http://ictmagic.wikispaces.com/Maths

When looking for graphics like for Classroom Rules, I like to do image searches on Google because you can usually find some very brief summaries. Here are some short ideas for those of you working on your wall posters now. Simple is better.

Below are examples of some interesting infographics. Click on the link below each picture to see the complete infographic. At the bottom of this page you'll find how to search for infographics. Find infographics that will complement your instruction. These look great on classroom walls when they've been printed and laminated.

A great idea and a good resource which uses a projector and a webcam to make an interactive wall or floor display. The webcam 'watches' what the children are doing to the display and the animations react. There are a limited number of activities in the free version. http://ictmagic.wikispaces.com/ICT+%26+Web+Tools

A beautifully made virtual word wall and sentence maker. Use the default words or add your own. http://ictmagic.wikispaces.com/English

This question wall is a powerpoint that you can use on your interactive white board. It looks like it took quite some time to set up. This is one you want to download and keep in your resources folder for use when you want to adapt it for your course.

I'm officially clueless and haven't even seen one of the nominations for Best Picture. Here's the full list of Oscar Nominations for those of you (like me) who need to get a little pop culture into your life. These are the things many of our kids talk about so they become important to me. Nominees for best Picture: American Hustle, Captain Phillips, Dallas Buyers Club, Gravity, Her, Nebraska, Philomena, 12 Years a Slave, and the Wolf of Wall Street. Many of these are a bit dark (understatement) and thus may not be something I choose to watch, but we can at least be familiar with the themes and what they are.

Erin Klein shares her principles for setting up an effective classroom design with tips especially relevant to elementary teachers. Filling the wall full of charts and clutter from floor to ceiling isn't only a problem with the fire marshall but may actually be making it harder for students to learn. Listen to this awesome conversation to learn more.

Edistorm is brainstorming without the bored room. Using sticky notes on a boardroom wall as a metaphor, users brainstorm ideas online and make better decisions.