Group items tagged

Abstract: One of the goals of teacher education is to develop each preservice teacher into a reflective educator. A reflective educator is a lifelong learner who perceives every experience as an opportunity for growth, change, and development of understanding. Written by one of my former professors at UCF, Dr. Kay Allen.

Florida counties fund STEM professional development for teachers.

To enable teachers to focus on their growth in their profession.

ProDev in Florida

There is a great deal of enthusiasm for the use of games in formal educational contexts; however, there is a notable and problematic lack of studies that make use of replicable study designs to empirically link games to learning (Young, et al., 2012). This paper documents the iterative design and development of an educationally focused game, Compareware in Flash and for the iPad. We also report on a corresponding pilot study of 146 Grades 1 and 2 students playing the game, a paper and pencil related activity and completing a pre- and post-test. The paper outlines preliminary findings from the play testing, which included high levels of student engagement, an approaching statistical improvement from pre- to post-test, and a discussion of the improvements that needed to be made to the game following the pilot study.

"Using iPads in the classrom" article gives an overview on how to incorporate relevant games, apps, etc.

This is the section of the Minnesota Dept. of Education's website called "Educator Excellence," furnished with resourses to help educators succeed such as Early Learning Resources, Professional Development and Teacher Programs. Worth taking a look at to compare with FL Dept. of Ed's website.

4Teachers.org works to help you integrate technology into your classroom by offering online tools and resources. This site helps teachers locate and create ready-to-use Web lessons, quizzes, rubrics and classroom calendars. There are also tools for student use. Discover valuable professional development resources addressing issues such as equity, ELL, technology planning, and at-risk or special-needs students.

This research article provides an overview of how transformative learning experiences can be created through instructional design.  The aim is to use instruction to make learning more experiential, personally relevant and transformative to students.  The authors explain a framework for providing transformative learning experiences, including several indicators that fall into the categories of developing personal meaning, competence with the subject and relationships.  The authors also present guidelines for designing these experiences, including applying design fundamentals, crafting the learning experience and teaching and facilitating to inspire learning. A quick, but worth while read! Wilson, B. G., & Parrish, P. (2011). Transformative learning experience: Aim higher, gain more. Educational Technology, 51 (2), 10-15.

These lesson plans, based on the Florida Early Learning and Developmental Standards for Four-Year-Olds (2011), are designed to help develop the skills that four-year-olds should know and be able to do by the end of their prekindergarten year. There are targeted Standards for Four-Year-Olds included in each lesson plan.

State of Florida publication to support RTI strategies. Good support for differentiating education, developing learning progressions and formative assessments

An article by NEA President Dennis Van Roekel covering areas including: "How Are They Developed?" "What do the Common Core State Standards Cover?" "What Is Special About These Standards?" "What Can The Standards Accomplish?" "What Happens After the Standards Are Adopted in States?" "What Else is Needed to Improve Education?"

Thursday, 09 January 2014 20:47 If your learners aren't performing as well on their post-training evaluations as you'd hoped, you may want to try an e-Learning development technique to help them remember - content chunking. Maybe you've never heard this term, or you've heard it mentioned and wondered exactly how it works, where it came from and how to apply it to your e-Learning development.

Virtual Reality and Nursing School

Good article on the need to develop/ sustain an interest in "how technology works," through technology education targeted at early high school students. The Australian Computer Society, mentioned in the article, "strives for ICT to be recognised as a driver of innovation in our society . . . ." Link shared by Tony Richards from Diigo group, Ed Tech Crew.

Enjoy the lesson plans, professional development opportunities, and online events all Smithsonian Educational Way

An outline of basic computers skills, and at what grade level students should be introduced to the skill, developing the skill, or using the skill. Great springboard for keeping in mind what skills students will have for your lessons and technology integration projects.

Several tips from John Van de Walle about teaching measurement. I have his book from one of my undergraduate methods courses for teaching math, and I LOVE it! He's got some stuff for teaching math hands on and recognizing patterns!

Webcast in five days, great resources to help celebrate Constitution Day and develop habits of citizenship in a new generation of Americans, presented by the National Constitution Center. Lesson Plans and Activities for Kids from the National Constitution Center.

This is a great resource for creating centers and improving reading instruction. Although this is not an interactive website, it is very user friendly. The website can be searched by grade level or by reading component. You can print out the resources, laminate them and save yourself a lot of time for making center activities.

The Florida Center for Reading Research (FCRR) is a multidisciplinary research center at Florida State University. FCRR explores all aspects of reading research-basic research into literacy-related skills for typically developing readers and those who struggle, studies of effective prevention and intervention, and psychometric work on formative assessment.

Great websites for resources on reading. You can get great lesson plans for intervention.

An awesome resource to share with students! As a teacher I regularly refer to Bloom's Taxonomy when I am planning or developing questions for my students to ponder and respond to. This resource provides a great explanation of the thinking processes that the learner should experience at each of the levels in the taxonomy. The chart offers sample questions in very student-friendly language. This will be helpful as I encourage my students to stretch their questioning and thinking from the knowledge level through the higher levels.