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Best tools and reflections to introduce creative and collaborative learning in our lessons... especially in ESL. Super cool website I found just "surfing" the web and I think it could be of some use to students interested in fun, creative ways to learn as well as ESL!! This is like a board where interesting articles related to innovative education are posted! Enjoy!!!

The University of Austin Texas posted an article on their website talking about the innovative approach English professors John Rumrich and Coleman Hutichson created for teaching Milton's poem Paradise Lost. The two wanted to incorporate multimedia uses into the teaching of the poem in order to enhance the reading and listening experience, as well as actively engage students into incorporating their meaning of the texts. The website they created has the poem being read aloud be various voices while the text itself is highlighted on the screen. Each line or group of lines has links to them that a student can follow which provide images, websites, or comments from students and teachers expressing their interpretation of the lines or ideas and questions prompted from them. The website Rumrich and Hutichson created have had around 25,000 hits world wide, and have inspired similar projects dedicated to the poems Leaves of Grass and Song of Myself. If poetry were to be taught in high schools with technology in mind, students would be more likely to actively participate in reading and discussing poetry then if it were just read as any other text.

let's try to link more directly to writing/learning to write.

This is an RSA animation of a lecture given by Sir Ken Robinson, a proponent of creativity and innovation in education (see http://sirkenrobinson.com/skr/who for more information about him). This is an interesting and often humorous look at some general trends in modern public education. Though there is nothing that directly relates to teaching writing, there is much here that may contribute to the topic of failure, and to the importance of learning in social contexts. Robinson concludes that collaboration is the stuff of growth, it is our natural learning environment.

This video is a very entertaining whiteboard animation of a talk given at RSA (described on their website, http://www.thersa.org, as "an enlightenment organisation committed to finding innovative practical solutions to today's social challenges") by author Dan Pink (for more, see http://www.danpink.com/about). The question he poses, is "what motivates us?" The common belief that people will work harder for a bigger reward is found to be true only when the work involves simple, mechanical skills. When the work requires even rudimentary cognitive skills, a surprising reversal occurs: the larger the reward, the poorer the performance. Pink states that engagement requires three factors: autonomy, mastery, and purpose. Though his presentation is addressed to the business world, I think that he's really addressing fundamental aspects of human nature that can be applied in education as well. For example, his claim that crappy products are the result when profit is separated from purpose, can be applied to education as well, when grades are separated from meaningful learning.

Great video and surpassingly simple. We do better work, when we are doing work towards something that interests us and that we are voluntarily invested in. That's not to say that we are invested in it voluntarily from the beginning, but that as we invest ourselves the reward is more personally gratifying. We are made happy by getting better at a task and mastering that task, we are made happy by engaging in abstract cognitive ideas that interest us. Money can not buy happiness, it can only buy a lack of cognitive effort.

In this TED talk video Dave Eggers is talking enthusiastically about free tutoring centers where students receive one-on-one attention from either more experienced peers or teachers who volunteer to go to these centers at least two hours a week. He backs up the need of having individual help by research data (I would be interested to see the primary research) which say that 35-40 hours a year one-on-one attention students can get one grade level higher. The first center was opened to offer help in English and writing. Although there was an issue of trust at first to visit the center, with time and some advertising the center got packed with students. They even published their own writing in a form of a book, which is inspiring as it honors their work, hardship, creativity and thoughts. Now they have 1400 students in the center and they want to grow nationwide. Also, they have a website (http://www.onceuponaschool.org/) where there is somebody to show guidance to those who are interested in starting their own learning center in their town (for their public school students). To me, this is a great idea to inspire students and keep their motivation going in a particular subject. I wonder if they have done research and found out students of what achievement tend to go there, is it possible that those who are already into writing, science, languages, etc, are the ones visiting these centers. I also wonder if the volunteers who are there to help receive any kind training about certain methodology or ground rules.