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Barbara Lindsey

Annals of Education: Most Likely to Succeed: Reporting & Essays: The New Yorker - 0 views

  • At this age, when kids show their engagement it’s not like the way we show our engagement,
  • And a good teacher doesn’t interpret that as bad behavior. You can see how hard it is to teach new teachers this idea, because the minute you teach them to have regard for the student’s perspective, they think you have to give up control of the classroom.”
  • Almost every time a child says something, she responds to it, which is what we describe as teacher sensitivity,” Hamre said
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  • Of all the teacher elements analyzed by the Virginia group, feedback—a direct, personal response by a teacher to a specific statement by a student—seems to be most closely linked to academic success.
  • “Mind you, that’s not great feedback,” Hamre said. “High-quality feedback is where there is a back-and-forth exchange to get a deeper understanding.” The perfect way to handle that moment would have been for the teacher to pause and pull out Venisha’s name card, point to the letter “V,” show her how different it is from “C,” and make the class sound out both letters.
  • “On the other hand, she could have completely ignored the girl, which happens a lot,” Hamre went on. “The other thing that happens a lot is the teacher will just say, ‘You’re wrong.’ Yes-no feedback is probably the predominant kind of feedback, which provides almost no information for the kid in terms of learning.”
  • “You know, a better way to handle this would be to anchor something around the kids,” Pianta said. “She should ask, ‘What makes you feel happy?’ The kids could answer. Then she could say, ‘Show me your face when you have that feeling? O.K., what does So-and-So’s face look like? Now tell me what makes you sad. Show me your face when you’re sad. Oh, look, her face changed!’ You’ve basically made the point. And then you could have the kids practice, or something.
  • Here was a teacher who read out sentences, in a spelling test, and every sentence came from her own life—“I went to a wedding last week”—which meant she was missing an opportunity to say something that engaged her students. Another teacher walked over to a computer to do a PowerPoint presentation, only to realize that she hadn’t turned it on. As she waited for it to boot up, the classroom slid into chaos.
  • “In a group like this, the standard m.o. would be: he’s at the board, broadcasting to the kids, and has no idea who knows what he’s doing and who doesn’t know,” Pianta said. “But he’s giving individualized feedback. He’s off the charts on feedback.” Pianta and his team watched in awe.
  • Educational-reform efforts typically start with a push for higher standards for teachers—that is, for the academic and cognitive requirements for entering the profession to be as stiff as possible.
  • But after you’ve watched Pianta’s tapes, and seen how complex the elements of effective teaching are, this emphasis on book smarts suddenly seems peculiar.
  • In teaching, the implications are even more profound. They suggest that we shouldn’t be raising standards. We should be lowering them, because there is no point in raising standards if standards don’t track with what we care about. Teaching should be open to anyone with a pulse and a college degree—and teachers should be judged after they have started their jobs, not before. That means that the profession needs to start the equivalent of Ed Deutschlander’s training camp
Barbara Lindsey

Educational Leadership:How Teachers Learn:Learning with Blogs and Wikis - 0 views

  • Teachers rarely get to self-select learning opportunities, pursue professional passions, or engage in meaningful, ongoing conversations about instruction.
  • Although most of my colleagues recognize that business-driven reform efforts are likely to have little effect on student learning, they are largely unwilling to challenge the status quo. "Nothing's going to change," they insist. "This is how professional development has always been done.
    • Barbara Lindsey
       
      Do you agree with this statement?
  • First, there's a new emphasis on the importance of collaborative learning among members of close-knit teams in schools. School leaders are beginning to believe in the human capacity of their faculties and are structuring opportunities for teachers to reflect on instruction together. These joint efforts are targeted and specific, increasing educators' motivation and engagement.
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  • Second, digital tools now help fulfill Elmore's desire for fresh "portals through which new knowledge about teaching and learning can enter schools." Specifically, thousands of accomplished educators are now writing blogs about teaching and learning, bringing transparency to both the art and the science of their practice. In every content area and grade level and in schools of varying sizes and from different geographic locations, educators are actively reflecting on instruction, challenging assumptions, questioning policies, offering advice, designing solutions, and learning together. And all this collective knowledge is readily available for free.
  • Blogs have introduced a measure of differentiation and challenge to my professional learning plan that had long been missing. I wrestle over the characteristics of effective professional development with Patrick Higgins (http://chalkdust101.wordpress.com) and the elements of high-quality instruction for middle grades students with Dina Strasser (http://theline.edublogs.org). Scott McLeod (www.dangerouslyirrelevant.org) forces me to think about driving school change from the system level; and Nancy Flanagan (http://teacherleaders.typepad.com/teacher_in_a_strange_land) helps me understand the connections between education policy and classroom practice. John Holland (http://circle-time.blogspot.com) and Larry Ferlazzo, Brian Crosby, and Alice Mercer (http://inpractice.edublogs.org) open my eyes to the challenges of working in high-needs communities.
  • What's more, the readers of my own blog challenge my thinking in provocative comments day after day.
  • Start by using a feed reader as a learning tool for a few weeks. Find several blogs that target educators in your grade level or content area and organize them with an aggregator of your choice. The search for blogs probably best begins at the SupportBlogging wiki (http://supportblogging.com), which includes a list of hundreds of blogs broken down into specific categories, such as education blogs, principal blogs, teacher blogs, classroom blogs, and librarian blogs.
  • Tell others how much you enjoy having your thinking stretched by the blogs you read.
  • Share your feed reader with your learning team and begin to explore together. Ask peers about the most interesting articles they're reading. Make it a point to talk with a colleague about a shared blog post at least twice each week.
  • Although reading blogs is the best way to start incorporating 21st-century tools into your plan for professional learning, writing your own blog about instruction can be equally powerful.
  • The difference between a wiki and a blog is that wikis are designed for collaboration among groups of users. Anyone with the shared wiki password can edit the content on a wiki at any time. Wikis also provide discussion boards for every page, enabling users to engage in ongoing conversations about their developing project. Some teams of teachers—such as the teachers creating Digitally Speaking (http://digitallyspeaking.pbwiki.com)—use wikis to reflect on the characteristics of effective instruction. Others use them to create warehouses of materials among teachers working in the same content area (http://cesa5mathscience.wikispaces.com) or as a source for teachers and teams creating entire classroom textbooks (http://anatowiki.wetpaint.com/?t=anon).
  • Consider finding a few peers to write about teaching and learning together. Divide your topic of interest into subtitles or sections. Teachers could be responsible for creating content for their area of expertise; they could generate key ideas, add links to external resources, upload appropriate documents, or embed interesting videos. Then allow users who are fluent with language to polish your final text. Find members who are sticklers for spelling and grammar and turn them loose. On a wiki, the writing process is far less intimidating than on a blog because you're not responsible for an entire selection all by yourself. Instead, you'll reflect with colleagues—which in and of itself is a powerful form of professional growth.
  • Digital tools have also changed who I am as an instructor because I've introduced these tools to my students. Together, we use feed readers to explore collections of student blogs (www.pageflakes.com/wferriter/20982438) and organize resources on topics connected to our curriculum, such as biofuels and global warming (www.pageflakes.com/wferriter/22534539). We write a classroom blog reflecting on current events (http://guysread.typepad.com/theblurb) and use wikis to collaborate around content (http://carbonfighters.pbwiki.com). I teach my students to challenge the thinking of digital peers with their comments—and to enjoy the challenges that others make to their own electronic thinking. At the same time, my students are learning to create, communicate, and collaborate—and to manage and evaluate information found online.
  • Blogs and wikis are changing who we are as learners, preparing us for a future driven by peer production and networked learning.
Barbara Lindsey

2¢ Worth » It's Not just about Motivation - 0 views

  • Our focus should not be on using technology to make our students easier to teach.  It should be on crafting learning experiences, within networked, digital, and information-abundant learning environments, where students are learning to teach themselves, and begin to cultivate a mutually common cultural and environmental context for for their lives.
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    "Our focus should not be on using technology to make our students easier to teach. It should be on crafting learning experiences, within networked, digital, and information-abundant learning environments, where students are learning to teach themselves, and begin to cultivate a mutually common cultural and environmental context for for their lives."
Katherine Ruddick

Teaching Channel: Videos, Lesson Plans and Other Resources for Teachers - 1 views

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    Yes, I was surprised too... a teaching channel! No FL-specific resources, but the ELA materials and strategies could definitely be applied to our classes.
dorie conlon

American Counsil on the Teaching of Foreign Languages - 0 views

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    "The American Council on the Teaching of Foreign Languages (ACTFL) is the only national organization dedicated to the improvement and expansion of the teaching and learning of all languages at all levels of instruction. ACTFL is an individual membership organization of more than 9,000 foreign language educators and administrators from elementary through graduate education, as well as government and industry."
Barbara Lindsey

CITE Journal Article: If We Didn't Have the Schools We Have Today, Would We Create the... - 0 views

  • chools resist change, because they are designed to resist change. They are cultural organizations, and cultural organizations are not supposed to change. Cultures are designed to preserve existing solutions to problems—considerable social and economic capital goes into developing culturally valued solutions to problems and change is risky.   Stability reduces risk—“change is bad”—and our schools have been designed to focus on the knowledge transmission mode of learning.
  • This is just what many teachers and faculty members are saying, “We don’t have time for this. We are good teachers, and we can continue to serve our students well with the instructional strategies we have always used. Besides, with the time demands on us, we don’t have time to learn this new technology. As good teachers, we are doing well with our students and we don’t need to go through this transition.”
  • The learning revolution is about constructivist learning, and these new communication and information technologies allow us to facilitate constructive learning in ways that we could never do before. They are becoming cognitive amplifiers that will accelerate learning and the development of new knowledge in the same ways that machines accelerated production during the industrial revolution.
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  • The third reason schools will be driven to change is that we have now reached a point where work is learning . Work in the workplace is learning.   Work in the larger community surrounding the schools is about learning every day.   It's not just about putting bolts on things anymore.
  • The fourth force is that learning communities have no boundaries .   In a networked learning community, schools and classrooms will simply become nodes in a larger learning environment.
  • The fifth factor affecting schools is that the home is becoming a learning place .
  • The final force driving change in schools is kid power.  
  • New learning teams are emerging, which consist of college faculty, the teacher candidates, and the in-service teachers. The high school students themselves are sometimes members of these teams, developing new applications of technology. They are becoming learning communities, “communities of practice,” as some would call it.   And in these learning communities, the distinctions between “teacher” and “student” no longer serve us well. That is why I believe education is rapidly moving toward new learning environments that will have no teachers or students—just learners with different levels and areas of expertise collaboratively constructing new knowledge.
  • There is no way for the faculty or teachers to collaboratively learn and construct new knowledge in this system—no way for them to know whether the knowledge that might have been acquired by the student teacher is actually the knowledge the student teacher then conveys as a teacher to the K-12 students. Few, if any, of the educators know anything about what the K-12 students might be doing with any of the knowledge they may have acquired after they leave the K-12 classroom.   This is a linear, fragmented teaching approach—the epitome of the factory-era assembly line approach to teaching and learning—which defeats any opportunity for collaborative learning or feedback across the various levels of teaching and teacher preparation.
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    expert learners (we call them teachers, educators, scientists, and researchers today) are going to be recognized for their ability to learn and help others learn, as they continue to construct new knowledge and develop their own expertise.
Barbara Lindsey

Wesley Fryer: Teaching and Learning - 0 views

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    Fabulous resources from Wesley Fryer.
Barbara Lindsey

One Laptop One Child | Scholastic.com - 0 views

  • quietly tell select students about the policy
    • Barbara Lindsey
       
      and which students then get to use this resource? What of issues of equity?
  • “We’re going to invite 20 seniors [this school year] selected by teachers,” he says. We don’t want the computers to be a distraction.”
    • Barbara Lindsey
       
      So is this the AP version of digital access?
  • In Forsyth, the district uses radius servers for centralized network management. This device identifies the districts’ computers, allowing them access to the network according to their status. Laptops that don’t pass this test are put on the district’s virtual lan. This gives them online access while keeping the user behind the district’s firewall and within its Internet filters. It keeps these computers—and their users—away from the district’s network.
    • Barbara Lindsey
       
      Sounds like a resonable solution
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  • The Consolidated High School District 230 in Orland Park, Illinois, has taken a step in this direction by allowing students to bring their computers to school and connect to the Internet, but not log on to the district’s network, says Darrell Walery, director of technology.Stay Away from My Networkwalery sums up the struggle in this issue succinctly. He says tech directors who have been teachers favor the experiment, while those who have business backgrounds blanche at the thought. “My role as technology director is to mediate this exact issue,” he adds.
    • Barbara Lindsey
       
      Why we need more IT who have been teachers or really understand the difference between a business and educational environment.
  • Murray’s Pennsylvania district scans each notebook before it can connect to the school server. Clean Server antivirus software is one of the tools it uses to avoid “malware” and worms. Also, the district’s scans point users to free patches and service packs that are needed to keep security up to date.
  • Compatibility seems to be less of an issue each day as more online applications become available.
  • schools can turn to the growing number of free online tools available to all.
  • Classroom management is another potential worry. If college professors feel like students sometime use their lectures as a quiet place to fool around or get other work done (see sidebar), then what chance do K–12 teachers have of getting—and keeping—25 students on task?Teachers in Pennsylvania use classroom management software (a small software download) to keep control. Murray says this program allows teachers to take complete control of each laptop if they want, pushing out their lesson to each screen, blocking all work with a single button, and even using the pcs as glorified personal response devices.
  • The last big hurdle to make this policy a reality in more districts is one that can’t be cleared with a simple software program. It is instilling the idea that teachers will no longer be the dominant information delivery for each class.
  • “How do you get teachers prepared to teach in a classroom where everyone is a teacher?
  • “Professional development is key. We have instructional technology specialists at every school. These folks are not the fix-it people but certified teachers [usually from that same building]. It’s a peer.”
  • “There’s an explosion of social activities” that computers enable, Murray says,  from talking with people worldwide to keeping in touch with like-minded groups through Twitter to having students take virtual field trips halfway around the world, or just down the street. Science students can do an online dissection with step-by-step analysis, or math problems where a simulation can help illustrate a difficult-to-grasp concept, he adds.
  • Teachers need to think about teaching in a different way,” he says. “If you’re doing that, a lot of these [problems] go away.”
  • Having kids bring in their own computers can help bring 1:1 a lot closer to reality, especially in poorer districts. Klingler says Forsyth can channel its existing computer stock to students without personal computers and help reduce tech disparity.
  • While his state’s Classrooms for the Future program brought 550 pcs into the district, the technology coordinator realizes he won’t have the funding needed to replace these machines in three or four years.
  • “The cell phone is their thing,” Walery says. “Communication is the main [goal]. They constantly text back and forth.”
  • Forsyth has even looked into using Sony Playstation handhelds in class, noting that they have a “decent Web browser.”“We want to support whatever kids bring in,” he adds.
  • “It’s much more likely in a few years all students will have their own smartphones,” he says.
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    How 1-1 is changing as students ask to bring in their own laptops
Barbara Lindsey

UCLA Language Materials Project: Language - Lessons - 0 views

  • The Authentic Materials Guide, created by Donna Brinton and Andrea Wong, provides an introduction to Authentic Materials, annotated bibliographies on teaching methodology, and links to online resources for creating lessons. The Guide offers sample lesson plans, which you are welcome to adapt for your own use.
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    "The Authentic Materials Guide, created by Donna Brinton and Andrea Wong, provides an introduction to Authentic Materials, annotated bibliographies on teaching methodology, and links to online resources for creating lessons. The Guide offers sample lesson plans, which you are welcome to adapt for your own use."
dorie conlon

Northeast Conference on the Teaching of Foreign Languages - 0 views

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    "The Northeast Conference on the Teaching of Foreign Languages (NECTFL) is the oldest (1954) multi-language association of pre-kindergarten through university teachers in the country. Although nominally a regional association, its activities, publications, and annual conference attract participants from around the country and the globe. Currently, about 40 states and 10 foreign countries send a total of 2,500 educators to the Northeast Conference each year."
Rita Oleksak

Global Horizons Western Massachusetts Constortium for Global Education - 0 views

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    This directory offers a variety of resources and teaching ideas for addressing global education issues across the school curriculum. The directory was developed by teachers from all grade levels and represents only a fraction of materials available for teaching from a global perspective. The book is divided into sections for elementary, middle, and secondary schools, along with a section on the International Resource Center Collection at the World Affairs Council, Springfield, MA. Suggestions are offered for lesson planning, the use of country case studies, inclusion of literature and other arts in the curriculum, and the use of maps. Each section contains a bibliography related to the specific grade levels. (EH)
Barbara Lindsey

ASCD Inservice: Would Your Admins Embrace MySpace? - 0 views

  • "Our eyes are not on the ball," said Moses. "If we're really serious about child safety, it's not about what's going on online; it's what's going on in their immediate physical environment. Five thousand kids get sent to the hospital every year for scissor injuries, but how many schools have scissors in them? We need to teach kids how to use things safely. You can run a band saw in middle school,but you can't go on the Internet."
  • Finally, the big question from this session: "Do you want to be a barrier to kids learning, or do you want to work with the learning they're already doing?"
  • We recently received an email from our superintendent all social networking sites and many other internet sites would be blocked. We are unable to view videos on our computers. My students are unable to play many games on the internet that are educational because of this. We have training in our school on how to teach our students to be safe but we never actually get to show how to use these social networks properly.
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  • I'm an administrator at a large high school in an organization that content filters almost everything of potential value. (it's ironic that our students cannot access iTunes U to get Chemistry lectures from UC Berkeley in the classroom but they can access ebay and a Las Vegas gambling rewards page. I wonder if there would be to much of an outcry among the office weasels if those sites were blocked as well) One of the things that I am observing outside the school is how many of our teachers (as well as students) are using Facebook. I was actually able to set up a training during Spring Break using Facebook as a back-channel communications tool when our teachers were scattered all over the country. Why are we asking students (and staff) to step back into the previous century when they arrive at the schoolhouse door?
Barbara Lindsey

21st Century Learning #95: Wendy Drexler on the Networked Student | EdTechTalk - 0 views

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    Are your students collecting RSS feeds in Google Reader, bookmarking sites as a group in Delicious, blogging, interviewing content area experts they found through Google Scholar, and teaching the section of the course for which they are responsible? Wendy Drexler's students are doing all of this. This is a must listen for those of us who dream of the day when education is a more active, accountable process for students and teachers.
Barbara Lindsey

Multimedia & Internet@Schools Magazine - 0 views

  • I would argue that postliteracy is a return to more natural forms of multisensory communication—speaking, storytelling, dialogue, debate, and dramatization. It is just now that these modes can be captured and stored digitally as easily as writing. Information, emotion, and persuasion may be even more powerfully conveyed in multimedia formats.
  • Libraries, especially those that serve children and young adults, need to acknowledge that society is becoming postliterate.
  • PL libraries budget, select, acquire, catalog, and circulate as many or more materials in nonprint formats as they do traditional print materials. The circulation policy for all materials, print and nonprint, is similar.2. PL libraries stock, without prejudice, age-appropriate graphic novels and audio books, both fiction and nonfiction, for informational and recreational use.3. PL libraries support gaming for instruction and recreation.4. PL libraries purchase high-value online information resources.5. PL libraries provide resources for patrons to create visual and auditory materials and promote the demonstration of learning and research through original video, audio, and graphics production. They also provide physical spaces for the presentation of these creations.6. PL libraries allow the use of personal communication devices (MP3 players, handhelds, laptops, etc.) and provide wireless network access for these devices.7. PL library programs teach the critical evaluation of nonprint information.8. PL library programs teach the skills necessary to produce effective communication in all formats.9. PL library programs accept and promote the use of nonprint resources as sources for research and problem-based assignments.10. PL librarians recognize the legitimacy of nonprint resources and promote their use without bias.
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  • Culture determines library programs; libraries transmit culture.
  • If we as librarians support and use learning resources that are meaningful, useful, and appealing to our students, so might the classroom teacher.
  • In Phaedrus, Plato decries an "alternate" communication technology:The fact is that this invention will produce forgetfulness in the souls of those who have learned it. They will not need to exercise their memories, being able to rely on what is written, calling things to mind no longer from within themselves by their own unaided powers, but under the stimulus of external marks that are alien to themselves.The Greek philosopher was, of course, dissing the new technology of his day: writing. Plato might well approve of our return to an oral tradition in a digital form. But his quote also demonstrates that sometimes our greatest fears become our greatest blessings.
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    Thanks to Russel Tarr via Twitter
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