This website is extremely useful, I have just bookmarked the 'About' page as it had a quote that I wished to highlight - This site was founded to assist elementary and middle school teachers in integrating technology into the curriculum. I think that I will be using this website in years to come.
Vicki Gould created this page to help support elementary PE teachers who are in the trenches planning and teaching physical education everyday. She offers relevant posts on her blog that are informative and helpful to PE teachers. In addition, she also offer various products, such as elementary PE lesson plans, e-books and activities for sale.
Article talking about "hacks" - small, cheap changes to make a difference - in a class room setting. A couple related to digital technologies, but focus is broader.
"Discovery Education combines scientifically proven, standards-based digital media and a user community in order to empower teachers to improve student achievement. Free lesson plans written by teachers for teachers. Here you will find hundreds of original lesson plans for elementary, middle and high school students. Use them as they are or modify them to create your own."
From the site
MathPickle was founded in 2010 to inject new ideas into the classroom. It is the driving force to get curricular unsolved problems into classrooms worldwide - one for each grade K-12. A conference in November 2013 established the thirteen unsolved problems.
Aimed to solve this problem
Whenever an elementary school teacher wants to teach addition, she will invariably face 20% of students who already know how to add and another 20% who are struggling with last year's curriculum. How can she engage the top students without losing the bottom students? How can she engage the bottom students without boring the top students?
"How to" article for blogging with primary school students. From a teacher at a primary school where all the teachers maintain their own classroom blog
Michelle has been a special education teacher in the United States for 27 years and has taught across elementary and preschool contexts and alongside early childhood programs for a local college.
The paper is mainly to explore the automated music composition experiences for the students in the high grades of elementary school who are unfamiliar with the professional music theory. The proposed Automated Composition for Music Education (ACME) software was developed to help the students to compose the rhythm and melody themselves, while chord configuration and arrangement are automatically generated.
Finally the students in the experimental group using the ACME teaching materials showed a better learning effectiveness at both reaction level and learning level, than those of the students in the comparison group
1. The lesson involves the students themselves in actively using technology for inquiry learning.2. The technology is integral, not peripheral, to the learning activity.3. The lesson focuses on the mathematical concept, not the technology.4. The technology facilitates learning activities that would be more difficult or impossible for the students to accomplish without the technology.
This is an interesting one - how can a teacher be hailed as such, when there is no real interaction (questioning from the student's point of view)? The Khan Academy does have its advantages as a very useful prop to specific lessons and concepts, yet the questions posed by any learner should be equally important if effective learning is to take place.
I agree Doreen, furthermore, the Khan Academy cannot be used as a stand alone to teaching, yet as a tool to extend understanding or to reteach concepts
It is a useful tool I agree. Students need to have an understand of a variety of ways/strategies/methods to draw upon in order to gain a full understand of the concepts.
I don't get why they are making reference to Bill Gates I don't believe he has an understanding of teaching. Although these online library can help with understanding but is it really the way we want education to go online teaching??
I belive that the reference to Gates arises from the fact that he's spending a lot of his money attempting to improve schools and universities. That money means that his views on what is good teaching carry significant weight. More so than his qualifications and experience might otherwise warrant.
What is more, his videos reveal an ignorance of how we know students learn mathematics.
The videos were started to help students who were already learning through the school system and needed more help without having to pay for it. A lot of people are complaining about the videos as alternatives to explicit teaching in the classroom, but aren't they great for what they were originally designed for.
All teachers make mistakes, after all, and Khan should not, the reasoning goes, be called out for making the same mistakes we all make.
There certainly are broken models in education, but there is absolutely no evidence that competent knowledge of student learning and thinking is one that teachers can afford to jettison.
researchers are finding evidence that particular kinds of PCK are associated with greater gains in student learning in elementary mathematics.
revolutionize
The equal sign (=) i
Many mathematics educators stress another kind of knowledge necessary to design and deliver quality instruction: pedagogical content knowledge (PCK). PCK refers to knowledge of content as it relates to teaching.
Content knowledge is important, but it doesn't matter how much knowledge a teacher has if s/he cannot teach that content in a way that the students will actually understand it and be able to apply it in future
I agree that content knowledge is important but it is just as important to know your students and how best they learn
The standard American curricular treatment, in which students are instructed to append zeroes to the shorter decimal to equalize the number of digits helps students to perform this task correctly, but fosters its own misconceptions.
he exercises offer no intellectual rigor and do not address our central concern.
PCK knows from both educational research and professional experience
I think frankly, the best way to do it is you put stuff out there and you see how people react to it; and we have exercises on our site too, so we see whether they’re able to see how they react to it anecdotally.
A teacher must be prepared before entering the classroom
If Khan’s videos occasionally popped up in a Google search, we would be content to have him carry on. There is lots of worse information available on the web. But Khan is hailed as “unbelievable” (
Bill Gates) and his work as “sparking a revolution in education
It is up to the teacher to assess whether or not the videos are suitable for his/her students. If the teacher chooses to use the video, then s/her can refer to the teacher information and see which questions the students answered correctly / incorrectly and identify any misconceptions. These misconceptions can then be addressed by the teacher in the classroom
Whether small steps or large, we urge Sal Khan and his funders to put their time, effort and dollars to the best possible ends, particularly when it comes to making decisions grounded in accurate, carefully considered pedagogical content knowledge
discuss the meaning of the equal sign frequently and explicitly, and (2) model correct use of the equal sign.
To quote a fellow student, Lucas Naughton states, 'ICT must be used to enhance and amplify the learning rather then becoming the point of the learning'. I get that there are holes in the Khan videos however if we are using them to enhance learning then why cant the teacher design an entire lesson around one video. They can discuss the missing misconceptions. They can provide other methods/concepts and they can create practice activities all around a Khan video. Remember-enhance and amplify the learning using these ICT's. Cheers Angela Woodward
Wikipedia mentions Khan's education: "Khan attended the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, graduating with a BS in mathematics, a BS in electrical engineering and computer science, and an MS in electrical engineering and computer science in 1998. Khan also holds an M.B.A. from Harvard Business School" I can't see a Bachelor of Education in there. I would have thought that this would be essential, and the first stepping-stone, to acquire an understanding of PCK and how students learn.
Danielson and Goldenburg state that "content knowledge alone is inadequate for quality instruction" and that many videos are prone to creating further confusion for students. They also go on to say that Khan's explanations are frequently off target in addressing likely student questions that experienced teachers would anticipate and elicit. Maybe a four-year stint at USQ might be in order?
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This is the blog of Linda Parnello a special education teacher in America. This is a current/active blog with a lot of classroom hints and tips for special education. There's not a lot of ICT but there is a lot about working with parents.
A blog by Deborah Stewart about her preschool and their daily activities. There are also lots of different ideas and resources on her blog (ideas for different activities along with lots of other resources). Very inspiring and interesting blog; definitely gives me lots of inspiration for things to do in my room!
this is a great blog about creative and fun ways to teach children in early childhood. I found it very interesting and it has some very relevant content for pre-service teachers hoping to work in the early childhood field. Take a look I hope you find it helpful.
Here you will find resources, teaching ideas, curriculum and inspiration related to Early Childhood education. This is a fantastic blog and a great example of early learning in action.