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Educators are, in large part, bullish on the role technology can play in improving student outcomes. But too large a percentage of them aren't receiving adequate training in the areas that matter most: instructional software, technology integration, learning outcomes management, and designing individual lesson plans.

Collaborative case studies of teaching and learning with 'interactive' technologies in the secondary classroom

This site contains lesson ideas, activities and resources, and they're all FREE for you to use in your classrooms! You can find ideas and resources in lots of different ways...

Interactive Whiteboards in the Classroom group, 1025 websites, 682 members. Also check out http://groups.diigo.com/group/interactive-whiteboards-in-the-classroom for the whiteboard challenge!

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"There are several ways educators can use Awesome Highlighter , here are some suggestions : * Teachers can use it to show students the important parts of a lesson * Teachers share links of Highlighted text of relevant interest with students to save them time * Students can use it to share referencing quotes between each other * They can also use it to gather information for research and classroom project"

Classroom review games and class management tools

These pages contain links to suitable activities to support & enhance classroom teaching & learning.

These pages contain links to suitable activities to support & enhance classroom teaching & learning. The thumbnails & activities are the property of the authors/creators & only available due to their generosity in sharing their work.

An interactive White Board (IWB) or SMART Board has the potential to deliver content better than traditional methods of teaching. Why? Because it provides multi-media functional interaction across audio, video, and computer media. It is also ideal for visual, auditory, and kinesthetic learners. These qualities of an IWB also promote the dynamic delivery of content (if used to its full potential) in an engaging manner, which allows students to interact with science or math content their self. Examples include: * data manipulation * responding to data * even creating data So with all these attributes - "How are interactive white boards unsuccessfully used in science and math classrooms?" For the most part - not effectively!

Despite this being a 'thinking' conference, despite us all being advocates for structured and scaffolded models of thinking, not one group had applied any thinking routines, utilised a collaborative planning protocol or talked about applying an inquiry model or design thinking cycle. It wasn't that we didn't know about them. It wasn't that we don't know how to use them. It wasn't that we don't value them. We had all the knowledge we could desire on the how to and the why of a broad set of thinking tools and anyone of these would have enhanced the process, but we did not use any of them. Why was this the case and what does this reveal about our teaching of these methods to our students?

Reasoning is at the heart of mathematical thinking. It is what mathematicians do. But how do we teach it?

The maker movement and with it maker-centered learning brings new possibilities and challenges into the classroom. It has spawned makerspaces and students are busy designing and making products. The danger with all this frenzied making is that it is very easy to miss the point, to focus on the product and not the journey.  

There is a growing momentum in education driven by a desire to share our practice and learn from our colleagues. Increasingly teachers are finding ways to break free of their classrooms and share their ideas. Collaborations in the interests of unlocking the collective potential of the profession are spreading within and importantly between schools. For many these collaborative endeavours and desires are satisfied by online communities but for many the possibility for a face to face conversation is more alluring.

Making, Maker Centred Learning and STEAM fit neatly alongside Inquiry Based Learning (IBL) for many schools. Commonly this approach includes a constructivist view of knowledge and teachers seek to establish conditions which allow students to explore questions and ideas with greater independence than may occur in the traditional classroom.  Learning becomes a collaborative partnership between teachers and students with a clear focus on a learner centric approach.

Earlier this year a group of teachers I work with explored the 'Eight Cultural Forces' identified by Ron Ritchhart of Harvard's Project Zero. In doing so we decided to focus on our use of the term learning instead of the word work. Our goal was to bring our language choices into the spotlight and explore how a more deliberate focus on learning might alter the culture of our classrooms. Two terms later this focus persists and it is worth reflecting on the effect that this has had.

How can we take more notice of the culture of our classrooms and what it communicates to learners about the value of thinking?