Group items tagged

"Ineffective use of technology happens because even when given the opportunity- some over burdened teachers shy away from working hard enough to understand how emerging tools can be used for powerful learning. Ineffective use of technology is a teacher problem, a PD problem, a leadership problem, a time problem, a systemic problem, a culture problem - not a computer problem."

By Amanda Ripley in The Atlantic, January/February 2010. This article looks at effective teaching in several ways: it profiles several highly effective teachers, and also discusses over ten years of data about effective teaching that the organization Teach for America is preparing to release.

Richard Byrne's blog on Free Technology for Teachers always comes up with excellent resources. This one is the Story of Bottled Water produced in 2010. I noticed below on this page videos about plastic and how 1 cheeseburger=15,000 Googles. I assume the last one is about the environmental costs of technology.

resource for MCNC Innovation lab teachers and students?

excerpt on teaching critical thinking "What are the right kinds of questions to ask? In figuring out what questions to ask, it's really helpful to look at Bloom's Taxonomy. Bloom's begins with a knowledge-based question such as, "Who was the first president of the United States?" To answer that question simply requires knowledge. That's just a first step. Next you want them to be able to evaluate. So I push teachers to look at the levels of Bloom's Taxonomy that involve the analysis and evaluation type of questions. That's when you're pushing kids' thinking. For instance, if you ask, "To what extent was George Washington successful as the first president of the United States?" that's a much higher-level question. It requires a student to evaluate, to create a set of criteria for what makes someone a great president, to possess knowledge about George Washington, and to evaluate his performance against that set of criteria. I suggest that teachers really think about questions that hit four specific criteria. Questions should be open-ended, with no right or wrong answer, which prompts exploration in different directions require synthesis of information, an understanding of how pieces fit together be "alive in their disciplines," which means perpetually arguable, with themes that will recur throughout a student's lifetime and always be relevant be age-appropriate

Website of Jim Burke, a high school English teacher who has published widely on how to be an effective high school English teacher.

Part of Stanford University's School of Education, STEP cultivates "teacher leaders" who share core values, including an interest in social justice, an understanding of diverse student populations and a commitment to equity and excellence for their students.

Published by Teachers College, Columbia University, this is the site for the Record, "a journal of research, analysis, and commentary in the field of education." Most (perhaps all) articles require a subscription for full access.

A rubber ducky personal learning network--could this be a model for a personal reflection--knowledge building exercise for IL teachers, students?

Excellent justification for why teachers need to write themselves if they want their students to be better writers and how blogging is a great medium for the writing journey. November 26, 2011, Langwitches Blog

Article by Rob Jenkins, August 16, 2011 on Improving Online Success for beginning college students. See excerpt below. Makes me think about how MCNC's SLI work has introduced? equipped? advanced? students' and teachers' online working skills, especially the push to use social media. And how all MCHSs and ECHSs should attend to this skill development for their students.

Beautiful flower of social pedagogies to illustrate what teachers design for and what students experience

by Derek Bruff, November 6, 2011. The best justification of the Innovation Lab premise that I have seen. "Sharing student work on a course blog is an example of what Randall Bass and Heidi Elmendorf, of Georgetown University, call "social pedagogies." They define these as "design approaches for teaching and learning that engage students with what we might call an 'authentic audience' (other than the teacher), where the representation of knowledge for an audience is absolutely central to the construction of knowledge in a course."" Often our students engage in what Ken Bain, vice provost and a historian at Montclair State University, calls strategic or surface learning, instead of the deep learning experiences we want them to have. Deep learning is hard work, and students need to be well motivated in order to pursue it. Extrinsic factors like grades aren't sufficient-they motivate competitive students toward strategic learning and risk-averse students to surface learning. Social pedagogies provide a way to tap into a set of intrinsic motivations that we often overlook: people's desire to be part of a community and to share what they know with that community. My students might not see the beauty and power of mathematics, but they can look forward to participating in a community effort to learn about math. Online, social pedagogies can play an important role in creating such a community. These are strong motivators, and we can make use of them in the courses we teach.

Passionate about the impact of technology integration on student success! 2006 TCEA Classroom Teacher of the Year. Carol Mortensen: Blogger. Author.

Secure Social Learning Network for Teachers and Students

Twitter feed of Lucian Duma, teacher, researcher and social media curator based in Caransebes, Romania . website: http://luciandumateachweb20.eu/

Community for English teachers on Ning

Online resource for understanding and teaching science. The site was produced by University of California Museum of Paleontology, in collaboration with a diverse group of scientists and teachers and funded by National Center for Science Education.

Online resource for understanding and teaching evolution. The site, like Understanding Science, was produced by University of California Museum of Paleontology, in collaboration with a diverse group of scientists and teachers and funded by National Center for Science Education.

Urban legends, conspiracy theories, and bogus public-health scares circulate effortlessly. Meanwhile, people with important ideas--business people, teachers, politicians, journalists, and others--struggle to make their ideas "stick." Why do some ideas thrive while others die? And how do we improve the chances of worthy ideas? Educators and idea collectors Chip and Dan Heath reveal the anatomy of ideas that stick and