Group items tagged

"What Makes a Great Teacher? Image credit: Veronika Lukasova Also in our Special Report: National: "How America Can Rise Again" Is the nation in terminal decline? Not necessarily. But securing the future will require fixing a system that has become a joke. Video: "One Nation, On Edge" James Fallows talks to Atlantic editor James Bennet about a uniquely American tradition-cycles of despair followed by triumphant rebirths. Interactive Graphic: "The State of the Union Is ..." ... thrifty, overextended, admired, twitchy, filthy, and clean: the nation in numbers. By Rachael Brown Chart: "The Happiness Index" Times were tough in 2009. But according to a cool Facebook app, people were happier. By Justin Miller On August 25, 2008, two little boys walked into public elementary schools in Southeast Washington, D.C. Both boys were African American fifth-graders. The previous spring, both had tested below grade level in math. One walked into Kimball Elementary School and climbed the stairs to Mr. William Taylor's math classroom, a tidy, powder-blue space in which neither the clocks nor most of the electrical outlets worked. The other walked into a very similar classroom a mile away at Plummer Elementary School. In both schools, more than 80 percent of the children received free or reduced-price lunches. At night, all the children went home to the same urban ecosystem, a zip code in which almost a quarter of the families lived below the poverty line and a police district in which somebody was murdered every week or so. Video: Four teachers in Four different classrooms demonstrate methods that work (Courtesy of Teach for America's video archive, available in February at teachingasleadership.org) At the end of the school year, both little boys took the same standardized test given at all D.C. public schools-not a perfect test of their learning, to be sure, but a relatively objective one (and, it's worth noting, not a very hard one). After a year in Mr. Taylo

the chances of successful outcomes are multiplied when every person in the group makes a commitment to active participation in helping others learn.

"ACEC Unplugged is an almost full day unconference event as well as a space at the for peer-to-peer learning, collaboration and creativity that will be running just before and alongside the festivities at ACEC2012"

"The More Knowledgeable Other. is anyone who has a better understanding or a higher ability level than the leaner particularly in regards to a specific task, concept or process. Traditionally the MKO is thought of as a teacher, an older adult or a peer" (Dahms et al, 2007),

YouthLearn's Learning section -- aimed at after-school programs that integrate technology -- has guidelines for creating lesson plans and projects; examples of tools for designing projects (e.g., curriculum mapping, tutoring/mentoring and inquiry-based learning); learning technique examples and guidelines (e.g., peer observations and animation) and staff recruitment and development tools (including sample position announcements).

"Bill Murray approaches the teaching-learning system as a game in which students, teachers, and others play various roles. He wonders whether the game itself encourages cheating, and suggests that teachers could restructure the game so that cheating is less rewarding and less likely."

Fascinating essay about assessment and cheating, and how teachers have created this situation.

Formative Assessment, assessing student performance routinely as instruction unfolds can transform teaching and learning. Writer actively experimented with giving more feedback to my students, using rubrics, models of student work, and having students assess their own work as well as that of their peers. Problem is Baltimore County school administrators have ordered all teachers to begin using a grading system next month that will require them to judge whether each of their students has mastered more than 100 specific skills. Elementary school teachers have classes of 25 kids while highschool teachers can have more than 100 students. Over the course of a year, many teachers would have to make as many as 10,000 marks indicating whether a child had learned a task.

A collaboratively written document produced in Bangkok, Thailand, at the March 28-31 teacher's meeting of EARCOS, the East Asia Regional Council of Schools. The hope is that this guide will be useful to any teacher confronting the challenges of introducing new technologies into the K-12 classroom in meaningful, inventive, productive, creative, and connected ways.