Skip to main content

Home/ OZ/NZ educators/ Group items tagged teaching ideas

Rss Feed Group items tagged

Tony Richards

The Atlantic Online | January/February 2010 | What Makes a Great Teacher? | Amanda Ripley - 0 views

  •  
    "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
Nigel Coutts

Hold your ideas lightly - The Learner's Way - 0 views

  •  
    The history of teaching is littered with ideas that have come and gone. In their day each was the new bright hope, set to transform what we do as teachers and how our students learn. Each new idea had its supporters and detractors and each in turn was replaced by an alternative or simply disappeared from view. Those who have experienced this ebb and flow of ideas have learned to approach the shiny and the new with caution and yet we have all encountered ideas that are so compelling it is difficult to ignore. How might we approach new ideas and innovative practices in ways that ensure our students benefit?
Nigel Coutts

Why do we teach? - The Learner's Way - 0 views

  •  
    Only those who have taught a class for a year, who have struggled with the challenges faced by students and who have shared in the moments of success will truly understand why we teach. Maybe that is why we seek out opportunities to gather and share what we do, to spend even a Saturday in the company of those who "get" what it is that we do and why we do it. Teaching is a beautiful thing to be a part. 
Nigel Coutts

Teaching Dispositions for Learning - The Learner's Way - 0 views

  •  
    Increasingly we aim to teach dispositions but some care in the use of the term is required as it is easily oversimplified. While teaching for dispositions is encouraged it will have little effect if it means doing little other than engaging with the terminology. If we are to encourage the expansion of the desired dispositions, we must be sure to adequately unpack them and understand the implications in store for our culture of learning. 
Mitchell Woellner

IT Programmes - What to Teach - 80 views

Jared I have found that the best areas to go into are areas that are applicable to their world. I think you would be hard pushed not to find children that do not have myspace, facbook or any othe...

progammes topics

Nigel Coutts

Getting started with teaching for deep learning. - The Learner's Way - 0 views

  •  
    There is an understandable interest in deep-learning, after all, who wants their students to have a superficial understanding of the content. Read the marketing of almost any school and you are likely to find some statement about the deep-learning that is achieved as a result of their excellent teaching and learning platform. Likewise, ask any teach about their philosophy of teaching and you will hear how they engage their students with learning that promotes a deep-understanding.
Nigel Coutts

The power of powerful ideas shared simply - The Learner's Way - 0 views

  •  
    Some statements stand out in your memory for the power with which they resonate through you mind. I recall the first time I encountered the question posed by Alan November "Who owns the learning?" on the cover of his book of the same name. In four words, Alan poses a question that strikes at the heart of education and encourages us to re-think our approach. If we believe that the learner should own the learning, what are the implications of this for our teaching? Like a stone dropped on the surface of a calm pond, the ripples from a powerful idea spread, expand and gain strength. 
Nigel Coutts

Girls in Tech - Reflections from VIVID Ideas - The Learner's Way - 0 views

  •  
    Sydney has become a beacon that brings people together and sparks conversations. Most recently the conversation centred on the topic of girls in tech and what might be done to re-dress the gender balance in STEAM subjects and related career pathways. Sponsored by INTEL this Vivid Ideas event drew a mix of entrepreneurs, educators and tech luminaries to the Museum of Contemporary Art on a Saturday afternoon to share their ideas on what might be done.
Tony Searl

In Defense of Public School Teachers in a Time of Crisis - Henry Giroux | Paulo Freire,... - 2 views

  • Yet, teachers are being deskilled, unceremoniously removed from the process of school governance, largely reduced to technicians or subordinated to the authority of security guards. Underlying these transformations are a number of forces eager to privatize schools, substitute vocational training for education and reduce teaching and learning to reductive modes of testing and evaluation.
  • Teachers are no longer asked to think critically and be creative in the classroom.
  • Put bluntly, knowledge that can't be measured is viewed as irrelevant, and teachers who refuse to implement a standardized curriculum and evaluate young people through objective measures of assessments are judged as incompetent or disrespectful
  • ...10 more annotations...
  • teachers are increasingly removed from dealing with children as part of a broader historical, social and cultural context.
  • Removed from the normative and pedagogical framing of classroom life, teachers no longer have the option to think outside of the box, to experiment, be poetic or inspire joy in their students. School has become a form of dead time, designed to kill the imagination of both teachers and students
  • Under this bill, the quality of teaching and the worth of a teacher are solely determined by student test scores on standardized tests.
  • Moreover, advanced degrees and professional credentials would now become meaningless in determining a teacher's salary.
  • In other words, teaching was always directive in its attempt to shape students as particular agents and offer them a particular understanding of the present and the future.
  • Rather than viewed as disinterested technicians, teachers should be viewed as engaged intellectuals, willing to construct the classroom conditions that provide the knowledge, skills and culture of questioning necessary for students to participate in critical dialogue with the past, question authority, struggle with ongoing relations of power and prepare themselves for what it means to be active and engaged citizens in the interrelated local, national and global public spheres.
  • fosters rather than mandates
  • respects the time and conditions teachers need to prepare lessons, research, cooperate with each other and engage valuable community resources.
  • In part, this requires pedagogical practices that connect the space of language, culture and identity to their deployment in larger physical and social spaces. Such pedagogical practices are based on the presupposition that it is not enough to teach students how to read the word and knowledge critically. They most also learn how to act on their beliefs, reflect on their role as engaged citizens and intervene in the world as part of the obligation of what it means to be a socially responsible agent.
  • As the late Pierre Bourdieu argued, the "power of the dominant order is not just economic, but intellectual - lying in the realm of beliefs," and it is precisely within the domain of ideas that a sense of utopian possibility can be restored to the public realm
  •  
    teachers are being deskilled, unceremoniously removed from the process of school governance, largely reduced to technicians or subordinated to the authority of security guards. Underlying these transformations are a number of forces eager to privatize schools, substitute vocational training for education and reduce teaching and learning to reductive modes of testing and evaluation.
Nigel Coutts

Lessons from Schrödinger's Cat - The Learner's Way - 0 views

  •  
    There are some ideas which seem to translate nicely into fields of thought far from their point of origin. These are  ideas which shine a metaphorical light on concepts and allow us to develop a deeper understanding of that concept once we see it from a fresh perspective. Schrödinger's Cat is one such idea.
Nigel Coutts

Our curious ideas about intelligence - The Learner's Way - 0 views

  •  
    We have some strange ideas about intelligence, many of them are wrong. Some of our ideas can have a damaging effect on the people we label as intelligent. When we look at some of the research behind intelligence we find that our assumptions based on what we were once told about it need to be updated. 
Rhondda Powling

Ten ideas for interactive teaching | Curriculum | eSchoolNews.com - 5 views

  •  
    " While lecturing tends to be the easiest form of instruction, studies show that students absorb the least amount of information that way. Interactive teaching methods are an effective way to connect with a generation of students used to consistent stimulation-and education professor Kevin Yee has some advice for how teachers can make their lessons more interactive." eSchoolNews
Rhondda Powling

25 Fun Ways to use QR Codes for Teaching and Learning - Emerging Education Technologies - 0 views

  •  
    The author of the post has culled a bunch of ideas from different teachers who have shared their approaches to using QR codes in a classroom setting. Once students are equipped with a device that can read QR codes and they know how to scan them, it is easy to adapt the ideas here to use a classroom.
Nigel Coutts

Teaching mathematicians shouldn't be like programming a computer - The Learner's Way - 0 views

  •  
    Traditional methods of teaching maths have more in common with how we programme a computer that what we might do if we wanted to engage our students in mathematical thinking. We shouldn't be overly surprised then when our students consider mathematics to be all about learning a set of rules that they need to apply in the right order so as to output the correct response. But is there a better way?
Nigel Coutts

Taking time to design programmes for understanding - The Learner's Way - 0 views

  •  
    Identifying what our children need to learn is one of the most important processes within education. For the teacher this is the question they engage with as they design their teaching and learning units. By no means is this an easy task and the teacher must balance multiple factors to ensure that the programmes they design provide their students with the learning they require. Even the most effective sequence of lessons is of little value if what it sets out to teach has little importance in the lives our learners are likely to lead. 
Nigel Coutts

Change and why we all see it differently - The Learner's Way - 0 views

  •  
     If the young people of today are to thrive beyond the walls of the classroom they will need to be able to cope with a world characterised by volatility, uncertainty, complexity and ambiguity. The children of todays Kindergarten will enter the workplace in the fourth-decade of the 21st Century. We debate the merits of teaching 21st Century Skills and what they might be while teaching children who have lived their entire lives in that very century. The challenge is how will schools and individual teachers respond to this drive for urgent change.
Nigel Coutts

Teaching and Learning as Dialogue with the World - The Learner's Way - 0 views

  •  
    Learning should always be an active process and a two-way partnership between teaching and learning. In essence, learning and its counterpart exist as a vibrant dialogue between individuals whose role in the relationship is continually transformative. I'd like to explore this thinking further.
Rhondda Powling

Illuminated Texts | A Way to Teach - 6 views

  •  
    Some great ideas for teaching with and creating Illuminated texts
1 - 20 of 282 Next › Last »
Showing 20 items per page