Group items tagged

"Being able to solve everyday complex problems through communication and cooporation with others are the skills that students need to learn and practice to prepare for the future. Communicating effectively and efficiently with diverse audiences and solving everyday problems are important in a society that is moving at a rapid pace in a Global Market. The ability to solve everyday complex problems is an important and necessary skill for students today. Problem based learning (PBL) provides a learning environment students require to resolve everyday problems while applying previous and learning new knowledge. Cooperative learning, as a part of PBL, allows students the opportunity to communicate ideas and knowledege. As a teacher it is also important to communicate effectively with students to guide the learning process as well as model how to question and reason through a problem. The web-enhanced 3 part seminar series is designed to review and apply the basics of PBL to allow you to create a PBL unit to use within your own classroom."

"Project-based learning is centered on the learner and affords learners the opportunity for in-depth investigations of worthy topics. The learners are more autonomous as they construct personally-meaningful artifacts that are representations of their learning. This article examines the theoretical foundations of project-based learning, particularly constructivism and constructionism, and notes the similarities and differences among implementations, including project-based science (Blulmenfeld et al., 1991), disciplined inquiry (Levstik & Barton, 2001) and WebQuests (Dodge, 1995). In addition, an anatomy of a model case will be considered using a WebQuest example developed by the author, describing seven characteristics common among the various implementations of project-based learning. Finally, practical advice and recommendations for project-based learning are discussed, including beginning slowly with the implementation, teaching students to negotiate cooperative/collaborative groups and establishing multiple forms of performance assessments."

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

An updated publication designed to help training teachers on ways to optimize the use of information and communication technologies in the classroom has been launched early November 2011 by UNESCO in cooperation with the Commonwealth of Learning, Intel and Microsoft. The ICT Competency Framework for Teachers aims at helping countries to develop comprehensive national teacher ICT competency policies and standards, and should be seen as an important component of an overall ICT in Education Master Plan.

SCAMPER is a strategy that can be used to assist students to generate new or alternative ideas. It is a tool to support creative, divergent thinking. SCAMPER is an acronym for: substitute, combine, adapt, modify/magnify/minify, put to other uses, eliminate, reverse/rearrange. What is its purpose? SCAMPER is a thinking tool that helps students to ask questions about a concept, text, or idea that require them to think beyond the obvious. It can help develop critical thinking skills and creativity and is a useful cooperative learning tool and a great stimulus for role play. In this post from Litemind, Lucciano " ....... presents a complete SCAMPER primer, along with two free creativity-boosting resources: a downloadable reference mind map and an online tool that generates random questions to get you out of a rut whenever you need." In this very comprehensive post Luciano note only explains the terminology associated with SCAMPER but also lists suggested questions as well as "Trigger Words".

"A collection of rubrics for assessing portfolios, cooperative learning, research process/ report, PowerPoint, oral presentation, web page, blog, wiki, and other social media projects."

"This list of three types of assessment is intended only to stimulate thought....These three things - helping others, being cooperative, contributing to the public good - are obviously not easy to assess. To be sure, it's far easier to ask students simple questions and grade the number of correct responses. But asking students simple questions, far from measuring putative 'content knowledge', is really an exercise in counting without any real interest in what is being counted."

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.

"Even if the technological progress gap between 2000 and 2010 was enormous, there is almost zero evidence that it has made an impact on education. Yeah, I know. "Blogging changed your life. Your PLN saved you from social isolation…" Social media just doesn't feel that new to me and I challenge you to argue that it has had more than an infinitesimal impact on classroom practice."

Nice blog article that reflects on the past decade, without getting lost in the next.