Group items tagged

"Though your instructors will often ask for scholarly or peer-reviewed sources, you may occasionally want to cite one of these social networking or app sources for your coursework or discussions. "

"TeachMeets are an exciting model of professional development making waves in the Melbourne teaching community. A TeachMeet is an informal meeting for teachers to share and discuss their classroom practise. Another term to describe these meets is an unconference. Presenters speak for either seven or two minutes on a topic of choice that is related to classroom practice. "

A well written post about content curation and the benefits it can offer teachers and students especially is part of the inquiry process. Discusses how it may be used to develop information literacy skills so they can become competent at locating, evaluating, and useing information

Fantastic article that discusses the complexities of being a teacher that in an impoverished school. A must read for perspective. 

Our aim with Predictions is to catalyze discussions around significant developments that may require companies or governments to respond.

ACE was founded to provide an independent voice for educators and advance the education profession. Now, half a century later and in an increasingly complex educational environment, it is even more important that the voices of those who educate our nation are heard and that they have a forum in which to inform themselves; discuss and debate issues; and seek to find shared solutions to current educational questions.

An article by Patrick Carman where he discusses how to get kids reading again - we should be creating books for every kind of reader-traditional, ultra-wired, and everything in between. "I've heard the same statement in one form or another from hundreds of different teachers and librarians when they talk about the emergence of multimedia books: kids who weren't reading are reading again. They're coming back."

Infographics that approach human rights (and the lack of them) visually. Some great discussion starters

Post provides an interesting discussion about why and how you might go about creating an online portfolio.

Post by US teacher (@tedrosececi) "Here are 10 ideas I have gathered this summer to kick parent communication up to the next level so that never again will they have to ask, "What'd you do at school today?" and hear the annoying, "nothing." Instead, parents will have already experienced the wonderful things that have been happening in their child's world and dinner table discussions will turn into celebrations and extensions of the learning happening at school."

Looking at the New Directions for school leadership and the teaching profession discussion paper, the only evidence presented to support the assertion that Victoria's education outcomes are not improving is the report "Challenges in Australian Education: results from PISA 2009: the PISA 2009 assessment of students' reading, mathematical and scientific literacy" Specifically the New Directions paper focuses on reading literacy, where in 2009, 14,251 students were given a two-hour pen and paper comprehension test. To get an idea of what types of competencies the reading test is assessing we can look at the sample test , with questions range from comprehension about a letter in a newspaper, the ability to interpret a receipt, comprehension around a short story, an informational text, and interpreting a table. While it doesn't seem unreasonable to want our students to be able to accurately perform these kind of tasks, these tests are not a true or accurate representation of the skills and competencies our students need in today's technology driven world.

What drives Copyright? Will it still be around in the future and why? Interesting article discusses the idea of copyright.

Emmanuel was a baby born in a war zone. His is physically disabled. Here he sings 'Imagine' on the x-factor. It is very humbling and provides an example of responding to conflict for students - both from the point of view of emmanuel, his mother, the audience and the judges. This performance provides a good discussion starter, Tissues may be required.

@tomwhitby "Dell Computer has sponsored four education Think Tanks over the last year, or so, and I have been fortunate to participate in three of them...Each of the groups is given four to six general topics of concern in education to discuss for about forty-five minutes to an hour. Since the members are all invited guests, they are usually intelligent, passionate, and well-versed in aspects of education specific to their profession....Progress is being stymied by the 6 "P's". By this I am not referring to the military expression "Proper Planning Prevents P*ss Poor Performance". I am talking about Poverty, Profit, Politics, Parents, Professional development, and Priorities preventing progress in Public Education."

Instagram and Vine are 2 popular social apps that allow you to share videos. This post examines the differences and the parameters of each. Tips for adults to be aware of as they try to assist young people in staying safe are also discussed

The four tools mentioned are free and available for smartphones, tablets and laptop/desktop computers.This means that anyone can use them to create or complete work or connect with others. These are dynamic and comprehensive tools that can improve teaching and learning in the classroom. The tools discussed are: Edmodo, Curriculet, ClassDojo and Khan Academy.

"The eSmart Digital Licence is designed to assist parents and carers to discuss smart, safe and responsible online behaviour with their children. Through a stylised, game-like, online program, topics ranging from cyberbullying to sexting will be addressed to evaluate comprehension and corresponding actions."

"Isn't that a human paradox? While conflict can irritate, it can also beckon. While conflict can bring out the worst in people, it can also bring out the extraordinary. While conflict can make us resist, it can also expand our understanding. While conflict can divide, it can also unite. As participants discussed ideas and practiced on examples of conflict from their work, here is what I observed:"

We all want to nurture a learning culture in our classroom. One that cultivates skills such as problem solving, critical thinking, synthesis, analysis, critical judgement and interpretation. For this to happen we need to pose learning problems and questions that demand the development of these skills. Well-posed questions can be simple questions but the right questions can drive much more learning and elicit insight that those complex questions that don't ask students to really think. Framing good questions is an art and some suggested questions are discussed here.

Good questions are great learning tools. The 8 strategies discussed here offer useful ideas for classroom techers