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Developed by Trudy Sweeney at Flinders Uni a Framework to help teachers transform their pedagogy via the use of an IWB in the classroom.

If we want to develop an understanding of the pedagogy of the subject we teach, we have to start somewhere and making sense of what seems central and often difficult to grasp by most learners, is a good place to begin our inquiry. A tendency among academic teachers is to stuff their curriculum with content, burdening themselves with the task of transmitting vast amounts of knowledge bulk and their students of absorbing and reproducing this bulk. In contrast, a focus on threshold concepts enables teachers to make refined decisions about what is fundamental to a grasp of the subject they are teaching. It is a 'less is more' approach to curriculum design.

How to teach text structures for better reading comprehension and improved retention. Teachers of history, science, and other subjects are now expected to weave literacy instruction into their teaching of content. But how should they do that? What are the most effective ways to help students learn to read challenging content-area texts? This article breaks down the research behind explicit teaching of text structures and includes a video that shows how to do it (Great for content-area literacy)

" What if we changed the time table in the same way. What if student's came to school to learn and not just move from class to class. What if we changed how we use time? Is our current school structures killing learning? "

The shift away from teaching for the rote memorisation of prescribed methods requires teachers to rethink their approach to the discipline. With this new pedagogy comes a need to understand the processes of mathematical thinking in ways not previously required. When we require our students to be able to reason and problem-solve through unique challenges we also require our teachers to have an understanding of the mathematical moves that their learners are likely to call upon.

This traditional pedagogy results in students developing a negative attitude towards mathematics. Many develop a mathematical phobia and believe that they are not a "maths person". When confronted by challenging mathematics they retreat and have no or only poor strategies with which to approach new ideas. This all leads to a decline in the number of students pursuing mathematical learning beyond the years where it is compulsory. Fortunately there is a growing body of research that shows there is a better way. 

This year is the fiftieth birthday of Harvard's Project Zero, a research project designed to explore the nature of thinking and learning and from this suggest pedagogies which align with what we know about the mind. For its birthday celebration Project Zero shared insights from its five decades of research with presentations from Howard Gardner, David Perkins, Shari Tasman, Steve Seidel and Daniel Wilson. The presentations revealed the changing nature of the work of Project Zero from its early days and focus on arts education to its current position as a research organisation with broad interests across education but with a focus on thinking, understanding and the workings of the mind.

Our goal might be to support Deep versus Surface Learning, but what does this mean in practical terms. What are the beliefs and dispositions which support teaching for deep learning, and what are the implications of this in terms of the pedagogy we adopt?

Particular patterns of pedagogy have been of most interest to me across the years, particularly those that shift the focus from what the teacher does to what the student does. With this shift comes an emphasis on understanding how students learn and with this knowledge in mind developing learning experiences that will allow them to develop their skills for learning.

Edudemic post "Symbaloo created by user lcobbs detailing 50 great classroom tools that are all easy to implement into just about any classroom. From Animoto to Prezi to Dropbox to Stixy (wait what?), there's a lot to check out."

I posted this on ICT and Pedagogy Diigo site. Great blog and heaps of digital tools we can still learn about, thanks. Many more to add to my toolbelt!

Interesting post from a prolific Ed blogger who has always written about Ed and the "bleeding edge" worth following and very readable. This post posits that if we are to introduce a non Americanised version of PBL then we should expect systematic change over a long period of time so that it becomes ingrained in the learning culture of the school. I particularly like this position because it takes into account the longevity of the teachers capacity not only to with stand the change but also to be part of the new paradigm.

Learning environments of the future are in incubation. And therein lies the challenge: Learning environments that don't exist can't be analyzed. Moving into the unknown requires a pioneering spirit. Helen Keller reminds us that is the truth of not only our age, but of all ages: "Security is mostly a superstition. It does not exist in nature, nor do the children of men as a whole experience it. Avoiding danger is no safer in the long run than outright exposure. Life is either a daring adventure, or nothing."

Wow! A fabulous info graphic that looks at all the learning theories.

Learning is impacted by many forces such as the learner's disposition to the process, the quality of their teacher's pedagogy, their emotional state and nature of the curriculum. Amongst this long list of factors is naturally the environment in which that learning occurs and the relationship between the environment and the learner.

Post by Ewan McIntosh. Finding questions that Google can't answer. Article looking at the questions we ask and the problem-solving sbilities we are teaching students

Offers some good ideas on different approaches to assessment by giving students some choice in selecting assessment methods. Interesting thoughts here from Dean Shareski with great examples.

"Theories and Models of Learning for Educational Research and Practice. This knowledge base features learning theories that address how people learn. A resource useful for scholars of various fields such as educational psychology, instructional design, and human-computer interaction. Below is the index of learning theories, grouped in somewhat arbitrary categories. Note that this website is an iterative project and these entries are a work in progress;"