I think eduBuzz.org has helped create not just this, but far more in terms of explicit reflection that wasn't there before. I'm wondering whether reflection is, in fact, a personal, private thing rather than a community issue, since often the community at large may not choose to be 'interested' in what you have to say. Take live blog posts, for example, written for the author more than the audience.
The biggest problem of online communities, and we've seen this, too, in East Lothian and eduBuzz.org, is that novices in particular find it hard to filter information. Angela says that the problem is one students have, but so many of our teachers and managers also have trouble filtering
what is important,
what is of interest and might be important,
what is of interest but might be a waste of time, and
what is of no interest at all, personal or professional.
Teachers and students are guilty of not knowing how to question the authority of an information source, other than to say blogs must be relatively poor quality and the BBC must be of relatively high quality (both, of course, had had their moments).
And again, not just students but for many teachers, too, it is not cool to have an extensive vocabulary to express oneself. We see a resistance in students to use words to say how they are feeling beyond 'good', 'bad' and fine (and I'd be advocating the use of sites like We feel fine to both educate our students and help counter this claim to some extent), and we also see resistance from some teachers to use a more extensive vocabulary to think about teaching and learning.
Finally, both teachers and students, because we over test, tend to not want to do anything that doesn't fit into the test. We cut and paste without engaging with material, we can take tests but cannot learn.
Contents contributed and discussions participated by David Raymond
f(t): Building a Better Worksheet - 6 views
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Post on tips to creating maths worksheets Can probably use the same principles no matter what the subject
Don't Try This At Home - Spiked Math - 8 views
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clever and funny
Myths and Opportunities: Technology in the Classroom by Alan November on Vimeo - 4 views
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strategies/skills 1. Every day have one student as the 'official researcher' who is looking things up on the web and saving the key information for later access 2. Reflect on your work as a learner. Look at body of work over time and reflect on what you've learnt and what you need to learn next. In a class it can be a podcast to review what has happened and how it fits in. 3. Documentation - not everyone has to write the notes. Someone or a couple of people are scribes and does the note taking but the class reviews at the end to make sure the notes are accurate and complete. It is saved where everyone and access it. 4. Suggests kids can research what they'd like to do for assignments
Support Blogging! - Educational Blogging - 0 views
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All about educational blogging - including a list of many blogs
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All about educational blogging - including list of many blogs
» The Podcast: Worth Keeping Bud the Teacher - 0 views
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Very interesting and useful view on the use and risks of using free online tools in schools. Main points are that how do we know that what students do and keep online will be retained? Need to have an option to get the stuff out of the tool and keep it in a safe place. The comments also open the way to further investigate this - particularly from Karl Fisch.
Outcome Based Education - The Dilemma of Defining Outcome Based Education, Objective Ba... - 0 views
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This is an excellent overview of OBE and also how its principles are compromised when trying to incorporate it with existing education systems
Students as Contributors: The Digital Learning Farm | November Learning - 0 views
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Alan November condenses a number of his ideas and those that come up in his interviews and presentations available from this website. There are also a number of suggestions on how students can contribute to their learning community.
Creating a New Culture of Teaching and Learning | November Learning - 0 views
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Alan November condenses a number of his ideas and those that come up in his interviews and presentations available from this website.
Alan November interviews Angela McFarlane | November Learning - 0 views
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key points (see also my bookmark to the BLC '07 keynote by Professor McFarlane) - technology is not helping learning (1:30) - american high schools are counterproductive to success in knowledge society (Bill Gates) (2:30) - have a model where kids produce their own digital representation of how they see the world (4:00) - make learning deeper rather than try to cover a lot of content but shallow learning (5:00) - one suggestion is teaching people to be able to recognise an evidence-based argument and not be susceptible to incorrect information (6:00) - model for assessment based on this sort of change to curriculum (7:30) - meaningful coursework - mainly in school - not allowing homework to restrict their self learning - treat school like work in a way with emphasis on quality not quantity (10:00) - need to connect with parents who see school as different than their schooling and unsure about its benefits (11:00) - access to technology (12:00) - benefit based on having the access first bit also that their environment but also their culture at home helps them benefit - top 15% (from BLC keynote) are getting most benefit from access and their culture - but these normally high achievers can't see school as relevant to them based on what they experience at home and are failing at school (13:30) - community knowledge and learning capacity building in technology (14:00) - "digital challenge" program in Bristol (14:40) - community mentors that learn something then teach to others in the community - giving more people access and that means they can have choices on what they can do
Professor Angela McFarlane - BLC07 Keynote | November Learning - 0 views
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Professor MacFarlane discusses many issues which ring true to me. In particular: - lack of vision for what education could be like with new technology (around 4 min mark) - the web2.0 and technology revolution is great for the 15% of people who have a good life anyway because of their suituation and culture (5:30) - others don't benefit from the access to the technology - they need help (6:00) - no change in classroom over last 20 years with computers and in danger of no change in next 20 years (7:30) - instruction vs. construction (8:30) - expect learning to change with introduction of technology (10:30) - but hasn't really done so - student self-directed learning is separate from school work i.e. at home and not related to school (14:30) - much of what kids do on computers at home is trivial (16:00) - the ones that do have good experiences are the same 15% (16:30) - kids that are missing out have a computer at home probably but no access to the community that enables them to have these experiences (17:10) - doing something by themselves does not really benefit them - it is being part of a community that had benefit for learning - what are we dong for these people? (19:10) - talking about missing pedagogical model for how to teach (22:00) - teachers are expected to use technology to provide innovative learning but no model against which to do so, some don't use it at all, some use it inappropriately - there maybe some individual examples but not overall (23:00) - schools bad at connecting with their communities in a learning sense (26:00) - talks about chinese online writing community and how they comment, collaborate (34:00) - community (47:30) - communitites aren't formed when people are brought together in schools etc. - need to have a common problem or interest (48:30) - Plant's definition? - in education the problem is because assessment is done individually (49:00) - so forming groups and sharing ideas is not attractive for students - worried about not getti
A Difference: Google Never Forgets - 0 views
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This is a good reminder of how public the web is
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