Group items tagged

"Online learning is sweeping across America. In the year 2000, roughly 45,000 K-12 students took an online course. In 2009, more than 3 million K-12 students did. What was originally a distance learning phenomenon no longer is. Most of the growth is occurring in blended-learning environments, in which students learn online in an adult-supervised environment at least part of the time. As this happens, online learning has the potential to transform America's education system..."

Great resources for teaching and learning.  "We strive to empower instructors by helping them develop a deep understanding of how students learn, so that they can effectively apply and adapt teaching strategies to meet their own goals and their students' needs.  The purpose of the following materials is to present current research and theory on student learning in a way that can inform and guide effective teaching practices."

"A blended learning approach combines face to face classroom methods with computer-mediated activities to form an integrated instructional approach." Leads to more links about blended learning as well.

"Students and Professors Sound Off on the State of the College Lecture" Lots of personal examples, not a lot of theory. But useful to hear both sides of the experience.

Valuable reading, as understanding how these cycles reinforce learning leads to better planning for blended learning. The Pedagogy and Technology Workshop employs a cycle much like the first few diagrams. 

Great resource for learning about Bloom. "There is more than one type of learning. A committee of colleges, led by Benjamin Bloom (1956), identified three domains of educational activities: Cognitive: mental skills (Knowledge) Affective: growth in feelings or emotional areas (Attitude) Psychomotor: manual or physical skills (Skills)"

Amazing compendium of what we've learned about learning.

"By working together on problem sets in math and sharing their perspectives in roundtable discussions in English, students at The College Preparatory School are making collaboration the driving force in their learning." Some great examples of collaboration -- both in practice and theory.

A passionate and eloquent plea from a university lecturer, attesting to the continued relevance of the lecture as a learning tool. I value her point that a lecture promotes active listening, but I disagree with the notion that a technology that has worked for thousands of years should see continued use simply because it has worked in the past.[1] Given the multitudes of other means of delivery of information today (remember, the lecture was developed when the only other means to spread information was handwriting), the lecture as transmission of information is a tool, not THE tool. She also equates books to lectures, and says that if we abandon one we move toward abandoning the other. A bit of tenuous logic, if you ask me. Still, perhaps worth a read.  [1] See also: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scriptorium#Trithemius.27_Praise_of_Scribes

Describes why teaching just the correct answers is insufficient for learning. You must address and eradicate misconceptions in order for the learning to take hold. This is ESSENTIAL for flipped teaching models.

Derek Muller describes why teaching just the correct answers is insufficient for learning. You must address and eradicate misconceptions in order for the learning to take hold. This is ESSENTIAL for flipped teaching models.

A slick interactive map of learning objectives according to Anderson/Krathwohl's revision of Bloom's taxonomy.

Interactive animation of Bloom"s revised taxonomies

A slick interactive map of learning objectives according to Anderson/Krathwohl's revision of Bloom's taxonomy.

"Digital learning resources, tips, research, and teaching and learning resources. Feel free to join this group to share related resources."

"There is a prevailing conception that students must learn facts and procedural knowledge BEFORE they can then engage in so-called 'higher-order' thinking skills. Educators, parents, policymakers, online commentators, and others point to Bloom's taxonomy (which typically has been portrayed as a pyramid) and say, "See? You have to do this stuff down here before you can do that stuff up top!" But that's not how Bloom and his co-authors categorized the taxonomy..."

Tons of links and resources on blended learning, from Diigo.

Very smart writing on the distinctions between a hierarchy of thinking vs. scaffolded learning. "the notion that students have to be immersed in 'lower-level' factual and procedural knowledge BEFORE they can do 'higher-level' thinking work doesn't comport with what we know from cognitive research."

Illustrates a lot of information from tine Innosight document, as well as several other sources. A bit busy but might be useful as a summary.

"We teach numbers, then algebra, then calculus, then physics. Wrong!" exclaims the Massachusetts Institute of Technology mathematician, a pioneer in artificial intelligence. "Start with engineering, and from that abstract out physics, and from that abstract out ideas of calculus, and eventually separate off pure mathematics. So much better to have the first-grade kid or kindergarten kid doing engineering and leave it to the older ones to do pure mathematics than to do it the other way around."

"Search, links, media sharing, social media, Wikipedia, games, open source etc. are ground breaking shifts in the way we learn, says Donald Clark. Unfortunately, they're not matched by the way we teach. The growing gap between teaching practice and learning practice is acute and growing. Institutional teaching, especially in Universities is hanging on to the pedagogic fossil that is the lecture. The true driver for positive, pedagogic change is the internet."

Slideshare in which Robert Talbert explains his vision of a flipped classroom: its justification and its application in classes.

"Children may perform better in school and feel more confident about themselves if they are told that failure is a normal part of learning, rather than being pressured to succeed at all costs, according to new research published by the American Psychological Association."