Group items tagged

This one is worth reading, but not because it's necessarily worth following. It's a wrong-headed approach to tech integration, one that values the tools above the pedagogical goals -- because it assumes that the use of the tool is valuable in itself. What it omits is why any one of these scenarios can support learning... which would be a much more effective way to lobby a teacher to use it...

Good background information on blended learning. Pay particular attention to the footnotes.

A classroom music experience in which 24 kids (many on iPads) and several professional musicians collaborated on a piece of digital music. The piece they created may not shatter any sales records (though it is actually on sale in the iTunes store), but it's certainly not bad for student work. It's unclear how long they worked on this piece, or how many takes were involved, but the resulting music and video are good. And the students are left with a downloadable song that they created. So here are my questions: - are these students learning music? - is their learning transferable to real instruments? - to tweak Sting's words: is technology a legitimate teacher in this case?

An overview of Twitter for professional development as well as some links. "Teachers who are fans say they appreciate the easy-to-use tool as a quick way to network with colleagues. They like being able to ask and answer questions, learn from experts, share resources, and react to events on the fly."

"Although hundreds of studies have shown that clearly communicating instructional objectives has a positive effect on student achievement, not all techniques for doing so have the same beneficial effects. In a series of studies we conducted at Marzano Research Laboratory, we found that some approaches had no effect on student achievement and that others actually produced negative results-that is, students would have been better off if the teacher had not provided an objective."

"Just as effective teaching demands that teachers establish routines to guide the basic physical and social interactions of the classroom, so too thinking routines need to be established to help guide students' learning and intellectual interactions..."

APPitic is a directory of apps for education by Apple Distinguished Educators to help teachers transform teaching and learning. These apps have been tested in a variety of different grade levels, instructional strategies and classroom settings.

Ideas on how to assess art projects, from an art teacher. Lots of his own opinions here, but many are valid. Just take them with grains of salt.

Very powerful application of Google Apps to create a system of assessment and feedback for teachers and students. It's complex, but he's provided the whole template.

"schools are spending billions on technology, even as they cut budgets and lay off teachers, with little proof that this approach is improving basic learning."

tutorials

"In spring 2007 I invited the 200 students enrolled in the "small" version of my "Introduction to Cultural Anthropology" class to tell the world what they think of their education by helping me write a script for a video to be posted on YouTube. The result was the disheartening portrayal of disengagement you see below."

"What is an essential question? An essential question is - well, essential: important, vital, at the heart of the matter - the essence of the issue."

Mathematics for Elementary

lists conferences, resources, etc for Math education

"While multitasking may seem to be saving time, psychologists, neuroscientists and others are finding that it can put us under a great deal of stress and actually make us less efficient."

"It was just another day here at St. John's College, whose distinctiveness goes far beyond its curriculum of great works: Aeschylus and Aristotle, Bacon and Bach. As much of academia fractures into ever more specific disciplines, this tiny college still expects - in fact, requires - its professors to teach almost every subject, leveraging ignorance as much as expertise."

"It was just another day here at St. John's College, whose distinctiveness goes far beyond its curriculum of great works: Aeschylus and Aristotle, Bacon and Bach. As much of academia fractures into ever more specific disciplines, this tiny college still expects - in fact, requires - its professors to teach almost every subject, leveraging ignorance as much as expertise."

"I used to have to tell my students about phenomena, or have them read; now I can show them," says Jim Doane, a science teacher at Scarborough Middle School, in Scarborough, Maine. When we begin adding digital demonstrations through video and Flash animation, we are giving students new, better ways to get information." This is sooo true - I love that I can show my kindergartners a video of a baby worm hatching from it's cocoon because the odds of us being able to see it in our worm bin despite the number of actual cocoons we may see are very,very low! Or videos of leaves changing color (in fast time) when we discuss chlorphyll and sunlight and fall. Or a magnificent closeup of our very own red wigglers as they "move" across the Promethean Board.