Group items tagged

"Learning Futures was a programme designed to get young people engaged actively and positively with their learning, achieving better outcomes and retaining a commitment to learning beyond school. We are now looking for people interested in becoming an 'Engaging School'."

Many great links to resources, tools, and related documents.

A recent study in the US found that: * 98 percent of students feel bored at school at least some of the time; * Two-thirds of students feel bored every day; * A quarter of students feel unchallenged by lessons

The "Collaborating for Success" Parent Engagement Toolkit is designed to provide parents with practical strategies for getting engaged in schools, and to offer schools research-based approaches to overcoming barriers to parental engagement. Parents will find strategies and information that will encourage their future or current involvement with their children's schools. The school-related approaches will support the development of new parent programs or the enhancement of existing ones.

"...research demonstrates service-learning's success as a youth engagement tool. It enhances students' sense of self-efficacy, improves self-esteem, and decreases their likelihood to engage in at-risk behavior. Service-learning has the potential to improve attendance. -percent of students at low-performing schools said their feelings would be more positive if they were engaged in service-learning at school."

"It turns out that even brilliant, highly accomplished people are pretty lousy when it comes to understanding why they succeed or fail." Great piece to consider as we engage in our work as fellows.

As school choice evolves in Vermont having a PR strategy and "brand" recognition will be a necessity. If a school doesn't define its brand...it will be defined for it. What is yours?

"While that sounds like a lot to manage, a good PR program can help you gain support for your district initiatives in some key ways: *Taxpayer support: ... *Demonstrate economic impact: ... *Ensure public engagement: ..."

Districts must manage their own PR and push out information through channels it can control, such as websites, direct mail, social media and email." "Social media has enabled anyone to become a 'citizen journalist' with the ability to sway public opinion - regardless of accuracy or intent," said Nichols. "Not only do we need to embrace these new technologies and opportunities, but we must master them to ensure that we can successfully operate our PR programs in all situations." Kleinz adds that today's mobile technology means that school districts must be prepared to respond immediately in a crisis to help manage the situation and ensure that the community receives accurate and timely information."

"When engaged in consistently, these actions-questioning, observing, networking, and experimenting-triggered associational thinking..."

"Most of us think creativity is an entirely cognitive skill; it all happens in the brain. A critical insight from our research is that one's ability to generate innovative ideas is not merely a function of the mind, but also a function of behaviors."

Education for Sustainability - A Public Lecture/Learning Series - Spring 2012" ...questions addressed in this lecture series seek to: clarify what we know about educational approaches to learning that can move people to authentically embrace sustainability (what is "education for sustainability"), share best practices and new approaches to engaging with the values and substance of sustainability (updates from the field), and provide opportunities for practitioners and educators to evaluate, integrate, and create new approaches to education for sustainability (learning next steps)."

Series ScheduleFeb 2: Lecture: A conversation with Bill McKibben about educational priorities in the 21st CenturyFeb 9: Panel: New concepts in engaged education for sustainability (Poleman, Kolan, Nordstrom)Feb 16: Lecture: Greg SmithFeb 23: Lecture: Taylor RickettsMar 1: Workshop: Understanding major themes in Education for SustainabilityMar 15: Panel: Student Voices on SustainabilityMar 22: Lecture: TBAMar 29: Lecture: Environmental Contamination (Paul Ligon and Jill Kauffman Johnson)(Tentative) Apr 5: Workshop: Practices that work - concepts and experiences(Tentative) Apr 12: Panel: Spreading Sustainability - A Programmatic Model (UVM Sustainability Fellows)Apr 19: Lecture: Tentative Debra RoweApr 26: Workshop: Sustainability futures - Ideas and collaborations

"What capacity do we need as leaders to demonstrate authenticity and build credibility and trust? One of the most critical is our ability and willingness to engage in challenging, sensitive - in a word, courageous - conversations."

"If we are leading for improvement, we are inevitably leading for change and can expect some degree of discomfort, disagreement or resistance along the way - whether on the level of the individual, or the organization."

"Leadership often involves challenging people to live up to their words, to close the gap between their espoused values and their actual behaviour. It may mean pointing out the elephant sitting on the table at a meeting - the unspoken issue that everyone sees but no one wants to mention."

That's how blended learning should work-a combination of personal digital learning and community connected, team-based, production-focused, authentic, engaging, and relevant activities.  At Maker High, students would publish rather than 'turn it in'.  They would demonstrate mastery rather than finishing a class.

Improved Academic Achievement Improved Student Engagement Enhanced Civic Engagement and Citizenship Enhanced Personal and Social Skills

Twelve youth-adult teams from Vermont's "Youth and Adults Transforming Schools Together" initiative (YATST) are excited to once again "Be the Buzz" at this second annual conference. Two rounds of "learningshops" will follow for engaging activities and deep discussions focusing on 1) why schools need to transform, 2) how schools might engage youth in the process of transformation, and 3) what transformed schools might look and sound like.

"...the absence of grades is a necessary ...(condition for)... promoting deep thinking and a desire to engage in it. It's worth lingering variety of efforts to sell us formulas to improve our grading techniques, none of which address the problems of grading, per se." - "If you have one eye on how close you are to achieving your goal, that leaves only one eye for your task."

"In isolation neither the research nor the teacher seems to have much of a chance for sustained discovery, growth, and positive change." (p. 39) "Faculty members are changing how they teach and making informed choices when it comes to teaching strategies. They feel empowered and are encouraged to take risks, are fostering collaborations in their teaching and are talking about teaching. For some, the change in how they teach has been radical. For others, the change has been small but still noticeable." (p. 42) And to what do the conveners attribute this success? "We saw that we are learners together in this learning community and we are our own best resource: Our collective knowledge is an invaluable asset." (p. 43) Retrieved from: http://www.cs.kent.edu/~volkert/science-learning/files/sirum-madigan.pdf

As educators do we model those "best practices" for learning which we expect from our students? How do we... "Engage ... in active learning experiences; Set high, meaningful expectations; Provide, receive, and use regular, timely, and specific feedback; Become aware of values, beliefs, preconceptions; unlearn if necessary; Recognize and stretch ... styles and developmental levels; Seek and present real-world applications; Understand and value criteria and methods for (our own) assessment; Create opportunities for (peer to peer) interactions; ...; Promote (peer) involvement through engaged time and quality effort" Retrieved from: http://pandora.cii.wwu.edu/cii/resources/outcomes/best_practices.asp

"Lately, there has been more discussion over what is meant by a world class education system. Last week the US Department of Education put out its white paper on international education strategy entitled, Succeeding Globally Through International Education and Engagement, and in 2012 several books on the topic were published. ... I thought I would synthesize the key concepts of these books in order to formulate policy design principles for Vermont as we begin to think about transforming our current educational system into a world class system."

"If examinations challenge learners to solve problems the way they are solved in real life today, the educational system will change for ever. It is a small policy change that is required. Allow the use of the internet and collaboration during an examination. If we did that to exams, the curriculum would have to be different. We would not need to emphasise facts or figures or dates. The curriculum would have to become questions that have strange and interesting answers. "Where did language come from?", "Why were the pyramids built?", "Is life on Earth sustainable?", "What is the purpose of theatre?" Questions that engage learners in a world of unknowns. Questions that will occupy their minds through their waking hours and sometimes their dreams. Teaching in an environment where the internet and discussion are allowed in exams would be different. The ability to find things out quickly and accurately would become the predominant skill. The ability to discriminate between alternatives, then put facts together to solve problems would be critical. AThat's a skill that future employers would admire immensely."

"We have a romantic attachment to skills from the past which are no longer relevant on a curriculum for today's children."

If you have not seen doctopus and Google docs used in conjunction with assessments you ought to check it out! It is so phenomenal that I cannot express how super fantastic a tool it will be for you.

An Odyssey Of Creativity, Innovation and Critical Thinking An Action Research Study By The Ottawa-Carleton District School Board Links to the full report: Unleashing Potential, Harnessing Possibilities, the Executive Summary and the Report At-a-Glance are all worth a look

"Under what conditions do healthy and creative individuals and organizations flourish?"

"...this work will have a significant impact on improving student achievement and well-being. This work is rooted in the belief that the more the organization recognizes, values and taps into the creative and unique capacities of everyone within and connected (to the school), the greater the opportunity to reach and teach all of the students in our care. This is the imperative in fostering a truly engaged and creative approach to learning and to individual and organizational health."

The greatest challenge to change in learning is our reticence to simply take action: - change the space - change the program - expect high outcomes.

Association for Authentic, Experiential and Evidence-Based Learning (AAEEBL) Monday, July 16, 2012 Boston, MA "This Institute will launch a conversation among educators and enable participants to raise questions and examine issues about the implementation of eportfolio programs for K-12 teaching, learning and beyond."

Website also has significant amount of information, resources, and exemplars re for those engaged in ePortfolio work.

Keynote at ISTE 2012.  Here is a video of YongZhao's presentation.  He was a wonderful speaker, very engaging and funny, but with a clear and serious message.  There is about 15 minutes of intro stuff first, but you can fast forward that if you are short on time.  His talk is about an hour and well worth your time.