Group items tagged

"I decided to use the teacher console on Diigo to create groups for each of my classes. I used handouts and tips from Bill Ferriter's Digitally Speaking Wiki to get everything set up and explain to the student how I wanted them to find, annotate, and share resources and information. (I highly recommend Bill's resources. They saved me a ton of time.) The students had used Diigo for research on a project during a previous school year so I thought with Bill's handouts and the boys' previous experience we were in good shape to begin. I soon learned differently. We have a 1:1 laptop classroom and the boys have a natural tendency to head straight to Google any time they have a question, but it was obvious after the first day that they weren't finding the quality resources they needed. Additionally, some boys still didn't know (or forgot) how to share to a group while others didn't know how to write a quality annotation. I had assumed too much. They needed what Mike Kaechele calls a "teacher workshop" on searching for information and on how to use Diigo. They needed me to model what they should do."

"We recommend discussing explicitly the purpose, associated practices, and changed roles that the use of Essential Questions entails. Here are some examples of key ideas framed as sentences to be spoken in class to prepare students for the changes: "There's not a single correct answer for this question. Life is about the consideration of plausible and imperfect alternatives." "Coming to understand important ideas is like fitness: it takes practice over time." "When a question is posted on the wall, it means that we are going to consider it again and again." "Inquiry is not a spectator sport: each of you needs to listen actively and participate." "Everyone is fair game. I won't only call on people who raise their hands." "If and when I or others challenge your comment, it doesn't mean we don't like you or don't value your contribution." "Making mistakes is an expected part of learning. If you never take a risk of making a mistake, you're not likely to improve." "You may find that you are re-considering things that you thought you understood. That is normal - even desirable." Like the care of seedlings, the new rules will require patience, careful nurturing, and constant reminders. Overtime, they will become the norms, allowing big ideas to take root and mature understandings to blossom."

"teacher-ready tips for stimulating curiosity in others. First, she suggests starting with the question, rather than the answer-which teachers will recognize as the foundation of inquiry-based or discovery learning (see: math teacher Dan Meyer's take on how to make math "irresistible" to students). She then suggests offering some initial knowledge on the subject. "We're not curious about something we know absolutely nothing about," she writes. Again, teachers may know this as "activating prior knowledge" or "setting the stage" before a lesson. Finally, she says it helps to require communication, or "open an information gap and then require learners to communicate with each other in order to fill it." The think-pair-share technique and vocabulary activities that require students to teach each other their words both exemplify this. What would you add to the list? How does stimulating curiosity gel with other motivation tactics-or should teachers think of curiosity and motivation as one and the same?"

Ramsey Musallam, a high school chemistry teacher from the San Francisco Bay Area, has been creatively using digital tools in his classroom for several years as a way to drive students to deeper inquiry. In a recent TED talk, Musallam says that a teacher's strongest tool - the force that draws students deeper into learning - is piquing students' curiosity. In his classroom, Musallam follows three rules: curiosity comes first, embrace the mess, and reflect and revise.

"At the Buck Institute for Education (BIE), we've been keeping a list of the many types of "_____- based learning" we've run across over the years: Case-based learning Challenge-based learning Community-based learning Design-based learning Game-based learning Inquiry-based learning Land-based learning Passion-based learning Place-based learning Problem-based learning Proficiency-based learning Service-based learning Studio-based learning Team-based learning Work-based learning . . . and our new fave . . . "

I have been thinking a lot lately about the challenge we face as educators when well-intentioned learners make incorrect, inscrutable, thoughtless, or otherwise off-the-mark comments. It's a crucial moment in teaching: how do you respond to an unhelpful remark in a way that 1) dignifies the attempt while 2) making sure that no one leaves thinking that the remark is true or useful? Summer is a great time to think about the challenge of developing new routines and habits in class, and this is a vital issue that gets precious little attention in training and staff development. Here is a famous Saturday Night Live skit, with Jerry Seinfeld as a HS history teacher, that painfully demonstrates the challenge and a less than exemplary response. Don't misunderstand me: I am not saying that we are always correct in our judgment about participant remarks. Sometimes a seemingly dumb comment turns out to be quite insightful. Nor am I talking about merely inchoate or poorly-worded contributions. That is a separate teaching challenge: how to unpack or invite others to unpack a potentially-useful but poorly articulated idea. No, I am talking about those comments that are just clunkers in some way; seemingly dead-end offerings that tempt us to drop our jaws or make some snarky remark back. My favorite example of the challenge and how to meet it comes from watching my old mentor Ted Sizer in action in front of 360 educators in Louisville 25 years ago. We had travelled as the staff of the Coalition of Essential Schools from Providence to Louisville to pitch the emerging Coalition reform effort locally. Ted gave a rousing speech about the need to transform the American high school. After a long round of applause, Ted took questions. The first questioner asked, and I quote: "Mr Sizer, what do you think about these girls and their skimpy halter tops in school?" (You have to also imagine the voice: very good-ol'-boy). Without missing a beat or making a face, Ted said "Deco

"There is a new acronym that is rapidly becoming embedded in the public narrative about technology and learning: BYOD. It stands for Bring Your Own Device. It opens up an area of inquiry that can be summarized in the following questions: How should communities, schools, and teachers address the issue of students wanting to bring their own digital devices to school? What new opportunities and challenges would a pro-BYOD-or an anti-BYOD policy-present? How do educators manage a BYOD world?"

"The literature on educational leadership and school change recognizes clearly the role and influence of the campus administrator (the principal, and sometimes an assistant principal) on whether or not change will occur in the school. It seems clear that transforming the school organization into a learning community can be done only with the leaders' sanction and active nurturing of the entire staff's development as a community. Thus, a look at the principal of a school whose staff is a professional learning community seems a good starting point for describing what these learning communities look like and how they operate. "

Attributes of Professional Learning Communities The literature on educational leadership and school change recognizes clearly the role and influence of the campus administrator (the principal, and sometimes an assistant principal) on whether or not change will occur in the school. It seems clear that transforming the school organization into a learning community can be done only with the leaders' sanction and active nurturing of the entire staff's development as a community. Thus, a look at the principal of a school whose staff is a professional learning community seems a good starting point for describing what these learning communities look like and how they operate.

"As the information landscape shifts to offer far more information in an often befuddling manner that some have called "data smog," many schools are learning that traditional approaches to student research are inadequate to meet the essential learning goals set by most states or provincial governments. With hundreds of computers and dozens of classrooms connected to extensive electronic information resources, schools are recognizing the importance of reinventing the way they engage students in both questioning and research. "