Group items tagged

Various researchers have summarized how to use Bloom's Taxonomy. Following are four interpretations that you can use as guides in helping to write objectives using Bloom's Taxonomy.

"The search giant said the move was the first step in transitioning from an "information agent" to a "knowledge agent." "The Knowledge Graph enables you to search for things, people or places that Google knows about - landmarks, celebrities, cities, sports teams, buildings, geographical features, movies, celestial objects, works of art and more - and instantly get information that's relevant to your query," Amit Singhal, a senior vice president at Google, wrote. Google is going to roll out the new feature slowly, but some users should begin seeing the feature this week. In practical terms, what's going to happen when you search on Google is that you'll see a separate "knowledge panel" on the right side of your regular search results that presents information about whatever your searching for."

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

Sophia is a free social teaching and learning platform that offers academic content to anyone, anywhere free of charge. The website, which has been described as a mashup of Facebook, Wikipedia, and YouTube focused solely on education, also lets educators supplement their teaching methods with tools to create a customized learning environment in a private or public setting. Sophia uses Web 2.0 tools and methods to create a credible, crowd-sourced platform where information is organized in "learning packets"-bite-sized tutorials tagged to specific academic subjects or topics, including standards-aligned objectives.

"In their book, Turning Learning Right Side Up: Putting Education Back on Track, authors Russell L. Ackoff and Daniel Greenberg point out that today's education system is seriously flawed -- it focuses on teaching rather than learning. "Why should children -- or adults -- be asked to do something computers and related equipment can do much better than they can?" the authors ask in the following excerpt from the book. "Why doesn't education focus on what humans can do better than the machines and instruments they create?" "Education is an admirable thing, but it is well to remember from time to time that nothing that is worth learning can be taught." -- Oscar Wilde"

A great sport themed maths game to help students learn about angles and how to measure them. http://ictmagic.wikispaces.com/maths

Open Educational Resources come in many shapes and sizes. This partial list of sources introduces the scope of OER and the organizations cultivating its increasingly vital role in opening higher education up to the greatest number of people worldwide.