sbisd early adopters

"I see posts and videos about great educators and the great things that they're doing almost every day. And, being the self-reflective person that I am, it often makes me have the same reaction: "Wow, that's great! Look at what that teacher is doing. Look what her students have created. Look at the impact his classroom is having on the world. "Why am I not doing that? Why aren't my students doing that? Man, what kind of a teacher am I if we're not doing that?"

edWeb.net is a highly-acclaimed professional social and learning network that has become a vibrant online community for exceptional educators, decision-makers, and influencers who are on the leading edge of innovation in education. edWeb members are teachers, faculty, administrators, and librarians at K12 and post-secondary institutions. edWeb is a place where educators who are looking for ways to improve teaching and learning can gather and share information and ideas with peers and thought leaders in the industry. Any educator can use edWeb for free to create a personal learning network or professional learning community to make it easier to collaborate, share ideas, and move forward faster with new ideas and initiatives, particularly those than leverage technology to accelerate improvement.

edWeb.net is a highly-acclaimed professional social and learning network that has become a vibrant online community for exceptional educators, decision-makers, and influencers who are on the leading edge of innovation in education. edWeb members are teachers, faculty, administrators, and librarians at K12 and post-secondary institutions. edWeb is a place where educators who are looking for ways to improve teaching and learning can gather and share information and ideas with peers and thought leaders in the industry. Any educator can use edWeb for free to create a personal learning network or professional learning community to make it easier to collaborate, share ideas, and move forward faster with new ideas and initiatives, particularly those than leverage technology to accelerate improvement.

""The reality is that to survive in a fast-changing world you need to be creative," says Gerard J. Puccio, chairman of the International Center for Studies in Creativity at Buffalo State College, which has the nation's oldest creative studies program, having offered courses in it since 1967. "That is why you are seeing more attention to creativity at universities," he says. "The marketplace is demanding it." Critical thinking has long been regarded as the essential skill for success, but it's not enough, says Dr. Puccio. Creativity moves beyond mere synthesis and evaluation and is, he says, "the higher order skill." This has not been a sudden development. Nearly 20 years ago "creating" replaced "evaluation" at the top of Bloom's Taxonomy of learning objectives. In 2010 "creativity" was the factor most crucial for success found in an I.B.M. survey of 1,500 chief executives in 33 industries."

"Schema theory explains how our previous experiences, knowledge, emotions, and understandings affect what and how we learn (Harvey & Goudvis, 2000). Schema is the background knowledge and experience readers bring to the text. Good readers draw on prior knowledge and experience to help them understand what they are reading and are thus able to use that knowledge to make connections. Struggling readers often move directly through a text without stopping to consider whether the text makes sense based on their own background knowledge, or whether their knowledge can be used to help them understand confusing or challenging materials. By teaching students how to connect to text they are able to better understand what they are reading (Harvey & Goudvis, 2000). Accessing prior knowledge and experiences is a good starting place when teaching strategies because every student has experiences, knowledge, opinions, and emotions that they can draw upon. "

"In cooperative learning, students work together, think together and plan together using a variety of group structures designed along an instructional path. This dynamic learning model breaks with the dusty forms of frontal teaching that often create classrooms of "lonesome togetherness" -- students who may sit together but live worlds apart. Cooperative learning creates what Daniel Goleman calls "cognitive empathy," a mind-to-mind sense of how another person's thinking works. The better we understand others, the better we know them -- pointing toward (among other virtues) greater trust, appreciation and generosity. "

"This is the first of several reflections from Wisconsin elementary principal Matt Renwick on digital and passion-based learning in a new afterschool program. "

View historical maps as Google Earth overlays. Great now/then material for History!

"As this happens, certain mental skills will become less valuable because computers will take over. Having a great memory will probably be less valuable. Being able to be a straight-A student will be less valuable - gathering masses of information and regurgitating it back on tests. So will being able to do any mental activity that involves following a set of rules. But what human skills will be more valuable?" 5 Traits...

"But students don't mind a wit. They're ready, wondering what's taking us so long to use the tools they can't get enough of at home."

"Our new research on the nature and variety of the pleasure avid adolescent readers take from their out-of-school reading (Reading Unbound: Why Kids Need to Read What They Want-and Why We Should Let Them) demonstrates that pleasure is not incidental to reading-it's essential.  "

"I am updating my workshop on how technology can be used to promote Voluntary Free Reading - the only undebatably fool-proof means of both improving reading proficiency and developing a life-long love of reading in every student. "

"The age of knowing is slowing giving way to an age of data navigation, and what students need help with should be adjusted accordingly-even if in ways other than the ideas below."

" He found in his research that assigning a pool of points for a team, say 40 points for four students, and having the students divide the points up depending on who did which percentage of the work, was effective in raising students' participation in a group project."

When learners speak, write, or draw their ideas, they deepen their cognition. Project Zero's Visible Thinking approach shows how. I'm sure Sara has already shared this... but couldn't control myself.

""What are you doing in your classroom now, that you could turn over to your students to do themselves?""

Likely reason why visits to H. Truman's Wikipedia page spike on presidential elections: http://t.co/6f5LhFR7nP @sewilkie @NLearning

Healthy food for thought & growth "@CurtisCFEE: "Why Does Jack Have to Change?" @PeterMDeWitt: http://t.co/T55cDdSiXo #edchat @BalancEdTech

RT @DrTonyWagner: "@HuffPostEdu: 5 habits of innovative educators http://t.co/d6f4yV5U0M" Some worthwhile advice #sbisdea