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Patrick Higgins

Reading in a Whole New Way | 40th Anniversary | Smithsonian Magazine - 0 views

  • We can agree or disagree with Kevin, but the world keeps spinning. Screens are made and used in instructive and destructive ways. As an educator I need to learn to use screens as learning platforms so that I can model constructive informative behavior for the students I interact with. So here is how I came to write this post. I subscribe to Will Richardson's blog weblog-ed in my Google Reader. He shared a link to Kevin Kelly's blog Technium. As I read the blog post I used Diigo to underline and add sticky notes. I now have this annotation in my Diigo groups. I will Twitter this and add a link in the New Literacies Institute Ning at newlit.org. Kevin will sell a few more books, which I have hundreds of, and add more readers of his blog.
  • This article is very interesting because it made me think.And I thougt that I was right when I bought a computer for my 81st birthday.It has a wide screen,and I could enlarge the letters to be able to read it because my eyes are bad. I felt that I was not anymore excluded of the world.I had entered the 21st century. The last 12 or some years I spend writing a book by hand.Nobody would ever read a single word of the more than 400 pages.No editor would have accepted it.But is has been typed and now it is on the web.Everybody can read it,and sites of military history,dutch and french,published it or parts of it(I wrote it in french)because it is about the 1940-campaign. Thank you,dear author,you made me feel I was right.
  • Bring on the technology, we have plenty of idle brain space waiting to make use of it.
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    Kevin Kelly writes about how reading has changed from a silent, individual pastime to one that is collaborative, more physical pursuit.  
Patrick Higgins

7 Bad Writing Habits You Learned in School | Copyblogger - 6 views

  • Go around citing the sources of all of your ideas and people will start avoiding you, because it’s boring as hell
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    What do you think of this?
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    Pat - this is such a true article - but can it fit anywhere in our classrooms? As an avid reader I have to admit that some of the BEST stuff I've read is just from the heart of an author. I like this - how can I use without making people angry ?? :)
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    Danielle, That's precisely the question I want everyone thinking about. We truly focus so much of our energies on getting the format down and getting the "i's" dotted and "t's" crossed, and for many of the students we teach, that is completely necessary; however, as we begin to look at the next phase of what we'd like to do in the district which includes more than just being "proficient" on some state test, can we blend some of the thinking in this post into what we are doing. And as for making people angry, my advice is that you don't get the results you really want without making a few people angry along the way. Not that you try to, but when you know that what you are doing will make your students better, you just go with it.
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    Pat - I'd love to share this post with the kids or incorporate parts of it. I have to say that the best writing that the kids have done is usually the writing they do when we're in class and they just write. One of the hardest parts of teaching English is having to read 130 well constructed essays that follow the rubric but are so dry and boring that I have to restrain myself from stabbing my eyes out with my pen. It all goes back to the fact that in our H.S. the kids can write a great 5 paragraph essay or write persuasively but they have NO VOICE and I feel that the stress on structure and grammar could be why they have no voice. Interesting - we should discuss this a bit at our next Connections meeting!
Patrick Higgins

Why I Returned My iPad - Peter Bregman - Harvard Business Review - 0 views

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    this would work well for some of the units, especially in 8th grade, that deal with the pros and cons of technology.
Patrick Higgins

Dot-to-Dot 2010 - 1 views

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    I'd love to get my new students and faculty into something like this.
Erica Hartman

Create your PLN - hartmanresources - 3 views

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    my site created for St Catharine's
Patrick Higgins

Decision-making: Use the "APC" Method to Creatively Solve Problems - 0 views

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    A method of finding solutions to problems.
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    From one of my favorite sites.
Patrick Higgins

Invitations to Learn // Carol Ann Tomlinson - 0 views

  • I am accepted and acceptable here just as I am. I am safe here—physically, emotionally, and intellectually. People here care about me. People here listen to me. People know how I'm doing, and it matters to them that I do well. People acknowledge my interests and perspectives and act upon them.
    • Patrick Higgins
       
      Some great lines here regarding the needs of the learners in your classroom.
  • I understand what we do here. I see significance in what we do. What we do reflects me and my world. The work we do makes a difference in the world. The work absorbs me.
  • when students discover meaning and relevance implicit in books, ideas, and tasks. Without meaning, schoolwork is purposeless for students.
  • ...5 more annotations...
  • What I learn here is useful to me now.
  • "Other teachers told us what to think. This one is different because she showed us how to think and that we can think."
  • Rubrics and work samples help students understand the hallmarks of quality work.
  • I accomplish things here that I didn't believe were possible.
  • the actions of those excellent teachers consistently convey invitation.
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    Tomlinson article detailing the emotional needs of learners in the classroom.
Patrick Higgins

Move beyond index cards: 12 ways to organize information online » TeachClever - 0 views

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    Here are some ways to make researching online available to your students. Also, my favorite part, to eliminate the notecard.
Patrick Higgins

Globaloria: Social Networks for Global Learning - 0 views

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    This one looks pretty robust here. I'd like to get my head around this one for a while.
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    I think we should check this one out to see if we can use it.
Patrick Higgins

My Report Card, 08-09 | The Line - 0 views

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    Great read by Dina Strasser about setting goals and providing feedback for yourself.
Patrick Higgins

Awesome Stories - 0 views

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    This might be the greatest link to pop onto my radar in a while. Primary source material centered around historical events in the form of eyewitness accounts, trial transcripts, etc. The possibilities here are endless. Where was this when I was in the classroom?
Patrick Higgins

UDL Guidelines | National Center On Universal Design for Learning - 1 views

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    This is something that is really influencing my thinking.  It's a method of designing curricular materials that appeals to the broadest array of learners.  Really powerful stuff.
Patrick Higgins

Hacking Education | Union Square Ventures: A New York Venture Capital Fund Focused on E... - 0 views

  • Students in the future will be as likely to be evaluated on their portfolio of work, as they are on their grades.
  • If I eat an apple, you cannot also eat that same apple; but if I learn something, there is no reason you cannot also learn that thing. Information goods lend themselves to being created, distributed and consumed on the web. It is not so different from music, or classified advertising, or news
  • But the most important thing about that was, I learned how to be obsessed with things... I got obsessed with these things and I had a series of stages in my life where I got obsesses with something else. And I just immersed myself to learn as much as I could. And it's that mechanism I used again and again and again in my professional life. So how do you teach kids to be obsessed with things?
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    Take a look at the annotations I made. To do this, you must have Diigo installed via Firefox. I think that might be our new project for the year--annotating articles for discussion at meetings.
Erica Hartman

Track My T - 2 views

Erica Hartman

Comiqs | My First Comiq - 0 views

shared by Erica Hartman on 14 May 08 - Cached
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    create your own comic
Patrick Higgins

Can You Become a Creature of New Habits? - New York Times - 0 views

  • “The first thing needed for innovation is a fascination with wonder,” says Dawna Markova, author of “The Open Mind” and an executive change consultant for Professional Thinking Partners. “But we are taught instead to ‘decide,’ just as our president calls himself ‘the Decider.’ ” She adds, however, that “to decide is to kill off all possibilities but one. A good innovational thinker is always exploring the many other possibilities.”
    • Patrick Higgins
       
      This is the part that we can really instill in our students: a sense of wonder that permeates all they do. How do we do it? My idea would be to tap into their passions. What do they go for? Also, one of the jobs of schools is to expose students to things they would not normally be exposed to. This can create new habits and new wonder.
  • The current emphasis on standardized testing highlights analysis and procedure, meaning that few of us inherently use our innovative and collaborative modes of thought.
    • Patrick Higgins
       
      This is where we come in.
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  • Ms. Ryan and Ms. Markova have found what they call three zones of existence: comfort, stretch and stress. Comfort is the realm of existing habit. Stress occurs when a challenge is so far beyond current experience as to be overwhelming. It’s that stretch zone in the middle — activities that feel a bit awkward and unfamiliar — where true change occurs.
    • Patrick Higgins
       
      This is Vygotsky's Zone of Proximal Development where our students are stressed to the point of learning, but not beyond it.
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    I am dropping this in your mailboxes today.
Patrick Higgins

Class Struggle - When teachers reject the Internet - 2 views

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    What do you think of this? For the best part of the article, be sure to read the comments.
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    Interesting article and comments but it all just makes me mad. I work to hard everyday and spend to much time away from my baby to hear constant criticisms about teaching, especially when I go above and beyond to put everything online yet no one ever looks at it. Great now I"m annoyed Thanks Pat :) LOL not your fault.
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    Danielle, Sorry about that; the intent was not to upset you, but rather to let everyone see that there is a balancing act that is going on all over the country. One of the commentors stated that "this is here to stay, so everyone get used to it," and while I didn't appreciate his or her closed tone, he or she has a point: it's here. Finding a balance between what is communicated, how it is communicated, and how to best maximize the time we spend doing the communicating in addition to the lives that we lead outside of school is now a huge issue. It is now a major discussion point in many of the meetings I attend, and I think the answer will come out after we muddle through it for a little while. There are so many new changes this year regarding openness and transparency, I think we will find that balance after a bit of trial and error with it.
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