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Patrick Higgins

The New Writing Pedagogy - 0 views

  • Moving to a new pedagogy is not easy for many district administrators, however, as the Web as a writing space is still primarily an unknown, scary place to put students. But as research is showing, students are flocking to online networks in droves, and they are doing a great deal of writing there already, some of it creative and thoughtful and inspiring, but much of it outside the traditional expectations of “good writing” that classrooms require
  • That change is spelled out clearly by the National Council of Teachers of English, which last year published “new literacies” for readers and writers in the 21st century. Among those literacies are the ability to “build relationships with others to pose and solve problems collaboratively and cross-culturally,” to “design and share information for global communities to meet a variety of purposes,” and to “create, critique, analyze, and evaluate multi-media texts.” Very little of that kind of work is possible to achieve without expanding the way we think about writing instruction in the context of online social tools.
  • “Using online writing tools will allow students to write whenever and wherever they feel inspired, and to be able to speak to an audience that is larger and more important to them than the traditional classroom,” Childers says. “There is a reason why we should constantly be looking for ways to incorporate more innovative writing opportunities into our curriculum.”
Patrick Higgins

Portfolios (Authentic Assessment Toolbox) - 3 views

  • Portfolio: A collection of a student's work specifically selected to tell a particular story about the student
    • Patrick Higgins
       
      This is what I am really leaning towards: students telling the story of their work. Can we accomplish that?
  • A portfolio is not the pile of student work that accumulates over a semester or year. Rather, a portfolio contains a purposefully selected subset of student work. "Purposefully" selecting student work means deciding what type of story you want the portfolio to tell.
  • 1. Growth Portfolios a. to show growth or change over time b. to help develop process skills such as self-evaluation and goal-setting c. to identify strengths and weaknesses d. to track the development of one more products/performances 2. Showcase Portfolios a. to showcase end-of-year/semester accomplishments b. to prepare a sample of best work for employment or college admission c. to showcase student perceptions of favorite, best or most important work d. to communicate a student's current aptitudes to future teachers 3. Evaluation Portfolios a. to document achievement for grading purposes b. to document progress towards standards c. to place students appropriately
    • Patrick Higgins
       
      Which one do you think fits our purposes? Or should we leave that up to the students?
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

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.
Erica Hartman

Official Google Blog: Our Googley advice to students: Major in learning - 0 views

  • ... communication skills. Marshalling and understanding the available evidence isn't useful unless you can effectively communicate your conclusions.
  • .. analytical reasoning. Google is a data-driven, analytic company. When an issue arises or a decision needs to be made, we start with data. That means we can talk about what we know, instead of what we think we know.
  • . a willingness to experiment. Non-routine problems call for non-routine solutions and there is no formula for success. A well-designed experiment calls for a range of treatments, explicit control groups, and careful post-treatment analysis. Sometimes an experiment kills off a pet theory, so you need a willingness to accept the evidence even if you don't like it.
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  • ... team players. Virtually every project at Google is run by a small team. People need to work well together and perform up to the team's expectations.
  • ... passion and leadership. This could be professional or in other life experiences: learning languages or saving forests, for example. The main thing, to paraphrase Mr. Drucker, is to be motivated by a sense of importance about what you do.
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    Great article from the Google Blog about who they want and how to promote thinking skills in the classroom.
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    Read this. It's worth it.
Patrick Higgins

The Strength of Weak Ties » Towards a Framework For Visual Literacy Learning - 0 views

  • The auditory nerve transmits sound to the brain and is composed of about 30,000 fibers. Contrast that with the optic nerve which sends visual signals to the brain through 1 million fibers (Burmark 2002). Basically, you’ve got a dial-up connection from the ear to the brain and broadband from the eye to the brain.
  • Visuals, when combined with other multimedia, provide individuals with a competitive voice. One that can be heard. One that can be measured. One that says “here I am, and here’s what I think, here is what I have to contribute. Now what do you think?” Kids have meaningful things to say, so challenge them to produce visual content with purpose and with pride.
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    Here are some things to think about...
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

Zero-Thumb Game: How to Tame Texting | Edutopia - 0 views

  • guiding exercises in text translation: pulling up a MySpace page or a lingo-drenched school paper and asking students to translate the writing into standard English. Or they ask students to translate passages from classic literature into texting speak to demonstrate their comprehension of the writing and to create a form of multilingual focus, similar to how learning a foreign language tends to enhance a student's understanding of his or her native tongue.
    • Patrick Higgins
       
      This is a great example of how to take a typical assignment and give it an atypical outcome.
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    Another good reason to address the texting issue.
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    Check out how this teacher is viewing the use of text message lingo in her classroom. Very forward-thinking stuff here.
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

NSFW: After Fort Hood, another example of how 'citizen journalists' can't handle the truth - 2 views

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    This author brings up the question that I've wrestled with before: just because we can, does it mean that we should? Or should our abilities always go to make us more human?
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    This is such a scary topic but something that needs to be thought about. This has happened in our own town, instead of helping, people are video taping someone being beat up. I wonder though how this happens? Does it happen because it can or we have the technology to allow it or has the moral compass of our nation changed so that we don't see anything wrong with it? Crazy article.
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    Did you watch the "This American Life' cartoon? That is exactly what you are describing, where even the premise of creating news shows altered how kids behaved in the face of a situation that called for social action. It raises the question for me of "should the kids know more how to operate the high tech camera, or when to step out from behind it and act?"
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    Yeah I watched the cartoon and saved it in hopes that I can show it to my students one day and have that discussion. I think they NEED to know how to step out and act - being a good person and citizen should always be number one and if they do that then they will use their technology for the best things! I love these diigo posts - thanks!
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

Flickr: Upload to Flickr from Your Cameraphone - 0 views

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    Here are step-by-step instructions for how to upload photos to a flickr account from a moble phone. Great for asking students to generate content via their cell phones.
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    I think all of you should think about this....
Patrick Higgins

Messaging Shakespeare | Classroom Examples | Focus on Effectiveness - 0 views

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    How to bring Cellular technology to Stratford-on-Avon. This is a wonderful example of a teacher leveraging technology that is essential to the lives of students to further their understanding of a traditionally challenging subject.
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    Texting Shakespeare. Check out this use of the cell phone.
Patrick Higgins

26 Learning Games to Change the World | Mission to Learn - 0 views

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    I'd like to play a couple of these just to see how engaging they are.
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    Check out some of these games and see if they relate to the units you are creating.
Patrick Higgins

FeedBlitz - The Leading RSS and Blog to Email Service - 0 views

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    another way to get all of your web content to filter to one place.
Patrick Higgins

A history of media technology scares, from the printing press to Facebook. - By Vaughan... - 0 views

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    A respected Swiss scientist, Conrad Gessner, might have been the first to raise the alarm about the effects of information overload. In a landmark book, he described how the modern world overwhelmed people with data and that this overabundance was both "confusing and harmful" to the mind. The media now echo his concerns with reports on the unprecedented risks of living in an "always on" digital environment. It's worth noting that Gessner, for his part, never once used e-mail and was completely ignorant about computers. That's not because he was a technophobe but because he died in 1565. His warnings referred to the seemingly unmanageable flood of information unleashed by the printing press
Patrick Higgins

Educators wiki / HOW To - Create Footnotes - 0 views

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    This wiki editor, similar to wikispaces, allows for students to create footnotes right on the page.
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    footnotes on wikis? Research paper done completely paperless?
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.
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  • 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

FiveThirtyEight.com: Electoral Projections Done Right - 0 views

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    Lots of great data to expose our students to here. Let them go nuts with the graphs and write their explanation and rationalie.
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    I like this one for its simple use of polling data to make projections. As John Becker said, they take a baseball stats approach to the election.
Patrick Higgins

Chris Jordan pictures some shocking stats | Video on TED.com - 0 views

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    Chris Jordan talks about how to he uses data and represents it visually. These images made the rounds last year, but his talk really shows how well they transfer the information he is trying to get out to people.
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