Group items tagged

1.  Cultural Awareness: All teachers should take a moment to self-reflect about their own understandings and questions in regard to cultural differences. Take the time to learn about different cultures, gestures, and traditions and celebrate these differences with all of the students in the classroom. Encourage all students to share their culture with classmates.

2.  Empathize: Try to imagine how overwhelming it must feel to leave your home country and family members while trying to assimilate, learn and socialize in a foreign language. Be aware that ESL students will be in culture shock and feel highly alienated for some time. Garner patience and understand that it will take time for ESL students to talk, as a silent period is highly expected. Smile and show support to your best ability. 

3.  Provide A Comfort Zone: Assess where the ESL student’s abilities are in relation to basic survival skills and needs.  Assign a friendly and welcoming buddy to assist with common school locations, requirements and routines. If possible, keep an extra eye out during busy transition times to assure the student gets to the correct location. If possible, find someone in the school, another classmate, parent or volunteer that may speak the student’s language. Connecting the student with someone who speaks his/her native language will provide a great deal of comfort. 

In the 21st century workplace, success requires more than basic knowledge and skills. In PBL, students not only understand content more deeply but also learn how to take responsibility and build confidence, solve problems, work collaboratively, communicate ideas, and be creative innovators.

The Common Core and other present-day standards emphasize real-world application of knowledge and skills, and the development of the 21st century competencies such as critical thinking, communication in a variety of media, and collaboration. PBL provides an effective way to address such standards.

Modern technology – which students use so much in their lives – is a perfect fit with PBL. With technology, teachers and students can connect with experts, partners, and audiences around the world, and use tech tools to find resources and information, create products, and collaborate more effectively.

Access to high-speed Internet in schools is particularly important for rural and low-income communities. When Internet connections in schools are too slow, and students don’t have access at home, students miss the benefits of educational technologies altogether.

here’s a mismatch between the logic of participatory media and the still-reigning 20th-century model of management and organizations, with its emphasis on linear processes and control. Social media encourages horizontal collaboration

The dynamics of social media amplify the need for qualities that have long been a staple of effective leadership

Leaders need to excel at cocreation and collaboration—the currencies of the social-media world

This kind of integration between business, community, government, and schools is what we need in order to transform the function of public education in our society--and a makerspace is just the right kind of place to do it.

hackerspaces - focus on electrons makerspaces - focus on atoms citizen science lab - focus on biology, science research open democracy - enable citizens to engage with mechanisms of democracy co-working - shared space for independent professionals project collaborative - gateway to project economy creative communities - support for creative / artistic communities

Taking full advantage of technology to transform learning requires strong leadership capable of creating a shared vision of which all members of the community feel a part. Leaders who believe they can delegate the articulation of a vision for how technology can support their learning goals to a chief information officer or chief technology officer fundamentally misunderstand how technology can impact learning. Technology alone does not transform learning; rather, technology helps enable transformative learning. The vision begins with a discussion of how and why a community wants to transform learning. Once these goals are clear, technology can be used to open new possibilities for accomplishing the vision that would otherwise be out of reach. Moving to learning enabled by technology can mean a shift in the specific skills and competencies required of leaders. Education leaders need personal experience with learning technologies, an understanding of how to deploy these resources effectively, and a community-wide vision for how technology can improve learning. 1

This included parents who are a great untapped resource within our own communities.  We can no longer have children going home and being asked the question, “what did you learn today?”, and responding with, “nothing.”  By opening the doors to our classrooms through both physical and virtual environments, we have the opportunity to change the conversation at home.  Parents are able to be actively involved in the process of learning, leading to a higher opportunity for success of each child.  The more we can involve parents in this process at home, the more likely students will be successful in school, and beyond.  This community support is imperative.

A successful leader, according the 2008 ISLLC Standards, is one who promotes the success of every student by: facilitating the development, articulation, implementation, and stewardship of a vision of learning that is shared and supported by all stakeholders advocating, nurturing, and sustaining a school culture and instructional program conducive to student learning and staff professional growth ensuring management of the organization, operation, and resources for a safe, efficient, and effective learning environment. collaborating with faculty and community members, responding to diverse community interests and needs, and mobilizing community resources. acting with integrity, fairness, and in an ethical manner.  understanding, responding to, and influencing the political, social, economic, legal, and cultural context.

Students use the class webpage to connect to the classroom from home.

Maintaining contact between classrooms and homes is an important goal but can be difficult to achieve.

This year, we tried a different approach so that this skill was not only taught, but also applied across all content areas.

NCTE and other respected educational organizations view digital skills such as keyboarding as essential for learners to communicate in the 21st century.

How could we use Google Docs to complete assignments? Wouldn’t these tools allow students to complete unfinished work at home? Making connections between the technology and the academics had begun.

Nationally, the Federal Communications Commission notes that 7 out of 10 teachers assign homework that requires high-speed Internet access, yet in some communities, only 1 in 3 students can access the Web at home.