Group items tagged

"This summer Sylvia wrote a number of excellent blog posts containing sound information for anyone that has questions about using social media in elementary school classrooms."

""What we need to get much better at is scaling that system so you don't have to pay attention to everything, but you don't miss the stuff you care about...""

The Flipped Classroom IS: A means to INCREASE interaction and personalized contact time between students and teachers. An environment where students take responsibility for their own learning.  A classroom where the teacher is not the "sage on the stage", but the "guide on the side". A blending of direct instruction with constructivist learning.

"One of the most fun and useful things I've been doing lately is automating small processes I do all the time. It took me a while to work up the courage to dive into automation, as it always seemed like a really difficult, technical thing to do, which should be left to programmers."

Part of the reason for that is that we might consider someone skilled if they need little or no documentation to accomplish a certain task. A skilled chef can make a meal without requiring a recipe, for instance, and a skilled network admin can make major changes to production switches and routers without calling up a CLI reference guide to check syntax. A talented chef, on the other hand, may think along different lines and construct an entirely unique dish for which there is no recipe. A talented system administrator may do much the same, assembling various tools in a unique way and devising a method around a problem that hadn't been attempted before. This may require some research and reference instead of rote knowledge, but the end result is something that wouldn't have otherwise existed, and is something for which there are no guidelines.

"In this framework, teaching was an intimate experience shared between teacher and student, the relationship was central. I knew who my student was and I knew, to some degree, if they learned what I intended to teach in the moment it was taught. I am now faced with a new kind of teaching; this mode of teaching provides a dimension to learning that challenges the core of who I am as an educator. This type of teaching is less about the act of teaching and more about the act of learning. In the past, I was an effective educator because I was good at being responsive in the moment, I could guide a conversation to deeper levels on the spot and I could redo and reteach based on in-the-moment assessments. But I am now facing a kind of teaching that doesn't make use of the teaching skills I have developed and refined over the years."

A Guide to New Theories, Methods, and Practices for Open Peer Teaching and Learning

Although faculty and students are the primary learning management system users, administrators and IT experts often select the system. This article stresses the importance of involving all stakeholders in the selection process, offers a step-by-step guide to LMS selection, and enables readers to develop a customized list of LMS features that align with their institution's instructional and learning priorities.

Learning analytics holds increasing potential for student agency and autonomy, highlighting a need for ethical discourse at all levels of higher education institutions. Topics central to this dialogue include student awareness of analytics, the future of algorithms and learning analytics, and the redefinition of failure.

For many years now, educators and instructional designers alike used the "ADDIE" Instructional Design (ID) method as a guide in designing and effectively tracking a project's progress. "ADDIE" stands for Analyze, Design, Develop, Implement, and Evaluate.

"More than another literature or creative writing course, these students needed a guide to the twisted subterranean landscape beneath their plugged-in social lives. Texting seemed like the logical place to drop our first pin. Even though it hasn't yet seduced researchers the way Facebook has, texting incites profound cultural unrest. Literally. Recent studies have found that many participants reacted like addicts when separated from their cellphones, while other studies have found that the "sleeping disorders" some high schoolers experience result from cuddling up with text messages all night."

"We need a book about the failures of media, the collapses of media, the supercessions of media, the strangulations of media, a book detailing all the freakish and hideous media mistakes that we should know enough now not to repeat, a book about media that have died on the barbed wire of technological advance, media that didn't make it, martyred media, dead media. THE HANDBOOK OF DEAD MEDIA. A naturalist's field guide for the communications paleontologist. "

Social presence remains the key to a successful learning experience, and understanding social presence, with its critical connection to learning and community building, allows us to better support faculty and students. Understanding a wide selection of tools, media, and reflective activities helps faculty assist students in taking responsibility for their own learning. Providing iterative feedback and mindful assessments helps faculty meet learning outcomes and guide student learning. Implementing change in small steps is the key to understanding which strategies work and which lead to frustration and discontent.

"Do you know the actual theories of learning? A learning theory is an attempt to describe how people learn, helping us understand this inherently complex process. There's sub-levels of each theory, behavior and other categories … it's complex. But it's worth understanding. This helpful infographic does a solid job of breaking down the basics of learning theories in a visual and understandable format. I personally enjoy the part about connectivism in the digital age. "

"Google Forms makes peer evaluation possible and simple. I collect the names and email addresses of both students: evaluator and evaluatee. I use the "grid" style question type to allow peers to rank each criteria on a scale of 1-5 against the rubric. I can include a URL to the grading criteria in the help text, so all students have access to the standard assessment guide. "

"When I first began tweeting, I came up with the following "formula" to help guide my work. Identify>Engage>Leverage This approach was (as it is today) pretty simple. If I could find the people I was interested in following, I could engage with them (e.g., retweet their posts, promote their blogs, share their professional achievements, etc.) and then "leverage" these connections; this "leveraging" process would include followers responding to my "Questions of the Week," retweeting my posts, and/or reaching out to me directly referencing my handle in their tweets.) The challenge, of course, is actually finding these "influencers" and in this post I'll share some research approaches that have worked for me."

The book examines the underlying principles that guide effective teaching in an age when everyone,and in particular the students we are teaching, are using technology. A framework for making decisions about your teaching is provided, while understanding that every subject is different, and every instructor has something unique and special to bring to their teaching.The book enables teachers and instructors to help students develop the knowledge and skills they will need in a digital age: not so much the IT skills, but the thinking and attitudes to learning that will bring them success.

nstitutions employing a team-based approach to the creation and delivery of education content and experiences will differentiate themselves and succeed, even as the pace of change - both in technology and in the disciplines - accelerates, says Daniel Christian, a senior instructional designer at Calvin College. Teams, comprised of a range of technology and subject content specialists, will be structured and function differently at each institution, but they all share a prime advantage: the ability to guide their institutions to thrive in higher education's increasingly competitive environment.