Group items tagged

Phat Poetry - an energetic program of performance poetry designed to introduce Years 5 - 8 students to the world of language and ideas. Storytelling, the investigation of rhyme, rhythm and the devices of poetry underpins the central theme of the performance. In 2012 we explore themes of identity, love, friendship, war, community laced with a healthy dose of nonsense using everything from ballads, sonnets and haikus to free verse, odes and raps.In this show we introduce a new component that takes a look at how Australian poetry has developed an increasing engagement with the cultures and poetic traditions of Asia.

Really interesting information on being a better online reader. The author suggests the following: "Maybe the decline of deep reading isn't due to reading skill atrophy but to the need to develop a very different sort of skill, that of teaching yourself to focus your attention. (Interestingly, Coiro found that gamers were often better online readers: they were more comfortable in the medium and better able to stay on task.)"

Coaching is a highly sophisticated form of reflective practice. When done well, it can transform a person's professional, and often personal, life, and provides many benefits to the employer in sustaining high performance and morale. The question is, however, whether it's the coaching itself that produces the results, or if it's down to an enlightened management team, which believes in people's development and so encourages coaching, which in turn produces results. When coaching is done badly, though, it has the power to decimate a person's sense of professional worth for years into the future and to incur substantial cost while returning no benefits, or worse, significant professional damage. Leadership can become cynical about the coaching process.  Money is wasted.  Time and attention are frittered away.  Ineffective coaching is counterproductive and should be stopped as soon as it is recognized.

If we value coaching, and we do, the question then becomes: "what are the elements of effective coaching that we can train, support, measure, and improve" - especially those that have the highest leverage for shifting those being coached perspectives and practices. The more I come to understand the power of coaching the more I appreciate that the best leaders see their primary role within an organisation as an influencer and coaching as the structure behind the myriad of interactions. I think an enlightened management team would not only be encouraging coaches but utilizing coaching strategies themselves on a regular basis.

Jane Hart of the United Kingdom's Centre for Learning and Performance Technologies has been assembling a list of the best resources for the past five years. But these resources aren't just randomly organized by popularity or something, the order is decided by a crowdsourced vote. What could be better than that?

Educational Flash web sites aside, the iPad is a great device for browsing the internet. At the heart of this is Apple's flagship browser, Safari. Overall, Safari is a capable browser on the iPad but there is some functionality missing from the app when compared to its big brother on Macs. Fortunately, iOS has enough tricks available for third party apps to fill in the gaps that Safari for iPad doesn't address. Here are three alternative browsers that I use regularly to perform tasks I think are necessary for educational use and general use that I can't do using Apple's default browser.

"A survey of teachers who instruct American middle and high school students finds that digital technologies are impacting student writing in myriad ways and there are significant advantages from tech-based learning. Some 78% of the 2,462 advanced placement (AP) and National Writing Project (NWP) teachers surveyed by the Pew Research Center's Internet & American Life Project say digital tools such as the internet, social media, and cell phones "encourage student creativity and personal expression." In addition: 96% agree digital technologies "allow students to share their work with a wider and more varied audience" 79% agree that these tools "encourage greater collaboration among students" According to teachers, students' exposure to a broader audience for their work and more feedback from peers encourages greater student investment in what they write and in the writing process as a whole. At the same time, these teachers give their students modest marks when it comes to writing and highlight some areas needing attention. Asked to assess their students' performance on nine specific writing skills, teachers tended to rate their students "good" or "fair" as opposed to "excellent" or "very good." Students received the best ratings on their ability to "effectively organize and structure writing assignments" and their ability to "understand and consider multiple viewpoints on a particular topic or issue." Teachers gave students the lowest ratings when it comes to "navigating issues of fair use and copyright in composition" and "reading and digesting long or complicated texts.""

Science experiment for performing arts unit

"Global SchoolNet's mission is to support 21st century learning and improve academic performance through content driven collaboration. We engage teachers and K-12 students in meaningful project learning exchanges worldwide to develop science, math, literacy and communication skills, foster teamwork, civic responsibility and collaboration, encourage workforce preparedness and create multi-cultural understanding.  "

"Shouldn't learning be as easy and effortless as possible? Unfortunately, this assumption turns out to be mostly wrong, as numerous studies have found that making material harder to learn - what the researchers call disfluency - can actually improve long-term learning and retention: There is strong theoretical justification to believe that disfluency could lead to improved retention and classroom performance. Disfluency has been shown to lead people to process information more deeply,more abstractly,more carefully, and yield better comprehension, all of which are critical to effective learning. This new paper attempted to provide the most direct test yet of the benefits of disfluency ."

Miley Cyrus' single "Party in the USA" performed in American Sign Language by Stephen Torrence.

"wcsmusic, formerly i music, is an exciting concept aimed at widening access to musical excellence through the production of revolutionary interactive learning materials. Due to the generosity of our funding partners, our products are available completely - FREE OF CHARGE. These include our award winning software, The Virtual Javanese Gamelan, and our second module, Virtual West African Drumming. These materials will offer a full 'hands on' practical exploration of an aspect of music from a computer workstation, integrating performance, composition and aural perception. Follow the links to discover more about the materials we are offering. wcsmusic is the trademark of Wells Cathedral School."

"Welcome to the AAAS Project 2061 Science Assessment Website The assessment items on this website are the result of more than a decade of research and development by Project 2061, a long-term science education reform initiative of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. Here you will find free access to more than 600 items. The items: Are appropriate for middle and early high school students. Test student understanding in the earth, life, physical sciences, and the nature of science. Test for common misconceptions as well as correct ideas. This website also includes: Data on how well U.S. students are doing in science and where they are having difficulties, broken out by gender, English language learner status, and whether the students are in middle school or high school. "My Item Bank," a feature that allows you to select, save, and print items and answer keys. Intended primarily for teachers, these assessment items and resources will also be useful to education researchers, test developers, and anyone who is interested in the performance of middle and high school students in science."

Article re how the color and shape of rooms affects the thinking that goes on inside the rooms... "They tested 600 subjects when surrounded by red, blue or neutral colors-in both real and virtual environments. The differences were striking. Test-takers in the red environments, were much better at skills that required accuracy and attention to detail, such as catching spelling mistakes or keeping random numbers in short-term memory. Though people in the blue group performed worse on short-term memory tasks, they did far better on tasks requiring some imagination, such as coming up with creative uses for a brick or designing a children's toy. In fact, subjects in the blue environment generated twice as many "creative outputs" as subjects in the red one. Why? According to the scientists, the color blue automatically triggers associations with openness and sky, while red makes us think of danger and stop signs. (Such associations are culturally mediated, of course; Chinese, for instance, tend to associate red with prosperity and good luck.) It's not just color. A similar effect seems to hold for any light, airy space."

Based on research not just opinion. What is it about games that is transcendent? Perhaps it's the fact that games are optional, they are obstacles that we volunteer to overcome. Games are what we choose to do. They are what we are drawn to when we have a choice about how to spend our time and energy.  Games are freedom.

Article with lots of links to research around the subject of games being good for us.