Group items tagged

Summary via The Scout Report (May 2012): "The earth sciences encompass a range of fields, including geology, meteorology, and other areas of inquiry. This website features a range of lesson plans and activities that cover these fields, designed for both high school and college classrooms. In total, there are over two dozen activities here divided into sections such as Rocks & Minerals and Earthquakes & Volcanoes. The Rocks & Minerals area is a particularly rich vein of pedagogical material. It features a mineral identification lab session and a lesson plan that probes the world of igneous rocks. Moving along, the site also includes engaging materials on the formation of clouds, atmospheric pressure, and a humorous lesson plan on thunderstorms. [KMG]"

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.

"@tesScience: Engage your whole class with these great @Socrative quizzes and short answers for Science http://t.co/2TW7ufip" #scichat

Lesson study* is a professional development process that Japanese teachers engage in to systematically examine their practice, with the goal of becoming more effective. This examination centers on teachers working collaboratively on a small number of "study lessons". Working on these study lessons involves planning, teaching, observing, and critiquing the lessons. To provide focus and direction to this work, the teachers select an overarching goal and related research question that they want to explore. This research question then serves to guide their work on all the study lessons.

<< Next Vista works to make learning more engaging, with a focus on helping students start strong with any topic they study. Its central project is a free, online library of teacher- and student-made short videos for learners everywhere.>> -- Rushton Hurley's site

A graphic that depicts the Technology Taxononmy I will talk about incorporating multimedia in the classroom as something all teachers should be doing but I definitely want teachers to know that they shouldn't stop there.  To reach high levels of engagement, thinking, and to narrow the digital divide, teachers must turn technology over to students and guide them as they become their own content producers and influencers on the community outside the classroom.

Not only does the iPad provide a pivotal tool for effective and engaging group teaching and learning, it has the potential to promote literacy and reading in an innovative and exciting fashion.

"Peer Instruction actively engages the students in their own learning. Carefully chosen questions (ConcepTests give students the opportunity to discover and correct their misunderstandings of the material, and, in the process, learn the key ideas of physics from one another. "

Engaging lessons are the best way to ensure students are not distracted. A couple of good tips re expectations too.

Some rich writing lessons here. Engaging

He has some very engaging videos that kids love

"To make things easier, here are five of my favorite TED Talks on science. The selection rules were simple: - Was I engaged within the first few seconds?- Was I entertained, inspired and challenged?- Would my kids understand the talk? and- Together, do they tell a story?"

"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.  "

Interesting to think how this relates to primary and secondary education.... not just tertiary..... "In an era when students can easily grab material online, including lectures by gifted speakers in every field, a learning environment that avoids courses completely-or seriously reshapes them-might produce a very effective new form of college. That was the provocative notion posed here recently by Randy Bass, executive director of Georgetown University's Center for New Designs in Learning and Scholarship, during the annual meeting of the Educause Learning Initiative. He pointed out that much of what students rate as the most valuable part of their learning experience at college these days takes place outside the traditional classroom, citing data from the National Survey of Student Engagement, an annual study based at Indiana University at Bloomington. Four of the eight "high-impact" learning activities identified by survey participants required no classroom time at all: internships, study-abroad programs, senior thesis or other "capstone" projects, or the mundane-sounding "undergraduate research," meaning working with faculty members on original research, much as graduate students do."

"John Hunter puts all the problems of the world on a 4'x5' plywood board -- and lets his 4th-graders solve them. At TED2011, he explains how his World Peace Game engages schoolkids, and why the complex lessons it teaches -- spontaneous, and always surprising -- go further than classroom lectures can.

An engaging trailer for the  film detailing 4 or 5 students who are being bullied and/or parents of teens who have committed suicide following bullying. 

ABSTRACT This article outlines a learning intervention which the authors call Learning by Design. The goal of this intervention is classroom and curriculum transformation, and the professional learning of teachers. The experiment involves the practical application of the learning theory to everyday classroom practice. Its ideas are grounded in pedagogical principles originally articulated in the Multiliteracies project, an approach to teaching and learning that addresses literacy and learning in the context of new media and the globalizing knowledge economy. The need for a new approach to learning arises from a complex range of factors - among them, changes in society and the economy; the potential for new forms of communication made possible by emerging technologies; and rising expectations amongst learners that education will maximize their potential for personal fulfillment, civic participation and access to work. The authors first brought together the Learning by Design team of researchers and teachers in 2003 in order to reflect upon and create new and dynamic learning environments. A series of research and development activities were embarked upon in Australia and, more recently, in the United States, exploring the potentials of new pedagogical approaches, assisted by digital technologies, to transform today's learning environments and create learning for the future - learning environments which could be more relevant to a changing world, more effective in meeting community expectations and which manage educational resources more efficiently. One of the key challenges was to create learning environments which engaged the sensibilities of learners who are increasingly immersed in digital and global lifestyles - from the entertainment sources they choose to the way they work and learn. It was also about enabling teachers to explicitly track and be aware of the relationship between their pedagogical choices and their students' learning outcomes.

There is an argument for creating videos as a means of engagement, as an approach involving doing something a little different; something that will hopefully result in a higher likelihood of it being committed to long term memory. These are additional benefits. The real value in these tasks is their requirement for genuine higher order thinking skills, and the resulting assessment of student understanding that can be used in a meaningful way.

A Neurologist Makes the Case for the Video Game Model as a Learning Tool The popularity of video games is not the enemy of education, but rather a model for best teaching strategies. Games insert players at their achievable challenge level and reward player effort and practice with acknowledgement of incremental goal progress, not just final product. The fuel for this process is the pleasure experience related to the release of dopamine.