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Louise Phinney

Free Technology for Teachers: CNN Student News is Back for 2012-2013 - 2 views

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    With the start of a new school comes a new season of CNN Student News. CNN Student News started back up again yesterday. The format is the same as it has been for years. The roughly ten minute episodes feature US stories, a world news stories,  "shout out" to a class, and a quick quiz. Transcripts for each show are available for download as are suggested viewing questions to cover with your students. 
Jeffrey Plaman

http://newlearningonline.com/_uploads/3_Kalantzis_ELEA_7_3_web.pdf - 1 views

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    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.
Sean McHugh

How a Radical New Teaching Method Could Unleash a Generation of Geniuses | WIRED - 1 views

  • he had happened on an emerging educational philosophy, one that applies the logic of the digital age to the classroom. That logic is inexorable: Access to a world of infinite information has changed how we communicate, process information, and think.
  • In 1970 the top three skills required by the Fortune 500 were the three Rs: reading, writing, and arithmetic. In 1999 the top three skills in demand were teamwork, problem-solving, and interpersonal skills. We need schools that are developing these skills.”
  • That’s why a new breed of educators, inspired by everything from the Internet to evolutionary psychology, neuroscience, and AI, are inventing radical new ways for children to learn, grow, and thrive. To them, knowledge isn’t a commodity that’s delivered from teacher to student but something that emerges from the students’ own curiosity-fueled exploration. Teachers provide prompts, not answers, and then they step aside so students can teach themselves and one another. They are creating ways for children to discover their passion—and uncovering a generation of geniuses in the process.
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  • “So,” Juárez Correa said, “what do you want to learn?”
  • human cognitive machinery is fundamentally incompatible with conventional schooling. Gray points out that young children, motivated by curiosity and playfulness, teach themselves a tremendous amount about the world. And yet when they reach school age, we supplant that innate drive to learn with an imposed curriculum.
  • inland pared the country’s elementary math curriculum from about 25 pages to four, reduced the school day by an hour, and focused on independence and active learning. By 2003, Finnish students had climbed from the lower rungs of international performance rankings to first place among developed nations.
  • n Finland, teachers underwent years of training to learn how to orchestrate this new style of learning; he was winging it. He began experimenting with different ways of posing open-ended questions on subjects ranging from the volume of cubes to multiplying fractions.
  • Juárez Correa had mixed feelings about the test. His students had succeeded because he had employed a new teaching method, one better suited to the way children learn. It was a model that emphasized group work, competition, creativity, and a student-led environment. So it was ironic that the kids had distinguished themselves because of a conventional multiple-choice test. “These exams are like limits for the teachers,” he says. “They test what you know, not what you can do, and I am more interested in what my students can do.”
  • They do it by emphasizing student-led learning and collaboration
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    In 1970 the top three skills required by the Fortune 500 were the three Rs: reading, writing, and arithmetic. In 1999 the top three skills in demand were teamwork, problem-solving, and interpersonal skills. We need schools that are developing these skills." That's why a new breed of educators, inspired by everything from the Internet to evolutionary psychology, neuroscience, and AI, are inventing radical new ways for children to learn, grow, and thrive. To them, knowledge isn't a commodity that's delivered from teacher to student but something that emerges from the students' own curiosity-fueled exploration. Teachers provide prompts, not answers, and then they step aside so students can teach themselves and one another. They are creating ways for children to discover their passion-and uncovering a generation of geniuses in the process.
Katie Day

The New Rules of Engagement (keynote speech) AIS NSW IT Integration conference 10 - Jen... - 0 views

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    The new rules of engagement. Preparing our teachers and students for how we can learn now. Teachers have always been in the game of ensuring we have prepared our charges well for the world that awaits them. But are we doing that well enough today? The game has changed. The playing field is different; there are new rules, and we need to be the coaches and players in a world where the bases are loaded with a whole new set of entities.
Louise Phinney

ReThinkingLiteracy - home - 0 views

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    Literacy as we know it and teach it; is not enough. There is a new grammar and a new literacy that students must understand and embrace in order access to the information, inspiration, and opportunities the world and web hold. You are central to this change process. Our students need teachers, leaders, policy makers and community stakeholders to be actively involved in creating new visions and pathways for literacy, learning and living.
Sean McHugh

Want to cure cancer? There's an app for that - News - Gadgets & Tech - The Independent - 0 views

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    A new gaming app is in development that will help scientists to analyse genetic data in the search for cancer cures. Cancer Research UK have teamed up with Google, Facebook and Amazon to develop a game you can play on your mobile that will simultaneously sort through genetic data. "A new gaming app is in development that will help scientists to analyse genetic data in the search for cancer cures. Cancer Research UK have teamed up with Google, Facebook and Amazon to develop a game you can play on your mobile that will simultaneously sort through genetic data.
Louise Phinney

Digital literacy 1: What digital literacies? - 1 views

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    My argument is that new media and new opportunities for learning through digital technologies require new literacies.
Keri-Lee Beasley

Elyse Eidman-Aadahl: Re-envisioning writing for a networked age | DMLcentral - 0 views

  • It’s very important for us to build this into our understanding of what it means to teach writing. We need to be able to make that part of our understanding of the new normal of writing -- not an additional piece -- but the new normal.
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    "It's very important for us to build this into our understanding of what it means to teach writing. We need to be able to make that part of our understanding of the new normal of writing -- not an additional piece -- but the new normal."
Katie Day

Paper Tigers - What happens to all the Asian-American overachievers when the test-takin... - 1 views

  • while I don’t believe our roots necessarily define us, I do believe there are racially inflected assumptions wired into our neural circuitry that we use to sort through the sea of faces we confront
  • Earlier this year, the publication of Amy Chua’s Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother incited a collective airing out of many varieties of race-based hysteria. But absent from the millions of words written in response to the book was any serious consideration of whether Asian-Americans were in fact taking over this country. If it is true that they are collectively dominating in elite high schools and universities, is it also true that Asian-Americans are dominating in the real world?
  • Now he understands better what he ought to have done back when he was a Stuyvesant freshman: “Worked half as hard and been twenty times more successful.”
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  • Who can seriously claim that a Harvard University that was 72 percent Asian would deliver the same grooming for elite status its students had gone there to receive?
  • The researcher was talking about what some refer to as the “Bamboo Ceiling”—an invisible barrier that maintains a pyramidal racial structure throughout corporate America, with lots of Asians at junior levels, quite a few in middle management, and virtually none in the higher reaches of leadership. The failure of Asian-Americans to become leaders in the white-collar workplace does not qualify as one of the burning social issues of our time. But it is a part of the bitter undercurrent of Asian-American life that so many Asian graduates of elite universities find that meritocracy as they have understood it comes to an abrupt end after graduation
  • It’s racist to think that any given Asian individual is unlikely to be creative or risk-taking. It’s simple cultural observation to say that a group whose education has historically focused on rote memorization and “pumping the iron of math” is, on aggregate, unlikely to yield many people inclined to challenge authority or break with inherited ways of doing things.
  • Leadership Education for Asian Pacifics. LEAP has parsed the complicated social dynamics responsible for the dearth of Asian-American leaders and has designed training programs that flatter Asian people even as it teaches them to change their behavior to suit white-American expectations. Asians who enter a LEAP program are constantly assured that they will be able to “keep your values, while acquiring new skills,” along the way to becoming “culturally competent leaders.”
  • The law professor and writer Tim Wu grew up in Canada with a white mother and a Taiwanese father, which allows him an interesting perspective on how whites and Asians perceive each other. After graduating from law school, he took a series of clerkships, and he remembers the subtle ways in which hierarchies were developed among the other young lawyers. “There is this automatic assumption in any legal environment that Asians will have a particular talent for bitter labor,” he says, and then goes on to define the word coolie,a Chinese term for “bitter labor.” “There was this weird self-selection where the Asians would migrate toward the most brutal part of the labor.” By contrast, the white lawyers he encountered had a knack for portraying themselves as above all that. “White people have this instinct that is really important: to give off the impression that they’re only going to do the really important work. You’re a quarterback. It’s a kind of arrogance that Asians are trained not to have. Someone told me not long after I moved to New York that in order to succeed, you have to understand which rules you’re supposed to break. If you break the wrong rules, you’re finished. And so the easiest thing to do is follow all the rules. But then you consign yourself to a lower status. The real trick is understanding what rules are not meant for you.” This idea of a kind of rule-governed rule-breaking—where the rule book was unwritten but passed along in an innate cultural sense—is perhaps the best explanation I have heard of how the Bamboo Ceiling functions in practice. LEAP appears to be very good at helping Asian workers who are already culturally competent become more self-aware of how their culture and appearance impose barriers to advancement.
  • If the Bamboo Ceiling is ever going to break, it’s probably going to have less to do with any form of behavior assimilation than with the emergence of risk-­takers whose success obviates the need for Asians to meet someone else’s behavioral standard. People like Steve Chen, who was one of the creators of YouTube, or Kai and Charles Huang, who created Guitar Hero. Or Tony Hsieh, the founder of Zappos.com, the online shoe retailer that he sold to Amazon for about a billion dollars in 2009.
  • though the debate she sparked about Asian-American life has been of questionable value, we will need more people with the same kind of defiance, willing to push themselves into the spotlight and to make some noise, to beat people up, to seduce women, to make mistakes, to become entrepreneurs, to stop doggedly pursuing official paper emblems attesting to their worthiness, to stop thinking those scraps of paper will secure anyone’s happiness, and to dare to be interesting.
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    fascinating article (May 8, 2011) in New York magazine by Wesley Yang
Sean McHugh

Let's Ban Bans in The Classroom | DMLcentral - 0 views

  • I’ve yet to read an earnest blog post calling for a ban on pencils in the classroom — but rather portable electronics, most notably the laptop.
    • Sean McHugh
       
      Especially the tedious, laborious stultifying mode of lecturing that is so pervasive in FE.
  • but then one wonders why the shoddy outcomes of the lecture format are worth defending.
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  • Shirky almost completely ignores pedagogy in this article. While this paragraph addresses learning and course structure, he doesn’t address or attempt to justify the learning modes that banning laptops is meant to protect. The assumption of his argument is that the classroom is a place where mostly lectures (and some discussions) happen. I do not doubt that portable electronics provide unique challenges to lecturing; but is this narrow definition of the classroom — a place where an instructor delivers knowledge to students who must pay attention — one we should be defending from these increasingly ubiquitous technologies?
  • Yet, what goes unremarked on in the study is how abysmally all of the students did on the comprehension tests.
  • Students didn’t start being distracted in class with the introduction of laptops, so instructors are better off addressing the root problem: making their courses engaging and interesting.
  • why must we ask the 21st century to wait outside our classes? Is it just to protect the lecture? We know what a classroom designed around lectures, notes, and quizzes can do, and it is not impressive.
  • Perhaps by embracing the new forms and structures of communication enabled by laptops and other portable electronics we might discover new classroom practices that enable new and better learning outcomes.
  • what is the value of pedagogies like lecturing? What is the value of attention-structuring activities like note-taking?
  • I’m not for banning lectures, either. What I am for is pedagogies that are nimble and responsive to a range of needs and outcomes for both instructor and student. The lecture has its place. Asking students to close their laptops has its place. But, failing to explore new possibilities for education prompted by emerging technologies does not serve the interests of either group.
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    Great Article via Ali F. The lecture has its place. Asking students to close their laptops has its place. But, failing to explore new possibilities for education prompted by emerging technologies does not serve the interests of either group.
Louise Phinney

The Discovernator : Discovery News - 0 views

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    Discovery News' "Discovernator" - generates a series of interesting facts.  Just reload the page to see what crazy fact comes up next.  This would be great for generating discussions in science and social studies.  Mind the comments below the generator - as with all sites that allow commenting, there is little control over what people contribute.
Katie Day

Teaching Kids the News - Current event news articles for kids, parents and teachers. - 1 views

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    "Timely, relevant news articles for kids, educators in the classroom and parents at home."
Mary van der Heijden

Mathematically Speaking | kindergartenlife - 3 views

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    One of the most powerful things I have learned is how amazing young children are in their thinking around mathematical concepts.  In Kindergarten I began developing a culture that not only had examples and artifacts of our learning, but ways for children to begin to use "math talk", which is the language I began modeling in explicit ways for children to see and began to practice in their own understanding of the concepts we are exploring. Through daily, explicit modeling through our daily number corner, math dyads and other mathematical work stations the children began to apply their understanding in meaningful ways throughout the day which has helped to build self-confidence in all of the children. What is important to understand here is that I did have to add something new onto my already full plate, but rather this was an opportunity to learn some new tools and a different way of thinking about what I was already teaching. This is one example of  where I started to see how rigor and relevance applied in my teaching and how vital it is and has become in my daily teaching practice.
Louise Phinney

Free Technology for Teachers: Create a Text Message Exchange Between Fictional Characters - 0 views

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    Good for any class doing a character study The ever clever Russel Tarr has developed a new neat tool for creating fictional text message exchanges between fictional and or historical characters. The Classtools SMS Generator is free to use and does not require students to log-in. To use the SMS Generator just click the left speech bubble icon and enter a message. Then to create a reply just click the right speech bubble icon and enter a new message. You can make the exchange as long as you like.
Louise Phinney

5 Free Online Courses For Social Media Beginners | Edudemic - 0 views

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    "Whether you're new to technology, just getting started with a social network, or looking for some useful tips then these courses are for you. They're part of a new idea that I've been working on with a few friends. We're calling it Modern Lessons and it's essentially a 'Khan Academy for real-world skills' where a small handful of people build free online courses designed to help you learn some important things."
Katie Day

The Power (and Peril) of Praising Your Kids -- New York Magazine - 3 views

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    A 2007 article in New York magazine by Po Bronson which explores the concept of "mindset" - popularized by Carol Dweck - and its impact on kids.
Louise Phinney

The iPad brings a rethink of how we browse the Internet | iGo With My iPad - 0 views

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    Reading online content later when offline is not something new, but a new free app for the iPad gets us rethinking our daily Internet browsing.
Keri-Lee Beasley

Re-envisioning Writing for a Networked Age: A Few Moments with Elyse Eidman-Aadahl | DM... - 1 views

  • To write still means to make something. Writers are makers.
  • much of the power of writing is that it takes thought and externalizes it
  • whether we are writing on a digital platform or in our spiral notebooks. There is a core to writing that is still about creating and sharing knowledge
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  • some components that have hugely changed, mainly the issues of what we can create and how it circulates.
  • teacher who acted as the sole reader of our material.
  • The internet and 21st century tools have opened up the possibility for one individual to not only produce the text but also to design it, circulate it, and manage publicity
  • very young or beginning writers can actually participate in all of those processes
  • we think of digital writing as writing that is not only created using digital tools, but is also typically created in or for a networked environment and meant to be interacted with on a screen.
  • We need to be able to make that part of our understanding of the new normal of writing -- not an additional piece -- but the new normal.
  • As computers become increasingly networked, teachers could see the potential for the read/write web, for writing as a way to participate in online communities, to hyperlink vast amounts of information connected to a text, and to interact and even collaborate directly with others to create something
  • being a writer yourself and participating in digital environments alongside the youth you work with, you are able to observe patterns and experience the new in such a way that you could be part of remaking knowledge in the field of composition. The writing revolution is not done and we can be right in the middle of it.
  • it's all about an inquiry stance and creating learning experiences where students can do the same because the "textbook" is all around us in the reading and writing going on in the world
  • participating as a digital writer and deeply reflecting upon your work by looking for patterns and understanding what shifts are being required of you
  • shift from being the person who hands out formulas for writing success to the person who stands shoulder-to-shoulder with the students to understand what happens when we write for real in world.
  • build the platforms for publishing and circulation of student work
  • It’s vital for teachers and curriculum developers to start with the assumption that every young person not only can become a participant in the public internet, but will become a participant and likely already is a participant.
  • youth are going to have to manage their online identity. How they present and represent their identities and manage the multiple footprints they leave on the web are going to be key things for students to understand.
  • develop a sense of responsibility around what they put out there
  • sense of power and authority
  • making, creating, and collaborating about real work that matters to them
  • tools are not the issue
  • They allow us to do new things and expand our capacity to make things, yet deep, consistent issues remain at the center: what am I saying? Is what I have to say warranted? Have I been accurate and credible? Have I crafted something that my reader and my audience can take in? Am I listening to response and looking at my drafts iteration by iteration?
  • it’s so important to slow oneself down and to take one’s text quite seriously.
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    "A learning environment expert and education advocate, Elyse is dedicated to improving the teaching of writing by helping educators understand the changing nature of the discipline in a digital age."
Louise Phinney

108 Ways to Use Word Clouds in the Classroom…Word Clouds in Education Series:... - 5 views

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    There is more to Word Clouds then Wordle! welcome to a series of posts devoted to the use of Word Clouds. I know you will find new information… whether you are a seasoned user of word clouds, or brand new. I enjoy working with teachers and helping them use word clouds in their lessons because they are a great way to get any teacher started with integrating technology.  In the last post you discovered  12 Tips in Using Wordle. In fact you may wish to read it if you have not as of yet. This post will share 108 ways for educators to use word clouds in the classroom. 
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