Group items tagged

Prezi on reflection

Adrienne's blogpost on Software to help students manage/reflect on their time

"What is Digital Is? The Digital Is website hosts a growing collection of stories, reflections, and resources about teaching and learning writing in a digital age. As the collection grows, we hope to maintain a certain point of view about teaching and the practice of writing: heavy on reflection, open to inquiry, focused on authentic student accomplishment. Here we collect five takes on the Digital Is point of view. "

"Sugar is a learning platform that reinvents how computers are used for education. Collaboration, reflection, and discovery are integrated directly into the user interface. Sugar promotes "studio thinking" and "reflective practice". Through Sugar's clarity of design, children and teachers have the opportunity to use computers on their own terms. Students can reshape, reinvent, and reapply both software and content into powerful learning activities. Sugar's focus on sharing, criticism, and exploration is grounded in the culture of free software (FLOSS)."

Teacher self - Reflection on teaching practices

Teacher reflection protocols

"We are being pummeled by a deluge of data and unless we create time and spaces in which to reflect, we will be left with only our reactions. I strongly believe in the power of weblogs to transform both writers and readers from "audience" to "public" and from "consumer" to "creator." Weblogs are no panacea for the crippling effects of a media-saturated culture, but I believe they are one antidote."

This is a nice site illustrating the benefits of student blogging linked to research findings.

"Basically, just honest to goodness, really decent human beings… Perhaps an old fashioned idea. No business degree needed for this part. Just the hard work of self reflection, personal growth and continuous striving to be accepting, caring, compassionate and trustworthy."

"the USC Shoah Foundation Institute for Visual History and Education reflects the broadened mission of the Institute: to overcome prejudice, intolerance, and bigotry-and the suffering they cause-through the educational use of the Institute's visual history testimonies. Today the Institute reaches educators, students, researchers, and scholars on every continent, and supports efforts to collect testimony from the survivors and witnesses of other genocides."

Throughout my nine years in the classroom, I've been eager to test out possibilities for improving teaching and learning through technology use. It's a messy process. Back in February 2010, I broadcast my eagerness to use cell phones in the classroom inEducation Week. Then I changed my stance, arguing in May 2012 that too much social media and gimmicky technology application in the classroom could lead teachers to neglect teaching students substantial skills. Since then, I've tested out Edmodo and continued to explore. After years of experimentation and reflection, here's my current take on smart-and not-so-smart-ways to use technology in the classroom:

Minute of Listening is an exciting new creative learning initiative that promotes curious, engaged and reflective listening in the classroom.  Piloting in 70 primary schools around the UK from January to March 2012, Minute of Listening creates a daily opportunity for pupils and teachers to access and explore a huge range of music and sound as a stimulus for class discussion and imaginative enquiry.

Action research is a process of deep inquiry into one's practices in service of moving towards an envisioned future, aligned with values. Action research is the systematic, reflective study of one's actions, and the effects of these actions, in a workplace context. As such, it involves deep inquiry into one's professional practice. The researchers examine their work and seek opportunities for improvement.

The surveys that reflect change over the longest time periods, going back to the early 1990s, consistently show declines in bul‐ lying and peer victimization, some of it remarkably large. The more recent trends, since 2007, show some declines, but less consistently

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.

Really interesting article from the NY Times about gender fluidity. Makes me reflective about what happens at school...