Group items tagged

Remember the day when someone rattled off a phone number while you just hoped against hope you'd recall the string of digits as you were dialing? That was working memory toiling away. With the advent of cell phones, you may no longer use it this way very often. But working memory still plays a central role in learning and our daily lives.  If working memory is weak, it can trip up just about anyone. But it really works against a child with learning disabilities (LD). You can take steps to help a child with weak working memory, whether or not LD is a part of the picture. Start by understanding what working memory is all about. 

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.

When we get together with others, even at a weekly meeting, it either works, or it doesn't. For me, it works - If everything is on the line, if in any given moment, someone is going to say or do something that might just change everything - If there's vulnerability and openness and connection .If there's support If it's part of a movement

"Below are some of the top web apps for students looking for helpful tools to focus while online, as selected by Google's Chrome Web Apps Guru, Rahul Roy-Chowdhury. StayFocusd - StayFocusd is a productivity extension that helps you focus on work by restricting the amount of time you can spend on time-wasting websites.  You can restrict entire sites or just parts of them for as long or short of a time as necessary. Todo.ly- Todo.ly is an intuitive and easy to use online to-do list and task manager. It helps you get organized and get things done by organizing your tasks into projects and subprojects, adding customized icons and labels, and assigning due dates to your tasks. Read Later Fast - This app lets you save pages to read later - online or offline, and fast. All you have to do is right click and save the page for later to avoid having too many open tabs on your browser. Write Space - Write Space is a customizable, full-screen text editor that lives in your browser. It is designed to minimize the distractions that come between you and your writing.  This app also auto saves your work and works offline. StudyStack - StudyStack helps students memorize anything with millions of flashcards that have already been added to the site or the ability to create your own.  There are dozens of flashcard categories including foreign languages, math, LSAT and GRE. Graph.tk - An app for math majors, Graph.tk is an app that brings the graphing capabilities of your calculator to the browser. It's easy to use and good for plotting graphs based on equations. WordReference - For anyone taking a foreign language course or studying abroad, this extension gets you the translations you need in a fast and easy way.  Since it's an extension and placed right next to the address bar, you don't even have to leave the site you're on for a quick translation. BONUS APP: Panic Button - Ok, this app won't help you pass your class, but it might just come in handy during

The head of the IBO has been caught not attributing ideas in a speech which came from Sir Ken Robinson... and has been reprimanded.... Interesting example to show students.

"We all know that we can share via iTunes over USB to any Mac/PC with a recent version of iTunes. Well would you believe the same thing works without a cable and it doesn't have to be the Mac/PC that manages the devices. It means that any teacher can access all the students files on a device that has been "Saved to iTunes".  You can even pick up the work, mark it and hand it back to the iPad whilst the iPad is still being used by the kids (unbeknown to the user!). As consumers we can sync over wifi and share files via iTunes. You can do this with a class set of iPads by attaching each device once to the teacher's computer and checking the "sync over wifi" option and "enable". Don't sync -just unplug each device. Provided you are on the same network, you can then open and close files on the class set from your computer."

"we are educators, not nannies. We are educated professionals who work with kids every day and often see your child in a different light than you do. If we give you advice, don't fight it. Take it, and digest it in the same way you would consider advice from a doctor or lawyer. I have become used to some parents who just don't want to hear anything negative about their child, but sometimes if you're willing to take early warning advice to heart, it can help you head off an issue that could become much greater in the future."

"Gone are the days when you can dump out a backpack or flip through a folder to see your kids' work. The answers to "What did you do today?" are locked inside a password-protected device. Often kids have the upper hand in understanding how the device works -- and those 10-inch screens make it difficult to look over kids' shoulders. That's why the Common Sense Media Education team created the 1-to-1 Essentials Program. It's a first-of-its-kind, comprehensive, and free offering that covers everything that administrators, teachers, and parents need to know to maximize the benefits of schools' technology programs. "

"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."

If we are feeling distracted, we should pay attention to that distraction.  It may be telling us that there is something better elsewhere, something more deserving of our attention.  Or it may be telling us we are on the wrong path, just when we thought we were zooming in to that perfect conclusion of a paragraph or a project.   Or it may be telling us we need better tools, that the set-up we have is not fully appreciating the particularities and peccadilloes of our own work life and demands.  Or it may be telling us that we need better partners, or a better method, someone or something to help us over the hurdle.  Or it may just be telling us we are working too hard and we need to put down what we are doing and go outside for a walk, or stop for a cup of tea, or go for a run, or maybe just check out Facebook for a while.  Distraction is our friend because it reminds us that we are fully human, not just workers, and that our lives are complex and, trying to shut out the complexity, may in fact turn out to be the least productive way to lead a life.

"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.""

<>

"This is a world in which public is the new default. Thought leader Michael Schrage (2010) notes that "the traditional two-page résumé has been turned into a 'personal productivity portal' that empowers prospective employers to quite literally interact with their candidate's work." The rules for building your personal brand are changing at light speed. It's not enough to suggest that we have those admirable skills of creativity, initiative, and entrepreneurship; now we have to show them in action online. In short, our résumé is becoming a Google search result, one that we build with the help of others and that requires our participation. Most students are beginning to face this reality without much assistance from the schools charged with preparing them for the world beyond school. That has to change. We need to help students understand more than just the safety and ethics of participating online; we also have to give them opportunities throughout the curriculum to find and follow their passions and publish meaningful, quality work for real global audiences to interact with." Article by Will RIchardson

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.

"A striking assumption animates arguments on both sides, namely that nonfiction is seldom literary and certainly not literature. Even Mr. Coleman erects his case on largely dispiriting, utilitarian grounds: nonfiction may help you win the corner office but won't necessarily nourish the soul. As an English teacher and writer who traffics in factual prose, I'm with Mr. Coleman. In my experience, students need more exposure to nonfiction, less to help with reading skills, but as a model for their own essays and expository writing, what Mr. Gladwell sought by ingesting "Talk of the Town" stories. I love fiction and poetry as much as the next former English major and often despair over the quality of what passes for "informational texts," few of which amount to narrative much less literary narrative. What schools really need isn't more nonfiction but better nonfiction, especially that which provides good models for student writing. Most students could use greater familiarity with what newspaper, magazine and book editors call "narrative nonfiction": writing that tells a factual story, sometimes even a personal one, but also makes an argument and conveys information in vivid, effective ways."

"What schools really need isn't more nonfiction but better nonfiction, especially that which provides good models for student writing. "  Totally supports my belief that nonfiction longreads are out there on the internet and are not being taken advantage of by teachers -- enough.

So Prensky was right the first time - there really is digital native generation? No, certainly not - and that's what's important about this study. It shows that while those differences exist, they are not lined up on each side of any kind of well-defined discontinuity. The change is gradual, age group to age group. The researchers regard their results as confirming those who have doubted the existence of a coherent 'net generation'. "We found no evidence for any discontinuity in technology use around the age of 30 as would be predicted by the Net Generation and Digital Natives hypothesis," says the report. What the reseachers do find interesting and worthy of further study is the correlation - which is independent of age -- between attitudes to technology and approaches to studying. In short, students who more readily use technology for their studies are more likely than others to be deeply engaged with their work. "Those students who had more positive attitudes to technology were more likely to adopt a deep approach to studying, more likely to adopt a strategic approach to studying and less likely to adopt a surface approach to studying."

What we should be doing to help our kids become more independent 

Dave, top article. I don't know what the technical term is, but I'm going to re-Diigo this with some Outdoor Ed tags? First part is expecially relevant

In fact, is it possible to re-Diigo it? I bet Jeffy Plaman will know...

On any given day, parents of American tweens and teens average more than nine hours with screen media each day. Eighty-two percent of that time (almost eight hours) is devoted to personal screen media activities such as watching TV, social networking, and video gaming, with the rest used for work

Incredible poster/graphic of how Google works.... from when you post something on the internet to when/how/why it will appear in a search result