If you have spent your time in class trying to write things down rather than listening fully, of course you won’t remember what was said, and will feel later like you have to rely on your notes.

In a world where “screen time” is becoming simply “time,” our policies must evolve or become obsolete.

Role modeling is critical. Limit your own media use

The more media engender live interactions, the more educational value they may hold

The quality of content is more important than the platform or time spent with media. Prioritize how your child spends his time rather than just setting a timer

An interactive product requires more than “pushing and swiping” to teach

Play a video game with your kids

co-viewing is essential

Tech use, like all other activities, should have reasonable limits

Elementary students in Finland often have the SAME teacher for up to SIX YEARS of their education.

Finland understands that the ability to teach isn’t something that can be gained from studying. It is usually a gift and passion.  Some have it, some don’t.

They do not try to interfere or usurp their authority and decisions.

Study after study

Imagine all of the exciting things you could do with your students if there wasn’t a giant state test looming over your head every year.  Imagine the freedom you could have if your pay wasn’t connected to your student’s test scores.  Imagine how much more fun and engaging your lessons would be!

teachers take their time.  They look deeper into the topic and don’t panic if they are a little behind or don’t cover every topic in the existence of mathematics in a single year.

math ONCE a week

The students get to actually understand the material before they are forced on to a new topic.

Finnish students have the least amount of homework in the world.  They average under half an hour of homework a night.  Finnish students typically do not have outside tutors or lessons either.

I won’t give you homework if you work on this while you are in my classroom.”

Trust is key

Cell phone radiation is more powerful than that emitted by Wi-Fi devices and the predominant concern is brain cancer, since people tend to hold cell phones against their heads. If cell phones caused brain cancer, the scientists say, we should already be seeing an increase in overall cases. We don’t.

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.

Reflective teachers help students understand that the students will now look back rather than move forward. They will take a break from what they have been doing, step away from their work, and ask themselves, "What have I (or we) learned from doing this activity?"

The teacher helps each student monitor individual progress, construct meaning from the content learned and from the process of learning it,

Teachers who promote reflective classrooms ensure that students are fully engaged in the process of making meaning.

in written and oral form

To be reflective means to mentally wander through where we have been and to try to make some sense out of it.

and journals

Habits of Mind

ask students to reread their journals, comparing what they knew at the beginning of a learning sequence with what they know now. Ask them to select significant learnings, envision how they could apply these learnings to future situations

the quality of students' reflections changes as children develop their reading and writing skills. When kindergartners were asked to reflect orally, they gave rich descriptions of their work. But as they developed their writing ability and were encouraged to write their own reflections, the reflections became less descriptive. This change puzzled the teachers until they realized that students are more concerned about spelling, punctuation, and other aspects of editing when they first learn to write. Because students do not have a great deal of fluency with their writing, they are more limited in what they describe. In contrast, when meeting with the teacher, the kindergartners elaborated on what they wrote about their work. And once students became more fluent with their writing skills, they were able to represent their reflective thoughts more easily.

stereotypical comments such as "This was fun!" or "I chose this piece of work because it is my best." Teachers realized that they needed to spend time teaching students how to reflect. They asked students, "What does a reflection look like when it really tells you something about the experience?"

Reflection was not a time for testimonials about how good or bad the experience was. Instead, reflection was the time to consider what was learned from the experience.

Students might collect work throughout the year as part of a portfolio process. Every quarter they can review the work in their collection folders and choose one or two pieces to enter into their portfolio. When they make those choices, they can take the opportunity to reflect on the reasons for their choices and to set goals for their next quarter's work.

superficial to in-depth reflections. Indicators of in-depth reflections include making specific reference to the learning event, providing examples and elaboration, making connections to other learning, and discussing modifications based on insights from this experience.

the school needs to create an atmosphere for reflection

a time and a place for looking backward and inward, not forward and outward

We are going to take a break from what we have been doing, stand back, and ask ourselves, What have we learned from doing our work today?

the tradition in education is to simply discard what has happened and move on to new topics. This episodic approach is reflected in both classroom instruction and assessment and in change efforts as schools frantically strive to stay abreast of an array of educational improvements and mandates. Knowledgeable, vigilant, and reflective organizations, however, view school change from a broader perspective—as a process of revealing and emancipating

In reflective schools, there is no such thing as failure—only the production of personal insights from one's experiences.

which dispositions were you most aware of in your own learning

Collecting work provides documentation for comparing students' levels of knowledge and performance at the beginning, middle, and end of a project.

“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

So Finland might not be so great after all, partly because its centralised curriculum has ignored certain concepts that are not tested in PISA.

choice is extensive

Do rewards motivate people? Absolutely. They motivate people to get rewards. When people use rewards to motivate, that’s when they’re demotivating.

once an activity is associated with an external reward, people are less inclined to participate in the activity without a reward present.

We want pupils to develop their intrinsic motivation.