Discussion of the use of rubrics and the role of models. Wiggins argues these must be used hand in hand.

What do you think of these three pillars of Web literacy? I wonder if this year we can do even better at highlighting the importance of these in IL. The section about the use of Diigo is interesting. We exploited last year as an information sharing site but perhaps we need to approach it more as a personal library???

Thinking about unit / lesson planning.... I have a book about Understanding by Design if anyone is interested in seeing it.

This article seems to connect with habits of mind claiming that eastern cultures are more able to persevere with difficult tasks that western cultures. I question whether the cultural differences are accurately described but found it has some good reminders in relation to habits of mind.

Thanks, Troy. I hadn't read it before. I was always doubtful of Eureka moments but classifying them as unnoticed thinking makes sense to me.

This TED talk is about the question formation technique which we experimented with on ADS/NZ this year.

"What are we afraid of? Would we rather be alone or better? Now that's a pair of essential questions."

This is Ron Ritchhart's website that has some good links to readings about Making Thinking Visible.

The Institute for Habits of Mind

Common wisdom holds that we learn best from our mistakes. But researchers at Michigan State University have published a new study that suggests something more is needed: We must be conscious of our mistakes to reap the benefits of improved performance. "Those with traumatic brain injury or other brain injuries that result in impairments in self-awareness suggest that your level of awareness of your own symptoms, for example, actually correlates with the probability that you'll recover from them," he says. "But there is still quite a bit we need to learn about conscious awareness and the role it plays in performance and judgment before we can say for certain." Hmmm. what does this mean in relation to the errors our students make?

As you are preparing your IELTS specific skills and strategies, are you also preparing stress management techniques?

Opps...wrong group....then again, as teachers, are we not only preparing with skill area strategies but also reminding our students of stress managment techniques???

Habits of mind....

Clyde from Macmillan sent this link of webinars. I haven't looked at any yet but some of the titles seem potentially interesting.

This is a great article that supports how rubrics can support the learning process.

Interesting TED Talk about how we don't need a teacher, but we need interest and collaboration to learn.