Group items tagged

'We do not need to teach creativity, but rather inspire its daily practice.' This opening sentence is intriguing yet inspiring to me. As said in the title, this article introduces 18 apps to support students developing creativity at different thinking stages. The writer also suggests some practical strategies which could be incorporated in our daily teaching practice. Nevertheless, what strikes me more is the reminder that we, as a class, school, or community, need to build a culture of trust in the first place to cultivate culture of creativity and innovation.

What a great article about creativity.  What I loved is that the article states that schools do not need to teach creativity.  Schools need to foster it by providing students a safe place to take risks and providing them tools that make that risk taking possible.  Creativity is about finding solutions to problems using one's own ideas and thinking skills.  Students can do this when given the power and opportunities to do so.

Like Chris, the opening to this post caught my eye. "We do not need to teach creativity, but rather inspire its daily practice." Ms. Darrow's article captures the importance of creating a school that values it's students, encourages them to take some risks, and lets them practice these skills with abandon. With support and coaching from teachers, students can work through the steps outlined in this article using technology to streamline the process, help them develop real life/career skills, and appeal to their interest in digital media. I like how Darrow labels this process; there are clear steps to increase understanding. Collaboration or group work can use this format as well, group members' jobs are easily created with the resulting structure. It also creates natural places to scaffold the process for individualizing learning in a classroom full of all kinds of learners. Each activity we do in a class may not need all these steps and some may need more, but I plan to keep this article in mind as I tweak my courses this summer.

Offers strategies for creating and managing project-based learning environments. Emphasizes active learning environments based on authentic tasks, inquiry and feedback.

An intriguing article delineating several useful methods to bring online classrooms to life. While text and self-teaching methods were the way of the past, we now have a multitude of means to engage the student both visually and audibly via an incredible assortment of tools and resources just brimming with creative potential.

Using online math course as the example, this article provides teachers and students with a lot of technology tools to create a rich online learning and problem-solving environment. With these digital tools, students get more engaged in learning and become more creative thinking. It's a good reference for subject teachers.

This article asks how we teach students the tools to learn how to talk, read, write, and think online. It mentions many of the media literacy tools presented in one of our readings.

This article deals specifically with how online writing through the use of either asynchronous or synchronous tools can enhance the traditional classroom. The use of a blog to discuss ideas and debate issues may not be as dynamic or interactive as some of the other Web 2.0 tools we have been discussing and using. However, this article makes the point that using blogs can make content more engaging, provide a way for students to be reflective, allow them the opportunity to practice presenting ideas and arguments and finding their voice. The author, Robert Baird from the University of Illinois, argues that these discussion tools are not used up to their potential. I resonated with this article because as a teacher of an online course that uses discussion threads extensively, I completely agree that students level of engagement and understanding of issues, as well as becoming better thinkers, finding their voice and being forced to use evidence in their answers is remarkable.

Great article on the benefits of a course blog . . . " Students who read, commented, and were involved with the blog maintained their initially positive attitudes" towards course.

Summaries the benefits of blogging: blogging is public, we are more attentive to quality of work; blogging creates a person-centered discussion; and blogging "encourages higher levels of reasoning-- at times upper levels--analyzing, evaluating, and creating--of Bloom's Taxonomy" and ways to get started.

This brief article describes some of the specific technologies that can be used in a mathematics classroom to move problem solving online (such as SMART boards, webcams, screen captures, etc.)

Facebook in the classroom

In this article, teachers are urged to push students beyond simply providing personal opinions as answers. By offering better prompts and questions, students need to be pushed into "critical reflection and evaluation" of the topic at hand. Having students move beyond simply Q/A formats, they are more engaged in their learning in terms of both the process and the outcome. Teachers need to provide feedback, challenging prompts, and encourage the discovery process (among others) to improve critical thinking skills. In addition, teachers can post open-ended questions, provide models of what synthesis looks like, and refrain from being the authority on the subject. While this article was not specifically related to Web 2.0 tools, the elements of how to increase critical / higher order thinking skills apply to all of the elements of technology use in the classroom.

Group work is regarded by most students as challenging. However in real life context, they have to work in teams in many situations. Collaboration is considered in this video to be an authentic approach to learning and this resource suggests strategies on how internet technology can make group work effective, less time consuming and transparent.