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This article outlines the notion of flipping the classroom to ensure there is more time in class "doing" your discipline and working on skills together, rather than "listening" or "looking" at how it is done. Being selective about what media you ask students to consume for HW, having them do blogs or discussion posts as HW and then using class time to work in groups and go deeper with the analysis of bias, perspective, sourcing, etc. is a great model. If we want to push the thinking further on the media literacy, we need to have class time to do this work with them.

This article lists some interesting statistics about the pervasiveness of social media. According to this post, 96% of students with internet access use social networking technology, and 56% of those talk about education-related topics while they are online. Educators say social networking gives them access to a professional community, and it encourages collaboration and the exchange of ideas. Parents say it helps them become more involved, helps them understand the teacher's expectations, and increases student-teacher communication. Social media helps students learn collaboration and develop important workforce skills. It also gives them a positive view of technology, stimulates engagement, and increases academic networking. Interesting statements, to be sure.

Similar to the flipped classroom, "The essence of the JiTT pedagogy is timely pre-instruction assignments, usually called warm-ups that inform the upcoming lesson by encouraging the students to examine their prior knowledge and seek information about the upcoming topic before coming to class." When lessons are done well using JiTT, students are more actively involved in their learning and are able to attain metacognition, thereby building higher order thinking skills.

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.

Many educators are looking for more outside the box methods to learning and understanding. Many teachers have tried implementing more technology inside the classroom or tried to create a more blended classroom. This article shows another method of instruction that brings higher order of thinking and that is using games to differentiate instruction. Our students have been playing games since they were no more than 2 years old. Why not implement a learning method that they are already accustomed to. This has transformed classroom learning into a more interactive learning style that has shown great success. The articles talks about the importance of moving your lessons to the students strengths so why not lean them towards what they know best? Using games for higher learning is no different then a classroom review. It is no different then a quiz. The only difference is that it is more interactive and it is electronic. This style of high order thinking or critical thinking creates a learning environment that is geared to challenge the students in a way that they want to be challenged.

This article gives a great description of flipped classrooms and how a flipped classroom will expand on media and 21st century learning skills in the classroom and outside of the classroom. It develops a sense of the changing paradigm of the typical sage on the stage teacher and creating the digital literate classroom.

This article gives a great example of how a librarian created a lesson that uses many web 2.0 tools while students demonstrated their media literacy skills.

By using libguide a Boston Librarian was able to create a lesson for students to learn about an oil spill off the coast of Louisiana. Using libguide allowed her to combine news links, a Delicious linkroll, an RSS feed, and a Google Map that compares the relative size of the spill to Manhattan, Paris, and other global cities.

This article provides an overview of Glogster, tips for teachers in using Gloster and links to tutorials for using Glogster in the classroom.

An article about a multi-school blog collaborative class

Taking a risk means that failure is an option. Many students may see taking a risk as a negative. If we want students to take risks, we must not only create an environment that encourages students to take risks, but makes risk taking seem like the best option.

This article talks about how to encourage students to take risks in the classroom. These "risks" can range from just questioning to imagining to trying out something new. This is a very important higher order thinking skill that many students have trouble comprehending and acting on because they would rather stick with what they know (or what they think will get them the highest grade). I think the ideas in the article can be applied to high school classrooms as well as college classrooms.

A great article about helping students be more creative by incorporating risk-taking activities in the classroom. Create an environment where taking risks are rewarded. Also start with small risk-taking activities and build up into more complex ones.

University students generally enter opposed to group work. This video article explains how to be effective, facilitate and create transparent assessment for this real-life skill.

This article clearly explains what constitutes a quality educational game. The formula includes "focusing on a targeted curriculum" and using higher order thinking skills. Problem solving is usually the main focus. Students should be "intrinsically motivated" by the game and be able to "master the learning goals behind the game."

This article discusses the importance of differentiation and especially the need for students to "redo" their assignments until they get them correct. By allowing students to "redo" they are improving their higher level thinking skills. Good and short article with practical reminders.

I love this article! Great reminders for all of us as educators to simply differentiate learning for our students. -vary the length or quantity of the assignment. -extend or curtail the duration of the assignment. -change the language of the assignment. -scaffold the learning activity from hard to medium to easy. -compact the activity and teach only what they don't know. -give them learning activities that let them perform the same learning objective with multiple mediums like summarizing a story they have read through narrative, drama, song, poetry, art, or design They also discussed the ability to redo assessments and I agree with this but somewhere in my teaching experience this has been engrained in my head only once. But I realize the feeling of success this allows a student.

In this blog, Ben Johnson reiterates the misconceptions in education about all students getting concepts in education at the same time. He goes on to discuss the importance of true differentiation in the classroom and that it is not creating an imbalance among students but a way for all students to succeed. He emphasizes the things teachers already do in the classroom to help students succeed and ends with a suggestion to allow students to redo their work in all areas (not just English and history).

Awesome site for Math tutorials and videos

With a library of over 3,000 videos covering everything from arithmetic to physics, finance, and history and hundreds of skills to practice, we're on a mission to help you learn what you want, when you want, at your own pace.

This is actually a video including ideas from film director George Lucas. The main point of the video is that teaching "communication" in the future should involve much more than just teaching writing but should involve all the ways that students can express their ideas.

This site looks at information literacy and looks at the 5 different "minds". They relate them to ethical, disciplined, synthesizing, creative and respectful minds when talking about students using web 2.0 applications.

Interesting article that discusses how our brains change when using Web technologies. The term "partial attention" is explained as "a state of constantly scanning for information." Insightful description of how our world has changed significantly now that technology is here to stay.

This article from eLearn Magazine discusses how neuropsyhcologists are studying the effects of using new media and Web 2.0 tools on our brains. Their results show both positive and negative findings. Some of the benefits include certain areas of the brain being worked harder and making strong neural connections allowing us to process and evaluate large amounts of information quickly. A downside is that we are not retaining information for extended periods of time and we are losing the ability to communicate with feeling because we are not always in face-to-face contact with others. The article also discusses Psychologist Howard Gardner's "Five Minds of 2.0 Learners." These are higher order thinking skills he believes individuals need in order to be successful in the digital world. These include disciplined, synthesizing, creating, respectful, and ethical minds. This is an interesting read and could start a great classroom discussion about technology use with your students.

An important component of information literacy is finding 'good', reliable information. When students become skillful at research, they can create amazing products and apply the knowledge learned. As Clive writes, "better to concentrate on important underlying concepts and principles".

Children are being invited to a Defcon conference in Las Vega, this August 2011, to learn how to become hackers. A major emphasis of the event is the use of hacking skills for positive purposes. The children will be encouraged to put their knowledge to good use and avoid the temptations of becoming a black hat hacker. Apparently the US authorities, intelligence officials and security officers will be attending to keep an eye out for promising hackers who can be hired to help fight cybercrime. How's that for open communication! The Inquirer - Computer hardware news and downloads. Visit the download store today.