Group items tagged

This article is about how the Bloom's Taxonomy of Learning has changed. The new higher order thinking is the following. Creating, Evaluating, Analyzing, Applying, Understanding, Remembering. The article also includes the three domains of learning: Cognitive, Affective, Psychomotor.  As stated in the article, Bloom's Taxonomy was create in 1956 and the old taxonomy included the following: Evaluation, Synthesis, Analysis, Application, Comprehension and Knowledge. The auther feels the new taxonomy , "reflects a more active form of thinking and is perhaps more accurate".- See more at: http://www.nwlink.com/~donclark/hrd/bloom.html#sthash.BeAdOInN.dpuf. Questions to ask are how does the new technology fit into the new definition of "Bloom's Taxonomy". At what stage will all education require technology as the main component and source for educating students?

This article is a review for animation software for the grade school level. While this article is not about HOTS directly it describes an interesting tool that can promote HOTS. Students are well versed in making PowerPoints these days and moving to a more extensive animation platform is the next logical step. The animation process involves HOTS because students must process the information into a format that is more then just memorization and repetition. This tool would promote the skills of analysis, synthesizing, and critical thinking as students take information presented in class and work to share their knowledge through film/animation.

This teacher makes a really strong argument that you should not feel that you have nothing important to say. This is the way to make some strong networked relationships. I like her quote "This has led to many great conversations with other educators about teaching issues." Blogging has connected her to peers throughout the world. I find that being an online educator is lonely so this may be the way to go to share resources and to discuss with others that share our online world.

I really enjoyed reading this article because I'm feeling the same excitement as the author did when she first began blogging. While I'm just learning how to "officially" blog, I have been using Edmodo with my students as a way to connect with my students outside my classroom. It allows us to communicate and ask questions to one another outside of normal school hours, yet in a more structured classroom like forum, unlike Facebook. But because it works similar to Facebook, the students love it and don't mind logging on and doing their assignments. One day when I was out sick, I was able to log on an have real time discussions with my students. If they had questions about the assignment they were able to ask. They can also turn in their assignments via Edmodo instead of waiting for the next day/week. My feelings are if the students are into it, then it's something we need to be doing as well to keep up with them. Teachers who use Web 2.0 tools such as blogging have an advantage over those that don't because these are the social networks that students know and are familiar with. Also, the author of this article points out the fact that teachers have a new way of connecting to each other and share ideas. From what I remember when I was younger, the traditional teacher's only way of communicating and sharing ideas or concerns with other teachers were via phone or before/after school meetings. I don't know how often that actually happened, but now with blogging you can share your information any time with any body.

This is but the first few paragraphs of an article describing the use of collaborative methods and technologies in the classroom. It compares what goes on in a collaborative classroom to that in a creative business. To bad one has to either buy the article or subscribe to read it all.

This article provides four points to increase parent involvement and communication: 1) Make a case for increased parent involvement, 2) Reach out to parents who want to make a connection, 3) Find ways to involve families in school culture, 4) Make the commitment to join the conversation with other teachers and parents. Within each of these four points, there are various links to more actively engage with tips, articles, and discussion groups.

Every school has a need to increase parent involvement for a variety of reasons, with such intended results as a better sense of "community" among families, faculty and students, improved student achievement, and the like. This can be a challenge for all these entities. It's helpful from time to time to have reminders of strategies that work.

This articles talks about our current college graduates being "digital natives,"  teaching digital natives, and how the use of  technology must be tied to subject matter, and  pedagogy.  

This article discusses collaboration on a large corporation level and allows for small businesses to conduct important daily activities and decision making using social media as well. The article states the Top 5 must have tools, how to set your goals, and how to choose an appropriate vendor.  I think the article can be viewed when working in our classrooms and we are trying to incorporate social media with collaboration tools.

This article proves that we need to prepare our students for the world of work. Companies and corporations are using social networking and social media tools for their employees to communicate and collaborate around the world. The Top 5 tools include several we are learning in our class.

Social media tools can be adapted inside of your company to share data, support employees, and facilitate the exchange of ideas. These days you can find a lot of advice about how to use public social media-such as Facebook, LinkedIn, and Twitter-for marketing your company to prospective customers, partners, and employees.

Discusses how to enhance the classroom by using a discussion board in a skills-based course by allowing students the chance to use information literacy skills.

This article offers insight into the process of appropriately constructing class discussions online. It cautions that discussions should be based on critical thinking than on sharing facts or answers. The author notes that problems can result if a student posts incorrect information and then other students respond thinking that it is correct.

November 11, 2010 Making Online Discussion Boards Work for Skills-Based Courses By: Rob Kelly In this article, an accounting teacher described how he used online discussion boards for study groups in his course. I appreciated this suggestion...online "study groups" could be a great way to motivate students to study and also for faculty to monitor their studying. Teachers could step in to clarify information a group appears to be confused about based on their discussion strand.

This article discusses 5 technology tools to help teachers incorporate differentiated instruction into any lesson. These tools appeal to different learning styles and individual strengths. Advanced students can be challenged and struggling students can receive help. The 5 programs/tools cited are Museum Box, The Elements, Garage Band, Intro to Math, and Dragon Dictation.

Each of the apps listed in this article deserve a glance, some especially for the younger grades and special education. Garage Band appeals to all ages - my colleague uses it to set poems to music in her 2nd grade class. I hope to have students use it this year as background to a video. The Elements app is awesome! (I just spent an hour checking it out - I was completely swept away and so not focused on the task at hand.) I can also imagine an group project with Museum Box, that would appeal to the ultra-organized students. This article really showcases just how technology and all the ensuing apps has something for every student to latch on to and feel success with.

Describes the efforts of the student group known as White Rose

Sarah D. Sparks in her article above, suggests that recent research indicates that 'video-chat or avatar environments' actually can lead to natural engagements between students. To View the complete article you can either subscribe or sign up for a two week free trial.

This article supports the argument that no one education method is the best on its own. The blend of social media, technology and face-2-face interactions help students to effectively communicate and form bonds with their classmates.

The article From 'e' to 'we' Learning is about empowerment through collaboration of networking. According to article this more than" 80 millions adults use social media for health-related issues-creating or sharing content on blogs, message boards, and chat rooms". Soem example of network tools are Twittter and Facebook.. This article was not an easy read.

An integral part of nearly all online classes is the threaded discussion-it is where students interact on a nearly daily basis, posting their thoughts and information on main discussion topics, your postings, and the postings of other students. While you have measured control over the content, length, and tone of student postings, you have full control over your own. To ensure that your responses to student postings in discussion are effective, incorporate the following ideas:

In this article, Errol Sull provides us many good reminders of what we should be doing to make sure our online learning environment is effective and positive for our students. I feel confident in his guidelines because he's been teaching in the online environment for fifteen years. His suggestions also make sense in both an online and f2f discussion.

This article by Errol Sull presents us with suggestions for online discussions. I personally have been nervous about having all class online discussions after a Moodle incident I had last year. Fortunately, my Moodle settings were set so that only two students were able to get a at each other. I will apply these ideas to my classes in August.

A lofty empirical research article intended for doctoral candidates and other researchers but if you can get past the SAT style language the information contained is rather interesting. While my high school students will not be writing formal literary analyses I am interested in them producing high quality papers based on valid research questions/topics and having them think of new ways to view the same literature. Some of the texts we read in class have so many articles and summaries already prepared that it is sometimes hard for students to think of new ways to approach the material and this article offers some interesting thought processes to consider when preparing a literary analysis.

This article looks at how students can use data bases to process the information they are gathering online while doing research. It is an excellent article promoting ideas to move away from multi-tasking and stealing ideas form the net.

At an educational technology conference in Boston July 27, Harvard University physics professor Eric Mazur explained how he uses "peer instruction" to help his students engage in deeper learning than traditional lectures can provide-and he unveiled a brand-new ed-tech service that can help educators take this concept to a whole new level.

This article by Dennis Pierce discusses events at a July 27 technology conference in Boston. The point of the article is to stress that education needs to move from information giving to student creation. He explains that students need the ability to assimilate the information given so that they can then apply it to another context. Web 2.0 tools have allowed for this "flipped" type classroom that he references, where students read up on a concept for homework, then in the f2f classroom use the higher order thinking skills....application, analysis, creation and publication with the new tools available.

An brief article cautioning with interesting statistics about the number of teens who use blogging on a regular basis. Might have some implications for introducing and educating students about blogging into the classroom.

This is an interesting article about the small percentage of teens 13 to 17 that are blogging. According to the Millennials reports, although social networking sites have increased, they are more interested in text messaging than twittering or blogging. The author suggest that "Understanding why teens go online, and what tools they use, can give teachers clues into how they conduct research, and even complete homework". This is something to consider

This article suggests how to use Web 2.0 tools to assess students in the digital age. The article has many useful links. I wish that the examples of the actual rubrics were larger. Overall, I found the article to quite helpful.

How do we assess students' learning in these in Web 2.0 environments? We want to go beyond assessing the mere mechanics of using these tools; unfortunately, most current rubrics for Web 2.0 learning devote only a minuscule amount (usually 16% or less) to actual student academic learning.

This article is about standards-based learning and 21st century skills. How to improve student learning through teacher's decisions and technology. He has a excellent list of rubrics Web 2.0 tools. Some examples "rubrics" are......Wiki/Blog, Images/Photo/Flickr, Video/YouTube,Podcast, Social Bookmarking, Twitter, Videoconferencing, General Assessment: Prensky's 21st century skills, General Assessment: enGauge's 21st century skills, General Assessment: Partnership for 21st century skills. I really liked the links and rubrics and found them very helpful. However the rubrics were small and a little hard to read.

Great article to support how to go about teaching students how to locate, evaluate, and use information effectively.

This article published in TES Magazine explores the idea of teaching thinking in the classroom. The author(s) ask "Is it possible to teach thinking skills?" They say that most experts agree that you can but Philip Adey of the Centre for Advancement of Thinking at King's College London, says that "thinking skills described in the national curriculum are not skills, they are mental processes. You can't teach them directly. But you can create a learning environment that will stimulate their development." I somewhat agree with this assessment however, a teacher can easily provide examples that the student(s) could apply to different scenarios. I'd call that teaching.