Group items tagged

February 21, 2013 By: Maryellen Weimer, PhD in Teaching and Learning Almost everyone agrees that student presentations benefit the presenter in significant ways. By doing presentations, students learn how to speak in front a group, a broadly applicable professional skill. They learn how to prepare material for public presentation, and practice (especially with feedback) improves their speaking skills. (Much of what we want for our students is to work, respect, support, find the good in one another, have fun and use web tools together! Highlighting the peer evaluative piece was one I am doing my best to work on. Great resource!) ~Tara

Tara, Good find. A nice way to get more students engaged. An interesting, approach to student presentations. The author does a nice job of describing advantages, as well as disadvantages, to requiring students to critique their classmate's presentations. The image of the "comatose" classmates in their seats as yet, another presenter tries to impress the teacher is comical, yet accurate. The students doing the critiques also had a vested interest as it represents a portion of their grade. A significant statistic was that," Seventy-three percent of the students agreed or strongly agreed that completing the evaluations made them pay more attention to the presentations. " A final point of interest is that students were clear in not wanting their classmates critiques to have an impact on their grade. Tom

This article by Sharon Boller is a response to Ruth Clark's article "Why Games Don't Teach". Here Boller discusses Clark's inconsistencies and explains how GBL can work in the classroom. Most importantly, Boller discusses the level of engagement, the feedback mechanisms, and the "rehearsal and practice" that GBL offer.

The article looks at how to shift from limited classroom instruction focused on lecture, homework, discussion, memorization to using the web as a tool to expand the learning experience. Imagine getting a tweet from a student who is outraged when Lennie kills Curly's wife in Of Mice and Men? Aaron Iffland explains how to make your classroom viral while requiring students to engage more in their own learning.

I like this article and I think students learn best by doing. I think I am addicted to my phone. I can paly games, read, wrtie, email and socialize all at the sametime. It's fun and educational!

"The taxonomy accurately classifies various types of cognitive thinking skills. It certainly identifies the different levels of complexity. But its organizing framework is dead wrong.  Here's why." I don't think I'm buying this rethinking, but it's worth a read.

This is a link to a video of a high school that uses only Project-Based learning PBL, a teaching/learning style where students create projects to demonstrate their learning of the objectives set out by the teacher. It goes through the process of how to set up PBL projects as teachers. It's a decent introduction to the process: something to pique one's interest. At the end there are links to other videos with more information about PBL.

Project-based learning has come to the forefront of education as it is being used to assess what the students know and how they can use the knowledge in the "real world" to problem solve. The approach by the school to implement PBL into their curriculum goes directly back to state standards. I thought the video was well informed and I was impressed with the 60-65 times the students speak in front of others (public speaking).

Go inside Manor New Technology High School, part of the New Tech Network of schools, where an unwavering commitment to an effective schoolwide PBL model keeps both students and teachers motivated and achieving their best. More to this story.

Patricia Owen gives some practical steps for using TRAILS (Tool for Real-time Assessment of Information Literacy Skills). She lists five steps: Devise an Action Plan, Administer Test, Analyze Results, Share Results with Teachers & Students, and Revise Instruction.

Blog post by Ken Kay of EdLeader21 outlining strategies for administrators to assist teachers in implementing 21st century skills (critical thinking, communication, collaboration, and creativity) into classroom practices .

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.

Socrative is an awesome tool used in Education to gain a better understanding of what our students have learned or are learning during a lesson by getting. In this post about socrative we see how it can be used assess writing in the classroom.

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.

Student debate has the capacity to both deeply engage the students in relevant learning, and to encourage students to be deep thinkers. Debate is more than simply arguing. It has structure and rules that are designed to keep both sides calm.

This article highlights the academic and intellectual benefits of student debate activities. According to the article, students who study and practice debate are able to think more deeply and critically and defend their opinions with evidence--definitely elements of HOTS.

This article by Melissa Venable deals with the skills one needs to effectively communicate in an online class. Whether it is between the teacher and the student or student to student communication. This is a skill that needs to be developed especially for the online teacher. The 7 C's are - Clarity, Completeness, Conciseness, Concreteness, Correctness, Courtesy, and Consideration. She further points out that there may even be more C's that need to be part of this equation - Confident, Conversational, Coherent, Creative, Convincing and Check. Her basic message is "More effective communication practices lead to a more effective learning process."

While the Cs in the article are associated with online courses, they can also be applied to face-to-face instruction, as well as written and oral communication. In all forms of communication, it is worth striving for these Cs.

While online courses bring concerns for underdeveloped face to face skills, these courses help students develop a more effective communication. In this platform students are more aware of what they are saying. Students must present their thoughts in clear, concise, correct sentences. They must also take care to be considerate of their audience. That the written word doesn't allow for tone of voice or body language to help get their ideas across. Students must really think before the "speak."

I really enjoyed this article because it addresses the practical application of technology in the classroom and how, as a teacher, we can maximize student time when using Web 2.0

Nice tips to keep the computer lab time as efficient as possible.

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.

Article that opens up the Chicken and the Egg discussion when it comes to Higher Order Thinking Skills. "Are beginning courses the best time to teach facts? Must students know the facts before they can think at higher levels? Asked a bit differently, is knowing the facts all that's needed to think at higher levels? Must students practice making connections, integrating facts and applying information, or can they do that automatically (once) they've got the facts?

Teaching students to think using higher order thinking skills may require teachers to think using higher order thinking skills. This article surely has me pondering the question, "Must students know the facts before they can think at higher levels?"

This article is designed to help the student retain what is read. Brown and Taylor refer to blogging in that the review of information absorbed will be put into memory by the act of blogging and other methods. The authors start with a few 'learner' tips, then a few 'teacher/trainer' practices and end on some technical techniques.

And because of my lifelong interest in creativity, I was thrilled to read the "Creativity and the Joy of Learning" article and reflect a bit on what I've learned and have yet to learn. .... as Jim Groom says "to practice my creativity habit" and to actually learn ... for credit or simply for the joy of learning and creating.

Westside High School has extended learning after the school bell has rung. Teachers and parents encourage creativity and productivity to meet the needs of every student in a 24/7 learning environment. Technology is used to promote educational activities that meet students' unique needs. Communication is supported through podcasts, tweets, ipods, ipads, flip cameras and video technologies. Media literacy is enhanced by tech integration.