Group items tagged

"This study aims at investigating the efficiency of web quests in enhancing the 8th graders' descriptive writing. The 8th graders in the Lebanese public schools in general usually demonstrate poor writing skills. Consequently, they don't show motivation to write in English. The subjects of the study are one control group (n=22) and one experimental group (n=23) enrolled in grade eight in a public school in Beirut and whose ages range from thirteen to fifteen years old. The purpose of the study is to examine whether or not the web quest helps 8th graders achieve unity and coherence in writing descriptive paragraphs and to examine if the motivation towards writing is increased after using the web quest. Based on a pilot study conducted earlier by the two researchers, the prospective findings of the study shall convey that the experimental group produces unified and coherent writings. More importantly, the experimental group is expected to reveal great motivation towards writing. The researchers' prospective recommendations will be mainly urging the teachers of all levels to use the web quests as an indispensable tool requested to enhance students' motivation and to better their descriptive writing skills."

"The invention of the LMS (Learning Management System) was a mistake. And here I'm not going to make the same frustrated argument made numerous times before now that LMSs are limiting structures, that their interface and functionalities control how teachers teach online (although those things are true). The LMS was a mistake because it was premature. In a world that was just waking up to the Internet and the possibility of widely-networked culture, the LMS played to the lowest common denominator, creating a "classroom" that allowed learning -- or something like learning -- to happen behind tabs, in threaded discussions, and through automated quizzes. The LMS was not a creative decision, it was not pushing the capabilities of the Internet, it was settling for the least innovative classroom practice and repositioning that digitally. As a result classes taught within its structure generally land with a dull thud. No matter how creative and inspired the teacher or pedagogue behind the wheel, the LMS is no match for the wideness of the Internet. It was born a relic -- at its launch utterly irrelevant to its environment and its user." Very thought-provoking article on how digital pedagogy really differs from just "teaching online."

"In the original 2004 article I stated: "The pipe is more important than the content within the pipe. Our ability to learn what we need for tomorrow is more important than what we know today. A real challenge for any learning theory is to actuate known knowledge at the point of application" (Conclusion section, � 1). I find Verhagen�s (2006) critique falls at precisely this point. The core of what I wrote in the initial article is still valid: that learning is a network phenomenon, influenced (aided) by socialization and technology. Two years is a lifetime in the educational technology space. Two years ago, web 2.0 was just at the beginning of the hype cycle. Blogs, wikis, and RSS�now prominent terms at most educational conferences�were still the sandbox of learning technology geeks. Podcasting was not yet prominent. YouTube didn't exist. Google had not released its suite of web-based tools. Google Earth was not yet on the desktops of children and executives alike�each thrilled to view their house, school, or business in satellite images. Learning Management Systems still held the starting point of most elearning initiatives. Moodle was not yet prominent, and the term PLEs (personal learning environments) did not exist. In two years, our small space of educational technology evolved�perhaps exploded is a more accurate term."

Mentoring for 21st Century Skills It's all about the Learning" About the book: In this book, we present a collection of papers and articles which represent the varied backgrounds and interests of the authors, all of whom belong to the VITAE team who developed the materials and approaches which are outlined here. While some articles are practical in their focus, describing the application of pedagogic models and the experiences of the participants; others are more theoretical, offering in-depth explorations of the approaches taken in developing the VITAE model.

This article goes a long way to debunk the myths perpetrated by Gardner and the brain-based learning movement. Once again, Schools of Education have fallen for the mythical. "So let's reiterate: A "learning style" curriculum won't affect the way you learn. You don't only use half of your brain, so being taught to your "left-brain" or "right-brain" won't help you, either. Fiddling with an iPhone app? Unlikely. "What might affect how you learn? The types of things you've learned before. "It's not so much based upon how the brain is structured," Alferink says, "it's based upon our experiences." So if you're not a very strong reader, for example, you probably won't learn very well by reading. "Our experiences do affect brain development," he says. "The wiring of the brain depends upon the experiences we have." "And as for the validity of "brain-based" education techniques - that term should really apply to all teaching. After all, Alferink says, "all education is brain-based. It is impossible to learn without a brain.""

"What strategy can double student learning gains? According to 250 empirical studies, the answer is formative assessment, defined by Bill Younglove as "the frequent, interactive checking of student progress and understanding in order to identify learning needs and adjust teaching appropriately." A great short article to make one aware of the nature and value of formative assessment. Unlike summative assessment, which evaluates student learning according to a benchmark, formative assessment monitors student understanding so that kids are always aware of their academic strengths and learning gaps. Meanwhile, teachers can improve the effectiveness of their instruction, re-teaching if necessary. "When the cook tastes the soup," writes Robert E. Stake, "that's formative; when the guests taste the soup, that's summative." Formative assessment can be administered as an exam. But if the assessment is not a traditional quiz, it falls within the category of alternative assessment."

"Programming is magic. It's the ability to create things from pure imagination. We started CodeCombat to give learners the feeling of wizardly power at their fingertips by using typed code. "As it turns out, that enables them to learn faster too. WAY faster. It's like having a conversation instead of reading a manual. We want to bring that conversation to every school and to every student, because everyone should have the chance to learn the magic of programming. "CodeCombat is a community project,with hundreds of players volunteering to create levels, contribute to our code to add features, fix bugs, playtest, and even translate the game into 50 languages so far. Employees, contributors and the site gain by sharing ideas and pooling effort, as does the open source community in general. The site is built on numerous open source projects, and we are open sourced to give back to the community and provide code-curious players a familiar project to explore and experiment with. Anyone can join the CodeCombat community! "

"As part of the Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS), students need to "ask questions to clarify evidence of the factors that have caused the rise in global temperatures over the past century." Many teachers have little to no formal training on how to teach about climate change. Along with the ever-changing research and the controversy that comes with it, some teachers inevitably shy away or even prevent students from digging deep into the content. Some suggest that teachers might be getting climate change all wrong. Since teachers can't rely on books to stay current with all the new research, digital resources are the only effective way to stay on top of such a dynamic field. Consider these practices when using technology to teach about climate change:" Sites include NASA Global Climate Change, Climate Kids for younger learners, Global Oneness Project, and Earth-Now to analyze realtime data.

"Many schools are currently using Forms as a way to easily and quickly record data from teacher observations. The advantage is of using a Google Form is that it compiles all the data into a spreadsheet which allows school leaders to quickly and easily see trends in the school's classrooms." Suggests that the administrator can also use the Google spreadsheet to collect data on what teachers are doing in the school as a whole. Video shows how to go to the Template and create your own by copying the document. Links to template, which has an auto-mail feature.

R. Byrne: "Wideo is a nice tool for creating Common Craft-style videos. You can create animated videos on Wideo by dragging and dropping clipart and text in storyboard frames. You set the position and animation sequence for each element in each storyboard frame. When you have completed your storyboards Wideo generates a video for you. "This week Wideo added a new feature that allows you to build interactive buttons into each frame of your video. The buttons can be hyperlinked to any webpage that you like. When people are watching your video they can click the buttons to be taken to the webpage you want them to land on. For example, clicking the buttons in the video embedded below will take you to the website of my favorite animal rescue organizations." Older students could, of course, create videos themselves to instruct others. The new interactive button might also lead to a quiz on Quizlet or in Google Docs, for example.

"Based on the motivational theories of Stanford psychologist Carol Dweck, the game encourages students to assess themselves not on how smart or talented they are, but on how hard they work. And the reward for completing quests with characters is significant: Help the Cheshire cat from Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and he'll help you turn invisible so you can sneak through the virtual world a la Harry Potter and his invisibility cloak. "The more characters from literature you get to know, the more powerful you become," says Schell. "

Key findings: ICT use by pupils and teachers in the case study schools led to positive motivational\noutcomes, supporting a focus upon learning and the tackling of learning tasks.\n* Positive motivational outcomes were most frequently found when ICT was used to\nsupport engagement, research, writing and editing, and presentation of work. Where ICT\nuses supported internal cognitive aspects of learning, for example in the case of secondary\ndesign and technology, there were indicators that the motivation arising from the use of\nICT was linked to enhancements in some subject specific attainment.\n* More positive motivation resulted when ICT use was focused on both teaching and\nlearning, than when ICT was used to support teaching alone.\n* Boys and girls were both motivated by uses of ICT. There was evidence that motivation\nfrom ICT use positively affected the work patterns of boys so that they worked in similar\nways to the persistent pattern of girls.\n* Motivation appeared to be independent of ethnic background, but socio-economic\nbackground impacted on occasions in terms of limited access or out of school support.\n* There were indications that ICT impacted positively upon

This blog entry describes what a rubric is and how to create rubrics for your own purposes. "Authentic assessments typically are criterion-referenced measures. That is, a student's aptitude on a task is determined by matching the student's performance against a set of criteria to determine the degree to which the student's performance meets the criteria for the task. To measure student performance against a pre-determined set of criteria, a rubric, or scoring scale, is typically created which contains the essential criteria for the task and appropriate levels of performance for each criterion. "

R. Byrne: "One of the most useful new Add-ons for Google Documents is the EasyBib Bibliography Creator. The EasyBib Bibliography Creator makes it easy to properly cite resources and format a bibliography in APA, MLA, or Chicago style. The screenshots below provide directions for the process." This can also be a learning process, as the student will have to figure out what format is most appropriate -- and collect the resources first.

"A little while back I saw a Netflix Template for Google Slides. It's essentially a template to replicate the screens you view when looking at episodes for a Netflix series. I immediately loved the idea of creating a Netflix series for a novel (displaying an understanding of plot, setting, characters, etc.). "The more I thought about it, the more I realized that this template could be used for essentially any subject area. Create a Netflix series for a historical event, animals/plants, etc. Unfortunately, the example I saw wasn't fully editable. I forgot about it until fairly recently and decided to build a fully customizable Netflix template based on the screens viewers see when looking at a series on Netflix." The site also offers a downloadable template to customize your own show for Keynote, Powerpoint, or Google Slides. T/h N LaFave

As with ICT more generally, positive impacts on student motivation depend on the ways in which the ICT is used. Improvements in students' attitudes in learning and changes in behaviour will inevitably be reliant on the capacity of teachers and students to use ICT as an effective pedagogical tool. Drawing clear conclusions on the effects of ICT from the range of research evidence and reports available can be problematic.There are a number of factors that limit effective comparisons, such as differences in sample sizes, methodologies and effects, and the extent and purpose of ICT use involved.However, ICT can help to motivate students in a number of ways.

This site is going EFL/ESL in a big way, using video: "We recently found out that 22frames.com is becoming a popular site for learning English as a second language (ESL). It turns out that watching captioned videos provides a way to not only learn formal English but also idioms and other cultural concepts. To find videos, you can browse through categories or make caption-only video searches on your interests. Even more, we have been devoting significant time and resources to developing ESL-specific features that are motivated by our users' feedback." "Recently, we found out that many of our users are using the site to supplement their English learning (see: http://www.22frames.com/esl.aspx ). They also began to pitch ideas we could implement to make the site even more useful for this activity. With so many requests, we decided to seriously consider these ideas and devote significant time and resources into realizing them. Now, we are turning our site into a substantial and FREE English learning resource. We are aware of a couple sites out there that are also focused on using captioned videos for English learning, so we've been focusing on the unique user-motivated features. Therefore, my goal here is to let you know about our free resource and that we are opening the door to requests for anyone who might desire features that have not been implemented elsewhere. Perhaps, you can share this with your colleagues/readers/etc as it will help us better gauge which features to prioritize and to increase the rate with which we will release new features. Please note that we are really serious about considering whatever feedback we get. I'm also pleased to announce our first feature, which we expect will help in learning/teaching popular English idioms. Idioms are a big deal in learning English, and it is clear that watching them used in real situations will increase the rate with which they are learned. We therefore processed a large group of YouTube videos in o

22 Frames is going to the ESL/EFL market, and is free. First features are idioms.

"The U.S. Library of Congress offers a wealth of fantastic online resources for teachers and students. A quick jump into the teachers resource page will lead you to things like these primary source analysis guides that I have used with students in the past. The LOC also offers a couple of good iOS apps that are worth noting." Shows how various apps can be used with the teachers' resource pages at the U.S. Library of Congress. Great authentic materials for research papers and projects. H/T to R. Byrne

"Real-world learning experiences can significantly improve children's knowledge in a matter of just days, a new study suggests. "Researchers found that 4- to 9-year-old children knew more about how animals are classified after a four-day camp at a zoo. "It wasn't that children who attended just knew more facts about animals, the researchers noted. The camp actually improved how they organised what they knew - a key component of learning. "This suggests the organisation of knowledge doesn't require years to happen. It can occur with a short, naturalistic learning experience," said Layla Unger, lead author of the study and a postdoctoral researcher in psychology at The Ohio State University." A very, very small study, but supports intuitive notions of the neccesity of real-world, real-life experiences.

"If you're the "techy" person in your school but you're not in the IT department sometimes your colleagues come to you with their tech help questions before heading to the IT folks. Sometimes those questions come over the phone and you find yourself trying to explain where to click next or struggling to understand the problem the other person is trying to explain. That's when it's handy to have a screen sharing tool readily available. Here are five that are quick and easy to use." Actually, these screen-sharing tools might be really great for seeing what your students are doing, or to allow remote collaborations.