Group items tagged

I'm trying to save this page in both the WAC and Writing Lab groups. Self-Directed Learning and Self-Efficacy are very much a part of the Connectivist model.

Reflection can be a challenging endeavor. It's not something that's fostered in school - typically someone else tells you how you're doing! At best, students can narrate what they did, but have trouble thinking abstractly about their learning - patterns, connections and progress. Likewise teachers and principals need encouragement and opportunities to think more reflectively about their craft.  In an effort to help schools become more reflective learning environments, I've developed this "Taxonomy of Reflection." - modeled on Bloom's approach.

Wikipedia is forcing us to confront the paradox inherent in the idea of learners as "doers, not recipients." If learners are indeed doers and not recipients, from whom are they learning? From one another, it appears; same as it ever was.

The Foundation and Center for Critical Thinking aim to improve education in colleges, universities and primary through secondary schools. We present publications, conferences, workshops and professional development programs, emphasizing instructional strategies, Socratic questioning, critical reading and writing, higher order thinking, assessment, research, quality enhancement, and competency standards.

General introduction to learning communities

Diigo is a powerful information capturing, storing, recalling and sharing tool. Here are just a few of the possibilities with Diigo: Save important websites and access them on any computer. Categorize websites by titles, notes, keyword tags, lists and groups. Search through bookmarks to quickly find desired information. Save a screenshot of a website and see how it has changed over time. Annotate websites with highlighting or virtual "sticky notes." View any annotations made by others on any website visited. Share websites with groups or the entire Diigo social network. Comment on the bookmarks of others or solicit comments to your shared bookmarks. To learn more about how Diigo can be used as as information management tool, visit these pages:

Students are all too often on a quest for the Correct Answers, which has little to do with critical-thinking development. Our schools are about competition, merits, awards, and how to earn the Golden Ticket -- giving the right answers. And this focus often starts as early as kindergarten.  … Studies show that getting answers wrong actually helps students learn.

New research suggests that even before 2-year-olds speak in full sentences, they are able to understand grammatical construction and use it to make sense of what they hear.

In short, [an eportfolio] is an online space from which to manage your life, learning and goals.

Infographics can change the way we learn, the way we see information put in front of us.  They help us digest that information and leads us to draw important conclusions more swiftly. After doing a little research online I was able to discover 10 gorgeous infographics on education that do more than simply show information, they relay it in a really potent and amazing way.

Filtering is what helps us deal with the vast amount of information available to us. We try to filter information so that we end up with something that is relevant to us - it helps us learn something, it helps us solve a problem, it helps us develop a new hypothesis about the world around us. These are all connections - and this is what really drives value creation. However, we can't connect without some filtering going on.

What kind of brain is the Web giving us? There is much we know or can surmise-and the news is quite disturbing. Dozens of studies by psychologists, neurobiologists, and educators point to the same conclusion: When we go online, we enter an environment that promotes cursory reading, hurried and distracted thinking, and superficial learning. Even as the Internet grants us easy access to vast amounts of information, it is turning us into shallower thinkers, literally changing the structure of our brain.

Many benefits of blogging seem to become apparent over time. That has happened in my own learning journey as a blogger as well.  It is the reflective nature and the timeline of a blog, as well as the growing connections with readers that will reveal growth as a writer, the benefits of being a member of a network and a contributor to a global community.

This project seeks to explore how "Reacting" might be employed as an alternative approach to fulfill the broader objectives of a liberal arts education.  The success of the "Reacting" pedagogy in engaging undergraduate students has been confirmed by faculty reports, student evaluations and formal double-blind assessment studies (Stroessner, 2009).  The latter studies show that "Reacting" students, when compared with those enrolled in other general education courses, improved in certain salient categories associated with learning, including the development of an appreciation of multiple points of view on controversial topics and a belief in the malleability of human characteristics over time and across contexts.  Speaking skills also improved substantially.

Recent studies show that literacy practices "are changing so rapidly that educators, students, and parents are unsure about how school literacy learning experiences and out-of-school literacy practices connect." However, "a majority of more than 900 educator-respondents to the NCTE poll indicate that … out-of-school literacy practices are as critical to students' development as what occurs in the classroom."

This wiki is a collaborative learning space. If you want to contribute to this e-portfolio or digital portfolio page, please join the wiki and then add your thoughts, your notes or describe how you created digital portfolios for your students.

Effective writing to learn activities

Educators have long cautioned students about posting damaging information online, but now it's also becoming important to build a positive digital footprint. When should students start building their online persona? The earlier, the better.