Shimon Schocken and Noam Nisan developed a curriculum for their students to build a computer, piece by piece. When they put the course online -- giving away the tools, simulators, chip specifications and other building blocks -- they were surprised that thousands jumped at the opportunity to learn, working independently as well as organizing their own classes in the first Massive Open Online Course (MOOC). A call to forget about grades and tap into the self-motivation to learn.
In some ways, the flipped model is an improvement. Research shows that tailored tutoring is more effective than lectures for understanding, mastery, and retention. But the flipped classroom doesn't come close to preparing students for the challenges of today's world and workforce. As progressive educational activist Alfie Kohn notes, great teaching isn't just about content but motivation and empowerment: Real learning gives you the mental habits, practice, and confidence to know that, in a crisis, you can count on yourself to learn something new. That's crucial in a world where, according to the U.S. Department of Labor Statistics, adults change careers (not just jobs) four to six times or where, as an Australian study predicts, 65% of today's teens will end up in careers that haven't even been invented yet. We don't need to flip the classroom. We need to make it do cartwheels.
I find this paragraph particularly telling: "The cartwheeled classroom not only connects text books and classrooms to the real world, but it also inspires, uplifts, and offers the joy of accomplishment. Transformative, connected knowledge isn't a thing--it's an action, an accomplishment, a connection that spins your world upside down, then sets you squarely on your feet, eager to whirl again. It's a paradigm shift."
Imagine what this could mean for our ASU QEP, for example, if we told our twelve 2012-2013 teachers that each of their QEP courses was going to be taught within the larger context of being meaningful to the population of a Haitian, African, Muslim, or Afghan village or community. The difference for the students in their real-world learning would be immeasurable.
This post has two purposes: (1) Present a model you can use for your own students' portfolios. It is critical to know what you want students to present before you begin. (2) Provide videos that show you, step-by-step, how to set up portfolios using Google sites.
Traditional use of the Web (i.e. non-mobile and non-video usage) is shrinking. Per-person consumption of traditional Web content fell by 3 percent between March 2010 and March 2011 in terms of minutes.
Within that shrinking slice of online time, Facebook is increasingly the portal for everything. While the "document Web" (as author Ben Elowitz terms the old-style Web) shrank by 9 percent overall, Facebook consumption increased by 69 percent, essentially stealing time from everything else. It now accounts for 1 out of every 8 minutes of online time, as opposed to 1 out of 13 at the beginning of the year. Search engines, once the gatekeepers to the Web, are giving way to Facebook. Google and everything it represents is facing the first stages of irrelevancy.
When we conceive of learner as knowmad, the traditional roles assigned to teacher and student become less relevant, necessary, and linear. The knowmad is mobile and learns with anybody, anywhere, anytime. As such, the place we now know as school may be too small and perhaps unable to contain the range of learning engagements necessary for those with nomadic tendencies. Rather, think of the extended community--one that is physical, virtual, and blended-- as potential learning spaces that our knowmadic traveler composes, accesses, participates in, abandons, and changes.
According to Leuf and Cunningham, a wiki is "a free expandable collection of interlinked webpages, a hypertext system for storing and modifyinh information, a data base, where each page is easily edited by any user." A Wiki can be thought of as a combination of a web site and a Word document. At its simplest, it can be read just like any other web site, with no access privileges necessary, but its real power lies in the fact that groups can collaboratively work on the content of the site using nothing but a standard web browser. The Wiki is gaining traction in education as an ideal tool for collaborative work.
This series of reports explores new forms of teaching, learning and assessment for an interactive world, to guide teachers and policy makers in productive innovation. The first report proposes ten innovations that are already in currency but have not yet had a profound influence on education.
Flipping a classroom is not a teaching technique, it is more in line with a philosophy or way of teaching. It involves using technology as a tool, not the main focus, for helping students increase their understanding of science or math concepts.
The ePI study is exploring large-scale implementations of e-portfolio use in Higher and Further Education and professional organisations in the UK . It is JISC funded and led by the University of Nottingham.
Google Currents is an application for Apple's iOS and Google's Android [that] lets you add content that you might want to read from a variety of sources. Google offers a list of featured content that is predictable: Forbes, CNET, ReadWriteWeb, and the like. Google has some other subject-specific lists of content too. The real strength of the app, as far as I am concerned, is the ability to add any RSS feed including those in your Google Reader account.
Donnelyn Curtis, the director of research collections and services at the University of Nevada at Reno, created Facebook profiles for Mr. McDonald and his wife, Leola Lewis, to give students a glimpse of university life during the couple's college days. Ms. Lewis graduated in 1913, and Mr. McDonald earned his degree in mechanical engineering two years later.
A collection of tech resources, tutorials, and guides, especially for teaching English. You can download all of these documents free of charge or read them online.