Writing Across the Curriculum

When math problems are based on real world situations, students internalize new information which prepares students to make connections with and between math concepts.

An overview is provided of the importance and why writing in math is different. A recommended checklist is provided to help students write clear math papers.

Writing in math is an excellent way to determine if students' understand or do not understand the math they are learning about. Allowing students to explain how they solved a math problem, how they developed a formula to solve a problem, or how they applied a math concept requires critical thinking.

What follows is an explanation of the Flipped Classroom Model, a model where the video lectures and vodcasts fall within a larger framework of learning activities. It provides a sequence of learning activities based on the learning theories and instructional models of Experiential Learning Cycles.

A course hosted in Moodle exploring how to create ePortfolios in Google Sites.

A white paper from Adobe about 21st Century literacy.

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.

Instead of lecturing about polynomials and exponents during class time - and then giving his young charges 30 problems to work on at home - Fisch has flipped the sequence. He's recorded his lectures on video and uploaded them to YouTube for his 28 students to watch at home. Then, in class, he works with students as they solve problems and experiment with the concepts.

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

Established in 2009, the Association for Authentic, Experiential and Evidence-Based Learning (AAEEBL, pronounced "able") is a membership organization for the world e-portfolio community that now has established affiliations and collaborations with nearly all world-wide portfolio initiatives, projects and organizations.

In their excellent book Understanding by Design, Grant Wiggins and Jay McTighe call the process of designing courses around learning goals "the backward design process."

We are already at the moment in which the ability to use social media, and particularly social media as amplified through the power of the mobile web, has become a key literacy.

Academics have held the online, user-written reference work in some disdain, said Mahzarin R. Banaji, a psychology professor at Harvard University, "but now I'm hearing nothing but enthusiasm, and I really think this is going to work." Ms. Banaji, the association's president, has put the prestige of a leading scholarly group-and her own name-behind the project, which involves a new interface custom-designed to make encyclopedia entries easier to write and edit, a nascent social network that links scholars who share interests, and tutorials for professors on ways to make writing for Wikipedia part of course assignments.

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.

I'm more convinced than ever that blogging and doing it with other students from around the world is essential to helping students connect with themselves and a larger world.

Google Reader, a tool which can do wonders, is still unused by people. We all know Google Reader as a Web-based aggregator, capable of reading Atom and RSS feeds online or offline, but it can also perform various other useful tasks. I compiled some uses of Google Readers and mentioned the links for tutorials.

A presentation about Pappas' ideas about integrating reflective practices into education.

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.

Students learned more than twice as much in the new "interactive" classes than they did in the lectures by the tenured prof with more than 30 years of experience, according to a report on the experiment to be published in the journal Science on Friday.