Experimenting fearlessly is an important step in redesigning education and encouraging the development of 21st century skills.
Clay Burell is Korea's best kept secret, asking provocative questions about the changing nature of schooling. Jenny Luca is an Aussie dynamo, encouraging teachers to create meaningful service learning projects. Kevin Jarrett runs one of the most inventive elementary-level computer labs in New Jersey.
Wouldn't young adults truly prepared for the 21st century have experience using computers to learn with—rather than simply about—the world
Don't today's 12-year-olds need to recognize that future coworkers are just as likely to live on the other side of the world as on the other side of town?
This is a great point which is why worldwide collaboration in education is so important to pursue and engage in.
no one has taught them about the power of these connections
few are using those networks to pursue meaningful personal growth
Consider the potential: Students from different countries can explore global challenges together. Small cohorts of motivated kids can conduct studies of topics with deep personal meaning to them. Experts can "visit" classrooms thousands of miles away.
When does this education begin? Or, does it matter? The impulse of typing the "emotion of the moment" overides what the adolescent brain has been taught.
each conversation includes opportunities for students to ask questions and feel a push against their preconceived notions.
This sounds like such an awesome opportunity to encourage students to defend their thinking (which is something we want them to do) in a form where it doesn't feel like a teacher assignment
I began using discussion tools like VoiceThread (http://voicethread.com) to create electronic forums for my students to interact with peers around classroom content—with extraordinary results
Why twitter? Aren't there other forums to find this same information?
Clay Burell
our students have no trouble connecting, but no one has taught them about the power of these connections. Although tweens and teens may be comfortable using digital tools to build networks, few are using those networks to pursue meaningful personal growth. Our challenge as teachers is to identify ways that students can use these tools for learning.
This points to the fact that we must teach students about digital citizenship. They are creating their own rules in these online environments. They need some direction to cut down on the terrible negative sides of online life.
What if we build time into the daily classroom routine for checking and interacting with our digigal relationships. Teachers would visit their professional learning communities and students would do the same. This could be a once a week activity, or every day...
The key to becoming an effective 21st century instructor is to become an efficient 21st century learner.
Wouldn't young adults truly prepared for the 21st century have experience using computers to learn with—rather than simply about—the world?
This is exactly what I've been saying in my blog posts...
Once you've taken your digital plunge, share with students how the digital connections you engage in enhance your skills and deepen your knowledge. Model learning transparently.
I wish I had the time to keep up with all the sites out there! I remember when we first showed VoiceThread - kids loved it. Now, they are more familiar and not as excited because they use it elsewhere, which is wonderful, but requires me to keep up on the "newer" options.
Am I ready to be tethered to my phone even more than I am?
Then start by following some of the good education blogs written by teachers. Many of these are listed in the Support Blogging wiki (http://supportblogging.com) and on my list of resources (www.pageflakes.com/wferriter/16618841).
And we need to include kids in the process of creativity - what structure do they naturally follow? Have them use Bloom's taxonomy to mull over the process of creativity. What is the difference between a wild idea that is outside of the box and a wild idea that is totally out of the realm of possibility? Once the kids establish a process and structure for creative thinking, they can also begin to fill their tool kit with creative thinking tools, like SCAMPER and reverse brainstorming.
I'm not sure about this...there has to be a balance I have said for years that we need more time in school
America is now facing the biggest challenge it's ever faced—to maintain it's position in the world economies. All these things demand high levels of innovation, creativity, and ingenuity. At the moment, instead of promoting creativity, I think we're systematically educating it out of our kids.
See Ken Robinson's talk on how schools kill creativity for more on this; I think this is an opportunity to look at all of the amazing things we do in our schools already to encourage creativity and innovation and then to figure out how to expand those things rather than to feel singled out as a cause of creativity's demise.
And when you find things you're good at, you tend to get better at everything because your confidence is up and your attitude is different.
The number of kids who check out or actually drop out of school is alarming - a noticable portion of whom are gifted learners. This really concerns me.
This is one of the great skills we have to promote and teach—collaborating and benefiting from diversity rather than promoting homogeneity. We have a big problem at the moment—education is becoming so dominated by this culture of standardized testing, by a particular view of intelligence and a narrow curriculum and education system, that we're flattening and stifling some of the basic skills and processes that creative achievement depends on.
So there's no doubt in my mind that collaboration, diversity, the exchange of ideas, and building on other people's achievements are at the heart of the creative process. An education that focuses only on the individual in isolation is bound to frustrate some of those possibilities.
The regime of standardized testing has led us all to believe that if you can't count it, it doesn't count. Actually, in every creative approach some of the things we're looking for are hard, if not impossible, to quantify. But that doesn't mean they don't matter. When I hear people say, "Well, of course, you can't assess creativity," I think, "You can—just stop and think about it a bit."
This is where the value of standards based education becomes clear. I want to use meaty criteria based on student actions and products to assess learning and growth, not numbers and letters. Both my students and I can most effectively assess creativity and innovation by using criteria embedded in content standards. For example, a student can look at their brainstorming notes, organized ideas, idea development work and product creation materials to determine whether they have taken their knowledge all the way up to the top of Bloom's Taxonomy. Have they generated multiple ideas to respond to the guiding question or problem? Have they made connections between ideas to generate new thoughts? Have they piggybacked off others' ideas to create new ones? Have they organized their ideas, explored the logistics behind them and selected the best one for the situation? Have them woven their best idea into new content mastery to apply their knowledge in an innovative way? To me a student reflection around these types of questions is a much more authentic and valuable means of assessment that any attempt to put a numerical value on creativity.
"Several of us at ProfHacker incorporate blogs into our pedagogy, and we have written on a range of course blog-related issues such as "Integrating, Evaluating, and Managing Blogging in the Classroom" (Julie) and "Tools for Managing Multiple Class Blogs" (Amy) among many others. In this post we (Jeff and Julie) will offer a few specific tips for evaluating course blogs and addressing the common question "how are you going to grade this?""
Several of us at ProfHacker incorporate blogs into our pedagogy, and we have written on a range of course blog-related issues such as "Integrating, Evaluating, and Managing Blogging in the Classroom" (Julie) and "Tools for Managing Multiple Class Blogs" (Amy) among many others. In this post we (Jeff and Julie) will offer a few specific tips for evaluating course blogs and addressing the common question "how are you going to grade this?"
This is an alphabetical list of websites which provide information and/or instruction about a wide range of subjects (ie they are not subject-specific sites).
The websites cover a wide range of informational and educational topics and include general reference resources, how-to guides, wikis, how-to videos, podcasts, courses, lessons, tutorials (including open courseware), e-books as well as other reference resources and places to ask questions both online and on your mobile.<
The resources are suitable for learners of all ages: students as well as workplace learners and lifelong learners - as well as teachers, educators and trainers.
"We asked 30 of the world's most creative professionals two questions: "What single example of design inspires you most?" and "What problem should design solve next?"
Their answers might surprise you. And, hopefully they'll inspire you. Discover what they have to say. Then share your thoughts. After all, this is a conversation. We'd love for you to join."
This all adds up to good teaching! I don't think each description defines rigor since there is more to an effective learning experience than just the rigor, but I certainly agree with all of descriptors in the left column! I think they're really describing best practices in teaching and learning, so rigor is connected to things like engagement, relevance, student-centered work, open-ended problems, critical thinking skills, accessibility, and high expectations for everyone.
Rigor involves all partners in teaching and learning.
Very important point - I agree! Students, teachers and other thinkers involved in a learning experience have a shared responsibility to create and maintain the correct environment for rigorous learning.
YES, YES!!! Bring on the productive struggle and messy learning!!! That is what learning is like in real life and that is what we need to provide for our students or they will never truly learn to be critical thinkers, independent problem solvers or inventive thinkers!
How can we shape our professional development opportunities to invite more rigor for staff to enrich their learning and to serve as a model for their teaching?
I sort of model this when I give exemplars for projects in which writing in their own words is part of a rubric. I'm not sure that is enough, however. I think maybe my writing doesn't sound enough like their writing in all cases
This instruction should focus on the supposedly simple technique of summarizing sources, which is in truth not simple. Many students are far from competent at summarizing an argument— and students who cannot summarize are the students most likely to plagiarize.
This strikes me as someting teachers in many learning areas could work on with kids rather than defaulting to Language Arts as the place where kids learn about plagiarism
The teacher in this tale uses the incident to teach students that using others' words without attribution is a serious crime. He then emphasizes to students the importance of citation and source integration techniques and enlists the school librarian to model how to cite outside works used in a piece of writing.
I'm not sure that I see the evil/missteps in this example. It doesn't say the student was punished it says the teacher & librarian used it as an opportunity to teach about proper attribution...
Educators should also communicate why writing is important. Through writing, people learn, communicate with one another, and discover and establish their own authority and identity.
Being able to write about things that you are passionate about will bring even more importance to students' writing.
it is easy for well-intentioned students to overlook the boundaries between what they themselves have produced and what they have slid from one screen (their Internet browser) to another (their word-processed document)
She begins by explaining that inserting synonyms is not paraphrasing. She then guides students in studying a passage and identifying its key words and main ideas that must be retained to paraphrase the passage. Shirley shows her students poor paraphrases of the passage for them to critique. Finally, she has them write their own paraphrase of a 50- to 100-word source passage that they themselves choose.