YHS Read and Learn links

A blog post about APPitic, a resource for apps geared to education.

There is a new kind of ignorance afoot in the world, one that results from overconsumption of information rather than from a lack of access to it.

In some colleges professors realize that most students don't really learn well via lectures; they are using strategies involving active learning and problem-solving to ensure that students really learn and understand complex ideas.

Since the summer of 2011, NoTosh has been transforming an initial cohort of schools with The Design Thinking School programme, through the support of the Brisbane Catholic Education Department.

Can traditional schools, with a course of study divided into discrete disciplines that rarely overlap, create an environment that is a hotbed for innovative thinking?

New Hampshire schools are now required to create alternatives to any lesson that a parent dislikes - whether it's about the Holocaust, contraception, gravity or anything else. Does this "à la carte" approach turn school into a private right instead of a public good? Do such accommodations benefit students?

HHelping students learn how to learn: That's what most educators strive for, and that's the goal of inquiry learning. That skill transfers to other academic subject areas and even to the workplace where employers have consistently said that they want creative, innovative and adaptive thinkers. Inquiry learning is an integrated approach that includes kinds of learning: content, literacy, information literacy, learning how to learn, and social or collaborative skills. Students think about the choices they make throughout the process and the way they feel as they learn. Those observations are as important as the content they learn or the projects they create.

"Edutopia is pleased to premiere the first blog in a new series designed to showcase compelling examples of how students are developing 21st century skills through a deeper-level of learning. Through this blog series, we hope to increase awareness and encourage replication of successful models."

As the educational community is moving toward implementing the Common Core Standards, I have been publishing tools and strategies to support that effort (see below). Recently, I published the Top 10 Characteristics of Effective Vocabulary Instruction and The Top 10 Characteristics of a Literacy-Rich Classroom. Both support the Common Core State Standards since the requirement to use more nonfiction and informational text in our teaching will result in increased demands for effective vocabulary instruction and a literacy-rich classroom to support and enrich student learning.