Contemporary Learning
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pedagogy
Know your learners | bluyonder
Here’s a question – do you believe all students can learn? If you said yes and you’re a teacher or leader, are there examples at your school of students who aren’t achieving gains in their learning? How do you reconcile the two? Here’s another question – if you were asked to list ten things that knew you about each learner in your class or school could you?
by Beth Bacon The first three decades of the twenty-first century will go down in history as the years that changed education forever. And the transition is full of turbulence. Will lecture-style classes disappear as digital learning rises? Right now, in 2013, the United States is just about in the middle of this thirty-year transition period from a low-tech to a digitally-integrated K-12 environment. How has digital learning affected education so far—and what will K-12 schools look like in the future?
3 turbulent decades that are changing education forever
Blooms Taxonomy is another topical theme I keep writing about here in Educational Technology and Mobile Learning whenever I stumble upon a new resource. I love this taxonomy and I always insist on its importance in learning , particularly in organizing the teaching content in such a way to enhance and promote those higher order thinking skills we all our students to develop. Use it like a roadmap to guide you through the different areas of your lesson planning. If you are a new teacher and need to learn more about this taxonomy I recommend you read this guide first. Today I am sharing with you a really wonderful poster created by iLearn Technology ( one of my favourite EdTech Blogs and one that I highly recommend for you ).
Two Great Blooms Taxonomy Posters for Teachers
high achievers
Worksheets matter! I know we hear a lot of talking points that tell us to get rid of them, but I think it's much more complicated than that. That call for "no more worksheets" comes from a place where that is all there is. By that I mean classrooms where students do nothing but worksheets. Often these worksheets are de-contextualized from relevant work, and this is where there's an opportunity to reframe and refine the traditional worksheet. There is a time and place for drill and practice or individual practice -- even in a PBL project.
Reframing and Refining the Worksheet
I love TED talks . They’re like the perfect educational appetizer. All of them are quick and easy to digest, they look great, and they make you hungry to learn more. The problem? There are just so darn many of them. And it’s too easy getting sucked into the TED talk black hole where you end up watching for hours.
Tip of the Week: 5 TED Talks Every Teacher Should See | History Tech
SpeEdChange: Changing Pedagogy vs. Teacher Identity
Those who watch my Twitter stream closely may understand that I cycle through two very different approaches to the night - either I stay awake "working" through the dark hours, fighting my way, or I hide as I did as kid, still mostly awake, just waiting for dawn when sleep can come ... Anyway, that's not the point... But awake one late night I watched The Story of Louis Pasteur on Turner Classic Movies. And in that movie I realized something - that it took Louis Pasteur and Joseph Lister forty years to convince the world's doctors to wash their hands. This seems - to us, as it did to Pasteur and Lister - a tiny thing with huge results, patients stopped dying at a 50% rate from infections, but it was massive because it threatened the entire self-image of the doctors. In order for the doctors to make this change - in order for them to stop killing half their patients - they had to admit that they were not quite the "healers" they imagined themselves to be.
Blended Learning: We Are All New Teachers
The challenges facing a new teacher are clear: how to write a strong lesson plan, how to master the fine art of lesson delivery and how to keep kids engaged in a positive classroom environment are all high on the list. Add to that list the addition of mastering the use of technology tools to support instruction with students, and many a new teacher might go running for the hills! In all seriousness, though, the need for a new teacher to be able to learn the fine art of incorporating Web 2.0 tools to support instruction with students is critical if we are to stay the course of 21st Century instructional reforms. Not only that, the research is clear that strategies that combine the use of traditional face-to-face classroom methods with computer-mediated activities are here to stay. Enter the blended learning model. Defining Blended LearningFive Characteristics of Learner-Centered Teaching
August 8, 2012 By: Maryellen Weimer, PhD in Effective Teaching Strategies , Teaching Professor Blog In May I finished a second edition of my L earner-Centered Teaching book. Revising it gave me the chance to revisit my thinking about the topic and look at work done since publication of the first edition ten years ago. It is a subject about which there is still considerable interest. The learner-centered label now gets attached to teaching strategies, teachers, classes, programs, departments and institutions.
Flickr: Corey Leopold By Greg Stack So much about how and where kids learn has changed over the years, but the physical structure of schools has not. Looking around most school facilities — even those that aren’t old and crumbling – it’s obvious that so much of it is obsolete today, and yet still in wide use. 1. COMPUTER LABS .
10 Things in School That Should Be Obsolete
About Technology Integration by Brandy Brown Walker 1.
5 Things Every Teacher Should Know | Teach Teach Tech
Differentiating Instruction: Meeting Students Where They Are No two students enter a classroom with identical abilities, experiences, and needs. Learning style, language proficiency, background knowledge, readiness to learn, and other factors can vary widely within a single class group. Regardless of their individual differences, however, students are expected to master the same concepts, principles, and skills. Helping all students succeed in their learning is an enormous challenge that requires innovative thinking. What is differentiated instruction?
Differentiating Instruction: Meeting Students Where They Are, Teaching Today
George Siemens wrote the Duplication theory of educational value about higher education, but I am going to share a quote from this with a couple adaptations for K-12 public education: “Let me posit a duplication theory of education value: if something can be duplicated with limited costs, it can’t serve as a value point for [public education]. Content is easily duplicated and has no value.
Personalization and Responsibility
Email Share July 12, 2012 - by Alison Anderson 50 Email Share
It's Time to Disrupt the System - Getting Smart by Alison Anderson -
We believe it’s essential for every teacher to develop lessons that challenge students to learn how to verify sources; here’s one example By Alan November and Brian Mull Read more by Contributor “To ensure that students learn the grammar and strategies of the web, we believe it’s essential for every teacher to develop lessons that challenge students to learn how to verify sources,” the authors write.
Web literacy: Where the Common Core meets common sense
Why more schools aren’t teaching web literacy—and how they can start
Fourteen years after we first published ‘Teaching Zack to Think,’ here’s a new three-part framework for making sure students are internet savvy By Alan November and Brian Mull Read more by Contributor If you follow the dictate that we teach what we test, it’s understandable why schools haven’t spent more time preparing students to be web literate since NCLB was passed. In 1998, a 15-year-old high school student used the personal website of a professor at Northwestern University, Arthur Butz, as justification for writing a history paper called “The Historic Myth of Concentration Camps.”tools
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