Solving America's Crisis of Academic Motivation. A decade ago the National Research Council released a report that showed that between 40 and 60 percent of U.S. high school students are disengaged from learning and don’t put much effort into school. Since that time, other studies have found that student motivation is a problem at all levels of the educational system, and that students’ desire to learn decreases steadily from the start of elementary school until they graduate from high school or dropout. On a recent national survey, 69 percent of teachers reported that low academic motivation is a problem in their classrooms - a higher percentage than cited poor student behavior, bullying, or a negative school climate.
Rising awareness of this crisis has helped to fuel growing interest in research on motivation among America’s educators, staff at academically-focused youth programs, and millions of parents. In my view, this new emphasis on student motivation is a very good thing. This Scientist’s Ideas Of What Testing Does To Kids Is Really, Really On Point.
By Brandon Weber Lawrence Krauss here asserts here that perhaps equally important as "The Three R's" is teaching the ability to think. To reason, to find answers after asking questions. That is, after all, the essence of learning once you get past the basics. When things kinda go off the rails is when local school boards get to decide what is taught. Those are largely made up of individuals who have no educational training. Sometimes, school board members even come from extremist backgrounds, and what the students are required to learn then suffers. In fact, due in part to those very same school boards, some schools have curricula that includes challenging evolution as well as the fact that climate change is real.
This is not how our future generations will make it in the world. I think a fair middle-ground is to teach things like “Intelligent Design” in religion and social studies classes, rather than in science class. But teaching the ability to think is still key. More from Lawrence M. Deeper Learning Demands Deeper Leading—and Technology Can Help.
Knowledgeable. Versatile. Creative. Engaged. Being college- and career-ready is no simple task. It’s time for all American students to take part in deeper learning. Limitations of current reforms Recent investments in education are not yielding adequate results, as dismal test scores and other indicators reveal. And technology is no panacea. What’s more, as education historian Larry Cuban has noted, the student-centered, hands-on, personalized instruction envisioned by education technology advocates remains the exception to the rule. A recent Gallup poll hints at what else is amiss, reporting that only 30 percent of America’s teachers are “actively engaged” in their jobs. Teachers feel disconnected from decisions relevant to their jobs, and their working conditions do not encourage ongoing professional growth.
The promise of deeper learning Promising new school designs are beginning to deploy teachers as leaders who engage students deeply, often using blended learning approaches. Idea to retire: Technology alone can improve student learning. Editor's Note: This article was first published on TechTank as part of the Ideas to Retire series. Read more essays in the series here. Nearly every aspect of the world is being transformed by digital tools. Over Thanksgiving weekend in 2015, more people shopped online than braved the aisles of brick and mortar stores fighting for highly discounted items. Globally, there are 2.6 billion active smartphone subscriptions. For generations, the belief that new technology will either transform or make schools obsolete has persisted. For example, there is a belief that students today are “digital natives” and as technology-savvy, multi-tasking, always-on individuals, they don’t need to be taught how to use technology effectively in order to learn.
What does make a difference is how students use technology. Similarly, access to technology doesn’t transform teaching. Research indicates that teachers have the most significant impact on student learning out of all other school-level factors. How Personal APIs Let Students Design Their University. I sat at a table with faculty, technologists, CIOs, startup founders and students, all gathered under one roof to tackle the question: How might we use application program interfaces (APIs) to empower students and faculty members to have voice, agency and digital literacy in their institutions? We met at “Indie Edtech and the Personal API,” a weekend event hosted at Davidson College, where we built prototypes for a student-centered API. The gathering was the first in a series of focused conversations on “Indie Ed Tech”—a movement that encourages students to create, not merely consume, the technology that they use. Kristen Eshleman, Davidson’s director of digital learning research and design, organized the event with Adam Croom, director of digital learning at the University of Oklahoma.
They encouraged participants to bring their own students. (Kristen is my edtech mentor.) For me, the weekend was an opportunity for collaboration across job descriptions and power structures. 10 Wildly Successful People on How They View Failure. Whether you’re an author, an entrepreneur or a musician, the road to success is often paved with rejection and failure.
The difference between those who succeed and those fail comes down to whether or not they choose to rise above the criticism and soldier on. One success story that was certainly not without its bumps in the road is that of J.K. Rowling, who let everyone know that even she, the world’s first billionaire author, did not reach her current level of success before receiving a few rejection letters along the way. She tweeted them to her followers this morning along with a few notes of encouragement, such as “I wasn’t going to give up until every single publisher turned me down, but I often feared that would happen.” Failure is often a critical ingredient on the path to success. There are many wildly successful people who can prove it: Stephen King Kenzo Tribouillard — AFP/Getty Images J.K. Donna Karan Brad Barket — Getty Images Steve Jobs Bloomberg via Getty Images Thomas Edison.
The future of learning: Technology coupled with human interaction. Technology enabled learning ecosystems allow the trainers to do a scientific and objective learning need analysis Technology and learning have many things in common: They constantly evolve, there is always something new, and getting people to learn or adapt to new technologies requires great effort. Learning is often stereotyped as the bitter pill that has to be swallowed in order to grow, but the emphasis must fall on the willingness and openness to learn, as well as the process of learning itself. Technology has facilitated learning to a great extent, it has opened and enhanced learning through MOOCs (massively open online courses), and cloud-based applications. It has also spiked the use of webinars, podcasts and social media-based learning in the digital space.
Jane Heart, of the Center for Learning and Performance Technologies, has compiled a list of top 100 learning tools of 2015; the top 5 tools in this list comprise Twitter, YouTube, Google search, Google docs among many others. The 10,000 Hour Rule Is Wrong. How to Really Master a Skill. Advertisement Malcolm Gladwell gave us the 10,000-Hour Rule. It turns out that rule is wrong. Here’s why, and how you can beat it. In 2008, Malcolm Gladwell published his New York Times bestseller, Outliers.
The book looks at a number of “outliers”, people who are extraordinarily proficient in certain subjects or skills. According to Gladwell, one common factor among these carefully selected individuals was the amount of time they practiced within their area of study. In the years following the book’s publication, this 10,000-Hour Rule has become a platitude for life-long learners, lifestyle designers, and self-improvement bloggers. This inaccuracy is good news for any of us looking to become even above average in a skill.
Instead, it could be a lot easier to attain proficiency. The 10,000-Hour Rule Is Wrong Anders Ericsson is a Professor of Psychology at Florida State University. Ericsson describes what could only be Gladwell’s work as: Tactics for Learning Faster 1. 2. 3. The Overselling of Ed Tech. Maybe we shouldn't be surprised that the idea of using digital technology in the classroom tends to be either loved or hated. After all, anything that's digital consists only of ones or zeroes. By contrast, my own position is somewhere in the middle, a location where I don't often find myself, frankly. I'm not allied with the Waldorfians, who ban computers from elementary and middle schools, but neither do I have much in common with teachers whose excitement over the latest export from Silicon Valley often seems downright orgasmic.
Basically, my response to ed tech is "It depends. " And one key consideration on which it depends is the reason given for supporting it. Some people seem to be drawn to technology for its own sake -- because it's cool. Other people, particularly politicians, defend technology on the grounds that it will keep our students "competitive in the global economy. " We can't answer the question "Is tech useful in schools?
" The Overselling of Ed Tech. Carol Dweck Makes Strongest Statement Yet On Growth Mindset Misuse. Professor Carol Dweck has been speaking and writing about what she considers as misuse of the growth mindset concept (you can see links to those articles hear the bottom of The Best Resources On Helping Our Students Develop A “Growth Mindset.” Earlier this week, in an article (Growth mindset doesn’t promise pupils the world) at TES, British education website, she made what seems to me to be her most strongly-worded caution to-date: Unfortunately, though, she did it in the context of challenging the work of Anders Ericsson, who has done the groundbreaking research on the concept of deliberate practice (see The Best Resources For Learning About The 10,000 Hour Rule & Deliberate Practice). Listen, I don’t think you’ll find many others who admire and apply Professor Dweck’s work more than me (even though I have critiqued it on occasion – see Our Students Are Not Supermen & Superwomen and The Limits To The Power Of A Growth Mindset (& The Dangers When We Don’t Recognize Them).
Related. Digital vs Digitized Learning | SAFARI Montage HD Network. Wix Launches WixEd, A Free Online School For Website Design. DIY website creator Wix wants to make starting a career in web design as easy as it’s made building your own site. Today, the company is launching WixEd, a free online education program that teaches Wix users everything they need to know to launch their own website design business. The course consists of three parts: Wix Webmaster, which teaches web design with the tools Wix provides, and two business and marketing classes that cover all aspects of running a small business with intros to SEO, e-commerce, accounting, and photography. A group of Wix instructors are on call to answer questions and review the homework that’s assigned after each section, including building a website for a real small business client. “It’s not only about building websites, it’s about being the person who is responsible for the online presence of a small business,” says Yuval Finkelstein, who is running the WixEd program for Wix.
The concept of different “learning styles” is one of the greatest neuroscience myths. Are you a visual learner who writes notes in a rainbow of different colors, or do you have to read something aloud before it will sink it? Chances are, you’ve been asked a similar question at some point in your life, and believe the concept of different “learning styles” is perfectly valid. But, as Quartz reported in December, we all learn in fundamentally similar ways. And, as New York magazine reports, the idea that students learn differently depending on their personal preference for visual, auditory or kinesthetic cues is just a myth.
In fact, it’s considered a “neuromyth,” which, as Paul Howard-Jones, professor of neuroscience and education at Bristol University, writes in a 2014 paper on the subject, is characterized by a misunderstanding, misreading, or misquoting of scientifically established facts. Other examples of neuromyths include that we only use 10% of our brain, and that drinking less than six to eight glasses of water a day will cause the brain to shrink. 3 Things Silicon Valley Taught Me About School Leadership. Posted 12/16/2015 9:24AM | Last Commented 01/19/2016 4:59PM I spent the last four years as a high school principal in San Francisco. Living and working in the City by the Bay gave me a front row seat to how Silicon Valley is redefining modern society. The boom and bust nature of the digital gold rush is rich with success stories of rapid market capitalization and cautionary tales of lost fortunes and squandered opportunities.
Here are just three of the things I learned from Silicon Valley about leading schools in the 21st Century. 1 - Embrace Design Thinking Empathize, define, ideate, prototype, test. That's the Stanford d.school cycle for design thinking. Design thinking comes as a shock to education. 2 - Physical Space Matters Gourmet cafeterias, funky couches, open architecture, desks without chairs. School architecture is often placed on the altar of efficiency. 3 - The Power of Networks The connection economy has its birthplace in Silicon Valley.
How Does Poverty Influence Learning? Editor's note: This piece was adapted from Turning High-Poverty Schools into High-Performing Schools by William H. Parrett and Kathleen M. Budge. People in poverty are as diverse as people in any other socioeconomic class. They present, like other groups, a wide array of values, beliefs, dispositions, experiences, backgrounds, and life chances. As educators, in order to be responsive to the needs of our students, it is helpful to consider the constraints that poverty often places on people's lives, particularly children's, and how such conditions influence learning and academic achievement. Health and Well-Being These factors are interrelated, and one factor can compound another. Language and Literacy Development Children who live in poverty often come to school behind their more affluent peers in terms of literacy and language development.
Material Resources Poverty often places constraints on the family's ability to provide other material resources for their children as well. Mobility. Are You Prepared For The Future Of Social Learning? Are You Prepared For The Future Of Social Learning? By Krish Kupathil, Mobiliya R = e –t/s where R is retention, T is time and S is strength. A formula detailing a chemical reaction, or the new math behind a social media outreach strategy? Actually, an expression of the ability to remember, discovered by the German psychologist Herman Ebbinghaus. Known as the famous Forgetting Curve, it hypothesized the decline of memory retention over time. In fact we now know that 50 percent of formal learning is forgotten within the first hour. With this statistic in mind, it is surprising that our formal education system –our schools, colleges and universities— has primarily relied on conventional learning methods to deliver information.
Even with the growth of digital platforms such as online programs, the basic structure of learning remained the same; automation and technology simply enhanced the delivery methods. Social Learning – A Way of Life Students of today are the workforce of tomorrow. Learning a Different Way « Chris Cline WCPS. Learning theory in the 21st-century classroom by @marciarpowell SmartBlogs. Why Kindergarten Is The New First Grade : NPR Ed. Sixteen Steps Every Educator Should Take in 2016 | Gerald Aungst. The 3 Stages of Documentation OF/FOR/AS Learning.
High Possibility Classrooms: Student Agency Through Technology-Enhanced Learning. Emotions, Learning & the Brain: Exploring the Educational Implications of Affective Neuroscience. Youtube. What’s Worth Learning in School? The Learning Styles Myth is Thriving in Higher Education. Crowdsourced Learning — Because Education Goes Beyond Classrooms. — Readers Writers Digest. Why I struggle with learning objectives and success criteria. Can Online Learning Ever Beat the Real Thing? Great New Video: “When People Make Mistakes Their Brains Grow, More Than When They Got Work Right” The Anatomy of a Modern eLearning Course. 3 Growing HR Trends Training Managers Can’t Ignore. What Meaningful Reflection On Student Work Can Do for Learning. Tech: The 37 Best Websites to Learn Something New. Tech: The 37 Best Websites to Learn Something New. How To Prepare Students For 21st Century Survival. Take Note of This: Handwritten Notes are More Effective than Typed Ones - Health.
For More Effective Studying, Take Notes With Pen and Paper — NOVA Next. A Learning Secret: Don’t Take Notes with a Laptop. In Defense of Education | Lynsi Freitag. Anywhere Anytime Learning is Changing: Implications for Parents, HigherEd and K-12. The Best Advice for Creating Student-Centered Learning. What do Students Lose by Being Perfect? Valuable Failure. The family who built a cafe just for their son. Learning in an Era of Abundant Information and Fleeting Expertise. The top 10 edtech lessons I’ve learnt after 15 years in schools. How Your Personality Determines How You Learn. What You Miss When You Take Notes on Your Laptop. Love of learning is the key to success in the jobless future. This activity can boost memory by 29% Can neuroscience solve the mystery of how students learn? | Teacher Network. Learning with 'e's.
Children 'in complete meltdown' over exams. Stop It Already. “Actively Learn” Looks Like A New Tool My Students Will Be Using A Lot. Tweeting And Texting In Class May Distract Students, But It May Also Help Them Learn: Study. Adults, Computers and Problem Solving - What's the Problem? - en. 10 characteristics of authentic learning. Lifelong learning should play a role in Global Citizenship Education - European Association for the Education of Adults. Education vs Learning - What Exactly is the Difference? Here's What Scientists Aren't Telling Us About Learning. Challenges in Education: A Student's-Eye View | Edutopia. Eye-Opening Ads Show What It's Like For Kids With Learning And Attention Issues.
Avoiding "Learned Helplessness" How a Bigger Purpose Can Motivate Students to Learn. Why "Content Coverage" is Over: A Manifesto! | Edutopia. Exploring Self-Driven Learning and Student Motivation (Ferlazzo) Top 20 psychological principles for teachers #3 “Learning is not limited by general stages of development” Universal Skills All Learners Should Know How to Do. Seven Laws of the Self-directed Learner. Pens And Paper Are Holding Your Kids Back, Says Microsoft. This Is The Future Of College. 12 Rules Of Great Teaching - Helll-ooo! Watching Videos Does Not Necessarily Lead to Learning -- THE Journal. 4 Fundamental Problems With Everything You Hear About The Future Of Education.
Learning Strategies. A Good Inventory To Identify Students Learning Styles. CORE Education’s Ten Trends 2015 Published | Virtual School Meanderings. 7 Ways Finland Gets Education Right. Seven Principles for Classroom Design: The Learning Space Rating System. Which of These 4 Instructional Strategies Do You Use in Your Class ? Technology in schools: Future changes in classrooms. Letting kids move in class isn’t a break from learning. It IS learning. Personalized Learning Vs Traditional Learning. Why Talking About the Brain Can Empower Learners. Universal Skills All Learners Should Know How to Do. Big Idea 2015: The Year We Take the ‘Me’ Out of Media.