12 Things Teachers Must Know About Learning. 12 Things Teachers Must Know About Learning By Bill Page closeAuthor: Bill Page Name: Bill PageSite: About Bill Page ... Bill Page, a farm boy, graduated from a one-room school. He forged a career in the classroom teaching middle school “troublemakers.” For the past 26 years, in addition to his classroom duties, he has taught teachers across the nation to teach the lowest achieving students successfully with his proven premise, “Failure is the choice and fault of schools, not the students.”
Bill Page is a classroom teacher. For 46 years, he has patrolled the halls, responded to the bells, and struggled with innovations. Bill Page’s book, At-Risk Students; Feeling Their Pain is available through his web site www.billpageteacher.com, or through Amazon.com. In the midst of the worldwide psycho-neurological revolution, knowledge about the brain and learning is exploding. Teaching Without Technology? Lenny Gonzales By Aran Levasseur New technology is a lightning rod and polarizing force because it not only begins to influence what we see and how we see it, but, over time, who we are, writes Nicholas Carr in his book, “The Shallows: What the Internet is Doing to Our Brains.” It makes sense then, that debate of digital technology’s role in society is naturally being played out in microcosmic form within schools. Education is designed to transmit a culture’s history, values and theories of knowledge while also preparing students for the world of tomorrow.
Yet, in times like ours, when the gulf between the past and future stretches light years, cognitive dissonance ensues when students, teachers and parents try to figure out what technology should be used to bridge this timeline. Anti-Tech in America’s Tech Capital While critique of new technology within schools is healthy and to be expected, a recent New York Times article revealed an unexpected source: Silicon Valley. 20 Tips To Promote A Self-Directed Classroom Culture. 20 Tips To Promote A Self-Directed Classroom Culture It’s an age-old saying, “Give a man a fish, and feed him for a day. Teach a man to fish, and feed him for a lifetime.” What separates good teachers from the excellent ones? The excellent ones are handing out fishing poles; creating a culture in the classroom of independence and self-reliance.
So how do you cultivate a culture of “I can…” in your classroom? 1. The more I study education and psychology, the more convinced I become that failure is one of the most important tools for learning. Failure can be the doorway to great accidental inventions. 2. Curiosity is what propels a young child to venture away from the safety of his/her mother to explore the environment. 3. Students who have a platform and a voice feel more empowered than those that don’t. 4. Terry Heick writes about the Gradual Release of Responsibility Model. 5. 6. Do you remember the last time you touched a hot oven? 7. 8. 9. 10. 11. 12. 13. 14. 15. 16. 17. 18. 19. 20. 7 Essential Principles of Innovative Learning. Big Ideas Culture Teaching Strategies Flirck:WoodleyWonderworks Every educator wants to create an environment that will foster students’ love of learning. Because the criteria are intangible, it’s difficult to define or pinpoint exactly what they are. But one group is giving it a try.
Researchers at the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) launched the Innovative Learning Environments project to turn an academic lens on the project of identifying concrete traits that mark innovative learning environments. They sifted through and categorized the research on learning science, documented case studies, and compiled policy recommendations they hope will transform the current system. Their book, The Nature of Learning: Using Research to Inspire Practice and the accompanying practitioner’s guide, lay out the key principles for designing learning environments that will help students build skills useful in a world where jobs are increasingly information and knowledge-based.
30 Habits Of Highly Effective Teachers. Editor’s Note: We often look at the qualities and characteristics of good teaching and learning, including the recent following pieces: How A Good Teacher Becomes Great What You Owe Your Students Ten Secrets To Surviving As A Teacher The Characteristics Of A Highly Effective Learning Environment How To Be A Mediocre Teacher So it made sense to take a look at the characteristics of a successful educator, which Julie DuNeen does below. 25 Things Successful Teachers Do Differently by Julie DuNeen If you ask a student what makes him or her successful in school, you probably won’t hear about some fantastic new book or video lecture series.
What students take away from a successful education usually centers on a personal connection with a teacher who instilled passion and inspiration for their subject. Are teachers reaching their students? 1. How do you know if you are driving the right way when you are traveling somewhere new? 2. We can’t all be blessed with “epic” workdays all the time. 3. 4. 5. Study Shows How Classroom Design Affects Student Learning. As debate over education reform sizzles, and as teachers valiantly continue trying to do more with less, a new study suggests that it might be worth diverting at least a little attention from what’s going on in classrooms to how those spaces are being designed. The paper, published in the journal Building and the Environment, found that classroom design could be attributed to a 25% impact, positive or negative, on a student’s progress over the course of an academic year. The difference between the best- and worst-designed classrooms covered in the study?
A full year’s worth of academic progress. The study was conducted over the 2011–12 academic year, with 751 students in 34 classrooms, spread across seven primary schools in the seaside town of Blackpool, England. So what did they find? Six of the design parameters—color, choice, complexity, flexibility, connection, and light—had a significant effect on learning. Read more here. [Hat tip: Wired] [Image: Brain and Board via Shutterstock] Top 10 Posts of 2012: Deep, Meaningful and Creative Learning. Flickr: CriCristina It may come as no surprise that the ideas that are top-of-mind for educators, parents, and policymakers are the very topics conveyed in the most popular MindShift posts this year. Giving kids the tools to create, teachers the freedom to innovate, making students’ work relevant in the real world, giving them access to valuable technology. These are the aspirations that have resonated most with MindShift readers this year.
Here are the top 10 posts from 2012. Being able to use the Internet and operate computers is one thing, but it may be just as valuable to teach students how to code. Giving students an introduction to programming helps peel back the layers of what happens inside computers and how computers communicate with one another online. Programming knowledge, even at a very basic level, makes technology seem less magical and more manageable. So much about how and where kids learn has changed over the years, but the physical structure of schools has not. Related. Seeing Students As Co-Collaborators. The traditional model of education is hierarchal, with organizations and administrators of learning on top and students and their families receiving the learning somewhere below.
While this made sense in the past when public education–inclusive systems of public education at that—were still finding their way, there is little excuse for such a workflow as we approach 2013. Embedded in this simple pattern are troubling implications that sabotage learning processes from the beginning. In informal and as they occur learning circumstances, the concept of power and currency is highly dynamic, constantly shifting based on context. If you are researching for the best fix for a leaking roof or an injured lower back, you might seek experts, or demonstrated expertise.
In these situations, you are constantly evaluating information and re-contextualizing it—understanding what you hear or read, and seeing how it makes sense to the specifics of your situation. But what would be the benefits if it did? What Does It Mean to Be a “Change Leader” in Education? A Simple Guide To 4 Complex Learning Theories. Students as Teachers – Designers of Weekly Activities. Start this month by discussing with students your Do Now questions and make explicit your daily goals.
Shift the responsibility to your students while supporting them as they create the check-in activity. Goals Start class with an engaging activity.Empower students to design, evaluate and reflect about a student check-in activity.Foster a more collaborative student centered classroom. Activity Plan: Students as Designers Organize your class into pairs, then assign each group a week and topic during the fall term. Meet early each week with 1 pair and discuss their preliminary design for a 2 or 3 question entrance ticket. What are Do Nows? Since your last class there have been numerous opportunities for students to improve their understanding or make false connections and lose track of where you left off. So how do you gauge what your students understand at minute zero of class? Examples Do Now activities: How-to Remain Relevant in Higher Ed with ‘Active Learning’ Active learning…. the topic frequently polarizes faculty.
Active learning has attracted strong advocates … looking for alternatives to traditional teaching methods, while skeptical faculty regard active learning as another in a long line of educational fads.” (Prince, 2004) Is active learning a fad? Flipping the classroom, peer teaching and collaborative learning are active learning methods that appear to be ‘in’ right now. What is Active Learning? Yet the lecture method is proving to be problematic in today’s digital culture. When using active learning students are engaged in more activities than just listening.
The words, ‘involved’ and ‘problem solving’ are worthy of emphasis; active learning is not busy work, but is purposeful instruction that guides students towards learning outcomes. These findings are consistent with Harvard’s Professor Eric Mazur, a pioneer of active learning who developed a method called Peer Instruction.
IndividualCollaborationCooperative Resources: Like this: Ten Secrets To Surviving As A Teacher. Ten Secrets To Surviving As A Teacher by Terry Heick Surviving as a teacher isn’t easy. Between the sheer work load, diversity of tasks, brutal pace, and seemingly divergent initiatives pulling you in a thousand directions, education can break even the most noble spirits. But it doesn’t have to be that way. Below are ten tips to keep you ticking when things get tough. 1. 2. 3. 4. If you have to move mountains to extract and implement data you’re going to fail. 5.
Be yourself, not “a teacher.” Make trying new things a habit. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10. Only it’s not. Whether you view your job as taskmaster, inspirer of lifelong learning, or somewhere in between, your job is to bring learners to content. To survive as a teacher, you have to constantly find ways to make content fresh, exciting, and literally life-altering. And that’s teaching in a nutshell.
Hacking the Classroom: Beyond Design Thinking. Design Thinking is trending is some educational circles. Edutopia recently ran a design thinking for educators workshop and I attended two great workshops at SXSWedu 2013 on Design Thinking: Design Thinking is a great skill for students to acquire as part of their education. But it is one process like the problem-solving model or the scientific method. As a step-by-step process, it becomes type of box.
Sometimes we need to go beyond that box; step outside of the box. Design Thinking Design thinking is an approach to learning that includes considering real-world problems, research, analysis, conceiving original ideas, lots of experimentation, and sometimes building things by hand ( As a further explanation of this process, here is an exercise by the d.School about how to re-design a wallet using the design process. “What does it take to create education in this age of imagination?” Hacking the World. Live Training – Search Education – Google. With these webinars, you can improve your own search skills and learn how to bring search literacy to your school. Browse the archive of past trainings, and make sure to follow us on Google+ to stay up to speed on the latest tips and trainings from Google. Even better search results: Getting to know Google search for education Google makes it simple to find the information you need, but there are strategies for finding higher quality sources even more easily.
Learn the basics of predictive search, a method for drawing on what you know about what you need to find it faster, including successful word choice and using the filters on the left-hand side of the screen to uncover information you never dreamed was possible. Power searching: Advanced Google search for education When you realize that the information you want will be a presentation or PDF, what can you do?
Beyond the First Five Links Looking for new ways to motivate students to look beyond the first five links in a search engine? 5 Common Uses Of Technology In The Classroom & How We Screw Them Up. Using technology to enhance learning is an incredibly exciting idea, and as an area of education is growing fast. Blended learning, mobile learning, connectivism, and other increasingly popular ideas all owe their existence to technology. But the reality in the majority of public schools in the United States is less than cutting edge.
While there is little data available to pinpoint exactly what is being done where, five of the more common applications of technology in the classroom appear below. The unfortunate reality here is that in lieu of significant progress in how technology is used in the learning process, significant work remains to do a better job understanding how these tools can function to increase depth of knowledge, learning curiosity, and critical thinking skills. Below we look at five of the most common uses of technology in the classroom: websites/social media, computer-based reading programs, computer-based assessment, and laptops/iPads. 1. 2. 3. 4. Read About. Writing to text. The 8 Elements Project-Based Learning Must Have. If you’re contemplating using Project-Based Learning or are already trying out the latest craze to hit the modern classroom, you should know about this checklist.
It details if you’re actually doing it correctly. For example, does your project focus on significant content, develop 21st century skills, and engage students in in-depth inquirty (just to name a few)? If not, you might want to reconsider your PBL approach. See Also: What Is Project-Based Learning? The checklist is by the PBL masters over at BIE and they’ve outlined 8 different ‘essential elements’ that must be present in a project in order for it to be considered PBL. While you may agree, disagree, or think there should be some additional elements, this checklist is phenomenal. These elements are actually useful for even more than PBL. What do you think about this PBL Checklist? Via TeachBytes and BIE.org.