5 Ways Twitter Can Help in Education - Getting Smart by Guest Author - edchat, social media, twitter. By: Pamela Rossow If you are in an educational field as a student, teacher, or parent, you may have wondered about the benefits of social media—specifically Twitter. All that tweeting seems like it could give you a headache. What if Twitter was more than just a way to dish about the amazing Caprese salad you had at lunch and actually a way to help students learn better?
Here are 5 ways that Twitter may enhance learning . . . Class participation. Projects. Outside in. Networking. Finding information. Education and Twitter can be synonymous if Twitter is used in a way that benefits educators and students. Pamela Rossow is a freelance writer who works with higher education clients such as eLearners. Students Learning From Their Blogging Buddies. Posted by Mrs Kathleen Morris on Tuesday, March 27th 2012 I seem to be continually uncovering more and more benefits to educational blogging. Aside from the advantages that I’ve shared here and here, having your class involved in the educational blogging community allows students to learn from and with their peers from all around the world. In my class we often use our blogging buddies’ posts as inspiration for classroom activities, and as role models for high standards of work. One such example was the readers’ theatre activities that we were doing last week as part of our CAFE reading program.
Throughout the week, we read a range of readers’ theatre scripts and used the posts on Mr Salsich’s Classroom Blog and 4T’s Classroom Blog as inspiring models. We published one of our own performances on our class blog here which hopefully continues the cycle of sharing. There have been many other instances when my students have learnt from their blogging buddies. Twitter for Educators – A Document. Flip This: Bloom’s Taxonomy Should Start with Creating. Teaching Strategies Chris Davis, Powerful Learning Practice LLC By Shelley Wright I think the revised Bloom’s Taxonomy is wrong. I know this statement sounds heretical in the realms of education, but I think this is something we should rethink, especially since it is so widely taught to pre-service teachers. Conceived in 1956 by a group of educators chaired by Benjamin Bloom, the taxonomy classifies skills from least to most complex. Many teachers in many classrooms spend the majority of their time in the basement of the taxonomy, never really addressing or developing the higher order thinking skills that kids need to develop.
Rather than starting with knowledge, we start with creating, and eventually discern the knowledge that we need from it. The pyramid creates the impression that there is a scarcity of creativity — only those who can traverse the bottom levels and reach the summit can be creative. Here’s what I propose: we flip Bloom’s taxonomy. Creating at the Forefront Related. MrH_low: Where does your class spend... These Are Some of the Most Amazing Lego Projects Ever Built | Raw File. In his new book, Beautiful LEGO, Mike Doyle has curated more than 200 pages of the world’s best Lego art. From museum-ready sculptures to indulgent geek references, the book highlights the impressive evolution of the legendary toy. “Every year this stuff gets more and more intricate and the technique gets better, so I thought it would be great to celebrate the merits of the medium,” says Doyle, who is also a Lego artist and includes some of his own work in the book. A graphic designer by day, Doyle re-discovered Legos four years ago after visiting Legoland with his two sons and then cruising around the internet to see what other people were doing.
Book cover reproduced from Beautiful LEGO, with the permission of No Starch Press. By Mike Doyle. After a lot of research on technique, he tackled his first project. The appeal for Doyle is the ability to “go beyond the medium.” Much of the other art in Beautiful LEGO also breaks boundaries, not getting hung up on the bricks themselves. The Gamification of Reading. John Hersey, author of Hiroshima , once worked on a committee for his children’s school to determine why children were struggling at reading. The group’s discovery was that the reason the children were struggling was because they thought the primers they were reading looked boring.
They didn’t want to read stories featuring illustrations of perfectly mannered children that just looked dull, insipid, and boring. This idea of using interesting illustrations was taken up by William Ellsworth Spaulding, an editor at Houghton Mifflin’s textbook division. He borrowed an illustrator named Ted Geisel from Random House to create a textbook that contained words that experts had decided were important for first graders to know. Nine months later a book featuring 236 of those words from the list was created. Geisel had noticed that many of the words on the list rhymed; the first two words happened to be cat and hat. So what does this have to do with gamification? This is how I see gamification… A Simple Rule to Eliminate Useless Meetings. V-blogging in your classroom - Mark Anderson. iPad Published on October 10th, 2013 | by Mark Anderson You might have got a handle on the advantages of blogging in your classroom, and the many pros of giving your students a public audience for their work, however have you considered adding V-blogging to your armoury of tools to engage your class?
A relatively new Video-blogging (V-blog) app that I think could have some real impact is TouchCast. The App allows learners to record video-blogs and chose a theme such as News, Business, Sports, Here’s How, Review It, and Travel Diary. They can then record themselves, or their work and use an auto-cue to produce a really professional result. You can also use video-apps such as a twitter feed, News feed or even weather feed to add interest to the finished product.
As the learners record the v-blog they can make these apps full screen to demonstrate research or link to other relevant outside sources. Lots to think about here. Photo Credit: Bee Nouveau via Compfight cc About the Author. Scottish Schools Focus on More Than Just Tests. Why Teach Meets ROCK! | From the Sandpit.... “Teaching without Twitter is like walking around with your eyes closed” (unknown) “It’s time to realise that teachers who leverage social media for learning are at a greater advantage than those who don’t” (@gcouros) “Teaching without Twitter is like playing tennis with a golf club” (@joe_kirby) “I had no one to speak to about this stuff before Twitter. It’s a revelation to find out I’m not alone. For me Twitter has been life changing.” (@learningspy) I could not agree more with the quotes above, Twitter has been a revelation and an eye opener to the many fabulous professional learning opportunities, I did not even know existed 4 months ago….Teach Meets for example!!
I admit to also being fascinated by the Teachmeet phenomenon, a self confessed CPD geek and magpie, my own Twitter handle @Dubai_Teachmeet was an attempt to set up such CPD events, where I teach in the UAE.. professional development at grass roots level, bottom up, by teachers for teachers, exactly the way it should be! Assessment and Rubrics. 9 Qualities Of Truly Confident People. 10 tips for using visualisers to enhance numeracy across all key stages. Continuing on from the previous articles about the benefits of using visualisers in the classroom, it's now possible to take a closer look at how to maximise the use of visualisers across specific curriculum areas. To start off this series, we will focus on numeracy and how visualisers can uniquely be used to enhance teaching and learning from key stages one to four. Below is a list of the foundational uses of a visualiser to aid numeracy learning at key stages one and two: Show the class how to use small items.
When teaching children how to use tools such as protractors and calculators, you can demonstrate on a large screen and even record your demonstration and leave it playing on a loop.Compare 2D and 3D objects and highlight how they differ. Many visualisers have split screens that allow you to compare and contrast all manner of objects.Explain how to construct charts and graphs. Using visualisers to enrich the teaching of mathematical principles at key stages three and four: How schools can stay safe whilst using social media. Is fear of abuse preventing you from using social media in your school?
Are you unsure of what safeguards you can put in place to protect your pupils? When social media was little more than a tool for socialising, schools could get away with avoiding it. Not any longer. Whether it’s buying a new product, doing business with someone, recruiting a member of staff, or learning a new skill, social media will usually play a part. So how do you encourage social media without placing your school at risk? Here are the steps your school should take before bringing social media into the classroom. 1. 2. Tone of voice to be used (e.g. serious/playful/non-aggressive etc)How frequently staff should postWhere to source content fromHow complaints are dealt with and how quicklyAcceptable contact with pupils and parentsInfringement of copyrightAvoiding conflicts of interestRectifying mistakes e.g. giving out the wrong informationDisclosing confidential informationNot damaging the reputation of your school.
The Standards | General Teaching Council for Scotland. Uses for the Standards Depending on your role in education, you may have different uses for the Standards. Take a look at the information outlining these uses. Find out more Learning for Sustainability Learning for Sustainability is integral to the GTCS Professional Standards Framework. For each aspect of the Standards, teachers should explore their own assumptions in the light of their experiences. Find out more Reflective Questions Have a look at the Reflective Questions, which can be used to help with your self evaluation against the Standards. Find out more. Login to MyGTCS | General Teaching Council for Scotland. Professional Update | General Teaching Council for Scotland. What is #gtcsPL? | Teaching Scotland. You may have noticed that we have been using a Twitter hashtag you may not have come across before. The #gtcsPL hashtag has kind of popped up with little explanation of what it's actually for and since it's being used on multiple days you may have gathered that it's not associated with an event.
The hashtag is is to promote professional learning and the different ways in which we increase our professional skills and knowledge. It's a topic that is at the heart of our revised Professional Standards but it's a topic that can mean different things to different people. We would like to try and encourage more discussion about professional learning by encouraging our members to use this hashtag to tell us about the professional learning they've decided to undertake and why? We want to explore different kinds of learning and the value that you place on them. In return we'll also be using the hashtag to promote examples of professional learning to you, both from us and our followers. Exclusive. What is #gtcsPL? | Teaching Scotland. LearnersCloud Blog: 4 things to know before flipping your classroom. Flipped learning is gaining momentum in more and more learning institutions around the world.
Our e-learning consultant, @Chris_Hendon, a specialist coach in alternative pedagogies, has been advising on just how far schools have progressed in recent years. Yet column inches and advice blogs tend to concentrate on the pros and cons, and advantages and disadvantages of the flipped classroom approach, and few have documented any real empirical evidence from UK contexts and case studies. This seemed like a challenge to us and so, with the help of our flipped learning coach, we followed a school in Kent to assess their experiences, reactions and findings as they set about integrating flipped learning.
The school and sixth form centre has always placed a strong emphasis on creating a personalised learning agenda through the use of mobile technologies and in 2011 embarked on a change programme that would see students gain greater responsibility over their own learning. 1. 2. 3. 4. Think2Read helps children to see beyond words into a world of meaning. Based on years of research, trials and evaluations, Think2Read has created a compelling comprehension programme structured on improving thinking skills and collaborative enquiry that teaches children how to question deeply and make meaning for themselves.
It offers a complete teaching resource of six modules with full lesson plans, quality activities and in-depth assessments which help children to learn progressive skills that show them how to summarise, retell, predict, clarify and question. The resources that grew out of Donna Thomson’s pioneering approach to teaching comprehension strategies and child-led enquiry skills were shortlisted for the 2007 Education Resources Awards. Her series of books based on these teaching methods have since accumulated sales of over 30,000 copies. Each programme contains six teaching modules (5-7 one-hour sessions per module). The modules are progressive and focus on the teaching and development of each comprehension strategy.
#GoodinTen – Requires Improvement CPD programme, by @TeacherToolkit #SLTchat. Classroom teachers; aspiring leaders; educational experts and senior teachers come together online – most Sunday evenings – to discuss the following school leadership topics as part of #SLTchat (Sundays 8pm). You can find links to SLTchat (and this discussion) here. What I am about to share, was formulated out of discussions that took place during 2nd June 2013: Improving teaching and learning for teachers with low motivation? How do you improve ‘Requires Improvement’ teachers? #SLTchat 2nd June 2013: The results were collated from a choice of 6 topics and voted for by anyone. Click to visit the web-poll You can find the full archives of this particular debate, here; The series of tweets that instigated this post are shown below: Click to go directly to the tweet and my tweet-response to this question was: Sharing good practice: As a result, I am sharing a new CPD programme I have curated for teaching staff.
The programme: What if? Training courses for SharePoint 2013 - SharePoint. @Westylish's Blog: Closing the Gap - developing efficient feedback techniques. Towards the end of last term and at the start of this I have been looking to develop my strategies for ensuring students make the most of their feedback and hopefully therefore make the most progress. Firstly, I think it's important to say that none of the principles I am discussing here are new to my practice. All of the things I have done before. What I am really talking about here is ways of systematising what I do to make sure that as many students as possible can successfully close the gap between where they are and where they want to be. One of the big issues with this is time and efficiency. This is especially true in my lower school teaching. If I am honest I am always going to make sure my priorities (GCSE and A-Level) are taken care of. That is partly because I don't feel that I have to be as efficient at closing the gap with my GCSE and A-Level classes as I do with my lower school classes because of the following reasons: 1) All feedback must be acted on.
To finish. Interactive Learning Sites for Education - Home. TesResources: How about this for an idea:... 10 ways to change the minds of tech-reluctant staff. 10 Secrets To Staying Motivated. How Many Teachers Use Technology in the Classroom? The 10 Skills Modern Teachers Must Have. Denbigh_TSA : #ukedchat How about this. How Does #Edchat Connect Educators. The Value of Self-reflection - Blog. What if…? Thoughts on Leadership, Teaching & Learning - Moving Teaching from ‘Good’ to ‘Excellent’: Part 1. Mark Anderson's Blog | education, learning & technology. Why It's Time To Focus On Skills (Not Just Cool Tools)
5 Powerful Questions Teachers Can Ask Students. 32 Characteristics Of High-Performing Classrooms. Theories for the digital age: The digital natives discourse. Personal Learning Networks. Online communities are transforming professional development for teachers | Teacher Network | Guardian Professional. Pinterest for teachers. Focus on Collaboration to Kick Off New School Year. Professional Learning in Effective Schools: The Seven Principles of Highly Effective Professional Learning. Session 169 – Effective feedback – How do you make your marking count? DotEPUB — download any webpage as an e-book. MandyVasek : SMART goals! L4LTV Launches - Online CPD by Teachers for Teachers. PLNning to Inspire.
How to Create a Robust and Meaningful Personal Learning Network [PLN]