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Video Games and the Future of the Textbook. Amplify’s digital offering includes a dramatic reading of Edgar Allen Poe’s “The Raven” with animation.

Video Games and the Future of the Textbook

Part 16 of MindShift’s Guide to Games and Learning The textbook is a problem that consistently plagues classrooms. At best, textbooks are innocuous, offering simple summaries of a very broad subject area. At worst, they oversimplify things, providing less information than an encyclopedia article without enough nuance or context to make it meaningful. One study showed that when students read textbooks, they tend to retain “absurd” details, but fail to “grasp the main point.” Learning styles aren't worth our time. Thanks, everyone, for continuing the discussion.

Learning styles aren't worth our time

I’m not sure what Jennifer means by saying that I employ “learning theories” in my design. I don’t subscribe to any particular theory. What I do is learn what I can about the audience and what they need to do in the real world. Facebook. Writing and Thinking Through the Student User's Guide Assignment. Note: Ashley Hutchinson co-wrote this post with social studies teacher Stephanie Noles and instructional coach Mike Flinchbaugh, both of whom are her colleagues at J.H.

Writing and Thinking Through the Student User's Guide Assignment

Rose High School in Greenville, North Carolina. Stephanie was having one of those days when everything she thought she knew about working with young adults seemed miscalibrated -- when tempers flared without cause and student motivation disappeared despite her careful planning. How Does ‘Lord of the Flies’ Fit Into Common Core? Teaching Strategies Alaina Buzas In a recent New Republic essay on the new Common Core reading standards, University of Iowa English professor Blaine Greteman complained that the Common Core’s method of deciding text complexity — the Lexile score — is making a mockery of learning to read by assigning books a “complexity score” between 0-1600, based mostly on vocabulary words and sentence length.

How Does ‘Lord of the Flies’ Fit Into Common Core?

Under this new standard of judging a book, said Greteman, Huckleberry Finn becomes too easy for high schoolers, and Raymond Carver’s Cathedral scores in about the same range as Curious George Gets a Medal. “Few would oppose giving teachers better tools to challenge students, but this approach seems badly flawed,” Greteman wrote.

A Must See Chart on Activity Vs Project. When talking about project based learning, certain concepts should be clearly explained so that teachers are in the know of what they are doing.

A Must See Chart on Activity Vs Project

Many instructors still make the mistake of equating activities and busy work with project based learning. For a project to be called a project it requires a significant time of planning, outline of objectives, and a structure of employment, other than that it is just an activity. Projects emphasize the process and are also assessment focused in that they test students content and processing skills. Let the horror continue! Ten ways to turn your learners into zombies! The Jigsaw Classroom in 10 Easy Steps. Cooperative Learning Strategies. Advent of Google means we must rethink our approach to education. Would a person with good handwriting, spelling and grammar and instant recall of multiplication tables be considered a better candidate for a job than, say, one who knows how to configure a peer-to-peer network of devices, set up an organisation-wide Google calendar and find out where the most reliable sources of venture capital are, I wonder?

Advent of Google means we must rethink our approach to education

The former set of skills are taught in schools, the latter are not. We have a romantic attachment to skills from the past. Longhand multiplication of numbers using paper and pencil is considered a worthy intellectual achievement. Using a mobile phone to multiply is not. But to the people who invented it, longhand multiplication was just a convenient technology. In school examinations, learners must reproduce facts from memory, solve problems using their minds and paper alone. The curriculum lists things that children must learn. Classroom Discussion Strategies. Classroom Discussions play an important role in student learning.

Classroom Discussion Strategies

It engages students, allows them to practice important life skills and is also a form of assessment. I rely on these interactions to help me gauge student understanding of topics we are studying. The following are a few of my favorite, and more unique, discussion strategies. Many of these ideas have been borrowed and modified for my own classroom. First Things First - Establish classroom guidelines for discussions. 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. Strategies 1. . *4 chairs placed in the middle of the room, while all students form an outside circle around the center group, thus forming a “fishbowl” effect.

*The 4 students sitting in the middle are the only ones allowed to speak. *If an outside circle student wishes to speak they must “tap-out” (on the shoulder) one of the 4 people. *Students on the outside can be listening, backchanneling on a TodaysMeet, or taking notes on paper. Resources for Idaho Teachers. We know that students learn best when they are truly engaged in what they are learning, when they have the opportunity to explore, debate, discuss, examine, defend, and experiment with the concepts and skills they are ready to learn.

Resources for Idaho Teachers

Students learn best when instruction is: Appropriately Challenging Kids (and adults!) Learn best when they start at their current level of understanding and are challenged - with support (teacher, peers, materials, etc.) - just beyond what they are comfortable doing on their own. (See Zone of Proximal Development) The student's background knowledge and current skill level are more important than their age/grade level in determining what they are ready to learn. Problem Solving.

A major goal of education is to help students learn in ways that enable them to use what they have learned to solve problems in new situations.

Problem Solving

In short, problem solving is fundamental to education because educators are interested in improving students' ability to solve problems. This entry defines key terms, types of problems, and processes in problem solving and then examines theories of problem solving, ways of teaching for problem solving transfer, and ways of teaching of problem solving skill. What is a Problem? A problem exists when a problem solver has a goal but does not know how to accomplish it. Specifically, a problem occurs when a situation is in a given state, a problem solver wants the situation to be in a goal state, and the problem solver is not aware of an obvious way to transform the situation from the given state to the goal state. Six Ways To Motivate To Students To Learn. Scientific research has provided us with a number of ways to get the learning juices flowing, none of which involve paying money for good grades.

Six Ways To Motivate To Students To Learn

And most smart teachers know this, even without scientific proof. 1. Fine-tune the challenge. Lucid Chart Now Works Offline - Create Mind Maps Offline. Deeper Project Based Learning - Vander Ark on Innovation. What If We Flipped Online Learning? If you’re an online student, taking an online course (perhaps at Modern Lessons or Khan Academy or Coursera or, well, the list goes on…), or simply looking into putting your lectures online, there’s something you should know. People are already considering what flipped online learning might look like.

It’s a thought that’s being passed around some social media circles that I follow and illustrated in the below infographic. In short, flipped online learning would involve a larger focus on the student producing the learning materials and having an online instructor be more of a ‘guide on the side’ as it were. Rather than watching videos and taking a quiz, you’d have a robust discussion, have students create projects to share with classmates, and generate more discussion out of that. Classroom Guide: Top Ten Tips for Assessing Project-Based Learning. Facebook Edutopia on Facebook Twitter Edutopia on Twitter Google+ Pinterest Edutopia on Pinterest WHAT WORKS IN EDUCATION The George Lucas Educational Foundation. How (And Why) Teachers Should Get Started With Blended Learning. Blended learning is quite simply one of the most overused terms to describe the current state of education’s relationship with technology.

However, it fits. Classroom Guide: Top Ten Tips for Assessing Project-Based Learning. Starting With Why: The Power of Student-Driven Learning. I know a high school student who is quite amazing. She’s keen. She’s hungry. She wants to be challenged. Facebook. Project-Based Learning. A Great Blooms Taxonomy Wheel for Teachers. Express 8.18 - When Students Own the "Why"