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How to Connect With Other Teachers in the Social Age

How to Connect With Other Teachers in the Social Age
In the 2012 Primary Sources Survey conducted by Scholastic and The Gates Foundation, teacher respondents claimed to spend only about 4% of each day collaborating with colleagues, while 44% of teachers surveyed responded that they would like that collaboration time to increase. Traditionally, the teaching profession has been an isolating one—if you’re not spending every minute at school teaching classes, tutoring during your breaks, or covering someone else’s class, then you’re likely spending that time disciplining, administrating testing, or scrambling to the microwave to reheat leftovers during your 15-minute lunch break. In addition, as state and district mandates swing from one end of the pendulum to the other, teachers are so completely overwhelmed with trying to follow all of the rules that they are left with no time to develop themselves and their practices. Feeling isolated and crunched for time used to mean that teachers weren’t able to collaborate. In Short Related:  sharing best practice

What’s the point of education if Google can tell us anything? Can’t remember the name of the two elements that scientist Marie Curie discovered? Or who won the 1945 UK general election? Or how many light years away the sun is from the earth? Ask Google. Constant access to an abundance of online information at the click of a mouse or tap of a smartphone has radically reshaped how we socialise, inform ourselves of the world around us and organise our lives. Some educational theorists have argued that you can replace teachers, classrooms, textbooks and lectures by simply leaving students to their own devices to search and collect information about a particular topic online. Such debate about the place and purpose of online searching in learning and assessments is not new. Digital content curators In my recent research looking at the ways students write their assignments, I found that increasingly they may not always compose written work which is truly “authentic”, and that this may not be as important as we think. How to assess these new skills

PLE Conference 2015 Call for Papers | PLE Conference Portal PLE 2015 – the 6th International Conference on Personal Learning Environments – will take place in Galway, Ireland, from July 15th to 17th. The PLE Conference intends to create an engaging, conversational, and innovative meeting space for researchers and practitioners to exchange ideas, experiences, and research around PLE related themes. The conference invites contributions in the format of “extended abstracts” or “alternative session proposals”. However, authors of both types of contributions will be asked to communicate their research and ideas within session formats that look to avoid the traditional 15 min presentation. Conference topics Topics include (but are not limited to)… PLE theoretical and reflective frameworksPLE as a key competencePLE in formal learning contextsPLE and Challenging learning contexts:PLE and AnalyticsSocial Learning as the core of PLEFuture Challenges in the PLE context Invited types of contribution Guidelines for the submission of Extended Abstracts Journals

6 Excellent YouTube Channels Created by Inspired Teachers Outstanding Math, Science, Art, History, and Social Studies Content for Flipped, Blended, or Traditional Classrooms! A HUGE “THANKS!” to Hip Hughes, who responded to a tweet I wrote the other day seeking great YouTube channels created by teachers. He singlehandedly provided what I needed for the post I wanted to write! Check out these outstanding channels of content created by a half dozen different inspired educators. Hip Hughes CHANNEL: ABOUT: “The most important events in History explained by HipHughes, YouTube EDU Guru & TV Talking Head (History Channel/American Hero Network). Keith Hughes has taught US History and AP Government for the past 15 years as well as edu classes in New Literacy and Technology for the Graduate School of Education at the University of Buffalo. HipHughes History is a series of upbeat, personable and educational lectures designed for students and lifelong learners. Sample Video: Beat Master Matt ABOUT: “Mr. Prof Rob Bob

19 Twitter Videos to Help Teachers and Students Connect via twitter.com Looking to engage global learners? Want to improve your personal and professional development? The solution to both issues comes in one word: Twitter. Thanks to the power of Youtube playlists, the 19 Twitter videos embedded at the bottom of this post help teachers engage students, while building powerful Personal Learning Networks. Twitter in the classroom inspires even the most reluctant learners to interact, and Twitter hashtags can create amazing ongoing conversations both in and out of the classroom. Like any social network, Twitter can be daunting for beginners, especially students. For a quick look at all 19 videos, click the playlist tab in the upper left corner of the Youtube video below. Share the Twitter videos with friends, colleagues and students and help build a community of digital learners. What you learn about Twitter: Teachers and students are global learners. Are you using Twitter to connect to teachers and learners around the world? Related November 7, 2014

Getting Technology Right in Schools – A Word with José Picardo An interview with José Picardo, Assistant Principal, exploring technology implementation at Surbiton High School ALT: What was the strategic technological framework adopted by your institution? JP: In too many schools the strategy is “we need to use more ICT” — often responding to a critical inspection. It always seems logical to pass the technology baton to ICT “experts”. ALT: What relationship needs to be adopted by developers with schools? JP: Even a marginal improvement in teachers’ understanding of the application of technology in an educational context can result in more informed choices. “Truly illuminating uses of technology are those where the technology is there, but invisible.” ALT: How might you apply a cost benefit analysis of using technology in your school? This approach is flawed because you are not comparing like for like. ALT: Are we over-thinking the role of technology in education? ALT: How can assessment bodies help schools to innovate? JP: The million dollar question.

Why coming to PLE Conference? ← Linda Castañeda Every time we meet for organizing the next PLE Conference, there are some –typical I guess- worries in the air: We are not a “serious conference”, yes we have papers (published in our proceedings), and we published some of them in relevant journals, but we are little, we have not “proper” sessions of presenting, we normally publish every single part of the conference online, so Why people would like to spent its time and money on coming to the conference? Because the main idea of the PLE Conference, is being a REAL opportunity for learning together. The majority of us –academics… ish- are tired of being in big conferences were the only important thing is being on it, having a paper, listening to the keynote and getting the certificate. I’m one of them, please do not misunderstand me, I love to be on conferences :-), I normally like to be there, to have the opportunity of showing my work, listening to other experiences and listening to great speakers speaking about relevant topics.

HEROES & VILLAINS: AN ACADEMIC HONESTY AND INTEGRITY WEBSITE Read the information below first, as it will inform you of what to expect from working through this site. There are eight main sections to the site - each covering all aspects of Academic Honesty and Integrity. Each section contains information essential to your studies along with quizzes and links to other useful resources. Much of the information is downloadable as a PDF (so that you can print off and read at a time that best suits you). You can of course also save the PDF (or Word document) electronically onto your mobile device. A brief description of each section is given below it and is accompanied with direct links. ‘Academic Honesty’ and ‘Academic Integrity’ will be explored as key concepts underpinning and informing academic good practices. We explode a few myths about academic writing, for example, it is not fully true that we should never put our own ideas in our work. Instead, we recommend taking your time. Please do let us know what you think!

EdTechSandyK: How to Decode a Tweet | Squeezing... Five reasons why you should 'do digital' Even as digital technology becomes ever more pervasive in learning and teaching, 'I don't do digital' is still a comment we hear from teachers and staff in further education. Yet, this attitude completely overlooks all of the excellent things that can be achieved by using new technologies and systems. Here's five reasons why people should embrace digital in the classroom. New platforms for reaching learners As an educator, the learner should be at the heart of what you do. Digital actually gives teachers more opportunities than ever before to converse with and support learner development, on their terms – whether that’s through the virtual learning environment (VLE) or social media. Recent research from Jisc found that 40% of students in further and higher education were using social media to keep in touch with tutors. More engaging It's easy to blame technology if learners get distracted, but in a lot of cases it’s a conduit rather than the cause. Boosting employability More sustainable

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