Definitions « Personalizing Learning CALGARY BOARD OF EDUCATION: “Key components of personalization have been identified as integrating and differentiating curriculum, development of learner profiles, flexible program delivery, technology infusion, social construction, and individual student learning plans.” learning how to learn: helping pupils develop a repertoire of learning skills and strategies to support their development as self-directed learnersassessment for learning: using a range of assessment techniques, with the emphasis on formative assessment that engages the learnerteaching and learning strategies: deploying the full repertoire of strategies, with pupil and teacher make informed decisions about which to use and whencurriculum choice: providing pupils with guided opportunities to develop individual learning pathways that develop skills rather than knowledgementoring and support: ensuring pupils have a one-to-one mentoring relationship with an adult, and benefit from peer support
Ten Ways to Remember Steve Jobs Steve Jobs shows off iPhone 4 at the 2010 Worldwide Developers Conference. Photo Credit: WikiMedia Commons While many argue that the education system is too slow to change, Edutopia has documented schools around the country that have embraced Steve's passion and dedication to innovation. In honor of this American icon's passing, I'd like to suggest some ways that we can all remember -- and perhaps even continue Steve Job's legacy of passion and innovation. 1. Take Advantage of Apps for Learning Applications or "apps" can be very effective in engaging students. 2. Thanks to Apple, powerful new devices are available at lower cost, such as the iPod and iPod Touch. 3. More and more schools are investing in one-to-one programs. 4. This year, a new type of edcamp sprouted up called PadCamp, a free unconference all about the exploration of the use of tablets, e-readers & other handheld mobile devices in K-12 education. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10.
Institute for the Advancement of Philosophy for Children The IAPC is the world’s oldest organization devoted to young people’s philosophical practice. Contact the IAPC: iapc@mail.montclair.edu IAPC News and Events Mission Statement The Institute for the Advancement of Philosophy for Children pursues a three-fold mission: Educational Programming Dissemination and Professional Affiliation Research The primary constituency the IAPC aims to serve is schoolchildren—from pre-schoolers to highschoolers and from schools close to the Institute to schools in the 40-odd nations with active Philosophy for Children centers.
Center for Collaborative Education Sir Ken Robinson on “Personalized Learning” « Personalizing Learning Thank you to “PW” for posting this content as a comment on Nov. 20th–I wanted to repost to draw attention to what Sir Ken Robinson says about Personalized Learning: “Personalized learning, to me, is the process of contouring learning to the individuals that you’re dealing with, recognizing that we all have different strengths and weaknesses, different interests [and] different ways of learning.” “It isn’t that everyone has to learn different things, although eventually our interests will take us in different directions,” he continued. It’s what good teachers have always known, he added. Read more in the Vancouver Sun article from August 23, 2011 : Like this: Like Loading...
Express 7.21 - Pinwheel Discussions: Texts in Conversation Pinwheel Discussions Texts in Conversation Teaching Practice Strategies for Student-Centered Discussion (7 min) Grades 9-12 / ELA / Student Discourse Lesson Idea (Common Core) Pinwheel Discussions: Large Group Conversations (34 min) Grades 9-12 / ELA / Discussion Soliloquy to Love: Day Two (Uncut) (24 min) Grades 9-12 / ELA / Shakespeare <div>Please enable Javascript to watch this video</div> The National Teacher of the Year for 2010, Sarah Brown Wessling, describes her formula for great literary discussions in her 12th grade English language arts classroom. Students seated in a pinwheel formation take turns answering questions as authors of one of three texts, while a student designated as "provocateur" makes sure the conversation keeps flowing. Prior to these pinwheel discussions, students receive a minilesson on how to construct the text-dependent questions that will fuel their discussions. Source: From Pinwheel Discussions: Texts in Conversation, by Teaching Channel, 2012.
Evidence: The Case of the Common Core Standards I have admired Rodin’s statue of “The Thinker” for many years. Yet the statue is not a man of action. Too much thinking, too little action is a recipe for fecklessness. Yet too much action, too little thought are ingredients for a potential disaster.* And this is where the Common Core standards enter the picture. Exactly how much evidence did policymakers have to justify the crafting and adoption of national standards? There have been two major justifications for Common Core standards: (1) raising academic standards across U.S. schools will grow the economy and make the nation globally competitive; (2) higher standards will improve students’ academic achievement. 1. Answer: None. See here and here. 2. See here, here and even here. So how can a public policy that has heavy consequences for students, teachers, and public schools have an appalling lack of evidence? The answer is in what top decision-makers consider as evidence when they determine policy.
Welcome to Boston Day and Evening Academy | Boston Day and Evening Academy What is PBL? To help teachers do PBL well, we created a comprehensive, research-based model for PBL — a "gold standard" to help teachers, schools, and organizations to measure, calibrate, and improve their practice. In Gold Standard PBL, projects are focused on student learning goals and include Essential Project Design Elements:
Drama Strategies to Use With Any Day's Times (Part 1) Can school performance be measured fairly? The Room for Debate blog asks nine experts this question, and we’ve suggested ways students can engage with it through role-playing. Go to related Room for Debate post » We’re declaring this week Drama Week on the Learning Network, and each day we’ll show you some easy ways that teachers across subject areas can use simple theater exercises to spur discussion and thinking about current events. We’ve asked David Kener, a teacher and former executive director of the American Place Theater Literature to Life Program, to help, and together we’ll bring you a technique or resource every day this week. The two exercises we’ve chosen first are related to a technique we often use in lessons on this blog — “four corners” strategy. Come back every day this week to find even more — and, as always, let us know what you think. Cross the Room Directions: For example: …if you live more than a half-hour from school. How Could I Use It? Times Example: Spectrogram
As Children’s Freedom Has Declined, So Has Their Creativity If anything makes Americans stand tall internationally it is creativity . “American ingenuity” is admired everywhere. We are not the richest country (at least not as measured by smallest percentage in poverty), nor the healthiest (far from it), nor the country whose kids score highest on standardized tests (despite our politicians’ misguided intentions to get us there), but we are the most inventive country. It is sobering, therefore, to read Kyung Hee Kim’s recent research report documenting a continuous decline in creativity among American schoolchildren over the last two or three decades.[2] Kim, who is a professor of education at the College of William and Mary, analyzed scores on a battery of measures of creativity—called the Torrance Tests of Creative Thinking (TTCT)—collected from normative samples of schoolchildren in kindergarten through twelfth grade over several decades. You might wonder how creativity can be assessed. Well, surprise, surprise. [2] Kyung Hee Kim (2011).
Interactive Classroom Projector Shootout Marc Davidson, January 18, 2013 Interactive projectors combine the capability of a standard projector plus an interactive whiteboard at a lower cost. However, not only do the various models differ in all the usual projector features, they differ in their interactive features as well, which means you can't treat the interactive part as a given. For this shootout, we gathered what are really two categories of interactive projector: four DLP projectors that use TI's interactive technology, and two LCD projectors that don't. Two Categories All four of the DLP projectors share some strengths and weaknesses that are built into TI's technology. On the minus side, all four have an interactive mode that, when activated, causes you to lose some brightness. The LCD projectors offer the exactly opposite strengths and weaknesses. Given these differences, you may want to start by choosing the interactive technology you prefer, and then focus on the projectors with that technology. What's True for All
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