OER Commons What Project-Based Learning Is — and What It Isn’t Screenshot/High Tech High The term “project-based learning” gets tossed around a lot in discussions about how to connect students to what they’re learning. Teachers might add projects meant to illustrate what students have learned, but may not realize what they’re doing is actually called “project-oriented learning.” And it’s quite different from project-based learning, according to eighth grade Humanities teacher Azul Terronez. Terronez, who teaches at High Tech Middle, a public charter school in San Diego, Calif says that when an educator teaches a unit of study, then assigns a project, that is not project-based learning because the discovery didn’t arise from the project itself. And kids can see through the idea of a so-called “fun project” for what it often is – busy work. “If you inspire them to care about it and draw parallels with their world, then they care and remember.” For Terronez, the goal is to always connect classroom learning to its applications in the outside world.
8 Switches To Update Project-Based Learning In The 21st Century - 8 Switches To Update Project-Based Learning In The 21st Century by Thom Markham Here’s some simple math: 1.8 billion youth need to be educated for 21st Century life. And, given that 21st Century living increasingly demands sophisticated work skills, deep personal strengths such as curiosity, empathy, and flexibility, and the ability to think as well as absorb content, it better be good education. What’s ‘good’ education? It’s important to understand that this is a global movement. This provides educators with a window of opportunity to share best practices around PBL and contribute to a worldwide, collaborative conversation on personalized learning, inquiry, and the way educators ‘hold’ students in their minds eye. This opportunity to help shape—not drive or direct, but shape—the outcome for PBL across the globe applies to U.S. educators as well, of course. It’s beyond time for U.S. schools engaged in PBL to shift their emphasis. How can U.S. 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8.
4 Important Apps for A Paperless Classroom June 11, 2015 Planning a paperless classroom? Here are four important apps you should definitely consider. Using these apps will enable you to create and distribute assignments to your students, provide feedback on your students work, organize your classroom materials, conduct quick formative assessments via quizzes, polls or exit tickets, track grades, record attendance, create seating charts and many more. 1- Showbie- Paperless Classroom “With Showbie, you can quickly and easily assign, collect and review student work on your iPad, then provide rich feedback to your students by adding annotations, text notes and voice notes directly onto their documents. Students can show their learning creatively by submitting to Showbie from thousands of compatible iPad apps, or by completing assignments with Showbie’s built in tools. 2- Teacher Toolkit “Over a million educators worldwide trust TeacherKit with managing their time and activities. 3- Socrative Teacher 4- Nearpod
See How You Can Magically Multiply Large Numbers In 3 Seconds Mnemonic as a technique is not a newly conceived idea. Back in 1910, there was a published book with the title, ‘ Magician’s Tricks: How They are Done’ by Henry Hatton and Adrian Plate. This interesting book presents and discusses proofs that the mnemonic idea has already been used by Harry Kellar, a magician who gained popularity during the 1800s. While it is not within the province of this book to go into a study of a system of artificial memory, there are certain conjuring tricks frequently presented to the public as “Mental Phenomena,” that have a system of this kind for their groundwork, as, for example, the following which depend, mainly, on numbers, for their effects: “Second Sight” the memorizing of a long list of words at one reacting; the instantaneous raising of any two numbers to the cube or third power… The Mnemonic system was then advanced by Ron Doerfler. How Mnemonic Works According to Wikipedia… Mnemonic…is any learning technique that aids memory. Outrageous images?
Want Better Project-Based Learning? Use Social and Emotional Learning Today's guest blogger is Thom Markham, a psychologist, educator, and president of Global Redesigns, an international consulting organization focused on project-based learning, social-emotional learning, youth development, and 21st-century school design. An unfortunate legacy of the cognitive model that dominates education is the belief that everything important in life takes place from the neck up. This belief is the primary reason that many teachers struggle with project-based learning (PBL). At its best, PBL taps into intangibles that make learning effortless and engaging: Drive, passion, purpose, and peak performance. But peak performance doesn't start with a standardized curriculum. Outside of education, the success of PBL is no mystery. These factors can be condensed into three bullet points: Caring relationships People perform better when they feel attended to. Organizational experts tell us to "search upstream in time and place" to identify the barriers to solving a problem.
Insights- A New Educational Tool for Creating Paperless Interactive Lessons June 25, 2015 The popular educational app TinyTap has recently released a new tool called Insights. This is basically a data management tool to help teachers access real-time analytics on data related to classroom teaching such as which lessons students completed, how they scored on them and how they are improving. Insights is designed to help you engage your students, improve grades, and save valuable time. Here are some interesting video tutorials to help you make the best of Insights. Take Control Of The Noisy Class - Video 2 | Take Control Of The Noisy Class Video 2: How to Get Students Sat Down and Ready to Work **Important** Don’t miss the key strategies revealed at 1:00 minute, 3:00 minutes, 7:30 minutes & 9:45 minutes This video explains a four-step process to get students in the classroom, sat down and ready to work with minimal fuss and disruption. You’ll learn how to give an instruction that will get your students LISTENING straight away as well as a clever way to filter out trouble-makers before they have chance to disrupt your lesson. Make sure you download and read the FREE handout for this video (Below) as it explains further details about this method. You may need to right-click the following links and select Save Link As to download the file to your computer Now watch video 3 for a novel strategy for getting students’ attention and maintaining their focus throughout the lesson Thoughts? Talk soon, Rob Plevin, Director, Behaviour Needs Ltd