Teaching Ideas - Free lesson ideas, plans, activities and resources for use in the primary classroom. Classroom 2.0 System Dynamics Learning & Teaching Introduction to System Dynamics The CLE has created a packet of key articles that touch on the important concepts of system dynamics, How to implement SD in K-12 Education, and How to explain systems thinking in 25 words or less. Simulations A variety of simulations allowing students to explore the consequences of actions. Explore how logging and planting rates impacts forests, see what happens to the number of friends based on actions, and many more. more material here... Road Maps is a self-study guide to learning system dynamics. Each chapter contains a number of individual papers - use the links below to navigate to each chapter. To learn more about Road Maps, please see the introduction (D-4500-10). The Road Maps Appendix contains a collection of short papers that are designed to help the reader during the process of going through Road Maps. There are several books required to help you complete Road Maps.
Home Page August 7, 2012 To all my educator colleagues: As you all know, I retired in June of 2011 from my school district job as Director of Technology. Since I started the Schrockguide in June of 1995, a lot has changed. However, I am not retired from providing you with great resources and ideas to support teaching and learning! I have moved all the support information for my presentations over to Kathy Schrock's Guide to Everything, located here, to help you as you think about the practical and pedagogical uses of technology. I also have my personal blog, Kathy Schrock's Kaffeeklatsch, at where I post gadget reviews and information as well as my other thoughts. I want to thank all of you for your use of Kathy Schrock's Guide for Educators over the years and all the kind notes you shared with me when you found that perfect resource. I hope to hear from you via the new sites I am now creating. Kathy
New ‘Dyslexie’ font helps dyslexics read better AFP/ Those in a study of the font say it improves reading accuracy. A graphic designer from the Netherlands, Christian Boer, has developed a new font to aid his dyslexia. The font, called Dyslexie, isn’t the first of its kind, but according to Scientific American in an article published Wednesday, “it has received much fanfare from sufferers.” Boer first designing his font in 2008 while studying at the University of Twente in the Netherlands, and in 2010 a fellow student conducted an independent study on the font as part of a master s thesis project. Participants in the study said the font improved their reading accuracy and allowed them to read for longer periods of time before tiring. According to Scientific American, the font tweaks letters of the alphabet that are commonly misread, such as d and m, to make them easier to recognize. Some other fonts designed to aid dyslexic readers are Read Regular, Lexia Readable, Tiresias and Sassoon.
System Dynamics Society myreads Engagement motivates students to read and enables new learning to take place by: Empowering teachers with effective strategies Engaging students in purposeful social practices Empowering teachers with effective strategies The conditions for successful teaching and learning are complex and involve many interwoven issues. The Guides will be most effective in engaging underperforming students when teachers are familiar with the various sections within the resource and use texts that work for their own particular student community. Engaging students in purposeful social practices Each of the Guides uses a specific text so that teachers can familiarise themselves with the strategy and contextualise the strategy given their knowledge of their own particular student community. Although ‘purposeful social practices’ is often taken to involve multiple and varied texts for community projects involving ‘real’ audiences, this resource has used specific texts to demonstrate strategies. Guides Frontloading
Study Skills Once you have established a schedule to study you need to get the most out of that time. Several things will help increase your effectiveness. As already mentioned, maintaining a regular schedule is one. A. Generally all the material that you should know for an exam is presented in lecture or in your lab work. DO NOT take this to imply that you do not need to read the text. Note: Different instructors utilize textbook information to different degrees. If it is discussed in lecture it is important. There is no single "best" way to study. The following is a compilation of many of the techniques used by successful students to study. 1. read and highlight important sections of the reading (note: highlighting is like note taking, highlight only enough to remind yourself of the key information presented. if time is short - preview the material briefly to identify key terms and concepts. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. different texts may present information in different ways that are clearer to you. 7. 8.
School Leadership 2.0 Infusing Career Orientation in the Middle-School Curriculum In this American Educational Research Journal article, Michael Woolley (University of Maryland) and Roderick Rose, Dennis Orthner, Patrick Akos, and Hinckley Jones-Sanpei (University of North Carolina/Chapel Hill) report on their study of CareerStart, a program aimed at helping middle-school teachers make course content more career-relevant for their students. The program was implemented in seven of 14 middle schools in a diverse district of 3,295 students and followed over three years. Lessons in core curriculum areas are available online for grades 6-8 at this website: (for grades 7 and 8, substitute those numbers for the last number in this URL). The result: CareerStart brought about significant gains in students’ math performance but had no effect on reading performance. From the Marshall Memo #514
Model Learning: Graphic Organisers Autism News and Resources CareerStart Most parents and educators don’t need research to tell them that the middle school years are a particular challenge, but ample data is available. Despite the fact that most students in the fifth grade, even those from families struggling economically, feel good about their teachers and school and see lots of hope for their futures, their trust in school is often questioned over the following three years. This is, perhaps, not surprising. In the United States, middle school education is a significant departure from elementary school education. Research suggests that many early adolescents experience academic declines and increased distress with the transition from elementary school to middle school, and that students leave eighth grade feeling less of a connection to school than when they entered sixth grade. The lesson plans in this collection are part of an approach designed to combat middle-school declines in engagement and achievement. What is CareerStart? Research findings
Creating a Game-Based Online Class One of the things that I like the most about the field of instructional design is the opportunity to think about that hard to quantify meta-level where you are teaching someone how to teach someone else. The most effective way to do this is to have your learner live the experience that you are trying to teach them to create. Unfortunately, the medium of a blog post does not permit me to teach you how to create a game-based curriculum by experiencing it. This adds a layer of complexity to my task, but one that is not insurmountable. Step 1: Define your Objectives This is exactly the same process you should undertake at the beginning of planning for any class. Content knowledge objectivesDiscipline-specific knowledgeDiscipline-specific technical skillsOther technical skills (technology skills)Other academic skills Be as specific and detailed as possible in your objectives. CostHardware/software compatibilityLearner technical skillsInstitutional constraintsFit with your objectives