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11 Reasons Teachers Aren't Using Technology #edchat #edtech

Top 3 Ways to Interact with Students Outside the Classroom This isn’t a revolution? Educators have been interacting with students outside the classroom for many years. Summer school/camp, email and the Internet have allowed education to be guided away from normal school hours.Nowadays It’s just easier to do. These 3 top ways to interact with students also serve as a reflection on the 21st Century classroom and ever evolving pedagogy. 1. Twitter – Instant interaction with students of the ‘social-media’ generation. From class information to the posing of questions or links to articles, twitter leads the way when interacting with students. During the recent summer exam period a host of schools and departments were posting regular tips and articles to help students with their revision. 2. A relatively simple platform that now plays a huge part in the workflow and organisation of student learning. Although not as immediate as twitter, with students signing in to the cross platform application, the effect of Edmodo has been staggering this year. 3.

Is the Internet Good for Writing? Part 1: Affirmative - Lingua Franca The science-fiction writer Theodore Sturgeon thought that 90 percent of everything was crap. Taking this side of the question is Clive Thompson, author of the new book Smarter Than You Think: How Technology Is Changing Our Minds for the Better. Thompson says he is “regularly astonished by the quality and length of expression I find online, the majority of which is done by amateurs in their spare time.” The length part, at least, is inarguable. Thompson, a journalist who has specialized in covering technology, asserts, “Before the Internet came along, most people rarely wrote anything at all for pleasure or intellectual satisfaction after graduating from high school or college.” Lord knows, most of those words are horrible, as Thompson readily acknowledges. But some substantial minority of amateur online writing—probably well below 10 percent—is pretty or very good, in a distinctly new way. The Internet is full of unexpected treasures that instruct and delight. Return to Top

It's Time to Disrupt the System - Getting Smart by Alison Anderson - For as long as I have been involved in education, the focus for finding the key to fixing education has always been about providing professional development for the teachers and administrators. The philosophy is top-down with the intent that knowledge will eventually trickle down to benefit the students. But, during one of the two ISTE Ignite sessions, I listened to the well respected “education disruptionist,” Will Richardson, sum up 19 of his bold beliefs about education in exactly five minutes. His five minutes were not just inspiring, but I heard it as a call to all educators to stop putting up road blocks and open up the classrooms and allow learning to become powerful and impact the world. There are so many things we are not doing right and, according to Mr. Richardson, we need to start asking “Why wouldn’t we…?” In the last few years, technology has invaded, like it or not, and the school experience is shifting faster than ever. It’s Time to Shift Our Focus

Classroom 2.0 Study: '21st Century Learning' Demands Mix of Abilities - Inside School Research The modern workplace and lifestyle demand that students balance cognitive, personal, and interpersonal abilities, but current education policy discussions have not defined those abilities well, according to a special report released this afternoon by the National Research Council of the National Academies of Science in Washington. A "who's who" team of experts from the National Academies' division of behavioral and social sciences and education and its boards on testing and on science education collaborated for more than a year on the report, intended to define just what researchers, educators, and policymakers mean when they talk about "deeper learning" and "21st-century skills." "Staying in school and completing degrees clearly have very strong effects," said James W. Pellegrino, a co-editor of the report and co-director of the Interdisciplinary Learning Sciences Research Institute at the University of Illinois in Chicago. Ms. Transfer in Context

Restyling the Classics: Don't Judge a New Cover by the Old Book - Jen Doll There's been a lot of talk about the new (book) edition of The Great Gatsby , with its movie tie-in cover that's been dubbed terrible by some and enticing by others. But there's a whole world of re-imagined book covers for classic novels well beyond those Leonardo Di Caprio editions of Gatsby . Take a look, for instance, at book designer Neil Gower 's new cover for the Penguin Classics Deluxe Edition of John O'Hara's Appointment in Samarra , which was released April 30. (It's the one in red, above, at right, next to the 1934 classic designed by Alfred Maurer.) There's no shame in redesigning a classic. From conversations with Bickford-Smith, Buckley, and Gower, here's how the designers make covers for the books you know and love new again. Finding Inspiration Through Drop Caps The Drop Caps series comprises 26 collectible hardcover editions of books authored by people from Jane Austen to (they're currently up to L ) Chang-Rae Lee. Nodding to the Original Want to add to this story?

July: The Ultimate Planning Period July is traditionally considered leisure time for educators and the educated -- teachers and students alike. Beaches and books, pools and picnics. And for good reason. The workload of any teacher or administrator can be difficult for those outside of education to fully appreciate. That said, there's a thin line between two months of respite and losing ground in your craft. Though it can be tempting to put the next school year off until last possible day, it doesn't have to be that way. While you likely have your own checklist for opening the school year, below are five ideas to help you stay on top of your game without completely spoiling the oasis of summer. 1) Review and Refine Instructional Design While classroom management, grading tips and collegial relationships get a lot of ink, instructional design is a teacher's real best friend. The school year itself is full of grading, reporting, refining and communication. 2) Verify Curriculum 3) Check-in with Your Digital PLN

44 Twitter Chat Tools For The Modern Teacher Twitter is one of the most powerful teacher professional development tools of the 21st century. The fact that that sentence is–as far as we can tell anyway–entirely true shows how much technology has changed everything. Imagine being told even just six years ago that in 2013 your best consistent source of diverse professional information would blogs and a stream of short messages in a bird-branded app on a screen you could hold in your lap. While we believe that it’s time to offer teachers professional development credit for their time invested here, that will likely time some paradigm shifts from district administrators and policy makers. For now, we can do the best we can with what we have.

The problem with 21st-century education Ever since 2000, educators and education reform folks have been quick to refer to “21st-century education.” For over a decade, this term has been used to describe the changing landscape for educators. What it has become is another one of the many catchphrases (e.g. “differentiation,” “rigor,” “personalized learning”) thrown around by educators, reformers and anyone, really, who feels they know enough about education to talk about it. But what do we really mean by “21st-century education?” Most people argue that we are at transitional time for education — that with the incredible rate at which technology is advancing and entering the classroom, and with the amount of information available at our students’ fingertips, educators need to change how they teach to best prepare students for the future. I have to wonder. Flipping the classroom One of the biggest trends right now is the flipped classroom model. Preparing students for the future As such, this is not a “21st-century” problem.

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