News & Events Events run from September 2013 through the Winter of 2014 Headline Events: Celebrating Girl Day: Engineering and EdTech: The Essential Elements Webinar On February 20, Education Elements celebrated Girl Day (part of Engineering Week) with a webinar for girls who were interested in learning more about what it takes to be an engineer. They heard from our team about what makes it fun, what makes it hard, and what you can need to learn now to be successful later! Education Elements Celebrates Digital Learning Day On February 5th, Education Elements’ students and teachers shared what they like about blended learning and how it impacts them. Check out a few highlights from 2013 Personalized Learning Tour 20 major cities across the United StatesTourThis year, Education Elements is embarking on an ambitious journey to raise awareness of the benefits and complexities of personalizing classroom learning. Back to Top Ted Mitchell Ted Mitchell is president and CEO of the NewSchools Venture Fund. Neil Kole
NewSchools Venture Fund: A non-profit venture philanthropy firm working to transform public education for low-income children Web 2.0 Collaborative Projects in the Middle School I am the library media specialist for my school and part of my job is to assist my faculty with the integration of technology in the curriculum. As such, I am always searching for new ideas to use in collaborating with my classroom teachers. Showcased below are a few of the Web 2.0 tools I have used with classes along with details of specific projects I have helped students to produce. Cacoo is a free online diagraming tool which allows real-time collaboration. My Observations: Teaching the kids how to use the program took half a class period as students caught on very quickly. Weebly is a free site which allows users to create websites and blogs using widgets. The Project:After studying all year about New York City, our 8th grade gifted groups take a five-day guided bus tour to the Big Apple. My Observations: Teaching classes to use Weebly took one class period and required mini-sessions during the week-long project for some reteaching of the multimedia and blog sidebar items.
Blending Math Instruction for Elementary Grades. Reading on a Kindle or iPad is NOT Reading … So, They Say … Maybe it is Better Reading on a Kindle or iPad is NOT Reading ... So, They Say ... Maybe it is Better In his book, I Can Read With My Eyes Shut! Dr. While all reports indicate that daily media use among children and teens is mushrooming, reading printed books has remained constant at about 25 minutes per day. At this point I would venture to guess that you are shaking your head in astonishment at my audacity to assert that any type of reading is reading. But should the act of reading be confined to an individualized, sedentary, solitary activity? Carr argues that the "words of books are extracted from the printed page and embedded in the computer's ecology of interruption technologies." I bought a Kindle when they first came out in late 2007 (yes, that's right, the Kindle is only two and a half years old!)
How to implement studio teaching? Philosophy Studio teaching is not just another kind of classroom activity. It is not a lab session, nor is it just a series of class projects. It is an approach to teaching and learning that gets students actively engaged in directing their own learning. The goal of studio teaching is to get students to be active learners -- to let them "invent" their own knowledge. Instructors serve as guides or mentors, helping when needed and avoiding whenever possible taking the lead role. Strategy A key to studio teaching is to develop a collection of exercises/projects that will provide the focus for learning throughout the semester. In studio classrooms, just as in all classrooms that emphasize active learning, the amount of material delivered by lecture is less than in a traditional lecture class. As much as possible, the goal is to distribute assignments and then stand aside while students do their learning. Group activities lead to individual learning/development
Shock the System | Startl SCALE-UP Site The Comprehensive Math Assessment Resource Due to time constraints in my corner of the world (school started a week ago) I’m gonna have to shelve my typically softspoken online persona and get straight to it. If you’d like to see assessment amount to more than a meaningless exercise in classroom control, if you’d like to see cheating drop and confidence rise, if you’d like to see a higher correlation between the grade you feel a student deserves and the grade on that student’s transcript … … take something from this page. How Things Used To Be Textbook manufacturers directed assessment, issuing lengthy tests at the end of their chapters, tests long enough to both intimidate students and make their percent grade totally indescriptive of what they know and don’t know. How Things Are In My Classes Learning directs assessment. The Timeline You teach.As you teach, you try to sense when you’ve hit the end of a self-terminating skill. The Handouts Frequently Asked Questions Don’t students try to game the signature/stamp process? Earlier Posts
MeTA musings TEACHING|chemistry Podcast217: Making the Case for Blended Learning <div class="greet_block wpgb_cornered"><div class="greet_text"><div class="greet_image"><a href=" rel="nofollow"><img src=" alt="WP Greet Box icon"/></a></div>Hello there! If you are new here, you might want to <a href=" rel="nofollow"><strong>subscribe to the RSS feed</strong></a> for updates on this topic.<div style="clear:both"></div></div></div> This podcast is a recording of a thirty minute skype connection I made to GT teachers in Ector County Schools, Odessa, Texas, on January 18, 2008. The focus of my presentation was making the case for using and supporting blended learning tools and learning methodologies in the 21st century classroom. [display_podcast] Show Notes: Subscribe to “Moving at the Speed of Creativity” weekly podcasts! On this day..
Teaching with Technology Today: Volume 8, Number 6 This article reports on the most significant observations from the Hybrid Course Project and provides "Lessons Learned" about hybrid course design and teaching for: For an overview and more general information about the project and hybrid courses, see Carla Garnham and Robert Kaleta, Introduction to Hybrid Courses, in this issue of TTT. Seventeen instructors from five University of Wisconsin (UW) campuses, representing disciplines from the humanities, social sciences, engineering, and professions, participated in the Hybrid Course Project by transforming a traditional course into a hybrid course. Throughout the project, project coordinators developed assessment protocols to capture insights into the hybrid course design process. Lesson #1: There is no standard approach to a hybrid course. The power of the hybrid course model is its flexibility and its pedagogical effectiveness.