10 Expectations

Teachers learning about and with ICT as collaborative design Twenty years ago already “CERN announced that the World Wide Web would be free to anyone, with no fees due” (Wikipedia) and since then I, as many educators and educational researchers, have been observing and participating in the phenomenal changes that occurred in the way we work, learn, and play. Perhaps now is a good time to reflect on what has changed so far, and what we are prepared to make happen next in term of digital literacy for teachers. The participatory nature of the web is the first feature that comes to mind, at least in my case. The key concept in all these initiatives is collaborative design. More recently I have started using the term practice shift to describe the gradual change (as opposed to radical) that can be observed as teachers appropriate digital tools in support of learning, both their own learning and that of their students.

Mind your language – a language based approach to pedagogy As the chap heading up Literacy at my school, I’ve been doing a lot of reading and thinking around the subject over the past year. I’ve become particularly interested in the need for oral language to develop written language and have been working with subject leaders to determine how students can think, speak and write like subject specialists. Kelly Hawkins, the head of Art at Clevedon School, has been getting her students to ‘think like artists’ for some time and it seemed a natural extension to work with teachers to encourage students to speak like geographers and write like scientists. I’ve written about some of my ideas on oracy here. But reading about the work of Lee Donaghy at Park View School in Birmingham has highlighted not only that I’m on the right track but just how much further I have to go. His first post is simply called Theory. The second post is imaginatively titled More Theory, but don’t let that put you off.. Lee then goes on to discuss Genre Pedagogy. Related posts

Assessment and Feedback Topics The Assessment Practice Topic pages provide background information on widely discussed aspects of assessment and feedback. Each page gives a summary of what is important about the topic, explores what we already know about the relationship between the topic and technology, and offers links to other sources of information with alerts about which projects in the Jisc Assessment and Feedback Programme have resources and findings to contribute in that area. A further set of pages draws out discussion points that have arisen as the programme evolved. These pages surface salient new ideas plus advances in technology that have emerged from the work of the projects to complement the more widely focused Topic pages. Please note that information may change from time to time in the light of significant new thinking, for example when further evidence and resources from the projects enter the public domain. Related Pages Transforming Assessment and Feedback (home page)

12 Things Teachers Must Know About Learning 12 Things Teachers Must Know About Learning By Bill Page closeAuthor: Bill Page Name: Bill PageSite: About Bill Page ... Bill Page, a farm boy, graduated from a one-room school. He forged a career in the classroom teaching middle school “troublemakers.” For the past 26 years, in addition to his classroom duties, he has taught teachers across the nation to teach the lowest achieving students successfully with his proven premise, “Failure is the choice and fault of schools, not the students.” Bill Page is a classroom teacher. Bill Page’s book, At-Risk Students; Feeling Their Pain is available through his web site www.billpageteacher.com, or through Amazon.com. In the midst of the worldwide psycho-neurological revolution, knowledge about the brain and learning is exploding. 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10. 11. 12. 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. With joy in sharing, At-Risk Students:

The proposed exceptions to copyright law offer greater flexibility to teaching and research activities Changes are afoot for how copyright laws apply to higher education settings. Emily Goodhand provides clarification on the recently announced proposed exceptions to copyright law, which are widely welcomed by the user community for bringing copyright law in line with current HE practices. Teaching and research activities such as the use of print extracts, digital text-mining and distance-learning media sharing seek to benefit from copyright clarification and flexibility. 2013 is a momentous year for UK copyright law. Image credit: Horia Varlan (CC-BY) Proposed Education Exceptions: Teaching The most radical overhaul to the education section of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act is the section on instruction (teaching) and examination. Distance Learning Distance learning is covered by a separate exception. Impact? These exceptions certainly allow for more flexibility in learning styles, content and delivery, but they are unlikely to radically alter current teaching practices.

Leading Innovation = Vulnerability | Inspiring Minds I am excited about the future of education in our province. The new Ministerial Order on student learning and the work taking place around Inspiring Education and Curriculum Redesign means that our schools will see us focusing on helping our students develop these competencies: This transformation of education will require courageous leaders in classrooms, schools, and districts who are ready to do things differently, explore new possibilities and risk making mistakes – not an easy thing to do in the world of public education. However, leading change, growth and innovation require that we step out of our safe, comfortable traditions and recognize that we need to be vulnerable in order to learn and grow together. In his book Tribes: We Need You to Lead Us, Seth Godin writes, Leadership is scarce because few people are willing to go through the discomfort required to lead. Where there is no feedback, there is no transformative change.

Improving Learner Motivation for eLearning Motivation has been and continues to be a widely studied area across many of life’s domains. Motivation is the energising force that initiates and sustains behaviour and ultimately produces results. Many motivation theories focus on the amount of motivation, with a larger quantity said to result in improved outcomes. Self-determination theory (SDT), an empirical theory of motivation by Edward Deci and Richard Ryan, focuses on the degree in which behaviour is self-motivated and self-determined. Ryan and Deci, 2000. Organismic Integration Theory (OIT), a sub-theory of SDT, places the four types of extrinsic motivation along a continuum of relative autonomy, depending on the level of control or autonomy. How can we help learners to internalise their motivation? SDT proposes that all humans require the satisfaction of three basic psychological needs, namely: What do these support strategies look like in practice? Autonomy: Competence: Relatedness: References: Deci, E. Kapp, K. Niemiec, C.

We Need to Educate to Create New Knowledge | In Their Own Words Education is a system that was designed over 100 years ago and it's completely antiquated and outdated for what we need to do today. Sir Ken Robinson does a great job of reminding us that in the old days, during the Industrial Revolution, the bell would ring and you would move from one workstation to another workstation. You would sit and you would absorb and have to regurgitate what you learned. That's the way schools are today, even though on search the information is instantly there. The notion that you should have to memorize it is antiquated. The issue is learning the best questions to ask and learning how to interact once you have the knowledge to create new knowledge. So there is a revolution in education that's upon us, it just hasn't happened yet. Either way we can see in the next 10 years a real transformation in how we educate. In Their Own Words is recorded in Big Think's studio. Image courtesy of Shutterstock

Why online teaching requires rigorous training (Mary Burns Mary Burns, Education Development Center (All references appear in above link) December 18, 2013 I am presently working in South America—a continent of gente amable, stunning vistas, and an exploding online learning environment. One impression continues to nag at me from these conversations — there seems to be a lack of concern for preparing instructors to teach online. But if a great teacher is to the classroom what Fred Astaire was to dancing, then an online teacher must be even better because teaching online is far more challenging than teaching face-to-face. Like Ginger Rogers, the online teacher has to do everything Astaire does—but backwards and in high heels (By the way, if you are not up on Fred and Ginger, click here). Online learning goes global This is no longer just a wealthy or middle-income country concern. Good Teachers Matter Backwards and in High Heels Notes Like this:

Student engagement in online content-based lear The Manifesto | Serious eLearning Manifesto We believe that learning technology offers the possibility for creating uniquely valuable learning experiences. We also believe, with a sense of sadness and profound frustration, that most elearning fails to live up to its promise. We further believe that current trends evoke a future of only negligible improvement in elearning design—unless something radical is done to bend the curve. Finally, we have concluded that in order to elevate elearning to the height of its promise, we need to begin with a personal commitment to a new set of standards. Through continuous assessment of learner performance, the elearning experience can optimize use of the learner’s time, individualize the experience for full engagement, address needs, optimize practice, and prepare for transfer of learning to performance proficiency. Supporting Principles Do Not Assume that Learning is the Solution We do not assume that a learning intervention is always the best means to helping people perform better.

Language learning: what motivates us? "Where's your name from?" I wasn't expecting to be the subject of my interview with John Schumann, but the linguistics professor had picked up on my Persian surname. Talking to me from California, where he is one of the world's leading academic voices on language learning, he effortlessly puts my own Farsi to shame. Schumann learned Farsi in Iran, where he was director of the country's Peace Corps Teaching English as a Second Language (TESL) programme. Shumann's work and that of his colleagues in UCLA's Neurobiology of Language Research Group, is concerned with the processes that happen within the brain when we learn a language. In 2009, Schumann published The Interactional Instinct: The Evolution and Acquisition of Language. "We've developed a theory called 'the interactional instinct'," Schumann says. Could this interactional instinct, then, be the key to learning additional languages? Native English speakers continue to be notoriously bad at mastering foreign languages.