Preparing Teachers for Deeper Learning - Getting Smart by Getting Smart Staff - Assessment, CCSS, Competency-based learning, deeper learning, education, learning, teachers Today Digital Promise and Getting Smart released “Preparing Teachers for Deeper Learning: Competency-Based Teacher Preparation and Development.” This white paper outlines the attributes of next-generation teacher preparation and makes recommendations to support the development of teacher preparation and development systems. Co-authored by Getting Smart’s Tom Vander Ark and Dr. Carri Schneider with Karen Cator, President and CEO of Digital Promise, the paper outlines how the role of teachers is changing amid broader shifts to personalized, blended, and deeper learning. Some element of teacher control over time, place, path and/or pace;Balance between teacher-defined goals, goals as defined by administration through teacher evaluation efforts, and school and district educational goals;Job-embedded and meaningful integration into classroom practice; andCompetency-based progression. For more information, download the paper. The full press release is copied below.
How to Design an Online Course Infographic e-Learning Infographics The How to Design an Online Course Infographic outlines some of the key components to creating an online course. Naturally, not every item is an absolute necessary (many of which will depend on your needs), but they all do provide value for your online courses. More than ever, it is important that you encourage online interaction and feedback mechanisms for the students in the online courses. Here are 5 Tips to Add Interaction to Your Training Courses. Some platforms make this easier than others, so make sure you do ample research as you select the best one for your situation. With the “bones” (software) in place, you can then begin the fun part: finding content for your course. In the Awesome e-Learning Course Guide you will find the top 10 tips for creating e-Learning courses that are effective, engaging, and immersive. Via: www.mindflash.com Embed This Education Infographic on your Site or Blog!
21 Ways to Check for Student Understanding Top 200 Special Education Apps As a reader of this blog, you might have noticed that Educational Technology and Mobile Learning has a particular focus on the use of iPad in education other than any other tablet in the market.We do in fact love other tablets especially Motorolla Xoom, Samsung GalaxyTab 10.1, and LG Optimus tablet and we do believe they have a promising potential in education as well but for now it seems that iPad is leading the mobile learning revolution. This is probably due to the kind of investment Apple is having in education. The folks in Apple have taken the issue seriously and they are intent on monopolizing the educational market. That being told, practitioners and teachers who are trying to implement iPad in their instruction find it hard to sift through the clogged-up apps market. Check it out and share with us your suggestions iPhone, iPad and iPod touch Apps for (Special) Education source : edudemic
Excellent Tool to Create Rubrics for Your Class November, 2014 Rubistar is a great free web tool that teachers can use to create educational rubrics to use in class. By definition, a rubric according to Geidi Andrade, is "a document that articulates the expectations for an assignment by listening the criteria, or what counts, and describing levels of quality from excellent to poor". As a teacher you can create rubrics and use them for a variety of purposes. These include: grading students assignments, providing focused feedback on works in progress, preparing lesson plans and many more. " Rubrics can teach as well as evaluate. When used as part of a formative, student centered approach to assessment, rubrics have the potential to help students develop understanding and skill, as well as make dependable judgments about the quality of their own work. Rubistar is very simple and easy to use.
Five Good Online Tools for Creating Infographics In my previous post shared some advice from Randy Krum, author of Cool Infographics, about creating infographics. In his book Randy devotes a chapter to design tools. Many of the tools used by professional designers cost hundreds or thousands of dollars. Infogr.am is an online tool for creating interactive charts, graphs, and interactive infographic posters. Easel.ly provides a canvas on which you can build your own infographic by dragging and dropping pre-made design elements. Piktochart provides seven free infographic templates. EWC Presenter is a new tool from Easy Web Content (a website creation and hosting service). Canva is a service that makes it easy to create beautiful slides, flyers, posters, infographics, and photo collages.
24 Questions to Enhance Students Reflective and Critical Thinking Skills August 31, 2014 Reflection is a fundamental skill from which is branched out all other thinking skills. Reflection is a form of meta-thinking, a process of deep contemplation and pondering. It is also the basis of critical thinking for we can not raise critical thinkers if we do not have good 'reflectors'. When students are taught the art of reflecting, they become independent learners who are engaged in a constant process of assessment and re-assessment of their learning needs and strategies. Reflection is all about questioning. To cultivate a reflective culture within your class, students need to be encouraged to pose challenging questions as to the way they learn and think. Check the full graphic from this page.
4 herramientas para enseñar a programar vídeojuegos en el aula Me llamo Javier Gómez Torres (@javigoto), mi formación es la de Maestro, en la especialidad de educación Primaria, y la de Psicopedagogo en la especialidad de educación especial. Imparto docencia de Tecnología en el colegio SEK Santa Isabel a alumnos de altas capacidades. Al mismo tiempo, compagino este trabajo con otro en el Grupo SM, como coordinador de encargos digitales, elaborando materiales didácticos para ser utilizados en el ordenador, tabletas, etc. Llevo más de quince años (que se dice pronto) enseñando tecnología a alumnos con altas capacidades intelectuales. Decir esto, en un país en el que la ayuda que reciben estos alumnos dentro del aula ordinaria es prácticamente inexistente, viene a ser lo mismo que decir que llevo más de quince años peleándome y buscando información en muchos foros extranjeros para descubrir programas con los que poder ofrecer la mejor ayuda a estos alumnos. En fin, espero que os animéis a utilizar estas aplicaciones con vuestros alumnos.
Focus on portfolios: 4 advantages of alternative assessment I’m happy to say that my school is currently dipping its toes into alternative assessment in the form of writing portfolios. Although I’m a big fan, it is the norm to view portfolios as a ‘non-traditional’ approach to judging performance. Nevertheless, portfolios, and alternative assessment methods in general, are frequently used in education to evaluate students based on objectives tailored to their learning needs. ‘Path by the river’ by @ALiCe__M from ELTPics 1. The portfolio process reviews a comparatively large body of a learner’s work, rather than a one off performance, to evaluate performance over a course of study. In ELT, research indicates that the portfolio process is beneficial when compared to traditional assessment, because its emphasis is on learners’ strengths as opposed to their weaknesses. 2. Unlike traditional testing methods, alternative assessment techniques are in general performance-based reviews that focus on real-world tasks to display ability. 3. 4. A few links
The 4 Apps Needed To Run A One iPad Classroom If you don’t have the luxury of a 1:1 classroom or even a 10:1 classroom then you might want to sit down. I have some seriously shocking news that you might not be adequately ready to hear. Ready? Sitting? Here goes: you only need one iPad to have an effective connected classroom. Wait, that wasn’t even the big one. You only need four apps to run a one iPad classroom. The idea is simple. As you can see, it’s quite easy to integrate these apps into one cohesive flow. Next, start getting familiar with your newest friend, Evernote.
10 Interactive Lessons By Google On Digital Citizenship YouTube has a firm place in the current classroom. From Khan Academy’s videos to YouTube EDU and beyond, there’s a reason all these videos are finding a home in schools. In an effort to help keep the ball rolling, Google just launched a set of 10 interactive lessons designed to support teachers in educating students on digital citizenship. Google (which owns YouTube) built the lessons to educate students about YouTube’s policies, how to flag content, how to be a safer online citizen, and protect their identities. Below is a list of lessons, and the recommended flow for delivery. Or you can download the Full Teacher’s Guide or the Full Set of Slides in PDF. The killer feature for this curriculum is the extra features that come with each video.
The Best Free Education Web Tools Of 2013 There’s a wealth of education related web tools out there that can make your life easier and turn your computer, phone, and/or tablet into a teaching and learning powerhouse. But because there are SO many tools out there, selecting the best ones can turn into a full time job. Downloading a ton of apps, researching, and testing different web tools can take hours – hours that you probably don’t have if you’re busy teaching and having a life. Thankfully, the folks over at Edublogs have put together this great List.ly that is filled to the brim with the best education tools, and the best part is that they’re all free! Check them out in the list below.
7 Pillars Of Digital Leadership In Education 7 Pillars Of Digital Leadership In Education by Eric Sheninger, Principal at New Milford High School in New Jersey As schools change leadership must as well. With society becoming more and more reliant on technology it is incumbent upon leaders to harness the power of digital technologies in order to create school cultures that are transparent, relevant, meaningful, engaging, and inspiring. In order to set the stage for increasing achievement and to establish a greater sense of community pride for the work being done in our schools, we must begin to change the way we lead. Once the fears and misconceptions are placed on the table, leaders can begin to establish a vision for the effective use of technology to improve numerous facets of leadership. The end result will be sustainable change in programs, instruction, behaviors, and leadership practices with technology as a pivotal element. From my work I have identified what I call the Pillars of Digital Leadership. 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7.
40+ Places to Find Educational Apps for Your Class One of the questions I often get asked by readers of this blog concerns the resources I draw on to curate the educational apps I share with you. App curation and reviewing is a time consuming task and unless you want to start up a blog to share apps I don't think you will need as many resources as I use myself. I follow the feeds of more than 200 blogs and have to spend hours sifting through piles and piles of apps but I really enjoy it not only because it is part of my daily work but the sense of exploring and discovering new tools and getting to learn how these new discoveries could be used for educational purposes provides me with a deep sense of gratification. That being said, and for those of you keen on learning about and keeping updated on new releases of educational iPad apps to use with your students in class, the list below will definitely serve the purpose. It features some of the tops app sharing platforms out there.