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Teachers’ Most Powerful Role? Adding Context

Teachers’ Most Powerful Role? Adding Context
Lenny Gonzalez Part 3 in the series Learning In the New Economy of Information. By Shawn McCusker During a recent unit on World War II, Courtney Wilhelm’s U.S. History class conducted a leader’s conference. In classes where students connect ideas from the abstract to real-life events, the role of the teacher — as Wilhelm illustrates — moves from being a distributor of information to one of nurturing students as they collect, evaluate, and process information into unique learning products. For some, these changing roles might signal the end of an era where the teacher serves as a content expert. It’s here, in these seemingly disjointed moments, that the expertise of the teacher is crucial to uniting the class’s learning. In reality, however, the converse is true. And it’s here, in these seemingly disjointed moments, that the expertise of the teacher is crucial to uniting the class’s learning. Teacher as Conductor in the Classroom Orchestra Related

How Teaching Is Changing: 15 Examples How Teaching Is Changing: 15 New Realities Every Educator Faces by Terry Heick It’s tempting to say that no matter how much technology pushes on education, every teacher will always need to know iconic teacher practices like assessment, curriculum design, classroom management, and cognitive coaching. This may end up being true–how education changes in the next 20 years is a choice rather than the inevitable tidal wave of social and technological change it’s easy to sit back and wait for. But it’s probably going to be a bit different than that. We’ve written before about the kinds of “things” modern teachers must be able to do. (Hint: It’s no longer about classroom management, testing, and content delivery.) 1. The Old: Administer assessment, evaluate performance, report performance, then–maybe–make crude adjustments the best you can The New: Identifying, prioritizing, and evaluating data for each student individually–in real time The Difference: Precision 2. Summary Incredible, no? 3. 4. 5.

A School With No Teachers, Where Students Teach Themselves Big Ideas UTC Library/Flickr By Eleanor Beardsley, NPR A new computer school in Paris has been overwhelmed by some 60,000 applicants. The school, called 42, was founded by a telecom magnate who says the French education system is failing young people. His aim is to reduce France’s shortage in computer programmers while giving those who’ve fallen by the wayside a new chance. In the hallways of 42, suitcases and sleeping bags are piled, and people are stretched out on mattresses in some of the corners. Living here for the next month are some of the 4,000 potential students who already made the first cut by passing cognitive skill tests online. Now they have to clear another hurdle. A Demand For Thinkers From Any Class “It’s very, very intensive,” Sadirac says. The only criteria for applying is to be between the ages of 18 and 30. Sadirac says they’re not looking for how much students know, but how they think. “We don’t want to teach them stuff. A Different Way To Learn Related

Science Shows Making Lessons Relevant Really Matters Good news for good teachers: It turns out, the old drill-and-kill method is not only boring, but -- neurologically speaking -- pretty useless. Relevant, meaningful activities that both engage students emotionally and connect with what they already know are what help build neural connections and long-term memory storage (not to mention compelling classrooms). "Long lists of vocabulary words that don't have personal relevance or don't resonate with a topic about which the student has been engaged are likely to be blocked by the brain's affective (or emotional) filters," writes neurologist and former classroom teacher Judy Willis. Plus, says Willis, it's necessary for learners to attach a new piece of information to an old one, or it just won't stick. Give It Context, and Make It Count Studies published in the journals Nature; Science; and Mind, Brain, and Education support this idea, and a solid amount of research also links personal relevance and emotional engagement to memory storage.

11 Ways Schools Can Be Relevant, Compelling and Effective in the Coming Transformational Years Technology and innovation are accelerating rapidly outside education, but not rapidly enough inside education. To quote NAIS President Pat Basset, Schools which are not schools of the future will not be schools in the future. Like others, I am fascinated by pieces forecasting the coming changes in schooling, and I am inspired by their example to offer my own. Two that have been particularly intellectually intriguing and influential to me are Tom Vander Ark’s Ed Reformer post, The Pivot to Digital Learning: 40 Predictions, and Shelly Blake-Pollock’s post, 21 Things That Will Become Obsolete in Education by 2020. I should add too that my thinking is greatly informed by the Christensen and Horn’s Disrupting Class, US DOE’s Karen Cator’s NETP: National Education Technology Plan, the writings of Michael B. This particular list is intended to present eleven ways schools can continue to be relevant, compelling, attractive, and effective to both students and parents in the coming years. 1. 2. 3.

Alternatives To Homework: A Chart For Teachers Alternatives To Homework: A Chart For Teachers Part of rethinking learning means rethinking the bits and pieces of the learning process–teaching strategies, writing pieces, etc. Which is what makes the following chart from Kathleen Cushman’s Fires in the Mind compelling. Rather than simply a list of alternatives to homework, it instead contextualizes the need for work at home (or, “homework”). It does this by taking typical classroom situations–the introduction of new material, demonstrating a procedure, etc.), and offering alternatives to traditional homework assignments. In fact, most of them are alternatives to homework altogether, including group brainstorming, modeling/think-alouds, or even the iconic pop-quiz. Alternatives To Homework: A Chart For Teachers

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