Teacher as Farmer | Edutopia K-12 education is riding the leading edge of a wave of existential transition, the kind that comes once or a few times in several generations. It is not a “flavor of the month” shift in how we teach math or develop a new curriculum. It is much larger than that, on the order of the rise of universally accessible public education in the 19th century or desegregation of education in the 20th century. Since humankind first gathered around campfires hundreds of thousands of years ago, education has largely been defined as the transfer of knowledge from a teacher to a student. The system did not fail to meet its objectives. The two key elements of a radically different world that impact education are 1) access to information, and 2) the rate of change. These arguments resonate with an increasingly large and diverse cohort of educators, parents, and students. Many educational communities have tried to shift their model from teacher as “sage on the stage” to teacher as “guide on the side”.
40 Free Resources Every Designer Should Know Ever wondered where designers get their resources to help them succeed with a project? Here is a list of great resources including sites, PSD. files, actions, UI elements, mock ups et cetera and best of all, they are totally free and available for you to download. Just click on the title or image and it will bring you to the resource. Bookmark this post so that you can always look back at this great list that can help you succeed. Icons for your website, an iPhone mock up or PSD’s for your landing page, Fribbble is the place to be. Many of us struggle when posting a project at Behance. Another great site to get free PSD files, blurred background or UI elements. Struggling to get the perfect colour combination? A great site where you can download free stock images. In need of some high quality patterns? Lets you design a website, for free, without code. Guides can be a pain in the ass when it comes down to web design, here is a simple solution for you! Love this site!
Why Twitter Will Never Connect All Educators. | My Island View If there is one thing I truly understand about educators it is that they are slow to change. It might be from decades of people jumping in with the “latest and greatest” answer to a better way to do things in education, or some legislative mandate to fix it all through legislation, only to find it to fizzle out and fall way short when actually implemented. If teachers learned one thing from these experiences it is that, if you wait and ride it out long enough, all of these initiatives will all go away. The problem however is that many educators want to apply this sit and wait posture to anything that requires them leaving their zones of comfort. The mindset of a 20th Century educator is very comfortable for most educators since they were trained for the most part by 20th century educators. The gap however, between 20th Century educators and 21st Century learners, is now beginning to widen at a much faster rate. If students need info, they can Google it. Like this: Like Loading...
9 Design tips to give your book a professional finish 87 Flares Twitter 64 Tweet Facebook 15 Google+ 5 Pin It Share 3 3 87 Flares × Cathy Hunt, of iPad Art Room, is here to provide some effective design principles for making ebooks with Book Creator. A passionate advocate for the arts in education, Cathy Hunt is always keen to share her knowledge and experiences from her own classroom and beyond. She is the teacher behind iPadartroom.com, a site full of resources for educators looking to leverage mobile devices for creativity. In her spare time(!) Many people know how to write a great story. In a media-rich world, visual literacy is increasingly important. By thinking about a few key principles of design as you construct your work, you can develop the tools you need to create beautiful books. A teacher’s perspective… As educators, we’ve all seen those books that feature rainbow backgrounds, neon fonts and images angled across the page! Cathy Hunt’s iPad Art book (made with iBooks Author) has a consistent visual theme throughout. 1. 2. 3. 4. 5.
My Ideal School (But Where’s the Technology?) Recently, I made a list of what I think my perfect school would look like. As I began developing the list, I was struck by two things: Firstly, how most of it was about making school more student-centered, and secondly, that I didn't mention technology once. For me, this second trend bears a little more fleshing out. I would never say that there is no place for technology in education, far from it… But I think the place of technology is to support a more student-focused, relevant and engaging methodology. The specific technologies will change and evolve, but once a school has reliable and fast Internet connectivity, other technologies can grow around it. Finally, some of these ideas you will recognise as eminating from leading education gurus such as Sir Ken Robinson. The perfect school: The primary focus is on tinkering, experimenting, problem-solving and making mistakes, rather than getting content into heads. Don't forget to look me up on Twitter:
There Are Hidden Messages in These 40 Famous Logos: How Many Can You Find? Via Hubspot This post originally appeared on The Agency Post. To read more content like this, subscribe to The Agency Post. You’ve seen the logo thousands of times. But do you know what’s hidden within those iconic logos you think you are so familiar with? The infographic below shows 40 brand logos and the little-known messages their creators cleverly hid within the image. Like what you see?
Take aim at innovation, with students in the center In September 2012, I packed up my Prius, left my patient wife, and drove around the United States for 89 days and 10,000 miles visiting 64 schools of every flavor and size to find out how they are preparing students for a rapidly changing world. I asked questions and recorded learning with more than 600 teachers, administrators and students. In setting up the complex matrix of this trip, many of my hosts asked, “What would you like to see when you are here?” As others have said, technology in learning should be as ubiquitous as air, and there is nothing innovative about students and teachers breathing. Technology is not innovation Nearly every school I visited was doing something dramatically different than they were just a few years ago. What would Dewey do? During my TEDx talk in February 2013, I defined innovation as “preparing students for their futures, not for our past.” Flipping the classroom is not enough But what if we really flipped learning? Passion, engagement, experience
1001freedownloads: The Best Free Resources From Around The Internet Toolkits Designers are always looking for free resources from both a time-saving point of view and an artistic point of view, so today we are reviewing a site that rounds up the best free resources that the web has to offer and puts them in one place for your convenience. 1001freedownloads in itself will save you time, then the resources they promote will save you even more time – and that is not to be sneezed at! With a range of categories such as Vectors, Photos, Icons, Brushes and Clipart, you can find a lot of the stuff you want and need right there. 1001freedownloads also produce exclusive content which can only be found on its site. 1001freedownloads Here is a short quote from the 1001freedownloads About page: 'Our site makes it easy and fun to seach and find the graphics you need in a quick and easy to use platform. Here is a quick look at some of the freebies they currently have to offer: Geometric Illustration A nice background with a purple geometric illustration. Font: Sounds Good
It’s About Learning - Reggio-Inspired Visible Learners focuses on how we can make deep learning experiences visible for high school students and adult learners. It is inspired by the Reggio Emilia pedagogy of listening and relationships, and grounded in the philosophy of children as capable and powerful, rather than unskilled and passive. The two key principles are group learning and documentation. Group Learning Group learning experiences enable students to problem-solve, create, encounter new perspectives, and build collective understanding. Teachers can facilitate powerful group learning by: • Designing tasks that are group-worthy and focus on meaningful topics. Documentation The core of documentation is observing. In classrooms that make learning visible, the practice of documentation has several distinct features: Students develop greater attentiveness to the value of remembering pivotal experiences when recording them is part of the classroom culture. Conclusion
Toolset, Skillset, Mindset Over the last few years I have developed three different lenses through which to see any creative inquiry process. When we are facilitating or planning with clients, schools and teachers we explicitly talk about our Toolset, Skillset and our Mindset. The design thinking process has distinct phases and although we may well be seeking to developing an overarching capacity it has always been helpful to be a little more specific about what this actually means. Sometimes it can seem a little fluffy around the edges. When we link Toolset, Skillset and Mindset to a particular phase of design thinking inquiry it becomes much clearer what is expected. This intentionality is wired into each of the different lenses helping to clarify to those involved what tools are involved, what skills are likely to be required and what mindset is needed. Below is a good set of definitions which helped me better understand their relevance to my work with design thinking and creative inquiry:
Finland schools: Subjects are out and ‘topics’ are in as country reforms its education system - Europe For years, Finland has been the by-word for a successful education system, perched at the top of international league tables for literacy and numeracy. Only far eastern countries such as Singapore and China outperform the Nordic nation in the influential Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) rankings. Politicians and education experts from around the world – including the UK – have made pilgrimages to Helsinki in the hope of identifying and replicating the secret of its success. Which makes it all the more remarkable that Finland is about to embark on one of the most radical education reform programmes ever undertaken by a nation state – scrapping traditional “teaching by subject” in favour of “teaching by topic”. “This is going to be a big change in education in Finland that we’re just beginning,” said Liisa Pohjolainen, who is in charge of youth and adult education in Helsinki – the capital city at the forefront of the reform programme. School lunches around the world
23 Inspiring Mac Related Websites A while back we showcased lists of Inspiring iPhone App Sites, iPad App Sites and other Mac Related sites. Since almost every Mac related app seems to really embrace the “Mac syle of design” and deliver beautiful websites, we decided to gather a new list to show here. From inspiring textures, backgrounds, patterns, typography, image galleries and minimalistic layouts, there are a lot of nice designs here to keep you inspired. Cheddar Cheddar keeps your world organized. Spell Tower A game of words. Paper Paper is where ideas begin. layer cake Bye bye, “Save for Web/Devices”. droplr Droplr is the easiest and best way to share files, large and small, over the internet. Wunderkit Another project shouldn’t require another place to organize it, it’s about time you had a home for everything. The Cocktail App With this app you will look on cocktails from a completely new angle. Showcase Your own portfolio on the go! Gradient Gradient streamlines the creation of CSS3 Gradients. Sipp Iris Flight Card popset
Christchurch Connected Educators: Choose to be More at Clarkville What’s it taken to CHOOSE TO BE MORE at Clarkville? From Pene Abbie, Principal, Clarkville School We are a small, semi-rural school on the outskirts of Christchurch, people used to say they wanted to send their children to our place because of this – being small and rural! It seemed that these two traits immediately determined a culture of great learning. Those of us on the inside knew it took more than this and we have spent the last seven years “reshaping our learning culture.” So what does this mean – and why, if our learners are doing pretty well, would we want to do anything differently? The process of reshaping the learning at Clarkville has required deep scrutiny of all we believe about great learning and all we know about great teaching. The result of this thinking and dissecting and inquiring has been to firmly place the learner at the centre of all we do, be and understand. So what do we believe? We will be people who know what to do when we don’t know what to do • lead by anyone
8 Things to Look For in Today’s Classroom As I think that leaders should be able to describe what they are looking for in schools I have thought of eight things that I really want to see in today’s classroom. I really believe that classrooms need to be learner focused. This is not simply that students are creating but that they are also having opportunities to follow their interests and explore passions.1 The teacher should embody learning as well. Will Richardson recently wrote this in a comment on one of my recent posts on what teachers need to be like in our current day and the focus that needs to be on learning: …we need teachers who are masters at developing kids as learners who are adept at sense making around their own goals. Although technology is not the focus, it does give us many opportunities to magnify the opportunities I list below. 1. Finally, let’s start to really tap into the wisdom of our rooms and have students not only learn, but teach each other. What I have missed?