Your Face Scares Me: Understanding the Hyperrational Adolescent Brain. Take off your snarky hat. Adolescents get a bad rap, says Dr. Daniel Siegel, and he should know. He's a clinical professor of psychiatry at the UCLA School of Medicine, founding co-director of the Mindful Awareness Research Center, Distinguished Fellow of the American Psychiatric Association, Executive Director of the American Psychiatric Association, and author of many books, videos, and articles on the mind. Despite his endless awards and titles, Siegel displays in lectures the warm avuncularity of James Taylor in an off-the-rack suit as he urges parents and educators to stop viewing adolescence as a grim and crazed space that kids need to cross through quickly. Siegel’s recent and sobering book, Brainstorm: The Power and Purpose of the Teenage Brain, relies on recent neurobiology research to explain how the mind works during adolescence, the ages between 12 and 24.
Wait 90 Seconds Fact: The brain's emotional system is more active during adolescence than at any other stage of life. Design Thinking – an opportunity not to be missed! | From the very first moment an education institution begins the process of even thinking about the construction of a new space for learning, be that physical or digital, the process itself sets a course for potential error. It is with this very proposition that Ewan McIntosh from NoTosh begins the learning journey in a 14-week challenge to learn and engage with Designing Spaces for Learning, a new subject to be delivered by Ewan in the Master of Education (Knowledge Networks and Digital Innovation).
The biggest challenge for educators is not, in fact, understanding the technical skills of the digital or buildings architect. The biggest challenge is one of scope, of seeing the possible rather than seeking the “not possible” of budgets, building constraints and “real life”. In short: the challenge is learning to think like a designer, to think differently about the world around us, and recognise which elements of our expertise in other domains lend themselves to the design process. Evidence Of Racial, Gender Biases Found In Faculty Mentoring.
Research found faculty in academic departments linked to more lucrative professions are more likely to discriminate against women and minorities than faculty in fields linked to less lucrative jobs. Now, when preschoolers get to college, some will have professors who take sustained interest in guiding them. This often happens because a student reaches out for a mentor. Now let's hear how that time-honored process suffers from bias. Our colleague David Greene sat down with NPR's Shankar Vedantam. We should be clear of what we're talking about here. This is not professors who sort of help students acclimate to a university, give them directions. SHANKAR VEDANTAM, BYLINE: That's right, David. GREENE: And what's the bias you found? VEDANTAM: The bias has to do with how faculty seem to respond to these requests, David. Let me read you some of the names and you can tell if you can pick up a pattern.
GREENE: Mm-hmm. VEDANTAM: Brad Anderson. GREENE: It sounds like a diverse group. VEDANTAM: Yeah. Teaching Empathy: Turning a Lesson Plan into a Life Skill. Worried about the shrinking presence of empathy in our schools? I know how you feel. With classrooms operating more like grade factories, it's hard to make the case for school-driven empathy. Faced with an endless cycle of memorize, drill, spit back and test, teachers have become the wardens of a new educational reality that pits the head against the heart.
Even if educators manage to skate past the dizzying array of standards and value-added evaluations, they must still contend with this fundamental divide: academic rigor, with its unflinching emphasis on measurable success, seems strangely at odds with emotional intelligence, a soufflé of moods and feelings. For an unlikely accomplice, look no farther than tomorrow's lesson plan. Cooperative Learning: An Empathy Lever In cooperative learning, students work together, think together and plan together using a variety of group structures designed along an instructional path. The Jigsaw Classroom: Goals and Execution. Compass: Support and strengthen our public schools | National Columnists.
At the beginning of this century, not so long ago, my wife and I and three young daughters lived in the volatile country of Venezuela for three years. We taught in a private school surrounded by 10-foot walls and a security team that may have outnumbered the teachers. The campus was beautiful, and the education rivaled the schools I had taught in for 12 years in Alaska (Unalaska and Seward). The difference was that it was private, and the tuition was very steep. If you didn't have a spare $10,000 for each child, you sought out a long line of other private schools, and, barring that, dumped your child into the public system with 40 students in a class that met three times a week for a few hours. The teachers were undertrained and often not paid for months at a time.
This system of education produced a population incapable of voting a decent politician into office. SJR 9, introduced by Sen. In the last decade, our schools have been under attack. Free Online University Receives Accreditation, in Time for Graduating Class of 7. Just in time for its first graduates, the University of the People, a tuition-free four-year-old online institution built to reach underserved students around the world, announced Thursday that it had received accreditation. “This is every exciting, especially for the students who will graduate in April, with a degree from an accredited institution,” said Shai Reshef, the Israeli entrepreneur who invested millions of dollars to create the nonprofit university.
“This has been the big question for anyone who thought about enrolling. We have 1.2 million supporters on Facebook, I think second only to Harvard, and every day, there is discussion about when we will be accredited.” Now, with accreditation from the Distance Education and Training Council, a national accrediting group, Mr. Reshef said, the university will expand significantly. He expects to have 5,000 students by 2016. From the start, Mr. “We want to make sure that no student is left out for financial reasons,” Mr. MOOCs by the numbers: Where are we now? Whatever your opinion of them, you can’t deny that MOOCs have come a long way in the last few years. To help put the massive online courses into some perspective, Alex Cusack, a contributing writer at Moocs.com, a blog that covers news about MOOCs (edited by Zachary Davis, a producer for HarvardX, a spin-off of edX) shared this handy infographic. Cusack, a consultant in educational technology, regularly works with corporations and universities looking to design online education programs.
And he’s a MOOC alum himself; his own experience with the courses (he has variously started, completed and dropped out of classes offered by Coursera, edX, Udacity and Udemy) has informed his take on the topic. As he told me over the phone, he became drawn to MOOCs when he realized, “I could attend Stanford-level classes and get objective content at basically free or little cost.” So what did Cusack find surprising while researching the infographic? Feature: The Empowerment of Social Media (McLeod) Feature Pages 18-23 The Empowerment of Social Media Four Iowa school districts have moved beyond the usual fears to model creative applications in K-12 teaching and learning BY SCOTT McLEOD Here in Iowa, approximately half of our 340-plus school districts now have a 1:1 computing initiative.
But whether children in school are using laptops, netbooks, Chromebooks, iPads, Android tablets or even smartphones, most 1:1 schools in Iowa are trying to move beyond device and bandwidth concerns to focus on powerful student learning. A few examples: In the Van Meter Community schools west of Des Moines, elementary students have co-keynoted the worldwide K12 Online educational technology conference and used flipped-classroom strategies to teach older students and educators how to apply digital learning tools and use Facebook, Smore, Instagram and other online accounts to help out their school library and share their academic work. School Library Story. Lesson Plans and Resources for Arts Integration. Tips for downloading: PDF files can be viewed on a wide variety of platforms -- both as a browser plug-in or a stand-alone application -- with Adobe's free Acrobat Reader program.
Click here to download the latest version of Adobe Reader. Lesson Plans Sample arts-integration presentations, lesson plans, quizzes, and other documents from various teachers and classes at Bates Middle School. Back to Top Professional-Development Presentations Professional-development presentations provided by Pat Klos, arts-integration specialist for Anne Arundel County Public Schools in Annapolis, Maryland Arts-Integration Templates Blank templates for arts-integration documents used at Bates Middle School Additional Documents from Bates Middle School Maryland Department of Education Arts-Integration Glossary Glossary of arts-integration terms provided by Maryland's Department of Education Useful Websites on Arts Integration Bates Middle School - school's website.
Sage Advice: Students Teach Tech. Credit: Getty Images Everything. Rachel Horwitz Librarian McKinley Middle School Albuquerque, New Mexico My students have taught me quite a bit in the last six years. Chris Clementi Computer-applications teacher Mountain Ridge Middle School Colorado Springs, Colorado Last year, I had a student in my class for a couple of months visiting from Peru who spoke no English, and I speak no Spanish. Deb Putnam Art teacher Gate of Heaven School South Boston, Massachusetts Everything I've ever learned of significance about technology, I've learned from my students. What my students have taught me about technology has driven innovation in my district. Cheryl Davis District curriculum instruction Acalanes Union High School District Lafayette, California I've learned from my students that a digital native looks at problem solving in a different way than a digital immigrant.
To get a whole new perspective on problem solving, I suggest talking to a high school student. Richard Baim Adobe-certified instructor John Amato. Knowledge Networks in Education. Inside thenextweb.com Photo: thenextweb.com Also Can machine algorithms truly mimic the depths of human communication? Thenextweb.com Massive Security Bug In OpenSSL Could Affect A Huge Chunk Of The Internet techcrunch.com Google Keep OCR googlesystem.blogspot.ca googlesystem.blogspot.ca Google Keep has recently added a few new features. Sweeping Away a Search History nytimes.com / By MOLLY WOOD YOUR search history contains some of the most personal information you will ever reveal online: your health, mental state, interests, travel locations, fears and shopping habits. And that is information most people would want to keep private. The Importance of Innovation in Education—how can we help? | (written by Laurie Cowgill) The National AASL conference opened with a keynote address by Tony Wagner, Innovation Education Fellow at the Technology Entrepreneurship Center at Harvard University.
He expanded on his recent book, Creating Innovators: The Making of Young People Who Will Change the World. Wagner contends that public education is missing the mark for student success. He presented the information gleaned from his research on the skills that really translate into success for students. Some of the points that spoke to me were: It is not what we know, but how we use what we know that is important.How do we, as educators, identify what critical thinking looks like? And how do you create a performance standard for critical thinking? There are schools around the country that teach true innovation in education. Mr. Libraries are the perfect place to give students the freedom to pursue knowledge and understanding on their own terms. Interview with Educator Heidi Echternacht. Q: What do you say to educators who say they don’t have time to be more connected? Time is definitely a precious thing! An even less talked about consideration regarding connected education is ENERGY!
I may have some time, but by the end of the day, my energy is generally running below zero! It’s important for people to think about the on-the-job intensity of teaching in terms of “throwing an eight-hour birthday party for five, nine, or 14-year-olds at your house and including 20 -30 children, (your child’s class size)”–and then do it again tomorrow–and then do it again the next day in correlation with reading, writing and math standards, with an added backflip of integrating differentiated and personalized birthday party experiences for each child. On the other side, I would say that teachers, as exhausted and stretched as we are, are in need of friends, colleagues and people who know what we are going through. Early childhood folks are a particularly wonderful group of people. Resources and Downloads for Differentiated Instruction. Tips for downloading: PDF files can be viewed on a wide variety of platforms -- both as a browser plug-in or a stand-alone application -- with Adobe's free Acrobat Reader program.
Click here to download the latest version of Adobe Reader. Click on any title link below to view or download that file. Resources On This Page: Lesson Plans & Rubric - Reteach and Enrich Sample materials used to teach, assess, reteach, and enrich one week's fifth grade math objective: differentiating prime and composite numbers. Watch our video or read the article to learn more about Mesquite's Reteach & Enrich program. Back to Top Tools for Data Assessment Teachers at Mesquite meet weekly with the student achievement teacher to review the most recent assessment data and plan instruction for each student accordingly. 5th Grade Math Formative Assessment Tracking Sheet Sample spreadsheet used to track student performance on each objective. Culture Websites & Readings. Teacher Resources. The Library of Congress offers classroom materials and professional development to help teachers effectively use primary sources from the Library's vast digital collections in their teaching.
Find Library of Congress lesson plans and more that meet Common Core standards, state content standards, and the standards of national organizations. Discover and discuss ways to bring the power of Library of Congress primary sources into the classroom. Go to the blog Subscribe to the blog via e-mail or RSS. Using Primary Sources Discover quick and easy ways to begin using primary sources in your classroom, with teachers' guides, information on citing sources and copyright, and the Library's primary source analysis tool. TPS Partners The Teaching with Primary Sources Program builds partnerships with educational organizations to support effective instruction using primary sources. The Teaching with Primary Sources Journal.
Deciding Who Sees Students’ Data. Advice From Teachers to Parents | Pete Mason. Essential Tools - Copyright, Fair Use, and Plagiarism - LibGuides at Kent State University at Trumbull. The dumbest generation? No, Twitter is making kids smarter. Why are we teaching like it’s 1992? What’s the Difference Between OCWs and MOOCs? Managing Expectations. 20 Fundamentals: What Every Teacher Should Know About Learning.
Daphne Koller: What we're learning from online education. What the Jane Fonda Fitness Revolution Tells Us About Success in College | Robert Shireman. The High Cost of Low Teacher Salaries. Principal fires security guards to hire art teachers — and transforms elementary school.