Seeing Students As Co-Collaborators The traditional model of education is hierarchal, with organizations and administrators of learning on top and students and their families receiving the learning somewhere below. While this made sense in the past when public education–inclusive systems of public education at that—were still finding their way, there is little excuse for such a workflow as we approach 2013. Embedded in this simple pattern are troubling implications that sabotage learning processes from the beginning. In informal and as they occur learning circumstances, the concept of power and currency is highly dynamic, constantly shifting based on context. If you are researching for the best fix for a leaking roof or an injured lower back, you might seek experts, or demonstrated expertise. In these situations, you are constantly evaluating information and re-contextualizing it—understanding what you hear or read, and seeing how it makes sense to the specifics of your situation. But what would be the benefits if it did?
For Low-Income Kids, Is More Time in School the Answer? To help disadvantaged kids who are struggling to keep up in school, some education advocates believe that extending the school day could give them the extra boost they need. They argue that many parents can’t afford to send their kids to the varied extracurricular activities that wealthier children enjoy – leaving poorer kids with a sparse education that focuses primarily on testing. On that premise, five states recently announced that select school districts will participate in a three-year extended time pilot project funded with a mix of federal, state and district funds, along with private philanthropy from the Ford Foundation and National Center on Time and Learning. Extended-time advocates cite studies showing a gap in childhood opportunity that mirrors the widening income gap. But simply tacking on hours at the end of a school day is not the solution, according to some. “The goal is to use the extra time to change the entire school day. Related
Students as Teachers – Designers of Weekly Activities Start this month by discussing with students your Do Now questions and make explicit your daily goals. Shift the responsibility to your students while supporting them as they create the check-in activity. Goals Start class with an engaging activity.Empower students to design, evaluate and reflect about a student check-in activity.Foster a more collaborative student centered classroom. Activity Plan: Students as Designers Organize your class into pairs, then assign each group a week and topic during the fall term. What are Do Nows? Since your last class there have been numerous opportunities for students to improve their understanding or make false connections and lose track of where you left off. So how do you gauge what your students understand at minute zero of class? As students trickle into class have them log into your Socrative room and engage in an entrance activity of two to three questions. Examples Do Now activities:
Good Read: MOOCs Take on the 1 Percent From Clay Shirky’s blog: “The fight over MOOCs is really about the story we tell ourselves about higher education: what it is, who it’s for, how it’s delivered, who delivers it. The most widely told story about college focuses obsessively on elite schools and answers a crazy mix of questions: How will we teach complex thinking and skills? How will we turn adolescents into well-rounded members of the middle class? “That’s because in the US, an undergraduate education used to be an option, one way to get into the middle class. Fifteen years ago, a research group called The Fraunhofer Institute announced a new digital format for compressing movie files. Read more at: www.shirky.com
Study Shows How Classroom Design Affects Student Learning As debate over education reform sizzles, and as teachers valiantly continue trying to do more with less, a new study suggests that it might be worth diverting at least a little attention from what’s going on in classrooms to how those spaces are being designed. The paper, published in the journal Building and the Environment, found that classroom design could be attributed to a 25% impact, positive or negative, on a student’s progress over the course of an academic year. The difference between the best- and worst-designed classrooms covered in the study? A full year’s worth of academic progress. The study was conducted over the 2011–12 academic year, with 751 students in 34 classrooms, spread across seven primary schools in the seaside town of Blackpool, England. So what did they find? Read more here. [Hat tip: Wired] [Image: Brain and Board via Shutterstock]
What we SHOULD have been taught in our senior year of high school All artwork and content on this site is Copyright © 2015 Matthew Inman. Please don't steal. TheOatmeal.com was lovingly built using CakePHP All artwork and content on this site is Copyright © 2015 Matthew Inman. TheOatmeal.com was lovingly built using CakePHP 30 Habits Of Highly Effective Teachers Editor’s Note: We often look at the qualities and characteristics of good teaching and learning, including the recent following pieces: How A Good Teacher Becomes Great What You Owe Your Students Ten Secrets To Surviving As A Teacher The Characteristics Of A Highly Effective Learning Environment How To Be A Mediocre Teacher So it made sense to take a look at the characteristics of a successful educator, which Julie DuNeen does below. 25 Things Successful Teachers Do Differently by Julie DuNeen If you ask a student what makes him or her successful in school, you probably won’t hear about some fantastic new book or video lecture series. What students take away from a successful education usually centers on a personal connection with a teacher who instilled passion and inspiration for their subject. Are teachers reaching their students? 1. How do you know if you are driving the right way when you are traveling somewhere new? 2. We can’t all be blessed with “epic” workdays all the time. 3. 4. 5.
White Parents Outraged by Course That Teaches Students About Systematic Racism In yet another attempt to pretend as if systemic racism does not exist, white parents of children attending a high school within the Delavan-Darien School District in Wisconsin are outraged by a course that teaches their children that minorities had been historically oppressed by white people. One parent, who wishes to remain anonymous, said the course teaches her child to feel guilty. “It’s meant to divide and victimize non-whites and condition whites to feel guilty and to be more passive,” the parent said. The Delavan-Darien School District superintendent Robert Crist, received a slew of complaints from parents about the course, which entailed an assignment that had students go to the local WalMart and count the number of dolls representative of blacks versus whites. Young America’s Foundation, which also overlooked the curriculum with the parent, called the course race-baiting. The parent believes Jensen’s ideology is politically driven.
7 Essential Principles of Innovative Learning Big Ideas Culture Teaching Strategies Flirck:WoodleyWonderworks Every educator wants to create an environment that will foster students’ love of learning. Researchers at the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) launched the Innovative Learning Environments project to turn an academic lens on the project of identifying concrete traits that mark innovative learning environments. Their book, The Nature of Learning: Using Research to Inspire Practice and the accompanying practitioner’s guide, lay out the key principles for designing learning environments that will help students build skills useful in a world where jobs are increasingly information and knowledge-based. “Adaptive expertise tries to push beyond the idea of mastery,” said Jennifer Groff, an educational engineer and co-founder of the Center for Curriculum Redesign. [RELATED READING: How Can Teachers Prepare Kids for a Connected World] Educators can also test ideas with students before implementing them.
Why Nikola Tesla was the greatest geek who ever lived Additional notes from the author: If you want to learn more about Tesla, I highly recommend reading Tesla: Man Out of Time Also, this Badass of the week by Ben Thompson is what originally inspired me to write a comic about Tesla. Ben's also got a book out which is packed full of awesome. There's an old movie from the 80s on Netflix Instant Queue right now about Tesla: The Secret of Nikola Tesla. It's corny and full of bad acting, but it paints a fairly accurate depiction of his life.
How-to Remain Relevant in Higher Ed with ‘Active Learning’ Active learning…. the topic frequently polarizes faculty. Active learning has attracted strong advocates … looking for alternatives to traditional teaching methods, while skeptical faculty regard active learning as another in a long line of educational fads.” (Prince, 2004) Is active learning a fad? Flipping the classroom, peer teaching and collaborative learning are active learning methods that appear to be ‘in’ right now. What is Active Learning? Yet the lecture method is proving to be problematic in today’s digital culture. When using active learning students are engaged in more activities than just listening. The words, ‘involved’ and ‘problem solving’ are worthy of emphasis; active learning is not busy work, but is purposeful instruction that guides students towards learning outcomes. These findings are consistent with Harvard’s Professor Eric Mazur, a pioneer of active learning who developed a method called Peer Instruction. IndividualCollaborationCooperative Resources: Like this:
20 Tips To Promote A Self-Directed Classroom Culture 20 Tips To Promote A Self-Directed Classroom Culture It’s an age-old saying, “Give a man a fish, and feed him for a day. Teach a man to fish, and feed him for a lifetime.” What separates good teachers from the excellent ones? The excellent ones are handing out fishing poles; creating a culture in the classroom of independence and self-reliance. So how do you cultivate a culture of “I can…” in your classroom? 1. The more I study education and psychology, the more convinced I become that failure is one of the most important tools for learning. Failure can be the doorway to great accidental inventions. 2. Curiosity is what propels a young child to venture away from the safety of his/her mother to explore the environment. 3. Students who have a platform and a voice feel more empowered than those that don’t. 4. Terry Heick writes about the Gradual Release of Responsibility Model. 5. 6. Do you remember the last time you touched a hot oven? 7. 8. 9. 10. 11. 12. 13. 14. 15. 16. 17. 18. 19. 20.
Ten Secrets To Surviving As A Teacher Ten Secrets To Surviving As A Teacher by Terry Heick Surviving as a teacher isn’t easy. Between the sheer work load, diversity of tasks, brutal pace, and seemingly divergent initiatives pulling you in a thousand directions, education can break even the most noble spirits. 1. 2. 3. 4. If you have to move mountains to extract and implement data you’re going to fail. 5. Be yourself, not “a teacher.” Make trying new things a habit. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10. Only it’s not. Whether you view your job as taskmaster, inspirer of lifelong learning, or somewhere in between, your job is to bring learners to content. To survive as a teacher, you have to constantly find ways to make content fresh, exciting, and literally life-altering. And that’s teaching in a nutshell.
Teaching Without Technology? Lenny Gonzales By Aran Levasseur New technology is a lightning rod and polarizing force because it not only begins to influence what we see and how we see it, but, over time, who we are, writes Nicholas Carr in his book, “The Shallows: What the Internet is Doing to Our Brains.” It makes sense then, that debate of digital technology’s role in society is naturally being played out in microcosmic form within schools. Anti-Tech in America’s Tech Capital While critique of new technology within schools is healthy and to be expected, a recent New York Times article revealed an unexpected source: Silicon Valley. Students who do best within the current system are those who can capture the transmission — as unfiltered as possible — and mirror back to the teacher what they have delineated. “Schools nationwide have rushed to supply their classrooms with computers, and many policy makers say it is foolish to do otherwise. Inquiry-Based Learning and Technology Technology shapes habits of mind.