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. These students don’t just recite facts or regurgitate information- they have learned how to learn. 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. 7. 8. 9.
Using Dropbox in the Classroom When I mention Dropbox to friends and colleagues, I usually get one of two responses – a knowing smile and nod, or a puzzled and quizzical look. Whether you know what the program is, you have likely heard the name. But really, what is Dropbox? Dropbox is many things — a multifaceted tool that’s so powerful, you’ll continue to discover new ways to use it. How Dropbox works So, how can you use Dropbox as an educator? Additionally, many applications that you likely use (Evernote, Things, 1Password, Elements, to name a few) have a Dropbox sync option. Using Dropbox with students In addition to making your life a lot easier, Dropbox can be a great teaching/learning tool – and this is why I introduce it to my students. You can call this folder anything. Next step: Put your mouse over the folder and click on the arrow to the right – a drop-down menu will appear. Next, you will get the window shown below. Once you have invited students, this becomes a “Shared Folder.” Students catch on quickly
5 Tools to Help Students Learn How to Learn Helping students learn how to learn: That’s what most educators strive for, and that’s the goal of inquiry learning. That skill transfers to other academic subject areas and even to the workplace where employers have consistently said that they want creative, innovative and adaptive thinkers. Inquiry learning is an integrated approach that includes kinds of learning: content, literacy, information literacy, learning how to learn, and social or collaborative skills. Students think about the choices they make throughout the process and the way they feel as they learn. “We want students thinking about their thinking,” said Leslie Maniotes a teacher effectiveness coach in the Denver Public Schools and one of the authors of Guided Inquiry: Learning in the 21st Century. “When they are able to see where they came from and where they got to it is very powerful for them.” A good example is a long term research project. During the process, students will go through different stages of emotions.
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.
Evernote: A Great Tool for Organizing Teachers & Students! If you are not familiar with Evernote, now is the time. Evernote is a free web tool and application that helps you to organize your notes, emails, images, and, well…. everything. It’s hard to describe, but this 50-second video highlights some of the key features and abilities. Evernote can be a great application for teachers, both to keep yourself coordinated and to facilitate student learning. I want to highlight a few ways that I have employed Evernote not only to make my life a little easier as a teacher, but to help my students and my classroom stay more focused and organized. First, if you need to familiarize yourself with a quick tutorial, try out the “Getting Started Guide For Teachers.” Organizing myself Teachers have tons of “stuff” on our plates. The key to Evernote success is that you set up some basic parameters first. Using Evernote with students Evernote is also a great tool for students to organize all of their own content. Should you go Premium? Concluding thoughts
Polishing the Apple: What ‘Dangerous Minds’ and Other Movies Get Right and Wrong About Teachers « Yesterday, summer ended for the teachers in the Houston Independent School District. School is back. Today, Dangerous Minds, a movie about a discharged Marine who attempts to teach disadvantaged high school students that they are not victims by giving them candy bars, celebrates its 20th anniversary. Both of these occasions are of particular interest to me because from 2006 to 2015 I worked as a teacher at a large inner-city school in Houston. I love(d) teaching and I love teacher movies. If I were to try to place an exact time stamp on it, I’d guess I decided I wanted to be a teacher somewhere around 1991, and I’m almost certain it had a lot to do with the episode of Saved by the Bell in which Mr. I understand that that’s dumb, but I imagine it’s how lots of these sorts of things work out. When I saw Cooler Belding — or, really, when I saw him or Mr. So this is a thing about what teacher movies get right about teaching — and what teacher movies get wrong about teaching. Ms. Fact.
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]
Update to Adding Video into Evernote | TRUE Learning Since I posted my original findings on getting video into Evernote. Our school has tried a few similar methods. One was to use the Photo Transfer App to more easily move videos taken and compressed on the iPad to a computer for attachment into a note. This was definitely faster than the Dropbox method referenced in my first work around post. However, this update includes instructions for what seems to be the most direct route to getting video into Evernote using the app Video Slimmer ($1.99). Here is what you need to know. Side note: You’ll notice that John’s blog is created with the Postach.io blog platform. Directions for using Video Slimmer to get videos into Evernote: Record your video. The video will be created in a new note in your default notebook.
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.
Top 10 Posts of 2012: Deep, Meaningful and Creative Learning Flickr: CriCristina It may come as no surprise that the ideas that are top-of-mind for educators, parents, and policymakers are the very topics conveyed in the most popular MindShift posts this year. Giving kids the tools to create, teachers the freedom to innovate, making students’ work relevant in the real world, giving them access to valuable technology. These are the aspirations that have resonated most with MindShift readers this year. Here are the top 10 posts from 2012. Being able to use the Internet and operate computers is one thing, but it may be just as valuable to teach students how to code. So much about how and where kids learn has changed over the years, but the physical structure of schools has not. The conversation in education has shifted towards outcomes and training kids for jobs of the future, and in many ways the traditional classroom has become obsolete. Can creativity be taught? Related
12 Things Teachers Must Know About Learning 12 Things Teachers Must Know About Learning By Bill Page closeAuthor: Bill Page Name: Bill PageSite: About Bill Page ... Bill Page, a farm boy, graduated from a one-room school. Bill Page’s book, At-Risk Students; Feeling Their Pain is available through his web site www.billpageteacher.com, or through Amazon.com. In the midst of the worldwide psycho-neurological revolution, knowledge about the brain and learning is exploding. When information is presented to students, it goes into the working memory of their brain, but the information quickly fades away unless something is done to trigger its move into the brain’s long-term memory, where it can be stored and recalled later. 1. 2. 3. 4. New knowledge must connect to previously learned, relevant, meaningful experiences and knowledge. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10. 11. 12. 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. The easiest lessons to teach are the hardest to learn. With joy in sharing, At-Risk Students:
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. That is, someone that can directly help, or some published media that might inform you. In formal learning settings, this is all turned on its head. Collaboration, when it occurs, is “lateral”—that is, from teacher to teacher.
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: