Teacher Profile: Maria Rosa Reifler Inspires Students toward Meaningful Lives by Marilyn Price-Mitchell PhD Character Ability to draw on positive internal strengths when taking action in the world. Courage Integrity Respect Meet Maria Rosa Reifler, a fifth grade teacher at Wilcox Elementary School in East Los Angeles who gives her students more than core curriculum. She teaches them about the value of living a life that matters. Maria Rosa Reifler instills important ideas, including how money and achieving goals is secondary to the kind of human being you become. But Mrs. Learn from a teacher who understands and models how to educate the “whole child.” Watch Maria Rosa Reifler in this inspiring video. Tags: positive youth development, teachers, Underserved Youth About the Author
How a Radical New Teaching Method Could Unleash a Generation of Geniuses | Wired Business He started by telling them that there were kids in other parts of the world who could memorize pi to hundreds of decimal points. They could write symphonies and build robots and airplanes. Most people wouldn't think that the students at José Urbina López could do those kinds of things. Kids just across the border in Brownsville, Texas, had laptops, high-speed Internet, and tutoring, while in Matamoros the students had intermittent electricity, few computers, limited Internet, and sometimes not enough to eat. "But you do have one thing that makes you the equal of any kid in the world," Juárez Correa said. "Potential." He looked around the room. Paloma was silent, waiting to be told what to do. "So," Juárez Correa said, "what do you want to learn?" In 1999, Sugata Mitra was chief scientist at a company in New Delhi that trains software developers. Over the years, Mitra got more ambitious. Over the next 75 days, the children worked out how to use the computer and began to learn.
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.
Before We Flip Classrooms, Let's Rethink What We're Flipping To Integrated into their regular math classes, Globaloria students access online video tutorials and receive expert advice on how to build original educational video games about math topics. Photo credit: World Wide Workshop We're hearing a lot of talk about education in these back-to-school days, but a few conversations rise above the din. One such is the chatter about "flipped classrooms,"1 in which students listen to lectures at home and do homework at school. No doubt about it, online learning at every level for every purpose is the flavor of the moment, and everyone is scrambling to offer a feast. Before we pick up too much speed to stop, we need to consider the educational future we are aiming for in higher education, technical education, and especially in the early years of K-12 education, when it really counts. Instructionism vs. But think about it: they are using rather traditional instructional methods. There was transformation, but it was mainly around the edges. Notes
Learning & Education – Future schools – Connected learning – Education technology ICT is significantly impacting how schools are organized and run. An Ericsson Networked Society report shows that introducing ICT in schools affects six principal areas including both physical space and behavioral aspects. Mikael Eriksson Björling, Expert on Consumer Behavior at ConsumerLab, says: “Learning and education are in a time of transformation. Our research shows that students and progressive teachers, empowered by technology, are the catalysts to fundamental change. ICT is literally breaking down the walls of the classroom, and we have to start looking upon learning as something that takes place everywhere, all the time. In conjunction with the report, Ericsson has also released a thought-provoking documentary titled “The Future of Learning”. Read the report Download the infographic
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. Horn, and the Digital Learning Now initiatives. How should we continue to be relevant and effective in the changing environment? 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. As Vander Ark writes, 9. 10. 11.
Schools in the Cloud – What could they be? Let’s look back at some past work: 1. Groups of children can learn to use a computer and the Internet by themselves, under certain conditions described a little later. This is a finding from a set of experiments between 1999 – 2004, often called the ‘hole in the wall’ experiments. 2. There are places all over the planet where it is difficult or impossible to build schools. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. Is it possible to put all this together into a learning system for children in need? If you give children, below the age of 13, access to a computer connected to the Internet, they learn how to use it. 1. 2. 3. 4. If you then ensure the computer is in working order, children begin to tire of games in a month or so and look for other activity. If they can read sufficiently well in English or some other language that is adequately represented on the Internet, such as Spanish, Italian, Chinese etc., children begin to search for answers to questions. Can the SOLE and the Granny Cloud come together? 1. 2. 3.
More holes in Sugata Mitra’s ‘Hole-in-Wall’ project “I wouldn’t take it if you offered it to me for free” said the head of the school I visited in the huge Katutura Township on the outskirts of Windhoek in Africa. In 2008 some guys turned up started to drill four holes in the wall, installed dial-up computers, and left explaining almost nothing. Within three months the project was dead. Internet access was intermittent and larger boys dominated the computers, playing games. Hype cycle Of all the learning technology projects I’ve witnessed over the thirty years I’ve been in this field, this is the one that most closely matches the Gartner hype cycle. Self-defeating For Arora, who visited the sites in India, there was “little real independent evidence, other than that provided by HiWEL“. Project not effective Conclusion At the E-learning Africa Conference, where I gave a keynote, workshop and debate contribution, I met practitioner after practitioner who welcomed by more sober view of the project.
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.