Since a new school year is upon us, Edutopia recently posted this. Click the link for more in-depth explanations and exampels. A brief and quick summary is below.
10 Rules of Engagement
1. Start Class with a Mind Warm-Up
2. Use Movement to get Kids Focused
3. Teach Students how to Collaborate Before Expecting Success
4. Use Quickwrites When You Want Quiet Time and Student Reflection
5. Run a Tight Ship When Giving Instructions
6. Use a Fairness Cup to Keep Students Thinking
7. Use Signaling to Allow Everyone to Answer Your Question
8. Use Minimal-Supervision Tasks to Squeeze Dead Time out of Regular Routines
9. Mix up Your Teaching Styles
10. Create Teamwork Tactics That Emphasize Accountability
Information designer Tom Wujec talks through three areas of the brain that help us understand words, images, feelings and connections. In this short talk from TEDU, he asks: How can we best engage our brains to help us better understand big ideas? (link here)
(Also archived under the “Arts, Learning & Talks” tab above)
“The challenge is no longer finding information but making it meaningful.”
A great article from 2020 Forecast:
An extremely visible world demands new sensemaking
Information proliferation will continue, exacerbating the burden on families, learners, educators, and decision-makers to make sense of vast amounts of data. New tools for visualizing data will require new skills in discerning meaningful patterns. Social media and collaborative tools will leave “data trails” of people’s online interactions — including contributions to group activities, inquiries and searches, skills, digital resources, and preferences (such as playlists, buddy lists, and topics tracked) — and social networks. At the same time, sensors and global positioning systems in devices such as cell phones and car navigation systems will be able to capture location-based information along with health and environmental data. Together these tools will provide a robust, visible “data picture” of our lives as citizens, workers, and learners. Families, learners, educators, and decision-makers will need to become sophisticated at pattern recognition in order to create effective and differentiated learning experiences and environments. Furthermore, new skills in collective sensemaking will redefine forms of knowledge, knowing, and assessment.
How do ubiquitous, visible data impact teaching, learning, and the assessment of learning experiences?
How can we use data to enhance human decisions rather than automate them?
How will we aggregate data and make sense of it all? “Educators and learners will need to learn how to participate effectively in an abundant data world. New ways of seeing, knowing, and communicating will redefine learning environments, roles, and even forms of knowledge, knowing, and assessment. “
Social websites harm children’s brains: Chilling warning to parents from top neuroscientist (from Daily Mail)
Social networking websites are causing alarming changes in the brains of young users, an eminent scientist has warned.
Sites such as Facebook, Twitter and Bebo are said to shorten attention spans, encourage instant gratification and make young people more self-centred.
The claims from neuroscientist Susan Greenfield will make disturbing reading for the millions whose social lives depend on logging on to their favourite websites each day. Full story here.
The value of teaching 21st-century skills (from The Boston Globe)
THINK strategically. Use technology wisely. Work collaboratively. Communicate effectively. Recognize how the world around you connects to everything you do. Employees are expected to be steeped in these and other skills their first day on the job. In today’s weak economy, the resumes of those who don’t speak the language of the 21st century are quickly passed over. Full story here.
Students tap into technology (from Pittsburgh Tribune Review)
Since 2003, Penzera has invested a great deal into technological advances for her classroom, including “smart” whiteboards to remote-control quizzes and videoconferencing.
English teacher Diane Penzera rarely uses books these days.
Instead, her students at Greater Latrobe High School use their laptops to read “Don Quixote” and Dante’s “Divine Comedy” on the Internet, then organize their notes with a computer program. Full story here.
How do WE learn in the age of the web?Michael Wesch, known for his YouTube videos “A Vision of Students Today” and “The Machine is Us/ing Us“, talks about anti-teaching and harnessing collective intelligence in his class. He is one of the U.S. Professors of the Year and it was great to have the chance to talk to him!
They discuss collaboration, posing inquiring questions and building and sharing class resources through wikis and blogs. Worth the 10 mins. to watch. If you like what you hear, I have more of his stuff under the “ICT Theories and Info” page.
