Northon Union Secondary school is located in a small Caribbean island.  At this institution, students are taught various subjects and skills. Teachers seek to integrate Information Communication Technology(ICT) in the classroom & according to their opinion: Eliademy is the ideal … Continue reading →

This past week in the blended learning MOOC I’m participating in, we discussed interactions in a blended learning classroom. There are a few key points that I think are important for anyone creating any class, whether blended, online, or completely face to face. Types of interactions There are several types of interactions that students can […]

When was the last time you laughed at a joke? Where did you hear it? Was it on TV? Or was it on a video clip or podcast? Susan Greenfield says, "Everything that happens to you will be seen in terms of previous experiences."Your brain "can see one thing in terms of something else and that’s your unique perspective", even when it comes to appreciating a joke.Here’s what she says:If you are a scientist or if you are just interested in Science, you may also be familiar with the erroneous opinion that Science is humourless. A joke is a cognitive jolt based on your previous experiences. This jolt can happen even if these experiences are to do with Science. So let yourself go! Abrogate your sense of self and have "a cognitive time" with some Science humour from Brian Malow.

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The goal of the Mississippi School for the Deaf is to provide for early language acquisition and to facilitate the development of two languages, American Sign Language (ASL) and English. This goal is accomplished with the belief that for most Deaf students, … Continue reading →

Courtesy Google AnalyticsIt is usual for a blog post to attract nearly all its visitors during the first few days after being published. This is so much so that the term‘the long tail’ is often used to describe the shape of the visitor profile of a typical post.Courtesy Google AnalyticsNow and again a blogger may spot an exception.‘Digital Natives? Digital Immigrants?’ is a post I published in mid-July this year. It was popular and attracted a couple of comments.Normally even the tail of a popular post would dwindle quickly over a period of less than a week. After two or three months, only the occasional visitor would be registered by visitor tracking.I use Google Analytics (GA) to track one sector of visitors to my blog.It gives a fair indication of comparative popularity.The July post is an exception to the long tail trend. Its visitor profile is at the top of this post. It has received recent attention of a magnitude not unlike what might be expected of a newly published post, yet it was published over four months ago.I first took note of its unusual visitor profile when comments started to appear, again, as if out of the blue. It has since attracted a significant number of comments.Occasionally posts generate very long tails that never really dwindle to nothing. Working With Online Learning Communities is such a post, published 1 April 2009. Its visitor profile shows recent steady traffic.Courtesy Google AnalyticsPosts with visitor profiles of this type tend to have been cited and linked on popular blogs or web pages.Isn’t it heartening that not all posts receive the same fate as a time-capsule?Courtesy NASArelated posts - >> ( 5 ) ( 4 ) ( 3 ) ( 2 ) ( 1 )

Assessment is an important part of any course. We want to make sure that our methods are working and learners are learning things (correctly!). One of the things that I love about the blended and flipped classroom movements is the focus on assessment through projects, discussion, and other non-test means. Today I’m going to take […]

The Evolution of Learning Technologies | Open Colleges

Kagman High School is one of three public high schools on Saipan, Northern Mariana Islands. It is part of the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands Public School System and opened in January 2002. KHS serves about 645 students from the villages of Kagman, north … Continue reading →

Courtesy PD Photo.orgA rose by any other name would smell as sweet - William ShakespeareEvening Standard columnist, Frank Furedi, believes that the educational crisis facing Britain today is in part due to the way objective academic standards are being defined and asserted in the classroom.His claim is that society seems "to have given up on adult authority and the idea that the person who knows best in the classroom is the teacher." He believes that "education requires the conscious and regular imposition of adult authority."I was reminded of Furedi’s opinion when learning recently of the debate over the move by principals and teachers in some New Zealand primary schools to have pupils call them by first name. Some teachers believe that learners bond better with their teacher when they call them by their first name.Anthropologist James Urry claims that removing the age-based hierarchy empowers children before they have the social skill to cope with it.Canterbury College of Education associate dean, Barry Brooker, was reported as saying that using formal titles develops a demarcation between teachers and students that gives teachers the authority to do their jobs properly.Do teachers need authority to do their jobs properly?At The Correspondence School of New Zealand (TCS), a distance education centre, learners always refer to teachers by first name.When I first took up a teaching post at TCS, this idea was new to me. I’d taught in different secondary schools for many years before then.In all the schools where I taught, in Scotland and New Zealand, students called their teachers by their surname: Mr Roberts, Mrs Gill, Miss James, etc.When I graduated PhD, the principal of the Edinburgh High SchoolI was teaching in announced to the school that I was to be calledDr Allan, from now on. I've been addressed as Dr Allan, or Sir, by students in every face-to-face school I’ve taught in since.But I had no problem when my students called me Ken at TCS.The policy of the school was that students always referred to teachers by first name.Other distance education centres do the same. And you know, it seems to work. I find that learners relate to me with at least as much respect as I had earned while teaching in face-to-face schools.Are face-to-face schools so different that students calling their teachers by first name can damage the potential for effective student-teacher relationships? What do you think?