Putting Technology At The Center Of Learning by Paul Moss Is your school still in the dark ages of #edtech? Does your school teach students with edtech only through an ICT subject, or does your school have a dedicated edtech agenda, with a strong focus on integration into the curriculum in general? As an English teacher, I can only dream of the latter, because in all of the schools around the world that I have worked in (Australia, Spain, UK), edtech takes a back seat every time. To say this is rather frustrating is an understatement, especially when most of those schools have cited the need to create independent learners as a means to achieve desirable results. Schools are still in the dark ages when it comes to technology integration with the general curriculum. Of course, this is not the case for many schools, but many doesn’t compare to most. Most schools simply don’t have the policy to handle such a change in pedagogy, for two reasons: cost, and willingness. I deliberately place these in the order they are oft stated, but in truth it is always the other way round, as the latter would certainly facilitate the former if the desire was there. For all the promotion and obvious benefits that edtech encourages, edtech remains a tokenistic endeavor. Look at any adverts for teaching jobs in mainstream schools around the world. Look at how many of those ads don’t mention a need to be skilled in using edtech as one of its central requirements for a position.   Schools generally have ICT labs, and possibly a mobile trolley of laptops. If you are lucky, you can actually book such facilities maybe once a week. Most likely, once a fortnight. Free slots in an ICT lab are like needles in a haystack because ICT teaching consumes at least 60% of the calendar. So, if you’re savvy, you sit on the calendar as the new day unfolds (14 days away), and book anything that comes up, running the risk of becoming the scourge of other teachers who resent your hogging; after all there are 35 other teachers wanting the limited slots. If your lessons coincide with free slots of no ICT teaching, then you are lucky: I’ve got about 4 times a week that I could secure such places - but for one of my classes: never. Excitedly you enter the computer suite, only to find that 2 or 3 of the machines aren’t working properly, and of course there isn’t a surplus of machines - there goes the once a fortnight experience for those 3 students: ‘You’ll have to share with Jim’. ‘The internet isn’t working sir’; ‘that site is blocked sir’; ‘my password isn’t working’; ‘That software won’t work sir - it says I haven’t got the latest version of ….’. Humans are resilient, but not stupid. Suffering several nightmares in the computer suite becomes a no-brainer for many teachers as to whether to try to rebook 2 weeks in advance for another go.  For someone who truly espouses the benefits of ICT in the classroom this situation is demoralizing, to say the least. The exciting cooperative learning opportunities offered by platforms like Blendspace, Pear Deck, Socrative, Nearpod, Padlet, and Verso most definitely promotes an independent approach to learning, as students learn that knowledge is constantly in flux, and that their responses can and should be tested against their peers’, as learning naturally has always been. For an English teacher, edtech goes a long way to leveling the playing field for students. Edtech excites them, and offers students who haven’t come from a reading background a real chance to engage in the subject. Students understand instantly what best practice is as they explore the notion of networks, with responses from peers or the teacher’s interventions allowing them to continuously refine their thoughts. Students become more active learners, engaging in vital 21st century skills in communication, as they decide how to challenge ideas presented, and they learn that using initiative is a rewarding process, as they find and curate new knowledge that others use. They become better at learning to learn; surely the ultimate goal of any progressive educators. BYOD is a natural progression in utilizing edtech, but if your school is hindered by any of the obstacles presented above, then I bet your Wi-Fi situation is limited too, rendering BYOD ineffective. I also bet your school has major reservations in freeing up Wi-Fi to students, citing safety and bandwidth as the main concerns, and in that order. Whilst the latter is harder to alter, it can, and in fact, must be done, if students are to maximize the potential that exists in this new learning context. To me, not utilizing BYOD is like trying to get to a town 100 miles away on a horse and cart, when there’s a car parked out the front, and you’ve got the keys. It’s such an obvious investment, yet seems to be a long way down the list on school priorities. In light of the many advantages that integrating edtech into the general curriculum offers, to continue to deny students these opportunities seems like a hard pill to swallow. Edtech is no longer in the early adopters zone; no longer in the testing zone. It is well and truly here, and senior leadership not only has to accept such a fate, but take the bull by the horns and truly embrace it for what it is worth.  For the sake of all its students, edtech must become an integral part of a school’s pedagogy. Putting Technology At The Center Of Learning   The post Putting Technology At The Center Of Learning appeared first on TeachThought.

Responding To Criticisms Of The Common Core by Adam Blum, CEO of OpenEd Ed note: Supporting "commonness" or standardization isn’t a part of our mission at TeachThought, but we are interested in giving equal voice to diverse voices across education. Further, the majority of educators in the United States teach according to the Common Core standards, which makes them of interest to us. While you’re not likely to see a significant amount of content related to CCSS (which our reader data suggests may not be so bad), we do publish it from time to time, like that below from OpenEd CEO Adam Blum.  Mention the words "Common Core" these days and you’re likely to elicit a litany of both positive and negative points of view. As most educators know, the Common Core is a set of high-quality academic standards in mathematics and English language arts/literacy. Simply put, the standards outline what a student should know and be able to do at the end of each grade to be prepared for success in school, college, career and life. However, the implementation of the Common Core brings along with it a unique set of myths and misinformation. At OpenEd, we provide teachers with access to the best and largest catalog of free educational resources for teaching the Common Core State Standards. Every day, these dedicated teachers who are investing time - often outside of the regular school day - to find targeted resources for personalizing instruction share with us bits of misinformation that are circulating in their schools, districts and communities. We wanted to take an opportunity to debunk eight of the more pervasive falsehoods: Myth #1: Fortune 500 publishers and corporations are force-feeding Common Core curriculum material to teachers. First, the standards are not a curriculum but rather a set of learning goals for students. Yes, educational publishers - large and small - are developing curriculum to match the standards, but so are school districts and classroom teachers. And, for the record, the Common Core was developed by the nation’s governors and state education commissions through their membership organizations, the National Governors Association and the Council of Chief State School Officers - not by textbook publishers, technology companies or President Barack Obama. Myth #2: The Common Core Standards are too vague and are "dumbing down" our students. The governors and education commissioners agreed explicitly that no state would lower its standards through the implementation of the Common Core. The Common Core Standards provide teachers with a measure of flexibility to help them determine the level of complexity that works best in their classroom. The standards include rigorous prerequisites for students, and educators who have reviewed them have, on the whole, found them to be incredibly stringent. In fact, in some instances, that has been the big complaint - that today’s students aren’t prepared for the rigor of the Common Core (see the next myth - #3). Myth #3: Common Core sets the bar too high for students, leaving them discouraged. If we want our students to be successful in today’s competitive, global economy, we need them to learn and achieve at a high level. That is where the Common Core sets the bar. Achievement at this level is attainable, however, with the help of the right resources to personalize learning for every student. Myth #4: All students learn differently, and Common Core is not flexible enough to adapt to their needs. The Common Core Standards are learning goals - not an instructional model. The way that instruction is delivered to individual students or classes remains the purview of districts, schools and teachers. Myth #5: There were no K-12 educators or childhood experts on the Common Core development team. Not true. Some of our country’s preeminent educators and standards experts were involved in the development of the Common Core - both in math and English language arts. And teachers, parents, school administrators and experts from across the country, together with state leaders, provided input into the development of the standards. State and local jurisdictions lead the actual implementation of the Common Core, including how the standards are taught, the curriculum developed, and the materials used to support teachers as they help students reach the standards. Myth #6: Students are being forced to master abstract concepts too early in their development. Not to worry - second-graders aren’t being asked to read Hemingway, and third-graders aren’t doing algebra. The truth is the standards make appropriate suggestions based on grade level (hence, Hemingway would be suggested for the 9th or 10th grades.) There is overwhelming evidence that supports the fact that what high school students are reading today isn’t nearly as comprehensive as what is found at the college level and beyond, leaving a big gap between what college freshmen are required to do and what they actually are prepared to do. The standards are built on increasing levels of complexity, spurring students to sharpen their skills and apply them to more comprehensive material as they advance in their coursework. Myth #7: Common Core was developed by, and is being forced onto schools, by the U.S. Department of Education. As stated earlier, the Common Core initiative was led by U.S. governors and state education commissioners. The standards are not by President Obama, the U.S Department of Education or any other federal governing body, and the federal government in no way, shape or form has any authority over the Common Core. Yes, there was an incentive to adopt the Common Core as part of the federal Race to the Top program - but it was up to individual states if they wanted to pursue that funding. Myth #8: The Common Core is a national curriculum. First, a reminder: The Common Core is not a curriculum. It is a clear set of shared goals and expectations for what knowledge and skills will help our students succeed. Local teachers, principals, superintendents and others will decide how the standards are to be met. Teachers will continue to devise lesson plans and tailor instruction to the individual needs of the students in their classrooms. Second, and most importantly, the Common Core is a state-driven initiative. States have made individual decisions to participate. The only thing "national" about the Common Core is its potential to accelerate achievement for our students and, ultimately, increase our competitiveness on the world stage. Adam Blum is the CEO of OpenEd, which provides teachers with access to the best educational resources for their students, with a focus on finding the right resources to teach the Common Core State Standards. To accomplish this important goal, OpenEd built the world’s largest catalog of lesson plans, assessments, educational videos and games. OpenEd is committed to keeping the majority of its content available for free to educators around the world. For more information, visit www.OpenEd.io; Responding To Criticisms Of The Common Core The post Responding To Criticisms Of The Common Core appeared first on TeachThought.

25 Random Thoughts About Teaching & Learning by Terry Heick The picture? It’s Spring, and I missed the sun. On to the random thoughts… That #makered is as much a tone as it is a trend. Every school and district needs a "Chief Change Officer." That "screen time" may be an under-studied phenomenon worthy of some research. That Meerkat is pretty amazing—and has stunning potential. That in terms of function, it’s not markedly different from Google+ Hangouts or Skype, but because it ties to twitter and forces you to record and share live and isn’t prefaced with "Google," it seems more interesting. That learning starts with the student, not a standard or map. That this is hard to actuate in a class of 32. That how we plan and teach today makes it pretty much impossible. And that this—if both true in any sense, and communally understood—means we’re producing mediocrity on purpose. That so many #edtech developers with decent ideas don’t understand the need for visibility, testing, feedback, and ecosystem. Marketing, too. (And that "boot strap" and "start-up" mislead a lot of folks into pushing forward with bad ideas.) That edtech is focused almost exclusively on automating and digitizing the existing classroom. That unlike the lower-end of Bloom’s Taxonomy, the lower end of the SAMR model is not a great place to be. That there is nothing wrong with memorization. That Apple’s Apple Watch event was more awkward than usual, and that their 18 carat gold Apple Watch should, once and for all, deflate the Apple is for Education argument. That mobile learning is already here, and if we can’t design with it in mind, we’re already behind. That education buzzwords diminish understanding because of their reductive effect. Easier to talk "1:1" than it is learning models that realize 1:1 potential.  That this isn’t limited to #edtech—the term "best practice" has done this for years. That there is more attention on and enthusiasm for progressive, 21st century learning than ever before. That one can perceive a shift from Apple to Google in the preferred edtech brand, but that Microsoft is still killing both in terms of usage. That it’s not as simple as "What’s best for the kids." Unsustainable approaches to education are, well, unsustainable. For everyone. That parents need help understanding education. That the fact that they don’t is the fault of education. That fault doesn’t really matter. That in 2015, anyone can create almost anything, for any reason, with anyone. That the best answer isn’t always the most popular. That in fact, they’re often inversely proportional. That common language precedes shared vision, which precedes mutual progress. That what a teacher believes school "is for" will dictate the tone and terms of their teaching. That this is somewhat adjustable, but not entirely accessible because it’s at the belief level of a person. That simulations are not only potent, but often too simply conceived. What would a racism simulator look like, for example? What would it allow students to toy with? What constructs would it allow students to feel free in testing, shedding, and/or clutching to? That teaching should not be an endurance contest; learning should not be a "grind." That you’ll know it when you see it. That you’re pretty spectacular for doing what you do, improving every day, and choosing to take an active role in something bigger than yourself. That learning can be addictive—should be addictive. Get it right, and you can’t get enough. 25 Random Thoughts About Teaching & Learning; adapted image attribution flickr user bobmical  The post 25 Random Thoughts About Teaching & Learning appeared first on TeachThought.

Taking A Closer Look At Teacher Effectiveness Ratings: Part 1 by Grant Wiggins, Authentic Education Can a chronically "failing" school be inhabited by 100% "effective" teachers? That’s the question that has caused Governor Cuomo to take a tough stance against the status quo of education in New York (for reasons known only to the Governor). His office recently released a grim document entitled The State of New York’s Failing Schools. The report rhetorically asks and tries to answer the opening question. I have no comment here on the politics or wisdom of this move by Gov. Cuomo. I’m interested, rather, in a dispassionate consideration of the larger question raised by the report: What is and what ought to be the relationship between teaching ratings and school quality measures? The gist of the Governor’s Report. Here are the facts that frame the Governor’s report: In the 2013-2014 school year, the teacher evaluation system resulted in the following ratings for New York State: 95.6 percent of teachers were rated Highly Effective and Effective 3.7 percent of teachers were rated Developing 0.7 percent of teachers were rated Ineffective Yet, the report notes, the schools on the watch list are struggling with student achievement and have not shown much improvement over time: ELA Proficiency 5.9% (vs. 31.4% statewide) Math Proficiency 6.2% (vs. 35.8% statewide) Graduation Rate 46.6% (vs. 76.4% statewide) Here’s the key conclusion in the Governor’s report: It is incongruous that 99% of teachers were rated effective, while only 35.8 % of our students are proficient in math and 31.4 % in English language arts. How can so many of our teachers be succeeding when so many of our students are struggling? That is surely a reasonable question; it does seem incongruous on its face. We should all be willing to consider that question, regardless of our feelings about the Governor and the politics of reform. After the general case for pursuing this issue is made in the Cuomo report, each "failing" school is profiled in the Appendix. (The Governor’s Report calls these "failing" schools while the designation actually used by the Department of Education is "Priority" Schools.) A Closer Look At The High School Because I am greatly interested in high school reform, I decided to concentrate on that data. This also has the virtue of factoring out the new tough and controversial Common Core exams used in the lower grades because the data for HS is based on the widely-accepted Regents Exam results and Graduation rates. The failing/priority determination was not made by the Governor’s Office. That designation is based on longstanding NYSED criteria for high schools: adequate growth in the English and Math Performance Index over two years, and a Graduation Rate of at least 60% and growth over two years. Strictly speaking, then, the designation "failing," in the Cuomo Report should read: "failed to show adequate improvement once targeted as an under-performing school." Below is a typical profile from the Governor’s report - one page for each "failing" school. As with many schools on the list, this high school has not made adequate progress over a ten-year period: Effectiveness Ratings-For The School Alas, as you see above, the Cuomo report inexplicably only highlights district teacher effectiveness scores, not school scores. (Though, in this case, since this district reports 0% Ineffective and Developing teachers, we can infer that this must be true for this school.) Nor, as you can see, are exam scores given on the report for the HS, just graduation rates. So, to truly make the case the Governor wants to make we need school-based Teacher-Effectiveness ratings and school Regents Exam scores. Fortunately, with a little digging on the NYSED site, I was able to find all the school data I needed. I picked three struggling high schools from the Cuomo Report list and 3 of the top-rated high schools in New York City to compare. (All six schools are public schools.) 3 key questions before we look at any specific school data, let’s ponder three predictive questions. What do you think? Should Teacher Effectiveness ratings in struggling schools in general be lower, equal or higher to such ratings in the most successful high schools? In a school that needs to improve and does not, what would be a reasonable expectation for %s in Teacher Effectiveness in the 4 categories of Ineffective, Developing, Effective, Highly Effective? Should teacher ratings in the most struggling schools be lower than the district or state average, more or less equal to it, or higher than average? Or should there be no correlations at all? I think that you’ll be interested in trying to predict the answers and in what I found. The Data Below are the teacher effectiveness scores from 6 NY public high schools. So: based on the data concerning teacher effectiveness ratings, which high schools are struggling and which are very successful on state outcome measures? Note that four different ratings make up the total Teacher Effectiveness rating: the composite score, a state-calculated score based on test scores and value-added metrics, and two internally-generated scores. The two scores that are most salient, then, are the bottom two because they are based on locally-assigned ratings by administrators and on locally-developed growth measures proposed by teachers (along with other local measures, in some cases). From this data on six high schools, then, which would you predict are the three schools that are struggling and which would you predict are the three very successful schools?  Let’s add a bit more suspense before revealing the answer. School Performance Data For The Six Schools Here is the data for the same high schools on Regents Exams and Graduation Rate trends:             You can thus fairly easily see which data reflect the successful vs. unsuccessful schools in absolute terms - the first three schools in this data. But can you pair each set of performance results with its partner teacher effectiveness data, above? The Results Made your predictions? Here are the results: The first three schools listed in both sets are the successful schools, and the second set of six schools pairs up with its like-numbered partner in the first set. In other words, School #1 in the first list is School #1 in the second list, and Schools 1 -3 are the successful ones. So, the teachers in the struggling schools are far more highly-rated internally than the teachers in some of New York’s most successful schools. (Two of these successful schools are on many short lists as the best high schools in the City). Indeed, in one of the struggling high schools (School #5), a school that has not made adequate improvement for 10 years, almost all teachers are rated Highly Effective locally! Tentative Conclusion From this (limited) data we can infer that in a successful school - whether clearly improving or doing well in absolute terms, on credible exams and client survey results - the local teacher effectiveness ratings are often lower, sometimes far lower, than those provided locally to teachers in failing schools. So, there would appear to be some merit to the core premise of the Cuomo report, regardless of how mean-spirited the approach feels to many NY educators. The Next Post In Part 2, which I will post in a few days, I take a closer look at School #3 on this list - a successful high school in NYC - and compare its data to those from two other high schools in the City. New York City publishes a great deal of accountability data beyond test scores and teacher ratings, including survey data from teachers, students, and parents; and offers an extensive Quality Report for each school, based on site visits. So, we can come away far more confident as to whether the Teacher Effectiveness Ratings have merit or not in City schools. I will look at the data from the three schools and end with 4 recommendations on how to make the teacher effectiveness ratings more honest and valid - hence, credible. This post first appeared on Grant’s personal blog; Grant can be found on twitter here; Taking A Closer Look At Teacher Effectiveness Ratings: Part 1; adapted image attribution flickr user tulanepublicrelations The post Taking A Closer Look At Teacher Effectiveness Ratings: Part 1 appeared first on TeachThought.

Snapshots Of Understanding? 10 Smart Tools For Digital Exit Slips by Ryan Schaaf, Assistant Professor of Technology, Notre Dame of Maryland University Do they get it? After an instructional lesson is over, educators are left with a classroom full of students looking at them. Did my students get the lesson? Are there any ideas, concepts or skills they are still unsure of? Do my students have any misconceptions about the lesson and its content? Do I have to review anything tomorrow? These are just a few of the questions reflective educators are left to contemplate after the bell has rung.  In truth, many of these reflective questions educators are left asking themselves can be addressed if they use an exit ticket. Exit tickets are a simple, quick and oftentimes insightful formative assessment method employed close to the end of a lesson. It is a simple task that requires learners to answer a few questions or perform certain tasks explored during the learning process. The format of an exit ticket varies. Educators can use a variety of question/activity types. There are multiple choice, true or false, short written response, matching, cloze (fill in the blank) and survey or polls to name but a few. In terms of classroom implementation, exit tickets should be short, concise and engage learners in a review of the skills, concepts and experiences explored during the lesson. They are also ideal for continuing the learning into the next class - many educators begin with the exit tickets from the previous lesson to activate students’ previous knowledge. In the age of digital learning, exit tickets are no longer confined to small slips of paper collected by educators as students leave their classrooms (although this method is still fine). There are numerous digital tools at the disposal of educators to collect this valuable performance data from their students. Here are ten digital exit slip tools to choose from. Snapshots Of Understanding? 10 Smart Tools For Digital Exit Slips Google Forms Educators can set up exit tickets with varying question types and submit requests to participate via email or sharable link. Recent upgrades now allow questions to include images and You Tube links. All participants will have their responses populate a single spreadsheet. Educators will be able to review every single exit ticket on the same document. Socrative Socrative lets educators assess their students with educational activities on tablets, laptops or smartphones (ideal for BYOD environments). Through the use of real time questioning, educators and students alike can visualize the data to make decisions about upcoming learning. Plickers While using Plicker cards, students are able to provide answers to their teacher’s questions. The educator can use a smart phone or tablet to capture student responses and the app collects and reports the data. Twitter Ideal for older students, educators can ask students to post a 140 character summary of today’s lesson and allow the discussion to transpire after the class has officially ended. Geddit Another app that is ideal for a BYOD or 1-to-1 computing classroom, Geddit gauges how students understand with the use of multiple choice or short answer responses. What makes it truly unique from the other apps and tools is Geddit allows students to provide feedback on the pace of the class - beginning, middle or during lesson closure. PollEverywhere PollEverywhere allows educators to provide a poll for students to complete. Data can be displayed to the class in real-time in order to provide immediate feedback and clarity for students. ExitTicket Exit ticket is a student response system that is ideal for 1-to-1 or BYOD computing environments. Educators are able to receive real-time results using numerous question and activity options. Students are also able to receive feedback, so they are able to assume responsibility in the learning process. A basic teacher account is free. VoiceThread VoiceThread allows educators and students to discuss documents, presentations, images, audio files and videos using numerous methods. Students are able to add audio, text or video responses for a media-centric assessment experience. lino As a cloud-based sticky note and photo-sharing tool, lino allows educators and students to post content to an online corkboard. This tool is also a free! Padlet Similar to lino, Padlet is an online shared space students can post notes, multimedia files, hyperlinks and documents on. Educators are also able to adjust privacy settings to ensure student safety. Of course there are hundreds of additional digital tools or strategies connected educators could use for administering an exit ticket to students that are not listed here. Please add a comment with some of the digital tools you use for your classroom exit tickets. Snapshots Of Understanding? 10 Smart Tools For Digital Exit Slips The post Snapshots Of Understanding? 10 Smart Tools For Digital Exit Slips appeared first on TeachThought.

Research Seeks Scale For Measuring Student Engagement by TeachThought Staff From a press release COLUMBIA, Mo. - Educators believe that student engagement in the classroom is crucial to learning and that it can increase achievement and enrollment in challenging courses while decreasing dropout rates. Until recently, teachers and administrators lacked tools to measure the engagement levels of their students in the classroom. Now, a University of Missouri researcher has developed a scale that quantifies student engagement and could help educators identify barriers to student participation and increase levels of student involvement and learning. "Many educators believe engagement leads to better school performance and is necessary for developing student motivation and interest," said Ze Wang, associate professor of educational, school and counseling psychology in the College of Education at MU. "After developing our scale, data from follow-up testing confirmed that students’ engagement scores were positively correlated with indicators of performance, such as good grades and independent learning outside of school motivated by interest. If teachers and administrators can understand how students differ in engagement levels through use of our scale, then they can take steps to increase academic engagement and positive learning outcomes among students in their classrooms." Based on data collected in a Missouri school district by her MU colleagues Christi Bergin, associate research professor, and David Bergin, associate professor of educational psychology, Wang and her colleagues developed a scale that improves understanding of classroom engagement and can be readily used in fourth through 12th-grade classrooms. The survey is relatively short and inexpensive to administer, Wang said. "Using the scale, we can compare different groups of students to see which have higher and lower levels of engagement," Wang said. "For example, we found that middle school students had less affective engagement or positive emotions - such as interest, happiness and excitement - than elementary school students. This makes sense because elementary students tend to be more obedient to their teachers, so they may show higher levels of this type of engagement at that younger age." After Wang developed the scale, she and her colleagues tested it on the same students from whom the original data used to create the scale was collected. Wang found that engagement varied among different groups of students. Those who did not receive free or reduced-cost lunch had higher cognitive and behavioral engagement. Also, girls had greater affective and behavioral engagement than boys. Understanding how these groups differ in classroom engagement can help teachers and administrators adapt their strategies to fit the specific needs of students, Wang said. The research study, "Measuring Engagement in Fourth to Twelfth Grade Classrooms: The Classroom Engagement Inventory," was published in School Psychology Quarterly. Research Seeks Scale For Measuring Student Engagement; adapted image attribution flickr user jirkamatusek The post Research Seeks Scale For Measuring Student Engagement appeared first on TeachThought.

13 Digital Research Tools And The Credibility Lessons They Teach by TeachThought Staff This post is promoted by Noet, makers of Encyclopedia Britannica Noet Edition and the free research app for the classics, who asked us to talk about the credibility of information research in a digital world. We thought, then, that it might make sense to focus on digital tools and resources that highlight the idea of credibility. And because credibility and research are such important digital concepts-or really, data and thinking concepts, actually-we itemized each tool as lesson in and of itself. The Google Generation has a universe of information, right there on a little pinch-and-zoom screen. In How Google Impacts The Way Students Think, we theorized that Google could create "the illusion that answers are always within reach even when they’re not. In fact, if users can Google answers to the questions they’re given, they’re likely terrible questions." Further, "by ignoring the phases of inquiry learning, premature Googlers often find what they want rather than what they might need. In this way, it underscores the independence of information rather than the interdependence. Instead of looking at information and data as components of knowledge, and then understanding, it instead treats information in more binary terms: black or white, right or wrong, credible or not credible, good or bad." This doesn’t make digital research better or worse, but rather different. So in response, here are 13 digital research tools and resources (one is a video), each complemented by a lesson on credibility and research for the 21st century student who has grown up in an age of information abundance, but contextual scarcity. 13 Digital Research Tools And The Credibility Lessons They Teach 13 Digital Research Tools To Help Students Understand Credibility ︾ 358 views 13 items 13 Digital Research Tools To Help Students Understand Credibility Listly by Terry Heick 13 Digital Research Tools To Help Students Understand Credibility   Follow List   Embed List   1  Noet | Scholarly Tools Lesson 1: Not all sources are created equal. 0 likes Comments Relist Share 2  PaperShip for Mendeley & Zotero Lesson 2: Access matters. 0 likes Comments Relist Share 3  Zotero | Home Lesson 3: Want credibility? Cite your sources. 0 likes Comments Relist Share 4  Wikipedia Lesson 4: Wikipedia is neither good nor bad. Like anything, it's a matter of citation. 0 likes Comments Relist Share 5  Internet Archive: Wayback Machine Lesson 5: The internet never forgets. (It's out there somewhere.) 0 likes Comments Relist Share 6  EasyBib Lesson 6: There are different rules for citation depending on what form you're using. 0 likes Comments Relist Share 7  The Telephone Game Free Lesson 11: Go as close as you can to the original source. 0 likes Comments Relist Share 8  Summon - the Google Scholar alternative - Google Scholar - LibGuides at Royal Roads University Lesson 8: You can combine digital search with academic content. 0 likes Comments Relist Share 9  Publish or Perish Lesson 9: Metrics can help demonstrate credibility, but popularity and credibility are not the same. 0 likes Comments Relist Share 10  SEO Automatic | Internet Marketing Tools | Membership & White Label Lesson 13: Google doesn't make info easy to find based on credibility, but rather searchability, indexing, and other "SEO" logistics. 0 likes Comments Relist Share 11  Today’s Document - Android Apps on Google Play Lesson 12: There is a difference between primary and secondary sources--and both matter. 0 likes Comments Relist Share 12  Pocket: Save Articles and Videos to View Later Lesson 7: Curation and readability are critical parts of digital research. 0 likes Comments Relist Share 13  Credibility and Authorship Lesson 10: Question everything--even if you like the source. 0 likes Comments Relist Share View more lists from Terry Heick Lesson 1: Not all sources are created equal. Lesson 2: Access matters-so improve it. Be ambitious. Don’t settle. Lesson 3: Want credibility? Cite your sources. Lesson 4: Wikipedia is neither good nor bad. Like anything, it’s a matter of citation. Lesson 5: The internet never forgets. (It’s out there somewhere.) Lesson 6: There are different rules for citation depending on what form you’re using. Lesson 7: Curation and readability are critical parts of digital research. Lesson 8: You can combine digital search with academic content. Lesson 9: Metrics can help demonstrate credibility, but popularity and credibility are not the same. Lesson 10: Question everything-even if you like the source. Lesson 11: Go as close as you can to the original source. Blogs & journals can help. So can Google. Lesson 12: There is a difference between primary and secondary sources-and both matter. Lesson 13: Google doesn’t make info easy to find based on credibility, but rather searchability, indexing, and other "SEO" logistics. Digital Credibility: 13 Lessons For the Google Generation; 13 Digital Research Tools And The Credibility Lessons They Teach The post Digital Credibility: 13 Lessons For the Google Generation appeared first on TeachThought.

What A Struggling School Looks Like On Paper by Grant Wiggins, Authentic Education Ed note: This is part 2 of Grant’s series on Teacher Effectiveness ratings.  In the previous post I looked closely at the data on teacher effectiveness for six different high schools. In this follow-up post we look more closely at a range of data from two successful schools and one school identified in the Cuomo Report on Failing Schools. Finally, I draw some important conclusions and recommendations from the lessons of the data. It appears that teacher effectiveness ratings are not valid measures in light of other available data, as the data showed in the previous post. Some of the better schools in NY (as measured by graduation rates and exam scores) have lower teacher effectiveness scores than some of the most struggling high schools in the state - sometimes greatly so. In this post I want to dig deeper via additional data that is available for high schools in New York City to show that parent, student, and teacher survey data: School Quality Reports; and narratives from site visits further support the notion that the teacher effectiveness ratings are likely not accurate, especially in struggling schools. A Struggling High School A struggling NY City high school that I also know (having worked there twice), is on the Cuomo list of "failing" schools. Here are its survey and quality report data: Overall Survey Data (and comparative graduation data) Parent Satisfaction Student Satisfaction Teacher Views on Improvement   Student Views on Improvement Teacher views of school culture     Student views of school culture   Student account of instructional approaches   It is noteworthy that the teachers in this school say that these instructional approaches happen "Often" - a student/teacher disconnect that does not occur at the other two schools discussed here. Selected quotes from the school Quality Review Report, based on site visits What the school does well The principal organizes resources and time in order to support instructional goals and increase student outcomes from a social-emotional and academic perspective. (1.3) The school uses various assessment practices to analyze student performance, target instruction, and provide students with feedback in order to increase student achievement and academic progress over time. (2.2) The principal expects that all teachers will utilize the school-wide grading policy, more frequent formative assessment strategies, including exit slips, written reflection, and the use of rubrics. Teacher teams meet weekly in each small learning community (SLC) to analyze and discuss student data, construct item analysis and determine where students have gaps in instruction. What the school needs to improve Increase the alignment of curricula across grades and content areas to Common Core Learning Standards, and refine units of study in order to increase rigor in tasks to advance the post-secondary readiness of all learners. (1.1) With the support of a curriculum director/assistant principal, the school continues to work with teacher teams on aligning curricula to Common Core Learning Standards and to further develop unit plans and lesson plan templates to effectively support students, yet this process of curricula refinement is inconsistently documented and only beginning to emerge in the math and social studies curricula. Additionally, the progress made in curriculum development is not being accurately communicated to the principal in a timely manner. Deepen academic rigor by consistently designing challenging tasks and utilizing effective questioning that elicits higher-order thinking and extends learning for students on all levels. (1.2) The principal believes that students learn best when they are given the opportunity to delve deeper into rigorous content, engage in student-centered instruction, collaborate and discuss evidence and viewpoints with their peers, and reflect on the process and learning. However, these practices as evidenced in classroom observations, are not being consistently implemented, as the majority of instruction observed was teacher-directed with many tasks not appropriately challenging, with an absence of text-based discussion and lack of conceptual understanding.Forexample, in an English class, the students’ response to the teacher when asked to analyze the influence of X in the text Y, was met with disengagement from most. One student stated, "We have been reading this same story over and over again and we need a new story", while other students ignored the teacher and began talking about things unrelated to class. In addition to the breakdown of classroom management, the lesson lacked rigor, directions for students to follow, and an ultimate objective, leaving the teacher scrambling to gain control and students not engaged in any meaningful learning. In a history class, teachers asked students to annotate, but did not hold them accountable for what they annotated. Students were asked leading and lower-level questions which resulted in the teacher answering the questions rather than allowing students to engage in productive struggle. In another class, the teacher designed a lesson using the lesson plan template the school devised, yet none of what was written in the plan was executed preventing students from interacting at high levels and from multiple entry points, which eventually caused the lesson to fall apart. Out of 11 classes observed, there were only three where students were frequently asked to explain their answers. Furthermore, differentiation and multiple entry points for a variety of learners were not observed anywhere, with the majority of lessons requiring all of the students to do the same work. The result is that across classrooms, not all students are consistently provided with the opportunity to engage in higher-level thinking or reflection, which is evident from low-level discussions and quality of student work products. Enhance the monitoring of curriculum development and teacher team practices to ensure that teachers are effectively meeting the learning needs of all students as they work to meet the expectations of the Common Core. (5.1) The principal monitors student progress and assesses teacher instructional practices across grades and content areas to ensure coherence and to ensure teachers participate in ongoing inter-visitations to learn best practices from each other. However, while there is student work posted with tasks and rubrics that align to Common Core expectations, there is insufficient evidence that academies regularly revise and modify curriculum plans to ensure that the learning needs of all students are being planned for, resulting in only some students being prepared to meet the expectations of the Common Core. While there is a system in place for teacher teams to meet weekly, there is no evidence that the school has an accountability structure in place to regularly evaluate and adjust the SLC’s inquiry team practices and monitor the connection between the work they engage in during team meetings and the alignment to school goals. What are the teacher effectiveness ratings for this school? Not one teacher is deemed Ineffective and only 5 are Developing., 90% are Effective and 5% are highly Effective. Yet, note, above (under #9) that the only positive comments in the site report referred not to teaching but to actions taken by leadership: there are nopositive comments about "what the school does well" related to teaching per se. (In fact, despite the positive site review of the school leadership, the teachers strongly dislike the work of the Principal and other administrators, as visible in other teacher survey data.) This post is excerpted from a post that first appeared on Grant’s personal blog; Grant can be found on twitter here; image attribution flickr user nasagoddard; What A Struggling Schools Looks Like On Paper The post What A Struggling School Looks Like On Paper appeared first on TeachThought.

When Teaching Makes You Cry by Terry Heick Jackie Gerstein shared a video on facebook recently-the very kind of thing I usually scroll right past because I’m obtuse and abrasive and feel shame whenever I’m on facebook anyway. But it was Jackie, so I clicked and watched it, and was moved by what I saw. After spending the vast majority of my time and energy helping rethinking learning, it was stunning to see a teacher that could simplify things to their most human and elemental and beautiful form: The interaction between people that need one another. There is something about teaching that makes you cry, and so having taught for several years at different grade levels across different districts, I’ve cried more than once. It’s not always for the same reason, either. Joy. A sense of being overwhelmed. Breakthroughs. Failures. There’s a lot going on in any moment in a classroom-altering-the-arc-of-one’s-life-type stuff. My most recent cry was about 18 months ago (I’m overdue). I was talking to a district administrator who wanted to see "more detail" in my lessons plans. This was part of an ongoing conversation that we’d been having for months. The administrator wanted to a level of "planning" that I was unable to provide, and I kept pushing and trying and revising and resubmitting and trying again, and I was getting nowhere, and she (the admin) wasn’t letting up. In fact, she was pushing harder. I take tremendous pride in what I do, and am harder on myself than anyone critiquing me could ever be. I’m fiercely competitive, not so much with others, but with what’s possible-the gap between what we’re doing and what we could be doing. What Gap Between What I Was Asked To Do & What I Was Able To Do The district I was working for had a prodigious-and vigorously-referenced-set of "non-negotiables." This list of items and processes made it very clear what was expected of every teacher on a moment-by-moment basis, and what could be requested on-demand for the teacher to "prove." I understood this on a rational level-every profession has a job description with clearly delineated set of responsibilities. But my word-what had I gotten myself into? I wondered. This wasn’t teaching, and had little to do with learning. The tone of it all was soul-crushing. The implications of the "expectations" and "non-negotiables" were dizzying. The assumption is that you’re delinquent; prove you’re not. Not demonstrate effective pedagogy. Not prove students understand. Not emphasize select and relevant student growth. Instead, it was spend an extraordinary amount of time proving that you’re preparing the way we want you to, and don’t complain because all teachers have to do it, and team players don’t complain about what is expected of the team because that’s selfish. So I tried. The administrator wanted my lessons every Friday by 3 o’clock for the week after next. She’d respond to my lessons within 48 hours, and wanted a follow-up response for each of her requests by Sunday evening. If I created a warm-up that included a journal prompt, it was requested that I provide anticipated responses for the prompts. If I provided three prompts, I’d need to provide anticipated responses for all three prompts. Same with any kind of Accountable Talk student questioning. How might the students respond to this question or that? Why? What would I say back? What might they say back? "Here, it says you’re using inquiry-based learning in groups of four, with tiered reading and writing assignments to provide checkpoint "snapshots" of understanding. That’s Monday. And then Friday, it says you plan on using an exit slip as assessment? So I need that exit slip checked for rigor and okay’d, and I need to know exactly what that exit slip will be assessing (standard placed on existing curriculum map). I also need to know what kind of responses you might expect, and how you might respond to those range of responses. "I also need to see (approved) research to support your choice to use inquiry, Reciprocal Teaching, and blended learning. And please email me and your principal and your team leader the research so they can okay it." Same with learning targets, PLC work, data team work, committee artifacts, walkthrough documents, literacy probes, assessment data, IEP data, usernames, passwords, etc., etc., etc.-all with the implication that I’m not doing it, and that my choices are problematic, and that I must prove otherwise. In a short time, teaching had become a matter of expectation, compliance, and proof, and was so stressful I began to dread Sunday nights. I had come to feel completely disconnected from my craft, and realized I was not capable of fulfilling what was expected of me. And that is an awful feeling. To not feel good enough is not something I was accustomed to feeling. I went from Department Chair and Literacy Committee Chair and Literacy Plan Author to insufficient. As a person, I no longer recognized the joy and curiosity and inquiry and thought and self-knowledge and utility and affection of teaching and learning, and that wasn’t because I was "stressed," it was because, in lieu of all of the training in pedagogy, and all of the passion I had for my students, when I pushed with everything I had, nothing budged. I felt lost, and this is what, in that meeting with that administrator that sunny October afternoon, made me cry. The other end of the when teaching makes you cry? Something beautiful? There’s this. The post When Teaching Makes You Cry appeared first on TeachThought.

How The Activity Learning Theory Works  by Steve Wheeler, Associate Professor, Plymouth Institute of Education This is number 8 in my series on learning theories. My intention is to work through the alphabet of psychologists and provide a brief overview of each theory, and how it can be applied in education. In the last post we examined the various educational theories of John Dewey including experiential learning. In this post, we explore the work of Yrjö Engeström on Activity Theory. This is a simplified interpretation of the theory, so if you wish to learn more, please refer to the original work of the theorist. Activity Theory (AT) originated in Soviet Russia from the work of Vygotsky and Leont’ev on Cultural Historical psychology and Rubenstein and others on related neuropsychological perspectives. It is a complex theory which draws on a number of disciplines and it has far reaching implications for education. The Scandinavian school of thought that has developed around Activity Theory is arguably the most referred to in the literature and is largely based on the work of Yrjö Engeström. How The Activity Learning Theory Works  Vygotsky’s earlier concept of mediation, which encompassed learning alongside others (Zone of Proximal Development) and through interaction with artifacts, was the basis for Engeström’s version of Activity Theory (known as Scandinavian Activity Theory). Engeström’s approach was to explain human thought processes not simply on the basis of the individual, but in the wider context of the individual’s interactions within the social world through artifacts, and specifically in situations where activities were being produced. In Activity Theory people (actors) use external tools (e.g. hammer, computer, car) and internal tools (e.g. plans, cognitive maps) to achieve their goals. In the social world there are many artifacts, which are seen not only as objects, but also as things that are embedded within culture, with the result that every object has cultural and/or social significance. Tools (which can limit or enable) can also be brought to bear on the mediation of social interaction, and they influence both the behavior of the actors (those who use the tools) and also the social structure within which the actors exist (the environment, tools, artifacts). For further reading, here is Engeström’s own overview of 3 Generations of Activity Theory development. The first figure shows Second Generation AT as it is usually presented in the literature. The first figure is my interpretation in relation to digital presence, community and identity, while the latter is based on Engeström’s work. How It Can Be Applied In Education  Teachers should be aware that everything in the classroom has a cultural and social meaning. The way children interact with each other and with the teacher will be mediated (influenced) by objects such as the whiteboard, furniture, technology, and even the shape, size and configuration of the room.  This also includes its ambient characteristics such as lighting and noise levels. Learning occurs within these contexts, and usually through specific activities. Teachers should ensure that those activities are relevant and iterative, providing students with incremental challenges that they can engage with at a social level, so that the entire community of learners extends its collective knowledge through the construction of meaning. Teachers should also be aware that tools can limit as well as enable social interaction, so must be applied wisely and appropriately to promote the most effective learning. Reference Engeström, Y., Mietinnen, R. and Punamäki, R-L. (Eds: 1999) Perspectives on Activity Theory. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Previous posts in this series: Anderson ACT-R Cognitive Architecture Argyris Double Loop Learning Bandura Social Learning Theory Bruner Scaffolding Theory Craik and Lockhart Levels of Processing Csíkszentmihályi Flow Theory Dewey Experiential Learning This post first appeared on Steve’s personal blog; How The Activity Learning Theory Works; Graphic by Steve Wheeler The post How The Activity Learning Theory Works appeared first on TeachThought.

"It’s vital your Makerspace reflects the culture of your school." by Britten Follett "What is the most unique item your students have created in their Makerspaces?" I asked our SXSWedu panel charged with sharing details about their Schools’ Vortex: Innovative Library Makerspaces. A giggling Darcy Coffta, Upper School Librarian and Innovation Director at Berwick Academy in Maine, explained the most memorable creation she’s stumbled upon was a nuclear reactor.  We laughed too.  But she was serious! One of Coffta’s high school students literally built a nuclear reactor. Much like that student’s creation, Makerspaces are sparking a transformation in the nuclei of a school—the library.  Librarians, like Coffta and our other SXSWedu Makerspace panelists, are tearing out their circulation desks; building work tables; designing Lego walls; and soliciting parents and visiting yard sales for treasures and donations like sewing machines, drills, and hot glue guns. After 43 years as a librarian, Dottie Smay decided she wanted a space where her students could focus on innovation and creativity.  Smay, whose creativity and dedication to inspiring her students at Shorecrest Preparatory School in Florida is evident in everything she does, wasn’t going to wait around to make it happen.  She decided the Follett Challenge—a contest designed to reward innovation in schools—and the fact that her superintendent was on vacation, was the perfect excuse!  With a saw, a gallon of paint, and Dottie’s signature determination, she transformed her library into a vibrant Makerspace with minimal expense. Smay used her 3D printer to make gingerbread men to introduce the new Makerspace to her elementary school students. And a giant pumpkin forced the little ones to "Make" ways to transport it from the school sidewalk to inside the library. The students’ initially thought they needed a dad or even Superman to move the pumpkin.  But through the process of research and design (and adorable collaboration and critical thinking among five-year-olds) they managed to move the pumpkin successfully! The learning didn’t stop once the pumpkin made it inside the library. Using cardboard and duct tape, the students made prototypes of their pumpkin-moving devices. Smay says, "Even the tiny kids learn problem solving and critical thinking skills because the pumpkin seeds helped teach counting and basic science." At SXSWedu, Smay challenged conference attendees to, "Just do it! One person’s trash is another’s Makerspace! Don’t wait for funding. You don’t need a 3D printer. Look around at what you already have for resources and space." One School’s Approach The panelists’ libraries are proof: if you build it, resources follow. Follett Challenge Grand Prize-Winning Service Learning Teacher Patrice Bryan says the transformation at Maplewood Richmond Heights wouldn’t have been possible without the support and drive of her administration. Bryan says, "It’s vital your Makerspace reflects the culture of your school." Ten years ago, Bryan’s district was failing by all measures. Today, at the urban St. Louis school district, you’ll find engaged and productive students running a chicken farm, fish hatchery, garden, food pantry, and much more.  The Makerspace at Maplewood is weaved throughout the district, from Kindergarten through high school, in all aspects of the curriculum.  Math students study volume by calculating how far the compost pile will spread across the garden, while science students study biology in the kitchen while teaching nutrition to pregnant teens. But it all began in the library, which is truly the vortex and remains the center of district’s transformation. The hub of innovation. Bryan told SXSWedu session attendees, "The library is where everything happens." And despite all of the other activities available to students, library circulation has gone up, because students rely on library resources to discover the next step in "Making." A true Makerspace is a marriage between imagination, discovery, creation, and education. It helps a student turn a thought into a learning experience, driven by curiosity and experimentation, failure and success. It requires research and exploration, and it gives students new drive to use the books and other resources in the library. When I look out into the endless sea of books in our warehouse at Follett, I can only imagine the next creation they will inspire in the minds of our country’s little "Makers". In coming years, I expect to see a lot more "Making" happening in our schools. At the SXSWedu conference, there were at least five sessions dedicated to the concept of Makerspaces. As the moderator of our Makerspace panel, my goal was to make sure all of the attendees left the session with something tangible they could take back to their school and begin implementing on Monday. But in a way, libraries have always been about "Making." Now it just has a name. As for that nuclear reactor, its "Maker" is using his creation in his application to M.I.T. One day all of us may benefit from his creations. Visit www.makerspacesxsw.com for free resources to start creating your Makerspace. "It’s vital your Makerspace reflects the culture of your school." The post "It’s vital your Makerspace reflects the culture of your school." appeared first on TeachThought.

40 Viewing Comprehension Strategies: Watching Videos Like You Read A Book by Terry Heick You can’t watch a video like you read a book; the modalities couldn’t be much more different. On the surface level a video uses light, color, sound, and moving images, with the potential for adding text and shape and color and light filters as overlays to communicate ideas, while the most basic text structures use alphanumeric symbols, paragraph and sentence structure, and an assortment of text features (e.g., white space, headings and subheadings, fonts, etc.) to convey their message. There is much, much more to it than this. Videos are meant to be consumed in short bursts, while literature, for example, is meant to be "sat with." Videos are (often manic) sprints, while texts are (often meandering) walks. Because of this very different tone and purpose as a matter of design, it’s unfair to criticize videos as "less rigorous" than texts, just as it would be misleading to say that video is universally "more engaging" than text (something I may or may not have said in the past). It’s more complex than that. The Interaction Between Video & Text Studies of the effectiveness of video in formal learning environments have yielded some confusing ideas, namely that content acquired via video consumption doesn’t easily transfer to the medium of text (Fisch 2002; Koran, Snow & McDonald 1971). This doesn’t mean students aren’t learning from the video (or the text for that matter), but it rather suggests that the design of each medium may impact how the brain processes and stores the "lessons" from said medium, disrupting seamless transfer from one form to another. This suggests that video consumption would more readily transfer to video production, or even video as a means of assessment. Similarly, the reading of a text naturally transitions to text production and text-based assessment-or so some research suggests. How this works in your classroom is ideally a matter of your own experimentation, and a matter of voice and choice for the students. In lieu of these data, inter and intra-media interaction from texts, images, voice, video, and other existing and emerging digital and non-digital forms represents a significant opportunity for innovation and creativity. Books, twitter, YouTube, poems, text messages, Meerkat, tweets, and other physical and digital aesthetics all matter less in form than they do in function-all represent and enable nuanced idea expression. Like reading a text, video comprehension is a matter of decoding, but with different symbols based on unique modalities. Light, sound effects, scene cuts, dialogue, voice-overs, video speed, music, and more. How should students approach a video? How should they watch one? What should they do when they’re done? More largely, what viewing comprehension strategies should students use to promote close viewing? What can they do to increase comprehension and retention of video content so that they are able to repackage meaning into other media forms? Due to diverse content, mobile access, credibility with students, and temptingly passive consumption, video is a pedagogical goldmine. In fact, the YouTube model of content distribution has been so successful, we took lessons from it last year and applied them to academic content distribution in How To YouTube Your Classroom. Below are a few possibilities, many of which you’ll notice apply to non-digital media as well. A Note About Student-Centering Reading strategies, viewing strategies, thinking strategies-any "strategy" should be student-centered. One way to interpret this is to say that it should only be used if necessary, should be accessible and meaningful to the student, and ideally would be selected by the student without prompting. See Readicide for a powerful argument of how we as teachers, while well-intentioned, can "schoolify" reading and viewing and learning to the point that it’s unrecognizable to anyone anywhere on the planet outside of the classroom, and make students think they hate what they’re doing in the process. This doesn’t mean we can’t support students to use said strategies, but blind force-feeding will likely be self-defeating in the long run. How The Viewing Comprehension Strategies Are Structured  The viewing comprehension strategies are organized in a Before-During-After structure, much like traditional reading strategies are. As with reading strategies, there is overlap from one part (e.g., Before Viewing) to another (e.g., After Viewing). That is, some strategies can be used at different times, but we had to place them somewhere. Each category has four anchor strategies. These are "thinking templates" that can be used in multiple contexts and combinations. For example, "Predict’ can be used in countless ways-predict the tone, predict the audience, predict the narrative, etc.) These anchor strategies are the most universal, and thus the most flexible for use with different kinds of videos, in different content areas, and at different grade levels. 40 Viewing Comprehension Strategies That Help Students View Videos Like They Read Books Before Viewing Before viewing comprehension strategies that promote understanding of video and streaming content. Anchor Strategies: Viewing Purpose, Preview, Predict, Connect  1. Set a viewing purpose 2. Predict (e.g., sequence of events, video creator’s position on a given topic, etc.) 3. Preview video (editing conventions, length, title) 4. Identify media connections (e.g., I read a book on a related topic recently; I saw a tweet that described this same idea but in sarcastic terms, etc.) 5. Make True/False statements about general video topic 6. Begin KWL chart 7. Roughly summarize (e.g., what they know about topic. video creator, channel, etc.) 8. Concept map the video topic in a given or self-selected context 9. Complete Anticipation Guide 10. Create self-produced guiding questions   During Viewing During viewing comprehension strategies that promote understanding of video and streaming content. Anchor Strategies: Stop, Clarify, Question, Infer 11. Stop (or pause) the video while viewing based on viewer preference and monitoring of own understanding 12. Rewind to clarify understanding or uncover subtle data/events 13. Rewatch video with new purpose and perspective 14. Form relevant questions based on viewing 15. Clarify (e.g., information, bias, fact/opinion, "author" position, etc.) 16. Monitor & Repair Understanding 17. Evaluate use of primary and secondary modalities 18. Make meaningful and personalized inferences (e.g., primary and secondary audiences) 19. Infer underlying assumptions of video 20. Adjust viewing speed (i.e., use slow-motion) if available (e.g., physics videos)   After Viewing After viewing comprehension strategies that promote understanding of video and streaming content. Anchor Strategies: Summarize, Analyze, Create, Socialize 21. Retell what happened; Paraphrase "standout" ideas 22. Summarize main idea and key supporting details 23. Recall own thinking and/or emotions during video (metacognition) 24. Modality Analysis (e.g., identify and analyze prevailing modalities and their effect) 25. Metric Analysis (e.g., to infer social context with respect to total views, currently watching, social shares, etc.) 26. Analyze idea organization of video 27. Create a word cloud (e.g., that reflects diction, tone, theme, etc.); Tweet, comment on, blog, or otherwise socialize initial impressions in a way that reflects digital citizenship 28. Socialize extended responses (e.g., in writing, on social media, etc.) 29. Categorize information and perspectives 30. Separate explicit and implicit ideas   Extended Extended comprehension strategies are meant to provide extended learning around video and streaming content, as well as opportunities for more complex thinking about that content. Anchor Strategies: Reflect, Create, Critique, Design 31. Reflect on "fit" of video with regards to Viewing Purpose 32. Compare & contrast video with similar video content 33. Create Anticipation Guide (for viewers that haven’t seen video) 34. Identify "big idea" of video 35. Critique video for which modalities supported video purpose and theme, and which seemed to distract 36. Roughly determine history of topic in similar and dissimilar media 37. RAFT thinking & extension (Role, Audience, Format, Topic/Theme) 38. Prioritize ideas & information from least to most important 39. Distinguish between tone and mood of video 40. Design follow-up medium that extends and deepens purpose of video 40 Viewing Comprehension Strategies: Watching Videos Like You Read A Book The post Viewing Comprehension Strategies: Watching Videos Like You Read A Book appeared first on TeachThought.

How I Use Seesaw To Create A Learning Journal in My Classroom by Kelli Ohms, Special Education Functional Life Skills Teacher Being a functional life skills teacher, my class is not set up like a typical classroom. Students do a lot of individual and small group work. All students spend time on academic subjects like basic reading skills, money skills, and social skills. We also spend time on life skills activities. We’ll take trips out into the community to work on life skills needed in the community, and each Friday we cook a full course meal for lunch to work on cooking a variety of foods and following directions. We started using Seesaw last November as a way to document and share the work my students were doing in the community and record evidence of the key academic skills they’re working towards. Due to the nature of my class, students pick and choose most of the items they post in their Seesaw journals, with some additional items which they are told to add. At first, my biggest challenge was teaching my students to add items independently, but now they enjoy adding new items to their journals, and even request to post unprompted! I also give students option to "write about it" or "talk about it" so there is commentary from the student along with the photo or video. They pick based on what they’re most comfortable with doing, and I allow that because it is their journal. The biggest way Seesaw has helped my classroom is with parent communication. Prior to Seesaw, I was writing notes home each day with a brief summary of what the student covered during their day. This took up a lot of my time at the end of my day, and parents only received detailed information about their child on progress reports every 9 weeks. Now that I use Seesaw, Parents have loved getting real-time updates on what their students are working on in class and how they are making progress. Seesaw has helped parents to see first hand how their child is performing a variety of skills, including math, reading, and life skills. For instance, I had a parent who did not think their child could count money. Through a video on Seesaw, the parent saw their child in the beginning stages of counting money. The parent has now started giving part of the child’s allowance in coins so they can continue to practice at home. Since this change at home, I have also seen increased accuracy and improvement in this skill at school! Increasing My Students’ Motivation Because of Seesaw I’ve also seen an increase in student motivation for work because students can independently see their own progress. Now that they have several months of posts in Seesaw, they can look back and see how they are improving; they say, "Look how I did today! It’s better!". Students are also excited to post to Seesaw to show their parents the work they are doing at school. Knowing that their parents look at their journal is especially motivating. They are very proud, and enjoy it when they get a comment from their parents during the day even before they head home on the bus. Simplifying Documentation and Data Collection As a teacher, Seesaw has helped me improve my data keeping and documentation, and makes it easier to see over the course of a couple of months how students are doing. Now I have easy visuals to access as I am going through data to document for progress. This has also improved my teaching because I can replay how students are making errors, and see how to teach skills in another way. I have also found it beneficial to pull up pictures and videos during annual case conferences with parents to show student progress, which I wasn’t able to do very easily before. I would suggest Seesaw to everyone! It’s quick and easy to set up, and it’s user friendly for teachers, students, and parents. Seeaw has simplified many aspects of my classroom, makes parents feel more involved and up to date on student progress, and increased student motivation. Learn more about Seesaw - The Learning Journal at http://seesaw.me or tweet @SeesawEdu; Kelli Ohms is a Special Education Functional Life Skills Teacher working with students from 6th grade to 22 years in Albion, Indiana.  Follow Kelli on Twitter @KelliOhms. Kelli has been using Seesaw in her classroom since November 2014; How I Use Seesaw To Create A Learning Journal In My Classroom The post How I Use Seesaw To Create A Learning Journal in My Classroom appeared first on TeachThought.

44 Diverse Tools To Publish Student Work  by TeachThought Staff Educators are often admonished to design work that "leaves the classroom." This is partly a push for authenticity. Work that is "real world" will naturally be more engaging to students because it has more chance to have credibility in their eyes, and usefulness in their daily lives. This kind of work has value beyond the current grading period and culminating report card. But work that is made public has other benefits as well. If someone besides the teacher is actually going to read it, students may be more willing to engage their hearts and minds in their work. This kind of work is also often iterative-done in stages, with drafts, revisions, collaboration, and rethinking. It’s design work, and as design work, it gives students a chance to show what they know. This is one of the gifts of digital and social media, and an idea we’ve approached before with 7 Creative Apps That Allow Students To Show What They Know. Tony Vincent from learninginhand.com revisited that idea with the following graphic that clarifies another talent of education technology-shared thinking. Publishing Student Work vs Assessment In lieu of its perceived art and science, assessment is a murky practice. Anything a student "does" can be used as a kind of assessment. What the say, write, draw, diagram, create, or otherwise manifest that is then shared with someone else is evidence of thinking. This can be taken as a snapshot-create a video that clarifies the cause-effect relationship of pollution and the water cycle-or something more project-based and done over time, such as a storyboarding, creating, drawing, and publishing a comic book character over a 8 part series that explores the issue of bullying over social media. Either way, because the work is mobile and digital and easily shared, its ripe for both assessment and sharing with authentic audiences in the real world. When students publish their thinking with their right audience or collaborators at the right time, the tone and purpose of the work are able to shift dramatically. The following tools either allow you to publish student work online (e.g., YouTube, Prezi, wevideo), or create something digital that can then be published in relevant contexts (e.g., Story Me, Book Creator, Puppet Pals HD). The tools to publish student work are separated into 11 varied categories that run the spectrum of digital publishing, a list that’s nearly as useful as the graphic itself. You can find the list, graphic, and tools below. 11 Categories Of Digital Tools To Publish Student Work Audio Recordings Collages Comic Books Posters Slide Presentations Digital Books Narrated Slideshows Movies Animations Screencasts Study Aids 44 Diverse Tools To Publish Student Work  The post 44 Diverse Tools To Publish Student Work appeared first on TeachThought.

Research-Based? When A Lab Is Not A Classroom by Judy Willis M.D., M.Ed., radteach.com Neuroscience research about the learning brain has guided development of powerful, individualized learning tools. The challenge lies in selecting the best edtech tools when commercial interests use invalid scientific claims to support their products. My previous blog addressed the available "consumer report" sources to guide you to effective edtech tools. Since there are many products not yet evaluated, this post is intended to offer thinking to help recognize deceitful claims and unreliable experts. As an educator, you can be alert for several tip offs to probable false claims or false "authorities." Three of the more common examples of misleading neuroscience research of edtech products are summarized below. A Lab Is Not A Classroom This is one of the more pervasive fallacies-of logic and marketing. As with teaching and learning, transfer is everything. If promoters claim that the product or program is "proven by brain research," their assertions are simply not true. Laboratory neuroscience research cannot be proof of what will happen in a classroom or with any one student. Lab research can only be suggestive beyond the lab, as lab research is done in very controlled conditions with only one changing variable. The outcomes of these controlled lab studies cannot promise the same outcome outside the lab walls. The variables in the real world, such as student age, socioeconomics, class size, time of day, background knowledge, years of teaching experience, and so on, are not evaluated in the lab. Lab research, therefore, reports results in the very controlled subject group and testing system. These results can be very useful in guiding strategies and products designed to produce similar benefits as found in the lab research, but those results cannot be promised. Valid claims do not state that the product is proven by lab research. They appropriately acknowledge that the product design is guided by interpretations of the laboratory research outcome. Fun To Believe Some of the myths persist because they’re compelling; they sound credible and can be fun to believe in. Consider the financial and socioeconomic costs resulting from commercial products falsely claiming neuroscience proof that all learners need what they offer. An example was the bogus, but widely-commercialized, left/right brain neuromyth. Considerable sums were spent by individuals and school districts for programs claiming to provide "critical activation of both sides of the brain to overcome the deficiencies of weak right or left brains holding back student intelligence or success." There was never any neuroscience research supporting these claims. Evaluations of these products revealed that activities such as crossing the right hand over to tap their left shoulder in order to send brain signals to strengthen the "weak" side of the brain did nothing at all. Neuroscience has demonstrated for decades that all brain activities requiring cognition transmit neural signals across the two sides of the brain so that physical left/right activities are not only completely unnecessary, but also useless wastes of time compared to the benefits of physical education with aerobic activities using games for exercise and social emotional skill-building. The sad outcome of beliefs in neuromyths, such as these, goes beyond the economic drain. The falsehoods they perpetuate undermine valid neuroscience research and make educators skeptical of using valuable products that really are supported by good research. The "next big thing" is often no thing at all, which has a boy-who-cried-wolf effect when truly useful and well-designed platforms, tools, and thinking emerge. ‘Spurious Correlation’ Just because two measurements are highly correlated, it does not confirm is a cause and effect relationship. According to US Census and USDA data there was consistent correlation of over 99% between the yearly divorce rate in Maine and the per capita consumption of margarine. Just because these two variables tracked each other closely over time, it did not mean that one caused the other. In other words, correlation does not equal causation. (A great website to explain that statistic and lots more examples to build student critical analysis is "Spurious Correlations.") Even if the controlled studies in the lab show learning outcome measurement benefits in the group using a learning product, that research cannot prove that use of the product will engender learning outcome improvement in any individual student in a real school. There are too many variables, as noted above, that come into play once research findings are diluted into claims beyond the highly controlled lab in the ivy tower. Awareness of these patterns can help you avoid the frustration of valueless products and prepare you for making good choices from the increasingly available and truly effective edtech (and non-edtech) products, curriculum, and programs. Research-Based? When A Lab Is Not A Classroom; adapted image attribution flickr user nwabr The post Research-Based? When A Lab Is Not A Classroom appeared first on TeachThought.

Introducing Encyclopedia Britannica Noet Edition: A Researcher’s Best Friend by Encyclopedia Britannica Noet Edition Staff This is a sponsored post from Britannica Noet Edition One of the biggest hurdles in student research is empowering them to dig into primary and secondary resources. But jumping from an online database of original texts, to Wikipedia, to an article, to a dictionary, to their paper convolutes the process (to say the least). And when most students think research should only be as difficult as Googling the answer, it can be incredibly challenging getting them away from untrustworthy search results and into credible resources. Fortunately for you (and Wikipedia-dependent students everywhere), there’s a new tool that makes it easy for students and teachers to do impressive academic research in less time. Encyclopedia Britannica Noet Edition (EBNE) combines one of the world’s most trusted sources of information with primary sources and research tools—making it the new gold standard for research tools. Plus, it’s available for pre-order for 60% off and you don’t pay until it’s released. This edition—available exclusively through Noet, makers of humanities software and a free research app for the classics—offers advanced tagging and integration with primary resources, dictionaries, and classic literature. Researchers can jump from an encyclopedia article on Plato, to the Greek version of Republic, then to the English translation in seconds. Searches also reveal relevant media, dictionary links, and related content across your digital library. Greek and Latin tools help students explore original language nuance and meaning, and dates in Encyclopedia Britannica link to Noet’s timeline tool—you can go from the date of Socrates’ birth in your encyclopedia to a timeline of other key events during Classical Greece in seconds. Automatic citations don’t hurt either—just copy and paste from any resource, and Noet automatically cites your sources for you. According to Michael Ross, senior vice president and general manager of education at Encyclopaedia Britannica, "The Noet edition is unlike anything we’ve ever done before and represents a massive step forward for Encyclopaedia Britannica." The EBNE comes with 20,000 photos, 2,000 art images, 1,567 maps, 279 flags, and 689 videos—all fully searchable and shareable; with a click, you can add an image to your next presentation. EBNE also syncs across your devices, so you can start studying on your tablet on the bus ride home, then pick up right where you left off on your desktop computer. For a limited time, you can pre-order Encyclopedia Britannica Noet Edition for 60% off. Reserve your copy at Noet.com/Britannica. The post Introducing Encyclopedia Britannica Noet Edition: A Researcher’s Best Friend appeared first on TeachThought.

7 Reasons Why Teaching Is Still The Best Job In The World by Paul Moss  Sometimes, good teachers quit. Teaching is an increasingly demanding job with divergent influences, dynamic sources of innovation, and aging dogma that makes it all a struggle. It can be emotionally draining, and at times, impossible. But in lieu of that-and in an age where start-ups are glorified, entertainment is endlessly emphasized, and tech is kind, teaching continues to be the best job in the world. Or at least I think so anyway. Here are 7 reasons why. 7 Reasons Why Teaching Is The Best Job In The World 1. The potential to transform lives - ask any teacher who has helped a student in any number of ways, from academic to welfare and emotional learning, and they will tell you that life is not only good, but amazing. 2. It gives you the chance to be continuously creative - of course there are increasing levels of accountability in teaching, but teachers are allowed to be creative in every lesson. Even in observations, in fact most of all in observations, lessons are encouraged to be creative and interesting to engage the students. Teachers have so many opportunities to try new ideas, and indulge in iterative process to ensure the optimum learning environment is created. 3. It offers you a chance to continuously get better - teachers are not only encouraged to seek continuous professional development, but can ask for observation on a regular basis, to provide opportunities to grow and learn from masters or more experienced practitioners. In so few professions is there such support, and considering that as a minimum, contracts are for a year, teachers have so much time to demonstrate improvement. A growth mindset is part of the foundation of teaching. 4. It is a grounding, humbling profession - the amount of work teachers do compared to remuneration is shockingly disproportionate, in 2 senses: firstly, in terms of how many paid vs non paid hours of work they receive, and secondly, in relation to other similarly creative and important (and not so important) vocations in our society. But that is not why teachers teach. So few teachers go into the vocation for the salary - it’s a calling before anything else. 5. There is always satisfaction somewhere - teaching is a calling, and no one enters it without his or her inner voice telling him or her that. Of course there are always some imposters, but the massive majority have their hearts in the right place. How cool is that for the students? Having said that, teaching can be and is incredibly demanding, and often we can lose sight of that calling, bogged down in aspects of the profession that don’t seem to be connected to it. But on closer inspection, most of the extra demands are actually central to the job itself: explaining to parents where you are coming from; being observed; collaborating with others; marking. Take this last aspect, crucial to understanding whether students are learning what you believe you are teaching. Yes, it is very time consuming, but perhaps one of the most important and fundamental weapons in a teacher’s arsenal; any good school will understand this and the other cited demands, and create an environment where they become part of directed time. It is when these aspects are not acknowledged in directed time that the conditions for burnout are rife. 6. It’s a chance to truly to lead the world in the 21st century - introducing students to new technologies and ways of presenting, curating, and collaborating with others with what they know is truly exciting and truly invigorating. Modern teachers are actually pioneering pedagogy, and can and will be able to hold their heads up high in the future when we look back and see how learning in this day and age took a radical but enormously beneficial turn for the better. Engaging students in greater collaboration, and instilling initiative in curation and the promotion of information leads to truly independent learning, and setting up such learning environments is an opportunity that all teachers now have before them. There are few more gratifying feelings that being needed. 7. The children.  Conclusion Of course, so much of the technological addition to teaching has all been achieved mostly through our own initiative, having to source and implement the enterprising learning strategies. But this only provides another string to our bow, and in the context of how important 21st century skills are, another example of why teaching is such an amazing thing to do. Sometimes teaching is exhausting, but friends, always come back to the core of what we are doing. We are change makers, and that is something to be proud of. Long live teaching, still the best job in the world! Adapted image attribution flickr user alexandersaprykin; 6 Reasons Why Teaching Is The Best Job In The World The post Why Teaching Is Still The Best Job In The World appeared first on TeachThought.

Hip-Hop University: Tennessee By Arrested Development by TeachThought Staff Hip-Hop University: Tennessee By Arrested Development Lyrics Lord I’ve really been real stressed Down and out, losin’ ground Although I am black and proud Problems got me pessimistic Brothers and sisters keep messin’ up Why does it have to be so damn tough? I don’t know where I can go To let these ghosts out of my skull My grandma’s past, my brother’s gone I never at once felt so alone I know you’re supposed to be my steering wheel Not just my spare tire (Home) But Lord I ask you (Home) To be my guiding force and truth (Home) For some strange reason it had to be (Home) He guided me to Tennessee (Home) Take me to another place Take me to another land Make me forget all that hurts me Let me understand your plan Lord it’s obvious we got a relationship Talkin’ to each other every night and day Although you’re superior over me We talk to each other in a friendship way Then outta nowhere you tell me to break Outta the country and into more country Past Dyes burg into Ripley Where the ghost of childhood haunts me Walk the roads my forefathers walked Climbed the trees my forefathers hung from Ask those trees for all their wisdom They tell me my ears are so young (Home) Go back to from where you came (Home) My family tree my family name (home) For some strange reason it had to be (Home) He guided me to Tennessee (Home) Take me to another place Take me to another land Make me forget all that hurts me Let me understand your plan Now I see the importance of history Why people be in the mess that they be Many journeys to freedom made in vain By brothers on the corner playin’ ghetto games I ask you Lord, why you enlightened me Without the enlightenment of all my folks He said ’cause I set myself on a quest for truth And he was there to quench my thirst. But I am still thirsty The Lord allowed me to drink some more He said what I am searchin’ for are The answers to all which are in front of me The ultimate truth started to get blurry For some strange reason it had to be It was all a dream about Tennessee Take me to another place Take me to another land Make me forget all that hurts me Let me understand your plan Hip-Hop University: Tennessee By Arrested Development The post Hip-Hop University: Tennessee By Arrested Development appeared first on TeachThought.

Why Students Don’t Always Transfer What They Seem To Understand by Grant Wiggins, Authentic Education As a follow up on my series on reading, most recently yesterday’s post on reading comprehension with respect to the gradual release of responsibility model, let’s take a look at transfer. What is transfer, and what does it demand? Let’s go back to two seminal papers from 1983 (Paris, Lipson & Wixon) and Palinscar & Brown (1983) on Reciprocal Teaching that foreshadow the problem of transfer of individual lessons in strategy: Palinscar & Brown: "We turn now to the instructional mode, how to teach the activities. One main concern was to try to avoid a common problem with traditional training studies, the outcomes of which have been somewhat discouraging. Although improvement on a particular skill in isolation has been reported, this improvement is often slight and fleeting, and there is very little evidence of transfer. Maintenance over time, generalization across settings, and transfer within conceptual domains are rarely found." Paris, Lipson & Wixon: "[D]eclarative and procedural knowledge alone are not sufficient to ensure that children read strategically. They only emphasize the knowledge and skills required for performance and do not address the conditions under which one might wish to select or execute actions… We want to introduce a new term, conditional knowledge, to capture this dimension of learning to be strategic. Conditional knowledge includes knowing when and why to apply various actions. For example, skimming is a procedure that is only appropriate for some tasks and situations. The procedure needs to be applied selectively to particular goals in order to be a strategy. Reading only some of the words and sentences in text is not a strategy by itself; such skimming could be the result of skipping difficult words, poor visual tracking or laziness. The systematic employment of skimming to accomplish goals of speeded reading or previewing, however, would be strategic reading. Conditional knowledge describes the circumstances of application of procedures. An expert with full procedural knowledge could not adjust behavior to changing task demands without conditional knowledge…" Here are other relevant summaries of research on transfer in reading strategically for comprehension. Most come from the Handbook on Research in Reading Comprehension that I have cited in previous posts: Explicit instruction generates the immediate use of comprehension strategies, but there is less evidence that students continue to use the strategies in the classroom and outside of school after instruction ends (Keeny, Cannizzo & Flavell, 1967; Ringel & Springer, 1980) or that they transfer the strategies to new situations. The lack of evidence [about when and to what extent strategy instruction transfers] stems from the heavy reliance on smaller sample sizes and shorter-term intervention designs as well as limited attention to a "gold standard" of transfer of training to autonomous use. Teaching students in grades 3-6 to identify and represent story structure improves their comprehension of the story they have read. In the case of this strategy, there was no evidence that the strategy transferred to the reading of new stories and improvement was more marked for low- achieving readers. Skilled comprehenders use metacognitive strategies significantly more often than less skilled readers. Less skilled comprehenders were significantly less likely to make inferences from text even with equal background knowledge. Spiro and colleagues suggested traditional educational techniques often oversimplify the presentation of knowledge in ways that hinder subsequent ability to use knowledge flexibly, and argued that instruction must present information in multiple ways to foster flexible thinking, a method they called "criss-crossing the landscape"(Spiro 2004.) Work in cognitive development shows children must develop the ability to consider multiple aspects of stimuli. Children are predisposed to derive a single interpretation from a text. Even when faced with inconsistent text information, children’s inability to consider multiple features of texts leads them to select one interpretation over others - rather than considering and comparing alternative perspectives and then choosing the most appropriate one, resulting in poor text comprehension. Oakhill, Youwill and Parking 1986 compared inference making abilities of skilled and less skilled 7 to 8-year-old comprehenders who did not differ on decoding skills or working memory, finding the less skilled comprehenders were significantly less likely to make inferences from text. Cain and Oakhill 1999 reported similar findings, even when skilled and less skilled comprehenders possessed the requisite prior knowledge to support inference generation. From Beck Questioning the Author: Building understanding… is what a reader needs to do to read successfully. Building understanding is not the same as extracting information from the page. Rather, building understanding involves actively figuring out what information we need to pay attention to and connecting that to other information. Toward Successful Transfer Of Learning How then is such flexible self-regulation in building meaning of text more likely to happen? How can teachers more likely facilitate transfer of learning vis a vis the comprehension and metacognitive strategies? Here are a few key passages from How People Learn (2001) that summarize what we know about effective use of conditional knowledge in new situations - i.e. successful transfer of learning: "A major goal of schooling is to prepare students for flexible adaptation to new problems and settings. Students’ abilities to transfer what they have learned to new situations provides an important index of adaptive, flexible learning; seeing how well they do this can help educators evaluate and improve their instruction… People’s ability to transfer what they have learned depends upon a number of factors: Spending a lot of time ("time on task") in and of itself is not sufficient to ensure effective learning…. [It is vital to] emphasize the importance of helping students monitor their learning so that they seek feedback and actively evaluate their strategies and current levels of understanding. Such activities are very different from simply reading and rereading a text. Knowledge that is taught in a variety of contexts is more likely to support flexible transfer than knowledge that is taught in a single context. Information can become "context-bound" when taught with context-specific examples…. One frequently used teaching technique is to get learners to elaborate on the examples used during learning in order to facilitate retrieval at a later time. The practice, however, has the potential of actually making it more difficult to retrieve the lesson material in other contexts, because knowledge tends to be especially context-bound when learners elaborate the new material with details of the context in which the material is learned (Eich, 1985). When a subject is taught in multiple contexts, however, and includes examples that demonstrate wide application of what is being taught, people are more likely to abstract the relevant features of concepts and to develop a flexible representation of knowledge (Gick and Holyoak, 1983). Students develop flexible understanding of when, where, why, and how to use their knowledge to solve new problems if they learn how to extract underlying themes and principles from their learning exercises. Understanding how and when to put knowledge to use—known as conditions of applicability—is an important characteristic of expertise. Learning in multiple contexts most likely affects this aspect of transfer." These are all helpful points, for sure, but probably not concrete enough or supported by relevant English/ELA examples enough for most teachers to apply directly. In my final posts I will offer a tentative set of practical implications of all this research for teachers in grades 6 - 12 who are trying to improve comprehension and achieve self-regulated transfer of learning in students. I will also share some excerpts from books written for teachers of English that provide the most helpful tools and tactics reflective of this research. And I’ll return to a classic text that I have recommended before. Its wisdom holds up 75 years later. This article was excerpted from a post that first appeared on Grant’s personal blog; Grant can be found on twitter here; Why Students Don’t Always Transfer What They Seem To Understand; adapted image attribution flickr user johmorgan The post Why Students Don’t Always Transfer What They Seem To Understand appeared first on TeachThought.

Misunderstanding The Gradual Release Of Responsibility Framework  by Grant Wiggins, Authentic Education Yes, reading strategies-and explicit teaching of them-make a considerable difference, as my previous four blog posts here, here, here, and here make clear. And there is much to like about the idea of the gradual release of (teacher) responsibility in the teaching of those strategies for reading - or anything else where we want skillfulness. The approach is interactive, empowering for kids, easy for most teachers to grasp and implement, and grounded in research. Here is the original graphic of the Gradual Release idea from the 1983 paper by Pearson & Gallagher: Here is a more recent graphic version from Duke & Pearson (2002): Here is a more recent version still, in the 2011 article on comprehension strategies by Duke, Pearson, Strachan & Billman, their chapter in a newer edition of What Research Has to Say About Reading Instruction (IRA, 2011): Here is the text description accompanying the most recent graphic: The model we recommend for teaching any comprehension strategy is the gradual release of responsibility (Pearson & Gallagher, 1983). In this model (see Figure 3.1), responsibility for the use of a strategy gradually transfers from the teacher to the student through five stages (Duke & Pearson, 2002, pp. 208-210): An explicit description of the strategy and when and how it should be used. "Predicting is making guesses about what will come next in the text you are reading. You should make predictions a lot when you read. For now, you should stop every two pages that you read and make some predictions." Teacher and/or student modeling of the strategy in action. "I am going to make predictions while I read this book. I will start with just the cover here. Hmm…I see a picture of an owl. It looks like he—I think it is a he—is wearing pajamas, and he is carrying a candle. I predict that this is going to be a make-believe story because owls do not really wear pajamas and carry candles. I predict it is going to be about this owl, and it is going to take place at nighttime…." Collaborative use of the strategy in action. "I have made some good predictions so far in the book. From this part on I want you to make predictions with me. Each of us should stop and think about what might happen next…. Okay, now let’s hear what you think and why…." Guided practice using the strategy with gradual release of responsibility. Early on… "I have called the three of you together to work on making predictions while you read this and other books. After every few pages I will ask each of you to stop and make a prediction. We will talk about your predictions and then read on to see if they come true." Later on… "Each of you has a chart that lists different pages in your book. When you finish reading a page on the list, stop and make a prediction. Write the prediction in the column that says ‘Prediction.’ When you get to the next page on the list, check off whether your prediction ‘Happened,’ ‘Will not happen,’ or ‘Still might happen.’ Then make another prediction and write it down."… Independent use of the strategy. "It is time for silent reading. As you read today, remember what we have been working on—making predictions while we read. Be sure to make predictions every two or three pages. Ask yourself why you made the prediction you did—what made you think that. Check as you read to see whether your prediction came true. Jamal is passing out Predictions! bookmarks to remind you." Great-a proven guide to teaching each strategy! What’s not to like? The Real Last Step Well, a key step towards the goal of the strategies is missing. In light of our discussion so far, do you see the critical mistake that users of this approach might easily make by relying only on these graphics and the explanatory text? Look at the so-called last step: independent practice. That is surely not the last step in developing self-regulated meaning-making. The last step is arguably fluent, flexible, and self-regulated selection and use from a repertoire of strategies - namely, successful transfer of learning for comprehension. The authors understood the issue, as made clear in another section of their chapter: Effective teachers of reading comprehension help their students develop into strategic, active readers, in part, by teaching them why, how, and when to apply certain strategies shown to be used by effective readers (e.g., Duke & Pearson, 2002). Although many teachers teach comprehension strategies one at a time, spending several weeks focused on each strategy … this may not be the best way to organize strategy instruction (Reutzel, Smith, & Fawson, 2005)…. Studies and reviews of various integrated approaches to strategy instruction, such as reciprocal teaching (e.g., Palincsar & Brown, 1984), have suggested that teaching students comprehension routines that include developing facility with a repertoire of strategies from which to draw during independent reading tasks can lead to increased understanding (e.g., Brown, 2008; Guthrie, Wigfield, Barbosa, et al., 2004; Spörer, Brunstein, & Kieschke, 2009). Alas, no practical guidance is offered here on how to accomplish such an integrated approach. (Oddly, the authors dropped a paragraph from their earlier 2002 version of this article that offers some guidance: "Ongoing assessment. Finally, as with any good instruction, comprehension instruction should be accompanied by ongoing assessment. Teachers should monitor students’ use of comprehension strategies and their success at understanding what they read. Results of this monitoring should, in turn, inform the teacher’s instruction. When a particular strategy continues to be used ineffectively, or not at all, the teacher should respond with additional instruction or a modified instructional approach. At the same time, students should be monitoring their own use of comprehension strategies, aware of their strengths as well as their weaknesses as developing comprehenders.)" The Unintended Consequence Because of the well-known graphic, it becomes ironically far too easy for a teacher to incorrectly think that gradual release on each strategy, in the way laid out in the graphics, should somehow culminate in a self-regulated repertoire that transfers. Alas, that cannot cause transfer - as common sense and the research reveal. Recall Pressley’s blunt comment from an earlier post: "Rather than teaching students how to become self-regulated learners, teachers seem to expect behaviors would naturally develop through prompted questions. There is of course no evidence that such prompting leads to anything like active self-regulated use of comprehension strategies." Yet, despite these warnings in the literature, I have seen this problem first-hand time after time in classrooms: teachers follow this graphic in organizing the teaching of all the strategies-and, worse, rarely assessing the extent to which students, unprompted, use the strategies when reading new text. Tomorrow, we’ll look at transfer, and how we can think of it differently for more effective teaching. This post is excerpted from a post that first appeared on Grant’s personal blog; Grant can be found on twitter here; Misunderstanding The Gradual Release Of Responsibility Framework  The post Misunderstanding The Gradual Release Of Responsibility Framework appeared first on TeachThought.

No Student Is Unreachable by Jeffrey Benson As an educational elder with a lot of experience working with challenging students, I am often asked to consult to school teams. Recently a dedicated school counselor discussed with me Garrett, an 8th graders, saying, "He’s really depressed, completely shut-down. He does no work. His dad doesn’t follow through on getting him to therapy, or to try medication. Garrett gets nothing done and doesn’t seem to care at all." We chatted about ways to support Garrett’s father, and the difficulty of hanging in while witnessing a student who is so shut-down. "It’s hard to see him fail each day. All he wants to do is work with Mr. B, the teacher in the robotics lab." Whoa, that’s not a completely shut-down kid! Our conversation then pivoted to the fact that Garrett had an interest (!) and a person at school whom he wanted to be with. We brainstormed ways the school could alter Garrett’s schedule so that he had more contact with Mr. B. The contact wouldn’t have to be earned, because kids shouldn’t have to earn something that they really need; Garrett needed time with Mr. B and robotics as much as a typical student needed to be in social studies. Being with Mr. B in the robotics lab wasn’t a cure—it was a way to get traction with Garrett and for Garrett to construct a more positive image of himself in a world which he could barely abide. This is not an uncommon scenario: teachers describe, often with great compassion, all the ways a student struggles, all the things the student cannot do that age-typical peers are doing. "Spend as much time describing what the child can do as what the child can’t do." When I hear these stories I too become shut-down; I am disabled by all the disabilities. It is as if I have been handed a trash bag filled with broken tools and smashed up parts and told to get to work. Then I remember to request: Please tell me anything and everything this child can do. The struggles of children who are challenging (often victims of exploited communities, neglect, and abuse) are so heart-breaking and extreme. As professionals we need to share our stories and vent our feelings. Equally important, as teaching professionals, we need to build, and for that we need every possible tool and working part in the child. No Student Is Unreachable: 4 Strategies To Reach Students That Don’t (Seem To) Want To Be Reached To counter our inclination to get overwhelmed by the disabilities and short-comings, I recommend the following steps for establishing a consistent framework anytime your school focuses on challenging students, whether in a case conference, child-study team, IEP meeting, or more informal conversation. 1. Spend as much time describing what the child can do as what the child can’t do. I suggest literally using a timer. The disability concerns tend to come with troubling stories; the ability side of the ledger tends to be a less-emotional list; e.g. "She likes to draw." What does she draw? When does she draw? Has anyone talked to her about her drawing? What sort of skills does her drawing demonstrate? Does anyone see anything else the child likes to do or shows an interest in? 2. Get everyone who works with the student into the conversation. There have been innumerable times when the physical education teacher, or the wood shop teacher, describes a very different child—an engaged child- than the core academic teachers see. This is not a criticism of those teachers; it is more a window into the complexity of human development. As with the story of Garrett, one of the other teachers may provide an "island of competence" that needs to be expanded, at least temporarily. These are the times we are protecting a child through a very hard time in life, when schools have to do their best to inflict no further harm. The time spent with those other teachers can insure that challenging students don’t experience each day in school as a continual reminder of their failures to thrive. 3. Analyze the student through specific skills embedded in all the multiple intelligences, but not necessarily evoked in the core curriculum. While there is much discussion about the "debunking" of the "myth" of multiple intelligences, the fact of the matter is that multiple intelligences can provide a kind of framework to diversify and differentiate instruction for all students. For struggling and hesitant learners, differentiation and personalization can make all the difference. Examples? Linguistic—does the child understand puns and word play? Logical/mathematical—does the child show ability playing board games? Visual—does the child dress with any personal style? Physical—does the child move gracefully across the room? Musical—does the child know popular songs? Interpersonal—does the child have friends, and if so, how is that initiated? Intrapersonal—does the child have ways to self-soothe? Natural—how does the child talk about her pet? The answer to all of these questions can allow the team to see the child through a richer set of lenses, and can lead to: a) very specific choices for engagement: "Tonya, we’ve got some new colorful markers you can use on the book report drawing;" b) opportunities to affirm the child and build connections through very simple observations: "Garrett, you wear the coolest hats. Tell me about them." 4. Swallow Your Pride The quicker you can make it about them and not about you or content or grades, the quicker you’ll gain their trust and be able to reach them. For this to work, however, it has to be authentic-not "I want your trust so you can get good grades and master standards," or even even "I care about your future." Rather, start with "I care about you, right here, right now, for no other reason than who you are." Conclusion Students who are challenging-i.e. victims of disruptive childhoods-do not change overnight. They grow. For many of them, that growth is dependent on grasping onto an extremely diminished set of possibilities, interests, and strengths. Ultimately they’ll have the best shot at a stable life by working from the things they are good at and the things they enjoy. We serve them best by spending as much time seeking and discussing their often fragile and submerged interests and capacities as we do their significant needs and disabilities. In addition to TeachThought content on personalized learning, you can also visit ascd.org to find more resources for creating inclusive learning experiences. Jeffrey Benson has worked in almost every school context in his 35 years as an educator, from elementary school through graduate programs. Benson’s book, Hanging In: Strategies for Teaching the Students Who Challenge Us Most (ASCD, 2014), shows educators the value of tenacity and building connections when teaching the students who most need our help. Connect with him on Twitter; edited by Terry Heick; No Student Is Unreachable: 4 Strategies To Reach Students That Don’t Seem To Want To Be Reached; image attribution flickr user vancouverfilmschool and usarmycorpofengineers The post No Student Is Unreachable appeared first on TeachThought.

Acetaminophen Reduces Social Pain? The Physiology Of Bullying by David Palank, Principal at San Miguel School in Washington D.C. Study Abstract Summary Pain, whether caused by physical injury or social rejection, is an inevitable part of life. These two types of pain-physical and social-may rely on some of the same behavioral and neural mechanisms that register pain-related affect. To the extent that these pain processes overlap, acetaminophen, a physical pain suppressant that acts through central (rather than peripheral) neural mechanisms, may also reduce behavioral and neural responses to social rejection. In two experiments, participants took acetaminophen or placebo daily for 3 weeks. Doses of acetaminophen reduced reports of social pain on a daily basis (Experiment 1). We used functional magnetic resonance imaging to measure participants’ brain activity (Experiment 2), and found that acetaminophen reduced neural responses to social rejection in brain regions previously associated with distress caused by social pain and the affective component of physical pain (dorsal anterior cingulate cortex, anterior insula). Thus, acetaminophen reduces behavioral and neural responses associated with the pain of social rejection, demonstrating substantial overlap between social and physical pain. The Physiology Of Bullying A student’s social status faces no bigger threat in schools than bullying. In research, schools with a higher bullying rate, subsequently had lower scores on algebra, geography, earth science, biology, and world history. At first glance, bullying and academic achievement should not be related because one is academic and one is behavioral. This is not a coincidence. While bullying has taken the mainstream media by storm in recent years, the neuroscience behind what truly happens to students is usually absent from these reports. Bullying is most detrimental to students when others stand by and do nothing while the harassment occurs. The brain perceives the bystanders as participating in the action because their lack of action is processed as a tacit endorsement of the bullying.  On a psychological level, we think that bullies speak for everyone. We are wired to believe that if this person has socially rejected us, then the masses have rejected us. Bullying is dangerous because social pain actually activates the same neural circuitry as physical pain. This means that the system in the brain that sends pain signals is hijacked when one is in social pain or is exposed to a social threat. When you stub your toe, the pain is pretty much all you can think about for a few seconds. Pain may be considered a purely physiologically effect by some, but that would not explain the fact that we can use meditation and hypnosis to deter some of the effects of pain. A 2011 study found that "After 4 days of mindfulness meditation training, meditating in the presence of noxious stimulation significantly reduced pain unpleasantness by 57% and pain intensity ratings by 40% when compared to rest." Therefore, pain must also be a psychological process. Banging your funny bone, elbow, toe, or other body part will decrease your ability to concentrate on anything else but that pain. Pain and emotion are experienced at the same time in the brain. If we are in pain it invokes an emotional response (remember that our brains are wired to seek pleasure and avoid pain).  The same concept applies to social pain  Unfortunately, social pain can last a lot longer. Students, who were bullied on regular basis in middle school, had a much higher rate of suicide years later. Those who were bullied at age 8, were six times more likely to commit suicide by age 25. The part of the brain that processes social pain is the Dorsal Anterior Cingulate Cortex (dACC). "Studies have suggested that the dorsal anterior cingulate cortex (dACC) is a key brain region involved in the detection of social exclusion." Removal of this part of the brain in rats resulted in the survival of only about 20% of their pups. This is due to the fact that they did not feel enough attachment to their pups to help them survive. When part of the dACC was removed in patients with chronic pain, anxiety, and depression those in chronic pain still had pain. However, they claimed that the pain "didn’t bother them anymore." Using this logic, scientists wanted to see if painkillers would dampen social pain as well. Social Rejection-And Tylenol? Cyberball is a game designed by scientists to make the player (the research subject) feel rejected.  One subject believes he or she is playing against two other players in a virtual video game.  However, the subject is only playing against a computer. At first, all three players toss the ball to each other in turn. But at a certain point, the computer controlled players cut the poor research participant out of the game. They toss the ball just to each other. Even though this is a silly game in a research study and has no bearing on real life, the research subjects reported (and brain scans showed) that they were really distressed, hurt and rejected. Even when then scientists told him it was not a human, but just a computer, his brain reacted the same way. This social rejection is so ingrained that even when we are told that it’s a not human, we feel the pain. The most interesting part of the study is how their brains processed the social rejection. To the brain, social pain feels a lot like physical pain. The more rejected the participant said he or she felt, the more activity there was in the part of the brain that processes the distress of physical pain. In a follow-up study, participants were called into the lab and, like last time, played Cyberball in the brain scanner. But this time, the researchers added a new variable. Before they came into the lab, half of them had taken Tylenol every day for three weeks while the other half had taken a placebo. What the researchers found in this study was remarkable: the placebo group felt just as rejected and pained as those in the initial study, but the people in the Tylenol group were immune to the social pain of feeling left out. Social rejection is so central to our well-being that evolution decided that social pain is processed the same way as physical pain. Social Pain, Rewards, and Consequences Evolutionarily, the better we understand our social environment the better our lives became. Therefore, in students, social interest is no distraction, but it is actually the most important thing they can learn well. A person in pain has fewer cognitive and attentional resources at their disposal, and this is no different when it comes to social pain. This social pain can lead to a dramatic reduction not only in a student’s sense of well-being, but in their ability to learn, which creates a destructive cycle. Teachers that do not allow social interaction are actively contributing to this pain. Disallowing social interaction is like telling someone that hasn’t eaten to turn off his or her desire to eat. The more that you allow for positive social interaction, the likelihood of social hunger being a distraction will inevitably decline. It becomes a distraction to students because our bodies realize that social interaction is critical to survival. You can visit David’s blog and look for his upcoming book, "Class Hacker."; Acetaminophen Reduces Social Pain? The Physiology Of Bullying; image attribution flickr user twentyfourstudents and cheriejoyful 1 Lieberman, M. (2013). Educating the Social Brain. In Social: Why our brains are wired to connect (p. 277). Broadway Books. 2 Zeidan, F., Martucci, K., Kraft, R., Gordon, N., Mchaffie, J., & Coghill, R. (2011). Brain Mechanisms Supporting the Modulation of Pain by Mindfulness Meditation. Journal of Neuroscience, 31(36), 5540-5548. 3 Lieberman, M. (2013). Social: Why our brains are wired to connect (p. 69). Broadway Books 4 Kawamoto, T., Onoda, K., Nakashima, K., Nittono, H., Yamaguchi, S., & Ura, M. (2012). Is dorsal anterior cingulate cortex activation in response to social exclusion due to expectancy violation? An fMRI study. Frontiers in Evolutionary Neuroscience. 5 Lieberman, M. (2013).Broken Hearts and Broken Legs. In Social: Why our brains are wired to connect (p. 53). Broadway Books 6 Eisenberger, N. (2003). Does Rejection Hurt? An FMRI Study Of Social Exclusion. Science, 290-292 7 Lieberman, M. (2013). Educating the Social Brain. In Social: Why our brains are wired to connect (p. 282-283). Broadway Books 8 Lieberman, M. (2013). Educating the Social Brain. In Social: Why our brains are wired to connect (p. 270). Broadway Books. 9 Ibid. 10 Ibid. p.283 11 Ibid. p.283 The post The Physiology Of Bullying appeared first on TeachThought.

Lessen Plans: A Call For Teachers That Reach by Cory Gomez Five years ago, on the cusp on entering college, I was cautioned by numerous adults about the dangers of the educational field. I would hear: "You’re crazy," "It is a horrible time to be a teacher," "You don’t know what you are getting yourself into," and other discouraging cliche advice. At the time, it meant nothing to me: I was an untainted, eager, "read-to-change-the-world" 18-year-old. All I wanted to do was follow my heart and enjoy a few years of college with my friends. The first years of college flew by as I conquered my required general education courses, but when junior year came, and I was thrown into the teacher candidate program, I realized how right those adults were years prior. It was an absolute mess. Professors struggled to adapt instruction to reflect the needs of the ever-changing education landscape. The punishing policies being cast down from the state and federal government were crippling. There was inadequate professional development, materials, and most importantly, time. I was the victim of poor governing and law-making, and all I wanted to do was teach. The courses were convoluted with professors’ desperate attempts to prepare us for the changes while still keeping the integrity of the original course content. The result was an extremely confused, discouraged, and resentful man moments away from employment opportunities. This is the exact perpetuating problem I want to tackle. Educators are doomed from the start; hope is eliminated as soon as an adolescent declares they want to teach. There is such a negative connotation with teaching that is impossible to persuade pre-service teachers that they are doing the right thing. The way media is currently portraying education is like a battlefield, but instead of recruiting soldiers to help fight, we are tell them to retreat and go home. That is why I wrote "Lessen Plans." It is a call-to-arms. It is designed to be inspirational, appeal to the senses, and to invigorate a generation of doubtful young teachers. We need them more than ever. "Lessen Plans" implies that now is the time more than ever to enter education and be apart of the reform. It humanizes and contextualizes the profession, demanding leaders to step forward and do their duty: teach with everything they’ve got. Lessen Plans  Our creation’s a nation too obsessed with testing and dissections. A generation of multiple choices questions, And not enough reflection or progressions. We lessen our lessons. As we head in the wrong direction, I’m just trying to make some connections Because between education and oppression there’s a fine line. Guessin’ the time’s mine Cause the blind’s still leading the blind. I’m becoming bitter, Intellectual rigor withers, The lights dim as serpents of shadows slither Into our perception and hinder. System’s just a business trying to grow bigger, ha, go figure. Enough of the trickery, About time we reconsider. Take it from history; literacy has turned misery into liberty and victory. Ironic that we are trying to leave no child left behind, while we race to the top. If being dumb is the new cool, then we got to make it stop. We got teachers who aren’t teaching, And preachers who aren’t preaching Students struggling, reaching, Not finding the meaning Cause they’re not doing their readings. But if you can’t join ‘em, then beat ‘em. ‘Bout time we put the "read" back into freedom. No student is a number, what happened to the humanity? A classroom without relationships is just a damn tragedy. So sad to see, students going unnoticed When after all, children are our main focus. So let’s rethink the way we teach and learn, Give the underdogs and freaks a turn, Go out side the box, and break the mold. You can have a degree, but real teaching takes a soul. Sobriety’s over, we’re drunk off ignorance. Society’s soldier, I’m just trying to make a difference. Lessen Plans: A Call For Teachers That Reach Lessen Plans: A Poem About Teaching; Lessen Plans: A Call For Teachers That Reach The post Lessen Plans: A Call For Teachers That Reach appeared first on TeachThought.

18 Simple Ways To Make Your iPad Faster by TeachThought Staff You bought your iPad new three years ago, and now it’s getting a bit long in the tooth. Opening apps can take forever. Sometimes they crash, stop responding, or won’t open to begin with. If you want to extend the life of your little glass rectangle-and make your iPad faster in general-the following tips can help. And all of these tips are simple(ish)-nothing crazy like jail-breaking or changing hardware. Let us know in the comments if we missed something you’ve found useful. 18 Simple Ways To Make Your iPad Faster 1. Temper your expectations This one may be the most important. If your iPad is old, it’s never going to run like new. Part of this is planned obsolescence from Apple-consumerism trumps wisdom, unfortunately. They’re not designed to fail, but they are designed with a short window of use in mind (anything past 36-48 months is pushing it in the mobile hardware world). Before you make any changes, realize that "fast" is a relative word. If you want fastest, you should buy a new iPad. 2. Reset it First things first, reset it by powering on and off. Press the power button, then slide the button "Off," then power back on after it’s finished shutting down. If the iPad is working properly, there is no need to hard reboot it. 3. Hard reboot But if it’s not working properly, a hard reboot may help. Hold down your Power and Home button until you see the white Apple logo showing that it is rebooting. This is different than simple powering on and off, and could square up any issues you were having. 4. Verify WiFi speed isn’t causing your problems Hanging WiFi signals. WiFi signals that claim you’re logged in but you have to spawn the browser to actually sign in on a public signal. WiFi signals that lie. Fluctuating WiFi signals. All of these can slow your iPad down even if you’re not browsing the web. Many apps are trying to connect to the cloud in the background, and if they can’t, things can get slow. 5. Turn off animations Settings > General > Accessibility > Reduce Motion > Switch ON 6. Monitor memory usage Apps like Battery Doctor (not linking to it here because we’ve only recently started using it and can’t vouch for its quality just yet-search the store and use reviews for better suggestions) can monitor memory usage and help you "boost" your memory by closing memory hogs, hanging apps, battery drains, and more. Just be careful not to download a memory app that’s a memory parasite, and does more harm than good. 7. Use quality apps This one sounds generic, but if you find Google Chrome snappier than Safari-or vice-versa-use the app that’s faster. Bad coding produces bad apps that produce a bad iPad. 8. Back it up Use your cloud service of choice-iCloud, Google+, OneDrive, Google Drive, etc-and know which does what. iCloud is the only of these services that can take a snapshot of your iPad and restore it from that snapshot, while Google+ is great for photos. OneDrive and GoogleDrive are great for files (Google recently added "Photos" to Google Drive as well as they dismantle Google+). iCloud does it all, but it’s slow and in many ways (at least according to this TeachThought writer) unintuitive. 9. Consider workflow Launch Center Pro and Workflow are two apps that can streamline what you do and how many button pushes it takes to do so. Fewer button pushes and opened apps can yield a faster iPad. 10. Separate wants and needs You can’t have it all. As your iPad ages it can still do plenty, but you need to create a sense of priority. Be honest with yourself about what you actually use. Also, delete buggy apps developers can’t get right, or apps that were long ago abandoned and gum up the way your iPad works. (See #7.) 11. Turn Off Background Services Sometimes your iPad is sharing info in the background that can cause it to hang. You can experiment to see if turning off one or more of them might help. A few places to start? Settings > Privacy… Location Services OFF Location-Based Ads OFF Share my Location OFF Frequent Locations OFF Fitness Tracking OFF Diagnostics and Usage DON’T SEND Popular Near Me OFF 12. Minimize or delete graphic-intensive apps  Asking an old iPad to play a brand-new, demanding, Unreal-engine’d first-person video game is the way of the slow. Don’t. 13. Clean it-and keep it clean The TeachThought Office iPad (a 2013 iPad Mini Retina) has a sticky volume button that requires force to operate. At some point, something’s gotten stuck in there, and a recent Q-tip-and-alcohol did not help because, well, we’re not sure-it’s been like that for 8 months. Sticky volume buttons, home buttons, clogged headphone ports and more happen. Clean them before while the debris is fresh, and try to keep them that way. 14. Use a case Another painfully obvious one, but dropping your iPad will eventually damage it, and a damaged iPad is a slow iPad. 15. Start from scratch Most people don’t want to reset everything because they’d have to download everything all over again, but that’s kind of the point here-starting fresh with new expectations about your slower iPad. Provided it’s backed up (iCloud, Google+, OneDrive, Google Drive, etc.), your only inconvenience is some extra legwork. This could extend the life of your iPad considerably if you’re more selective about what you put back on it. Settings > General > About > Reset. This will take you to this screen:   From here you can decide what to reset-settings, content and settings, Network Settings, Subscriber Services, etc. 16. Narrow its use You used to use your iPad for Netflix and email and eBay while grading papers via Google Classroom and taking notes using Zoom Notes. Now that it’s slower and you want to use it as a frisbee, it may seem hopeless, but if you simply adapt its use to its speed, you can extend its life. Only use it for web browsing and as an eBook reader. Or only use it for "Newsstand" as a magazine reader, or for comic books. Maybe use it for podcasting, or iTunesU, or digital portfolios. Narrow its use, limiting it to something it does well, and you may not want to throw it (as often). 17. Make sure it’s updated In truth, this is part of what slows down your iPad. As Apple builds a busier, more robust, or even buggier, overly-ambitious OS that adds in support for thermostats, watches, car audio, and a dozen other things you have no concern for, your iPad will become even more divergent from the operating system it depends on. But failing to update-or even downgrading your operating system-is a losing game. There is no future where you have a blazing fast iPad running on a dated OS running non-updated apps. It just doesn’t work that way. 18. Close what you don’t use Double Press Home and swipe away whatever you’re not going to use again in the near future. 18 Simple Ways To Make Your iPad Faster The post 18 Simple Ways To Make Your iPad Faster appeared first on TeachThought.