What Does "College Ready" Really Mean, Anyway? by Terry Heick Yesterday, I was talking to my 14 year old daughter yesterday about the kinds of skills that translate to academic success. I also actually used the sterile phrase "academic success." This was an important distinction, as she’s home-schooled (another term I dislike) and learns through a kind of hybrid approach-a self-directed learning framework coupled with inquiry, combined with traditional academic tools. So for her, learning can happen on her phone, outside painting, writing her own music, or within the boundaries of a scripted lesson or unit. And while that’s true for anyone, her learning, on a day-to-day basis, is designed that way. So when she talks about what it means to "do well in school," she has to shift her thinking. As teachers, we often think of our classrooms and schools as "learning," but really it’s only one form of learning with very strong flavors and tone-one driven by the idea of coverage over mastery, with that mastery measured by mostly universal assessments, and with the motivation to learn mostly institutional-letter grades, certification, endorsements, titles, etc. You can fail. "Drop out." Get "kicked out." Be interviewed. Be selected. Be rejected. This approach has alienated a significant number of potentially brilliant children who, for whatever reason, didn’t make the cut, which creates a useful context to rethink education. Right, so, with Madison (my daughter), I told her that the universal skills of "doing well in school" (college, in this case) were literacy (close reading, skimming, note-taking, argument analysis and formation, the writing process, etc.), research (inquiry, sources, citations, and-the big one-understanding the value of specific data, and how to package that in an argument of your own), resourcefulness (to know where to go for what, and when), and communication (working together with peers, teachers, and other university-and external-resources, getting help, etc.). Of course, this is incomplete. I was standing over her on the deck while she read, not giving a formal presentation. Still, I was trying to make the case to her how you learn is more important than what you know. What Does "College-Ready" Mean? This begs the question, What should high school prepare students for? A job? College? These limited answers, to me, miss the point of education entirely, but I’ll get to that in another post. In K-12 we tend to focus on grades and content knowledge, success in college, and then within any "careers," may have unique factors. Grit is often the face of these skills, to which we can add resourcefulness, communication, collaboration, time-management, and other famously "soft skills." The first two years of an undergrad degree can be much different than the next two (or three). Before being concerned with a major, there are General Education Requirements to fulfill, which dictate that a student have specific skills in math or reading or language, and that strong or poor performance on ACT/SAT testing can increase or reduce this work. So to suggest that content knowledge doesn’t matter would be incorrect. It’s possible, though, that the hardest academic work might depend most on the softest of skills. A student might be thought of as "prepared for college" when they are highly literate, research fluent, self-motivated, and eager to connect with the people and ideas and resources and opportunities around them. But that’s too broad for policy, apparently. Or too narrow. In an article on Politico, David T. Conley, a University of Oregon education professor who has researched both Common Core and college readiness, explains, "It’s not just that people don’t agree on what ‘ready’ means. It’s that most of the definitions of ‘ready’ are far too narrow, and we don’t gather data in many key areas where students could improve their readiness if they knew they needed to do so." Not sure this makes sense, though. We need precise definitions and indicators for each specific student and their apparent "college readiness"? Like high school readiness? Or middle? Or the most problematic-career readiness? All of the "key areas" parsed and visible for teachers to "plan learning experiences"? The more ambitious the scale of our improvement, the more we lose sight of the student in front of us-the one seeking wisdom, or the science background that nurtures a love of medicine, or the creative expression to become an artist, or the sheer courage to farm. College is just a word. The reasons for going to college is a more specific group of words, but also misunderstood (see the college dropout rate, which is somehow attributed to lack of "prep" instead of the high cost or dubious utility of many college classes). This whole education-to-life connection is a bit murky. College Isn’t For Everybody Without something at least approaching the universe of this kind of thinking, college is often a matter of momentum and social expectation and rat race. And 18 is way, way too early to enter the rat race. As a culture, we have an odd infatuation with college instead of the currency and output and rhythms of knowledge and people. College-worship is a deadly practice-same with GPA worship and letters-after-your-name ego. It’s nutty. The truth is, you never really know if a student is ready for college, because the college may not be ready for that student and their needs and dreams and vision. College isn’t for everybody. If we were all rich and privileged, we could send every student to a 4-year undergrad program that could help give them a broad foundation of somewhat-personalized learning that high school never could. But some teens have babies. Or anxiety. Or creative angst. Or a need to provide for their family. Or learning disabilities. Or no sense of themselves as writers or thinkers. Or ambition bigger than a university campus. This can’t all be untangled in middle and high school. What A College Ready High School Student Can Say So then, how can we recognize those students who might apply to, be accepted by, and otherwise excel in college? A high school student might be ready for college when they can say: I read well, both for pleasure and understanding. I write well, either creatively or for communication. I understand how to research, extract key information, and evaluate its credibility and utility. I have personal reasons to learn-things I want to see, know, and understand. I see college as a trade-4-8+ years and X amount of dollars in exchange for something else. If that’s a good trade or a bad trade depends on my own measures that are personal to me and only me. I can either manage money, or am perma-funded by my parents or endless scholarships and loans that will drown me in debt. I am not scared of testing-or at least can test somewhat successfully. I know that people will project their thinking about college on me-what I should study, what’s "valuable," why I should go, which one I should go to, etc. And that the more of this thinking I casually inherit (rather than think about and adopt), the more dangerous the takeaways. I have a clear vision of myself as an emerging learner, and what college can do for me to clarify that vision further to underpin me as a person. I can create and cultivate learning networks full of experts, mentors, peers, professionals, and educators. I can distinguish a teacher that’s there from a teacher that cares, and then get the best from each. (Because like it or not, teachers still dictate the terms of a student’s success in college no matter how motivated or demotivated a student might be.) I realize that knowledge precedes-and proceeds-vocation, and that the person precedes the knowledge. If they can’t say these things, then they need to be able to say, with great certainty, "I have no idea what college is or why I might need it, but I trust myself to persevere and figure it out along the way." Or not go, and find their own path to their own good work. What Does "College-Ready" Really Mean, Anyway? image attribution flickr user iksme The post What Does College Ready Really Mean, Anyway? appeared first on TeachThought.

Text Complexity? Helping Readers See The Whole Text by Grant Wiggins, Authentic Education Selecting Text For Comprehension In the previous literacy posts in this series I identified a few guiding questions that stem from the research: Do students understand the real point of academic reading? Do students understand that the aim of instruction is transfer of learning? Am I using the right texts for making clear the value of strategies? Do students understand the difference between self-monitoring understanding and knowing what they might do when understanding does not occur? Am I attending to the fewest, most powerful comprehension strategies for academic literacy? Am I helping them build a flexible repertoire instead of teaching strategies in isolation? Do students have sufficient general understanding of the strategies (which is key to transfer)? Am I doing enough ongoing formal assessment of student comprehension, strategy use, and tolerance of ambiguity? In this post we consider question #3, on the appropriate texts to use to develop text comprehension. The Challenge Of A Common Language I began this series by reminding readers that NAEP results show flat scores and far too weak results on text comprehension over 30 years, in middle and high school. (The gains have come in lower grades in terms of basic decoding and literal reading). Questions on "main idea" and "author purpose" on state tests also reveal this problem over a long time frame, as I noted in looking at some past test questions and item analysis. Sitting in on numerous classes over the years reveals a key source of the problem: students are rarely expected to read a multi-page complete non-fiction text and be assessed on their grasp of it as a whole. Rather, most large-group instruction or reader-workshop mini-lessons involve small bits of text, typically no more than a few paragraphs. How can you possibly develop comprehension ability of a text this way? Such bits of learning can lead to absurd lessons. A well-known and highly-regarded Toolkit - even by me - offers this teacher-script for the lesson on how to distinguish importance: "To make it easier to sort through all the facts we are learning, let’s look at this three-column form. There are columns for Important Information, Interesting Details, and, of course, My Thinking. In the first column we’ll record the important things we want to remember about the topic. But sometimes it’s those interesting details that really engage us. We can add some of those in the second column…" How can you judge importance without grasping the purpose? Nowhere is the criterion of "important to remember" discussed. To understand a text and to therefore judge what is "important information" you have to know the author’s purpose and the main ideas of a text. You simple cannot identify what is "important" vs. "merely interesting" by reading a brief excerpt. This leads them to leave the text, in fact: "things we want to remember." But what if that was not at all what the author was trying to say? Worse, this is a deficient categorization: a detail could be both interesting and important. In fact, students in the provided transcript get hung up on this point in a few cases! Finally, how would any reader judge what is "important to remember" without asking the question: "Important to remember for what purpose?" (Another serious deficiency in the advice to teachers is that the overview of the lesson talks about learning to find important ideas, but that gets turned into important information in the text of the lesson as the excerpt, above, shows. This confusion about facts vs ideas is rampant in many lessons I have witnessed.) In other words, when you read only a brief excerpt from a text, there is no practical difference between important vs. supporting information, between summary and message. Thus, the vital distinctions between topic, main idea, and summary get blurred. I have watched students get completely confused about these concepts because the brief resources and lessons easily led to muddled thinking. Indeed, I have heard more than a few teachers equate main idea and summary at different points in their teaching. A Counter-Intuitive Choice Of Texts Thus, we need to do something unobvious in our reading choices: we must choose complete fiction and non-fiction texts that can be easily read and grasped literally by all students, so that summarizing is easy; yet, be texts in which the main ideas are not obvious. Otherwise, there is little use for true comprehension, specific strategies, or distinctions between ideas and information. (Most blog readers who took the Kant test in Post #1 experienced this tension at their own reading level.) If I were teaching 7th grade ELA, therefore, I would begin my year with Aesop’s Fables. The whole point of each Fable is an explicit "moral of the story" - a general life lesson stated at the end of the tale. We would start by reading one or two in which the moral is provided and modeling of analysis, then students would be asked to generate the moral of a few stories on their own, in a gradual release way. The text is easy; the inferring is challenging. You could also use very easy readings from much earlier grades, including fairy tales and short non-fiction books - with the added virtue that struggling readers would start off on the right foot since the texts and discussions would be accessible. Another recurring "text" would be New Yorker and editorial cartoons, and familiar but rich song lyrics to help students understand that the text’s message may nowhere be stated explicitly - that even in very short texts inference is essential. (As I have written before, calling "inference" a strategy is categorically wrong: reading for meaning is all about inference.) I would also have them read a few satires, such as The REAL Story of the 3 Little Pigs? by A. Wolf. Satire has the virtue of painting a sharp contrast between topic, summary, and the author’s point. All of these early moves would build clarity of goal - understand by making meaning of the whole and see how the parts support the whole - and confidence in all readers. Further along in the year, there would be paired non-fiction and fiction readings in which the topic was the same but each author’s point was different. Students would be asked to compare and contrast regularly. Essential questions would frame cross-text debate and regular Socratic Seminars. (In the ASCD DVD on Essential Questions, you can see me leading a seminar with high-schoolers using readings and activities linked by the EQ:Who Sees? Who is Blind?) One of my favorite moves in terms of matched non-fiction readings was to have students read selections from the history textbooks of other countries. Here is a selection from one on the Revolutionary era: What then were the causes of the American Revolution? It used to be argued that the Revolution was caused by the tyranny of the British government in the years following the Seven Years War. This view is no longer acceptable. Historians now recognize that the British colonies were the freest in the world… The French menace was removed after 1763 and the colonies no longer felt dependent on England’s aid. This did not mean that they wished for independence. The great majority of the colonists were loyal, even after the Stamp Act. They were proud of the Empire and its liberties…In the years following the Stamp Act a small minority of radicals began to work for independence. They watched for every opportunity of stirring up trouble….The radicals immediately seized the opportunity of making a crisis and in Boston it was this group who staged the Boston Tea Party…. In the Thirteen Colonies the Revolution had really been a civil war in which the whole population was torn with conflicting loyalties. John Adams later said that in 1776 probably not more than one-third of the people favored war. Where is this from? A Canadian textbook! Pair it with the relevant section from the students’ History textbook in 8th grade, and you have a recipe for engaged reading for meaning - indeed, further research. (I have done similar things in science by having students read Ptolemy’s proof that the earth is stationary and at the center of the universe.) It is vital, therefore, to assess progress in understanding the whole of a text. I would ask students each week to title an article read (in which I had removed or covered the actual title) and justify the choice of title. I would supplement this activity with similar titling questions from released state and national tests (since such items are often used to test for understanding of main idea/author purpose). And there would be a regular cold read and short-answer test on the main idea of a non-fiction article. (None of these need be deemed formal grades until second semester). Students would thus need to be taught and constantly practice a rudimentary logic: What’s the conclusion, the point? How do you infer this? How did the author take us there, i.e. what are the key pieces in the argument that supposedly support the conclusion? Without understanding rudimentary logic it is almost impossible to understand the difference between "important" and "unimportant" parts of a text; and it is almost impossible to read beyond a word to word approach, which research shows undercuts understanding. Nor is it possible to meet the argument-related standards at the heart of the ELA Common Core standards. Less Is More? Comprehension Strategies Once students understood fully that their job is to think about what they read so that they understand the "logic" of a whole text, I would present students with texts that demand care in thinking as they read where the message is obscured. Some obvious secondary-level text candidates include: Motel of the Mysteries, the mythic anthropological study of the "Nacirema" tribe, editorials and op-ed essays with unusual views on controversial topics. Poems are obvious candidates; so are puzzling allegories like The Lottery, Plato’s Allegory of the Cave, and the math story Flatland - all highly thought-provoking readings, though relatively easy to grasp at a surface level. But we need many more good examples of nonfiction than we have at present, in which the goal is not to learn information but ponder important ideas and arguments. Otherwise, there is far too little need to invoke any strategies. As for reading strategies, I would use a very small set, as noted in the key research mentioned in previous posts. In addition to heavy attention to metacognitive self-monitoring (to be discussed in a later post), I would highlight questioning, summarizing, and outlining the logic. In short, we worry too much about Lexile scores and "grade-level texts" and not enough about designing backward from our goal of text comprehension via intellectually-challenging whole readings that elicit thought and thus a need for strategies. Yes, I know what the Standards say about text difficulty; that’s a goal. But I am quite confident that - paradoxically - we would be more likely to meet grade-level standards in the end, by starting off with easier below-grade-level complete texts worthy of reading and thinking about. Otherwise, we quickly overwhelm and lose struggling readers with too-difficult text and a grab-bag of too many strategies. I welcome suggestions from readers about non-fiction complete texts that have worked for them, in helping students to become better comprehenders via close-reading strategies. Further Resources Four books written for teachers stand out for me as helpful resources in this challenge: Notice and Note by Beers and Probst; Teaching Argument Writing by Hillocks, Deeper Reading by Kelly Gallagher, and the previously mentioned Questioning the Author by Beck et al. These books, written for secondary level teachers, are chock full of sensible advice and helpful tools for readers to use. But by far the best book for learning to read intellectually challenging books is a classic:How to Read a Book by Mortimer Adler and Charles van Doren. This book transformed me as a college student from a lazy to an active and more careful reader, and many of my students have told me that this book was a life-saver for them as well when they went to college. Adapted image attribution flickr user externus; This article was excerpted from a post that first appeared on Grant’s personal blog; Grant can be found on twitter here;  The post Text Complexity? Helping Readers See The Whole Text appeared first on TeachThought.

3 Simple Strategies To Integrate Technology Into Any Lesson by Sandra L. Love, Ed.D., mentoringminds.com In today’s classroom, we have moved beyond teaching reading, writing and mathematics through rote memorization. We must push students to dig deeper and ask clear, thoughtful questions so they build the critical thinking skills essential for success in school, college and life. Technology has played a huge role in the development of the modern classroom, progressing from something that’s "cool" or "different" to a key piece of the critical thinking puzzle. While technology is an important part of the education equation, it doesn’t tell the whole story. Teachers play a bigger role than ever in developing an engaging well-rounded curriculum, though integrating technology into the mix presents its own unique set of challenges. Many teachers have been reluctant to replace their print materials due to cost and dissatisfaction with the available digital options. According to the MDR 2014 State of the K-12 Market Report, there’s a growing demand for solutions that improve teaching and personalized learning and educators are willing to consider new instructional models. So, how do we build an engaging curriculum based on the components of critical thinking, while incorporating technology into the mix - without sacrificing the basics? Here are a few simple tips to integrate technology into almost any lesson. 3 Strategies To Integrate Technology Into Any Lesson 1. Think Visually-Or Help Students To Do So  There is a wealth of free programs that allow students to incorporate visuals into their class work. For example, programs like Easel.ly can be used to create infographics to enhance history papers or scientific experiments. Animoto, a video program that turns your pictures into video, can be used to create book reviews or book trailers, which can transform an ordinary book report, essay, math project, or art portfolio pice into a fun and engaging multimedia experience. Technology is nothing is not visual. 2. Blog All About It-Before, During, & After Learning Journaling is a classic critical thinking instructional strategy that helps students independently deliberate on a teacher-prompted topic. Developing a class blog takes the practice of journaling one step further by fostering collaboration and teamwork. It allows students to think critically about their own learning process, while encouraging interpersonal, group learning and communications skills. Taking pictures during field trips and blogging about the experience, or documenting an in-class or school wide project such as a science or an art fair are authentic experiences that excite students about the process and spur them to examine these projects in a different light. Whether a writing piece is used to make predictions, assess background knowledge, create the "gradeable" product of the lesson, used to reflect on the learning process, or even a metacognitive survey of their own thinking throughout the activity/lesson/unit, blogging is a simple way to inject technology into any lesson. Tumblr is an extremely versatile tool for student blogging. Other options include WordPress and Blogger. (If you’re interested in the neurological benefit of "basic" cognitive actions like prediction and reflection, see 5 Teaching Strategies To Keep Students From Turning Off Their Brains.) 3. Integrate Social Media-For Focused Student Interacting Or To Publish Student Work Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Pinterest - there is an abundance of social media options available and students seem to be interacting with all of them. Social media can be used to publish student work, promote peer-to-peer interactions, or anchor project-based learning activities in "closed-circuit" or public digital spaces. The exciting thing about social media is that it can be adapted into a fun and unique learning tool as well. Create photo contests using Instagram and Facebook. Utilize Twitter to play word games or scavenger hunts and to create newsfeeds on particular subjects like political elections or breaking news stories. Allow multiple students to collaborate and create research boards where they pin articles and other ideas through Pinterest. The possibilities are infinite. Dr. Sandra Love is Director of Education Insight and Research at Mentoring Minds, a national publisher of K-12 critical thinking educational resources. The company recently launched Total Motivation™, a standards-aligned, supplemental curriculum, delivered in a groundbreaking combined print-and-online solution, meaning "You Get Both" for the same price. This new instructional solution ensures teachers and students have access to high-quality content to help students meet rigorous standards and effectively build individual critical thinking skills. For more information about Mentoring Minds and its educational resources, call 800-585-5258 or visit mentoringminds.com; image attribution flickr user flickeringbrad The post 3 Simple Strategies To Integrate Technology Into Any Lesson appeared first on TeachThought.

There’s Value In A Non-Traditional Path To College  by Dawn Casey-Rowe, Teacher & Holder of Student Loan Debt  It’s that time of year again-college time. You go to the mailbox. It’s the moment you’ve been waiting for your whole life. The one that parents and teachers tell you will determine the course of your very existence. You reach into the box. The thick letter means you got in, the thin number-ten business envelope is a sure sign of rejection. Your hand feels around in the dark. Bill, bill, junk mail…then, you see it. The thin envelope. "We are sorry to inform you that…" "After careful consideration…" "Unfortunately…" You’re eighteen, too old to cry. Your whole life is flashing before your eyes on one piece of recycled paper. Don’t despair! Let’s flip this equation, shall we? Could it be that rejection isn’t that bad? That there is a fate far worse than rejection? "What’s worse than rejection?" you ask. After all, you’re the one holding the rejection letter-it’s all very well and good for some old teacher to say it’s not so bad. I’ll tell you what’s worse than rejection. Acceptance in the wrong place or by the wrong crowd is far worse than rejection. Just like the wrong crowd can get you into trouble, the wrong college can get you into a lifetime of unforgivable, unrecoverable debt. Trust me on this-I see your financial aid packages. Some are fantastic, but others-not so much. Getting rejected feels terrible. Getting into a school you can’t afford is far worse. Getting into a school you think you can afford then trying to pay for it when you can’t is the financial kiss of death. My high school teacher urged us not to pay overpay for college when we could get an equivalent education for close to free choice local universities. I hope you’ll listen better than me. I went to an expensive undergraduate school then switched careers and paid for 1.5 graduate degrees so I could teach. I’m still paying off my last $15K. Will you be paying college loans at my age? What does that financial aid package really mean? Loans vs. grants. Grants are good. Loans must be paid back. An easy way to remember it is "g" grants equals "g" good. However, not all loans are created equal. Some are the key to affording a good quality education. Others are predatory in nature, meaning they suck the very life out of you, no different than a tapeworm or flea. All loans carry interest. A good loan is a reasonable amount with a low rate of interest that is deferred until after you graduate. A bad loan is a ticking time bomb. Many loans have interest that starts to accrue right away-hiding and compounding so that when you graduate, you owe a ton more than you borrowed. Some loans even need to be paid back as you attend college. That comes out of your ramen noodle fund-what student has money for that? Parent loans. Many parents take parent loans and have students agree to pay the loans after graduation. These stay in the parent’s name and can ruin their chances of retiring to a tropical island if you can’t pay them back. Don’t bankrupt your parents-that’s not nice. Work study. That guarantees you a job with a salary paid by the university. All my work study jobs were minimum wage on campus-things like the cafeteria, where I was the Sunday morning carver. I also worked in the bookstore. The advantage is that they’re close and they understand things like final exams. You can probably make more money off campus. I made three times the money waitressing. Work is an opportunity cost-you have to look at time you spend working in terms of what other opportunities are out there if you hustle. Work study may not be to your benefit, but it’s listed on your financial aid package. Live off campus: I looked at one girl’s loan package and noticed she had a scholarship for tuition, but not room and board. Everyone wants the college "experience," but room and board is really expensive. Would you be willing to give up some "experience" to get a solid education and keep yourself out of debt? This might be the difference between being able to afford college and really struggling after graduation to make those minimum loan payments-which can exceed a thousand dollars a month for expensive colleges. What can you do about this? Appeal. Sometimes your circumstances change or a college really wants you. It doesn’t hurt to call a financial aid counselor and say your family needs more assistance. There may be additional sources of funding they can award. Go part time. I spoke with a girl looking at a high-priced technical institute for a specialty career. She had an internship during high school and wanted to stay with her company pretty much forever. My suggestion was to continuously take two courses at night and one each summer semester while working. Tons of people do this. You’ll sacrifice your social life, but graduating without debt will be worth it. Ask your boss to pay. I had a job that paid for graduate school for employees-just not me. Nearly everyone got a law degree or an MBA. I wanted to a teaching degree. "Sorry, Casey," said my boss. "That’s not related to this job. You’ll take it and leave." I pointed out everyone else was taking their law degrees and MBAs and leaving, and maybe I wanted to go into corporate training. That didn’t work out for me-I should’ve taken the free MBA. A great many of my friends got to be lawyers and MBAs and go on to lucrative careers on the company dime. I got more college debt, which, as we discussed, is not wise. A lot of companies have education benefits. Ask. Consider the military. I recommend the military to my most motivated students-the ones who need expensive college for rocket science and medicine. If you qualify, the military will pay for your education and give you a cool job. The Reserve Officers Training Corps is a program that accepts students on a four-year scholarship. You go to college as usual and fulfill your military requirements during the year. You’ll have a class, drill, activities, and usually a summer requirement. For this, you’ll be paid a stipend and your tuition is paid. Upon graduation, you are commissioned as an officer and serve a certain number of years depending on the job you take in the military. You can stay in or leave after your term is up. You leave college debt free, with a job and the chance to serve your country. The National Guard also has education opportunities as does the active-duty military should you decide to enlist right after high school. You accrue money for your education or you can take classes while on active duty. The key is this-if they offer free classes, take them and knock them out of the park. Log onto your computer and learn. There is literally nothing you cannot learn online. You can follow and connect with experts in your chosen online with places such as Twitter. You can take online courses at some of the best universities in the world. There are so many careers out there that do not require a college degree-they require the ability to produce. Learn, do, then learn more. Surround yourself with a crowd inspires you and pushes you to learn more. You can be successful without college if you’re continuously learning and pushing yourself to be great. So, what do I do now? Go to Plan B. Take classes at a local school or start project "Log In and Learn." Get a job doing something you think you’ll love and evaluate it for a few years. Look at all the other possibilities around you. Research other cities you might like to experience and get a job somewhere you’ve never been before. Volunteer for six months doing something you feel passionate about. Write about everything you can write about in your pause to find your new path. Make a video diary. Put it up on YouTube. Do anything! Everything good that you do now adds to your future, which will be great, I promise you. It might be even better than you imagined. Take that rejection letter and write, "I am going to rule the world," right there on the back. Write a list of dreams you hope to accomplish. Put the letter away for four years. Go tackle #1 on the list. Come back to the letter and see if you are just a little bit happier than you would have been getting a bill for $250,000. Have you grown, progressed, and become a better person? Are you still on the positive path? Chances are you are and you have. And you have just a little bit more money in your pocket than your friends to show for it. You have not suffered a fate far worse than rejection. You have traveled four years on the road to amazing. Congratulations. That’s a job well done. Adapted image attribution flickr user tulanepublicrelations; There’s Value In A Non-Traditional Path To College  The post There’s Value In A Non-Traditional Path To College appeared first on TeachThought.

An Index Of Online Courses For Teachers: Summer 2015 by Class Central EDUCATION & TEACHING (29) Powerful Tools for Teaching and Learning: Web 2.0 Tools University of Houston System via Coursera Go To Class | Next Session : 3rd May, 2015   Foundations of Teaching for Learning 5: Planning for Teaching and Learning Commonwealth Education Trust via Coursera Go To Class | Next Session : 4th May, 2015   A Beginner’s Guide to Writing in English for University Study University of Reading via FutureLearn Go To Class | ★★★★★ (3 ratings) | Next Session : 4th May, 2015   Instructional Design for Mobile Learning via Canvas.net Go To Class | Next Session : 4th May, 2015   Erasmus+ Funding Opportunities for Youth SALTO-Youth via Canvas.net Go To Class | Next Session : 4th May, 2015   Prior Learning Assessment for Educators and Industry Colorado Community College System via Canvas.net Go To Class | Next Session : 11th May, 2015   Foundations of Teaching for Learning 8: Developing Relationships Commonwealth Education Trust via Coursera Go To Class | Next Session : 11th May, 2015   Understanding IELTS: Techniques for English Language Tests British Council via FutureLearn Go To Class | Next Session : 11th May, 2015   Shaping the Way We Teach English, 2: Paths to Success in ELT University of Oregon via Coursera Go To Class | Next Session : 11th May, 2015   GSE3x: Introduction to Data Wise: A Collaborative Process to Improve Learning & Teaching Harvard University via edX Go To Class | Next Session : 12th May, 2015   CS.1x: Preparing for the AP* Computer Science A Exam — Part 1 Cooper Union via edX Go To Class | Next Session : 13th May, 2015   Chem.1x: Preparing for the AP* Chemistry Exam - Part 1 Cooper Union via edX Go To Class | Next Session : 13th May, 2015   Performance Assessment in the Virtual Classroom University of California, Irvine via Coursera Go To Class | Next Session : 18th May, 2015   ICT in Primary Education: Transforming children’s learning across the curriculum University of London International Programmes via Coursera Go To Class | Next Session : 26th May, 2015   TESS101x: Enhancing Teacher Education Through OER Open Education Consortium (OEC) via edX Go To Class | Next Session : 27th May, 2015   Instructional Methods in Health Professions Education University of Michigan via Coursera Go To Class | Next Session : 1st Jun, 2015   Foundations of Teaching for Learning 3: Learners and Learning Commonwealth Education Trust via Coursera Go To Class | Next Session : 8th Jun, 2015   Preparing for Uni University of East Anglia via FutureLearn Go To Class | ★★★★★ (2 ratings) | Next Session : 15th Jun, 2015   FLOW Education: Facilitating Learning through Outdoor Watershed Education National Geographic Society via Coursera Go To Class | Next Session : 17th Jun, 2015   Foundations of Teaching for Learning 6: Introduction to Student Assessment Commonwealth Education Trust via Coursera Go To Class | Next Session : 22nd Jun, 2015   Developing Your Research Project University of Southampton via FutureLearn Go To Class | Next Session : 22nd Jun, 2015   MechC101x: On-Ramp to AP* Physics C: Mechanics Weston High School via edX Go To Class | Next Session : 1st Jul, 2015   PFLC1x: On-Ramp to AP* French Language and Culture Weston High School via edX Go To Class | Next Session : 1st Jul, 2015   INQ101x: Teaching With Technology and Inquiry: An Open Course For Teachers University of Toronto via edX Go To Class | Next Session : 1st Jul, 2015   Foundations of Virtual Instruction University of California, Irvine via Coursera Go To Class | Next Session : 6th Jul, 2015   CS.2x: Preparing for the AP* Computer Science A Exam — Part 2 Cooper Union via edX Go To Class | Next Session : 15th Jul, 2015   Chem.2x: Preparing for the AP* Chemistry Exam - Part 2 Cooper Union via edX Go To Class | Next Session : 15th Jul, 2015   Tinkering Fundamentals: A Constructionist Approach to STEM Learning Exploratorium via Coursera Go To Class | Next Session : 22nd Jul, 2015   Emerging Trends & Technologies in the Virtual K-12 Classroom University of California, Irvine via Coursera Go To Class | Next Session : 17th Aug, 2015 Self-Paced Online Courses For Teacher   Designing an Exemplary Course via CourseSites Go To Class | Next Session : Self Paced   Instructional Ideas and Technology Tools for Online Success via CourseSites Go To Class | Next Session : Self Paced   Locating, Creating, Licensing and Utilizing OERs State University of New York via CourseSites Go To Class | Next Session : Self Paced   Universal Design and Accessibility for Online Learning via CourseSites Go To Class | Next Session : Self Paced   Knowledge Is Golden IOC Athlete MOOC via Independent Go To Class | Next Session : Self Paced   College Readiness Math MOOC University of Wisconsin-La Crosse via Desire2Learn Go To Class | Next Session : Self Paced   iTDI Summer School MOOC For English Teachers International Teacher Development Institute via Independent Go To Class | Next Session : Self Paced   Learn How to Play Chess Chesscademy via Independent Go To Class | Next Session : Self Paced   College Student Success Tennessee Board of Regents via Desire2Learn Go To Class | Next Session : Self Paced   Digital Badge: Rockets to the Rescue! via Canvas.net Go To Class | Next Session : Self Paced   Managing Behaviour for Learning National Science Learning Centre via Canvas.net Go To Class | Next Session : Self Paced   BlendedX: Blended Learning with edX via edX Go To Class | Next Session : Self Paced   Get Organized: How to be a Together Teacher Relay Graduate School of Education via Coursera Go To Class | Next Session : Self Paced   Applying to U.S. Universities University of Pennsylvania via Coursera Go To Class | ★★★☆☆ (2 ratings) | Next Session : Self Paced   Surviving Your Rookie Year of Teaching: 3 Key Ideas & High Leverage Techniques Match Teacher Residency via Coursera Go To Class | ★★★★★ (1 rating) | Next Session : Self Paced   Math Refresher Course Utah Valley University via Canvas.net Go To Class | Next Session : Self Paced   Art and Inquiry: Museum Teaching Strategies For Your Classroom The Museum of Modern Art via Coursera Go To Class | Next Session : Self Paced The post An Index Of Online Courses For Teachers: Summer 2015 appeared first on TeachThought.

H&R Block Budget Challenge Awards Grand Prize Winner $120,000 in Scholarships Properly managing personal finances is critical to success in adulthood, and yet teenagers are woefully under-educated and under-informed when it comes to money matters. In response to this nationwide shortcoming, H&R Block founded Dollars & Sense to provide teens with financial management skills that will last throughout adulthood. Why the H&R Block Budget Challenge? High schoolers are graduating without basic financial skills. As young adults, their first exposure to real-life situations can result in costly mistakes, overwhelming debt and an unstable financial future. A recent study by H&R Block Dollars & Sense found that 57% of teens make purchases using their own money but only 17% maintain a budget. The H&R Block Budget Challenge is like a road test for financial management. Players learn how to time their student and auto loan payments, the consequences of being late on rent, how to stay under their credit limit and more, all through a 9-week online simulation. "America’s teenagers need to learn and practice budgeting skills now so they can manage their personal finances later. The H&R Block Budget Challenge is unique because it allows students to learn by doing. But unlike the real world, all they have to lose is points - not their credit or hard-earned money," said Bill Cobb, president and chief executive officer of H&R Block. How Did It Work? Each student was given a job and salary. Then, each student set up accounts with a number of vendors from cell phone companies to cable providers. Throughout the simulation, bills arrived and students were challenged to figure out how to balance their paycheck and pay their bills, as well as contribute to their 401k plans. Scores were determined based on the amount in a student’s 401k, the ability to pay bills on time (fees detract from the score) and performance on short finance quizzes offered every few days. Teachers were also given lesson plans and classroom materials to help educate and guide their class through the simulation. The 2015 Winner: A Future Chemical Engineer Sean Lawrence, a St. Clair, Michigan, high school senior, has won $120,000 in college scholarships as grand-prize winner of the H&R Block Budget Challenge — a teen financial literacy program that simulates an adult’s financial life and rewards students for mastering real-world financial decision-making. Lawrence earned the $100,000 scholarship for having the most "real world ready" financial skills out of 93,980 high school students in 5,621 classrooms nationwide after participating in the 2014-2015 Budget Challenge program. He received an additional $20,000 scholarship for placing in the top 22 of his simulation, earning a total of $120,000 to apply toward his education. Lawrence plans to study chemical engineering at Macomb Community College, Charter Township of Clinton, Michigan, for two years and then transfer to Western Michigan University. His future goals include working hard at a well-paying job, while investing in retirement and saving for a house and a car. Reflecting on the knowledge that he and other teens have gained through the Budget Challenge, Lawrence said, "Learning about money management before going into the real world allows teens to make the right choices, or have the correct knowledge so they don’t end up as the typical American with mountains of debt." Learning by doing approach   The H&R Block Budget Challenge uses a learn-by-doing educational approach that allows students to experience personal finance activities in the safety of a classroom, before heading out into the real world on their own. Participants play classroom against classroom and student against student, competing for $3 million in grants, scholarships and cash prizes. "Our goal with The Budget Challenge is to arm teens with the personal finance skills and confidence they need to succeed when they’re out on their own. It’s an investment in American teens," said Cobb. H&R Block awarded more than $3 million in grants, scholarships and prizes through the Budget Challenge in the 2014-2015 school year. Teachers who are interested in registering for the program can find details this August at www.hrblockdollarsandsense.com. For additional background on the program prior to open registration, please read this post for an introduction to the program. The post H&R Block Budget Challenge Awards Grand Prize Winner $120,000 in Scholarships appeared first on TeachThought.

A Quick Summary Of The Theory Of Learning Curves by Steve Wheeler, Associate Professor, Plymouth Institute of Education This is number 9 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 Yrjö Engeström’s Second Generation Activity Theory and its applications to education. In this post, we explore the work of Hermann Ebbinghaus on memory and learning. This is a simplified interpretation of the theory, so if you wish to learn more, please read the associated literature. The Theory Of Learning Curves It should be noted that the work of Ebbinghaus is not regarded as a ‘theory’ of learning, but borrows quite heavily from behaviourist theory, as evidenced through the ‘drill and practice’ and reinforcement schedules he recommends. His studies can be considered to represent a ‘model’ or explanation of how memory functions. We often hear people say they are ‘on a steep learning curve’. What they usually mean is that they have a lot to learn, not enough time to learn it in, or that they are finding it difficult. The term ‘learning curve‘ actually derives from the work of German psychologist Hermann Ebbinghaus, who studied memory and recall. In fact, he was probably the first psychologist to conduct experimental research into human memory. Ebbinghaus was interested in discovering why when we learn new information, it tends to fade away over a period of time. He referred to this as the forgetting curve and mapped it using graphs. What he also discovered was that over time, if learning is rehearsed and repeated at regular intervals, we actually forget less. He also found that there is a spacing effect that influences how much we can recall over a period of time. The frequency of repetition and rehearsal, if spaced at intervals, promotes better recall of memory than if the information is presented in one long burst. When expressed statistically, the learning curve, if steep, represents a quick accumulation of knowledge, and rapid progress in learning expressed through recall from memory. How It Can Be Applied To Education Teachers know that content can be presented in a variety of sequences, but that some sequences are more effective than others. The reason for this is that some kinds of content are easier to remember than others, depending on their difficulty levels as well as their juxtaposition. Teachers should know that primacy recency effects are often present in the forgetting curve. This means that the first content that is presented in a lesson (primacy) and the most recent content that is presented (recency) are the most readily recalled by learners. According to Ebbinghaus, difficult concepts should thus be presented first and then reiterated at the end of the lesson. For the more difficult content, regular revision over time can be more effective than a single mass delivery. What is even more effective is when the content is applied in authentic contexts, and where learners have the chance to rehearse and stregthen their recall.  These opportunities can be built into a scheme of work, and applied during lessons. When it comes to revising for an exam, the spacing effect comes into play. It is better to revise content over a longer period of time in the run up to an exam, than it is to do last minute ‘cramming’. Memory of information is more resilient if it is made meaningful by the learner. Reference Cherry, K. (2014) Forgetting: When memory fails. About.com Psychology. Available online at this link. 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 Engeström Activity Theory A Quick Summary Of The Theory Of Learning Curves by Steve Wheeler is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License. This post first appeared on Steve’s personal blog; A Quick Summary Of The Theory Of Learning Curves The post A Quick Summary Of The Theory Of Learning Curves appeared first on TeachThought.

TeachThought Is Looking For Interns. (Again.) by TeachThought Staff Every 6 months or so, we send out a call for interns. These are unpaid positions where you get to do a mix of things-some fun and self-directed and open-ended; some small, some large. Some clerical. Mostly writing content. It’s all fluid and sometimes rudderless and very millennial.  Each time, we receive more applications than we actually need, respond to a few that "feel" in our wheelhouse, and off we go. Three weeks later, most of the interns drop out because either they don’t have the time they hoped they might, or the experience is just not what they thought it would be. Which we get. You’re not paid, so it’s up to you to create your own "value"-not unlike a student in a self-directed learning environment. But if you can? That’s where the good news comes in. The interns that stick with it find themselves with, at worst, strong resume fodder, and, at best, with job opportunities from connections or visibility from their internship. This means that, like clockwork, 6 months after we call for internships, they’re all gone-either back to the craziness of their normal lives, or enjoying a new opportunity that came (at least partly) as a result of their time here. Ultimately, the idea of unpaid internships is polarizing-you’re either fine with it and want to learn and connect and do and see what’s what, or you wonder if "internship" isn’t a synonym for "free labor for some huge-and cheap-media conglomerate." This experience, like any other, you get out what you put in, which is why we’ve spent several paragraphs here contextualizing it all. Requirements At least some experience in education A growth mindset It’d be nice if… Extensive experience in education Strong writing and communication skills An interest in technology At least some graphic design experience Benefits Experience working with diverse projects Opportunity to see how you do in a (mostly) self-directed professional environment Chance to write on assigned topics, and/or topics you choose Increased visibility (author boxes, social accounts, etc.) Representative Tasks Here are some examples of tasks you may encounter. Note, you don’t have to do all of these things. You may want to focus on writing, or research, or simply organizing local events. Or you may do some research, but mostly writing and graphic design. Not only is that acceptable, that’s ideal. Write a post on personalized learning in digital spaces Host a twitter chat Edit content Create a visual for teachers Survey pertinent research Write a post on blended learning in a mobile classroom Organize a mini meet-up Write a post collecting awesome digital literacy tools Present at a conference Write an eBook Graphic design something (if you can do this, we have a honey-do list for you) This position can be any of the above, or other ideas you bring to the table. Writing. Social Media. Writing. Graphic Design. Writing. Project planning. Writing. Conference presentations. Writing. The Commitment None. If you love it and find your groove, keep at it. If you don’t, stop. Life’s too short. Ideally, you’ll do awesome, and eventually find your dream job in education and 6 months from now, we’ll be putting out another call for interns. Which is awesome. If this sounds like something you might be interested in, send us an email explaining why. The post TeachThought Is Looking For Interns. (Again.) appeared first on TeachThought.

Simplifying Our Increasingly Complex Social Interactions by Terry Heick Preventing bullying is just as likely as preventing poverty, racism, or violence. If we can start from this kind of humility, we may be able to improve our efficiency in dealing with and responding to it as a problem. Of course, there is no "it." Bullying is an output and a symptom—the result of a variety of factors that manifest themselves well beyond the school. Celebration of aggressiveness and violence, pack mentalities, peer pressure, lack of empathy, violence at home, insecurity, social media, a lack of role models, and more all combine with scores of other factors to produce the ugliness that is bullying. Technology has a way of amplifying our best and worst characteristics as people, and that is true with bullying—or cyberbullying—as well. Cyberbullying is just a digital layer added to what’s gone on for years in schools, on playgrounds, in workplaces, and even with professional athletes. In fact, there is now impressive nuance available when bullying through technology. For one, there is the visibility and scale of it all. Make one comment on an Instagram thread, and every single person afterwards sees that comment, as well as any reply. Same with facebook, tumblr, and twitter if you dig a little. The snide comment in the hallway that was only heard by four of five people has been replaced by the snarky subtweet that has everybody taking screenshots. Which brings us to the relative permanence of digital fare. Once it’s emailed, posted, liked, tagged, texted, or otherwise flung out into the digital ether, it’s "loose." Gone. No longer under the sender’s control. Social media is designed to make people seen and heard, which means it captures—and amplifies-everything. In fact, certain apps, like Snapchat, are built around this very idea of permanence vs impermanence as some kind of escape of accountability. The New-Bullying: Passive Aggressive Social Media Behavior And then there’s the nuance I mentioned, starting with passive-aggressive behavior that so many social media platforms seem designed for. The aforementioned subtweets, "sliding in and out of people’s ‘mentions’" on twitter, tagging—and more acutely, failing to tag people that very well "should’ve" been tagged, failing to respond to tags in a timely fashion, following and unfollowing, friending and defriending, and more all create an ecology that breeds bullying. Which brings up an interesting point: What does it mean to bully? And more broadly, what kind of response makes sense to get closer to the roots of the problem? Bully education should probably be a big part of it, in large part built around a clear, modern definition for bullying and all of its degrees. Stopbullying.gov defines bullying as "unwanted, aggressive behavior among school aged children that involves a real or perceived power imbalance. The behavior is repeated, or has the potential to be repeated, over time." That’s not a very kid-friendly definition, so that’d be a good start—a definition for bullying that the people who have trouble understanding it can use. "Being mean to people that can’t or won’t defend themselves" may be too flimsy-sounding, but it’s clear. Maybe some compelling and authentic examples, include passive-aggressive bullying? The iconic bully takes lunch money, grabbing pint-sized kids by their ankles, turning them upside down, and shaking out their change. Certainly this still happens, and it’d be a stretch to say "21st century bullying" is always digital. But updating how we define bullying, what it looks like, where it happens, and some basic strategies for response may be a good first step. If nothing else, we might work to remove the stigma from being bullied. Everyone, at some point, has been bullied. There is no reason for shame. Which brings us to a key takeaway here—transparency. We can’t prevent bullying, but we can make it crystal clear that it: Happens to everyone Has varying degrees, behaviors, and host environments Is not okay Is correctable Takes a village to correct Highlighting the behaviors instead of demonizing the bullies themselves could be one strategy. While there is some kind of justice in calling out and ridiculing bullies, that’s a lot like spanking kids for hitting, or sending lifelong criminals back to jail. Your reaction to any of this is a matter of personal philosophy and politics, but the big idea is to address the ecology that produces the problem, rather than playing whack-a-mole every time it surfaces. It’s not easy, but neither is spending two hours every morning responding to the previous evening’s middle school facebook blow-up. The tone and terms of our social interactions are new, and require newly simplified thinking to understand. Conclusion Educators have taken many approaches to solving the problem of bullying, from making it "uncool" to bully, to scary punishments, to teaching tolerance. Tolerance is part of the issue, but even that starts with highlighting differences between people, and suggests that one "tolerate" the other. "Stopping bullying"-and racism and sexism and dozens of other examples of how humans can be cruel to one another consistently enough to require a word for it-is impossible. It’s ambitious to try, but ambition is one of education’s biggest sins. As the frequency and anonymity of our interactions increase through digital tools, so does our capacity to bully in more subtle, passive-aggressive ways than ever before. This is not limited to children, either-you’ve probably felt it yourself on twitter or facebook or instagram or the comment’s section of a blog. Digital citizenship first depends on citizenship-being a human being, then carrying that tone to digital spaces. We could do worse than helping students to reflect on these interactions (which would have the side-effect of slowing them down). Before each interaction, thinking about a few simple questions would change everything. Who is this person? What is their history? How do we connect-how do our similarities and differences affect our feelings towards one another? How do our differences potentially strengthen our interaction? How can I help them grow? What do they need from me, and I from them? This is digital citizenship in question form. As long as this kind of thinking is absurd, our capacity to hurt one another will be as well. The new thinking here, then, isn’t new at all, but rather reflects a need to return to that which is simple in the face of circumstances which seem complex. A version of this post was written by Terry Heick for Edutopia; adapted image attribution flickr user vancouverfilmschool and usarmycoropofengineerssavannahdistrict; The Simple Terms To Manage Increasingly Complex Social Interactions The post Simplifying Our Increasingly Complex Social Interactions appeared first on TeachThought.

A Universal Framework For Modern Literacy Pedagogy by Terry Heick Why do we need a framework? Literacy instruction has done a relatively poor job of keeping up with the urgent pace of change in the ways people read and write. What’s the big idea? Media evolves. New modalities emerge. All media are connected. Scaffolding the analysis of these relationships can promote critical literacy of critical texts and related media forms. This can serve as a foundation for modern literacy. Quick Background The forms most commonly used to communicate (texts, emails, music, articles, video, and film) have increased the quantity of communication. (The cost to quality is subjective, but worth examining further.) This may be creating a delineation between the "old" (e.g., a novel or poem or essay) and the "new" (e.g., an interactive graphic novel or tweet or video stream). Further, this obscures the connection that exists between all media forms-they all represent the need for humans to communicate-to hear others, and be heard themselves. As technology increases the tools available to meet this need, the communicate patterns may continue to become more nuanced and distinct. This risks cultural devaluation of that which is seen as "old" and unfamiliar. A Definition for Modern Literacy: The ability to both create and extract communication through prevailing local media forms A Definition for Modern Literacy Pedagogy: Helping students create and extract communication through prevailing local media forms Media (plural form of medium): The forms we use as a culture to communicate ideas Examples of "media forms": novels. video. social streams. blogs. books. poems. letters. essays. editorial cartoons. sketches. video games. music. paintings. What about the simple…complex part? The idea of the simple thinking about simple media->complex thinking about complex media spectrum is to first and foremost, make the analysis of any media form accessible in some way, shape, or form. Students needn’t be pushed to "think critically" about media forms-or their inherent themes-without being given strategies and practice to do so. What are modalities? The "things" that act as symbols in a given media. A play? Stage presence, dialogue patterns, language, music, scenery, etc. A poem? Line breaks, imagery, figurative language, etc. A video game? Music, a digital avatar, light, a clear narrative, a character’s interactions with a hostile environment, etc. The media form-in terms of its structure and modalities-is decentered in this framework.The focus is on the interpretation of the symbols-modalities of light and color and sound and text and moving image, for example-to clarify an author’s message, and then taking a tiered approach to extracting any complexity within. In short, this is about seeing literacy as symbol decoding, seeing those symbols as modalities, and scaffolding the analysis of it all as a matter of medium/media design. Stage 1: Simple think about simple media design Example: In Looney Tunes, why does Wile E. Coyote chase the Road Runner? Stage 2: Simple thinking about complex media design Example: How do characters communicate in Shakespearean plays? Stage 3: Complex thinking about simple media design Example: What might we infer about Wile E. Coyote’s own interpretation of cultural norms? How does he adapt-or refuse to adapt-those norms through his observable behavior? Stage 4: Complex thinking about complex media design Example: How does Shakespeare use diction to establish a unique tone within each individual scene, and how do those scenes collectively establish a theme for the plays themselves? A Handful of Underpinning Ideas Literacy is a matter of decoding, comprehension, and transfer. The traditional media forms of books, poems, letters, and speeches is increasingly supplemented by diverse and technology-based media. There is a clear and direct relationship between a poem, an essay, a tweet, and a video game. Understanding that relationship can help leverage modern digital technology and forms to interpret classical structures, and vice-versa. Scaffolding the analysis of these forms and structures can make anything more approachable. It can also provide opportunities for differentiation, self-directed learning, and extended critical thinking about critical media. A Universal Framework For Modern Literacy Pedagogy   The post A Universal Framework For Modern Literacy Pedagogy appeared first on TeachThought.

4 Strategies To Recharge Your Teaching by Paul Moss The last month of teaching was quite hard for me. I found myself becoming increasingly frustrated in the classroom, less tolerant, less friendly, and worst of all, sarcastic. As a result, I became utterly exhausted. Something needed to change. I needed to take a step back and reflect on what was happening. Why had things changed? Where had the love gone? Had the students changed, or was it me? It was of course me. And it all came down to planning. My lessons were boring, and so students were naturally disconnected more often. Their attention waned easily, and inevitably, their behavior deteriorated. As I looked back over my planning, I saw a lot of attention given to addressing outcomes, but a distinct lack of focus on deep learning. I decided to invest some time into designing a new lesson plan template, forcing me to explicitly incorporate into my planning elements that I know work, which engage students, and satisfy epistemology inherent in me, which is reflected in the image above. Each lesson must incorporate several strategies that I’ve used to recharge my teaching: Constructivism Movement Collaboration Differentiation Constructivism: Who’s Making Meaning? Does the learning activity encourage independent learning? Does it allow students to find the knowledge themselves, or am I giving it to them? Does it let them build upon existing knowledge by making connections? Does it involve some sort of inquiry, or problem where questions naturally and continually emerge, which leads to learning? For me, constructivism is key to a successful learning environment. Students have a natural disposition to inquire, and lessons need to provide such opportunities. My teaching of late was lacking this. Rather, students were going through the motions, receiving information and being expected to apply it. The depth in the learning was missing because the students hadn’t fought for it themselves. They hadn’t discovered it for themselves; and so their connection to it was superficial. In my planning now I ensure I am not only designing activities that promote independent thought, but that I also ask pertinent questions that initiate deep thinking. I also allow space for the likelihood of the lesson diverging from the track, realizing that that is the nature of constructivism. I think this is incredibly important: to honour that students’ interests will demand some veering from the path. This doesn’t mean that the intended outcome can’t be reached. It just means that more time must be factored in, and the teacher must be skilled in promoting connections to bring it back to the original intention. The result is a deeper learning experience, as students have been engaged, and will have more ownership of their progress. It’s about quality rather than quantity. Interactivity: Do Students Move? Interact? With What, And Why? To get students inquisitive, there needs to be suitable stimulus. Interactivity is characterized by several elements, from the delivery method of the information, to the relevance of the learning. Explicitly planning for a variety of delivery is imperative. Everybody knows VAK, but so often I under-rate the importance of kineasthetic elements to an activity. And I don’t believe that writing is a sufficient kineasthetic activity. Students need to be physically active at some point in the lesson, whether it be moving around the room consulting other tables’ work, or adding ideas to a common board. Even better is if students can learn about something through the body. For example, the other day in the Frankenstein unit I am teaching, to explore the idea of superficiality I had the students create and act out a short scene exploring the consequences of superficiality in a teen’s life. Yes it was messier than if I had just given them information, but every student now deeply understands the theme, as they learnt from their own and then their peers’ performances. This has now facilitated a deeper engagement in the text. Of course it’s a lot easier, and manageable, to ignore kineasthetic learning, but for so many students, it it is at the expense of engagement. The learning at some point also needs to be relevant to the students. This can be achieved either through a thematic EQ (emotional intelligence) activity, a task based on interests, or a connection to a real world skill or application. I don’t care what anybody says: present students with boring resources, and the lesson will be poor. Cooperation: Is There Collaboration? Learning from peers is powerful, and helps strengthen constructivist experiences. Often, students will seek their partner’s help to know what to do in a task, or to check if their learning is actually what was asked of them. Viewing a lesson back via video shows just how often this actually happens in a lesson, albeit surreptitiously, and rather than it being quashed, citing disruption as the rationale, let it flourish. Often, teachers try to quell such instances, demanding quiet, and individual learning, but by insisting on this at all times, valuable opportunities are foregone. Students having opportunities to view others’ work from around the room is also effective. It’s one thing to know what the teacher is thinking, but knowing what their peers are thinking will spark greater stimulus as they relate, compete, challenge, and reshape their thinking - and deepen the learning experience. Social media is so pervasive in students’ lives because it satisfies these very elements. The massively untapped power of learning via social media will soon become a thing of the past, as teachers will begin to gain further access to existing platforms, and as new platforms aimed specifically at addressing safety for students and schools emerge. Also, it is important to be aware of participation in class discussions. Lately, while some excellent conversations have occurred in my class, only the 5 or 6 participating in the discussion were engaged. The rest were not, and thus not learning. Asking questions and then getting students to discuss their thoughts with their partners, and then the table, encourages everyone to think, before the findings are offered to the class discussion. Kagan presents some very useful thinking and strategies in this area. Differentiation: Just Enough, Just In Time, Just For Me I focus on two aspects of this. Firstly, and obviously, is there a range of expectations in the task? Am I catering for all abilities, scaffolding certain tasks and providing increased challenge on demand? Have I consciously placed students on tables to maximize cooperative learning and to both push and support each other? Secondly, am I allowing and prompting variation in how students demonstrate their knowledge and understanding, or is everything written? As an English teacher it can seem an overwhelming task to get students’ writing skills to the level required for exam success. However, when we only focus on such output, we deny students chances to deepen their engagement in the learning, and ironically, impede the development of the writing as students lose interest and connection with the subject. It takes a brave teacher to swim against the tide of teaching to the test, to trust that deeper engagement and a more well-rounded student will pay off in the long run (or swim). But like you, in the name of progressive education, I will continue to do so. Reflecting On My Own Journey In hindsight, this last point was actually a significant reason for my disconnection over the last month. I lost my spark for teaching momentarily. I lost sight of why I bother to spend 50 odd hours a week doing it. The learning was becoming prescriptive, narrow, sterile and shallow. My new lesson plan template however forces me to be more conscious of the things I value in my teaching. The template encourages deeper learning, deeper engagement, and inevitably, deeper satisfaction. Even in the last few lessons where I’ve been using it, I feel re-energized, and refreshed. I am indeed back in business. The post 4 Strategies To Recharge Your Teaching appeared first on TeachThought.

12 Rules Of Great Teaching by Terry Heick Recently, I’ve been thinking of the universal truths in teaching. Students should be first. Don’t always start planning with a standard. Questions matter more than answers. Trust is a currency of a human classroom. So I thought I’d gather twelve of them to start with. The idea of "good teaching" is an idea we get at a variety of different ways, So then, here are some rules we might consider when making sense of this idea of what makes a teacher great. Thanks to Sylvia Duckworth for the great illustration, who went all out and added all 15. 1. Start small. This is how great things are built. Curriculum. Relationships. Portfolios. Take your time-this is a marathon, not a sprint. 2. Embrace that there is no one way. Learning models, for example, are the new teaching strategy. Traditionally, teachers focus on "strategies" to "teach." Reciprocal teaching. Lit circles. Accountable talk. Of course, these have value. But the modern approach should have as much to do with what students access, when, how, and why as it does with "what students do in the lesson." Self-directed learning. Scenario-based learning. Project-based learning. Inquiry-based learning. Game-based learning. These are the strategies that matter first.  3. Trust the people around you. Your students, first and foremost. But this goes for parents, and colleagues as well. It may not always work out the way you want, but if you’re the only one in control, there will be a net loss of capacity for the ecology of learning you participate in and serve. 4. In learning, curiosity is everything. If you can’t make them curious, teach something else. I’ve theorized that there are stages to curiosity-and even things that make students curious. as well. Taskmasters seek compliance. Good teachers seek engaged students. Great teachers-somehow, some way-find out what makes students click, and use it. 5. Experiment. Experiment. Experiment. Teaching is a craft. Play with it. A little more of this, a little less of that. This new tool. Start here instead of there. Try this instead. Throw this out. Welcome this in. Not only does this keep things fresh for students, but it keeps you sharp and relevant as an educator as this big world keeps on turning. 6. Don’t always start planning with a standard. Know that it’s okay to think technology-first. Or curriculum first. Or standards. Or data. Or (ideally) student-first. There are dozens of ways to plan content. What matters is the power and sustainability of the learning as it manifests in the classroom. 7. Teaching is always changing. Technology. Curriculum. Assessment. The value systems of students. Since these are always changing, your teaching be should as well. 8. Be concise. When explaining, less is more. 9. Know your pedagogy. Know the difference between confusing and complex. Between differentiation and personalized learning. Between project-based learning, and learning through projects. Between difficulty and rigor. Between standards and curriculum. Between teaching and inquiry. 10. Help students ask great questions. This can happen by modeling them, celebrating them, assigning points for them, curating and publishing them-whatever you can do to help students see what a great question implies. Here are 8 strategies to help students ask great questions, for starters. 11. Be interesting. Be unpredictable. Challenge authority. Connect with students both through your teaching and in lieu of your teaching. Begin class with a bang-a crazy idea, interesting story, great song, funny joke. That said… 12. It’s not about you. So don’t be the center of attention. Charismatic teachers are great-everybody loves them-but if your voice and personality dominate the classroom on a daily basis, things are out of balance. Bonus Here are 3 more to consider. 13. Love your content. Stay up-to-date on changes. Be aware of the tricks, shortcuts, and interesting quirks of the content you teach. While teaching isn’t about content, mastery here can make everything else easier. 14. Be your students’ biggest cheerleader. The be-tough-for-their-own-good bit may work for some, but celebrating kids works for everybody. 15. Know that learning should disrupt. (Read more here.) Knowledge gained should result in personal change rather than mere academic progress. It should result in personal change for each student-and thus social change for all of us as a society. If we build great schools and fill them with great technology and great teachers, but still send students home with no hope for the future-home to communities full of poverty, racism, intolerance, greed, waste, and apathy toward local ecologies, with no sense of place, historical legacy, or local and digital citizenship, then we know we have an institutionally-centered system. When beautiful things happen-things we never could’ve imagined-both inside and outside the classroom, we’ll know we’re headed in the right direction. 12 Rules Of Great Teaching; image attribution flickr user flickeringbrad The post 12 Rules Of Great Teaching appeared first on TeachThought.

The Challenge Of Personalizing Learning In Real-Time by Dr. Philip Lanoue The conversation on the need to use student achievement data in education is fast-tracking its importance in today’s classrooms. But with so much data now directed at school leaders, teachers and students  - how do you make sense of it all? First and foremost, it is imperative that every data point has a face - it is not about the number but about students and their performance. Student data can only be useful if the right environment is created with procedures that create conversations where data is informative, useful and put into practice. For students to grow and for teachers to personalize instruction - data must constantly be formative and meaningful. Here in Clarke County School District of Athens, Georgia, we are taking steps to truly integrate our digital learning initiatives with are common planning process using data. We are forging ahead with designing a new model that relies on using data for real-time progress monitoring that results in a true personalized learning environment - no more pre and post test analysis. This is a major focus for us, and our district leaders and teachers use new innovative technology such as Waggle from Triumph Learning to help make it happen. Waggle is a digital learning platform that monitors student performance based on practice. Students are presented with a variety of questions for the subjects of math and English and must continually be successful (the practice) to be able to move forward. When they continue to get questions right over time, then they progress to the next stage. When they answer a question incorrectly, they are able to try again, and are offered hints and customized feedback to help them find the path to the right answer. In this program, seeking the right answer is a critical skill that is developed. The idea here is to move past simply telling students if they are right or wrong. Educators now present them with opportunities that demonstrate the benefits of putting in the work to increase their understanding of the subjects they are tasked to learn. Learning how to find answers - productive struggle - becomes equally important as giving the right answer. Our new personalized learning model is moving towards real-time formation. If educators can create tools that monitor students on an ongoing basis around proficiency, then administrators like myself don’t have to worry about the time and focus put on them pre- and post-test. We now can plan and assess students by monitor growth and progress. One of the biggest obstacles with traditional testing methods is that there isn’t an opportunity to effectively intervene with struggling students until the results of a test are available. Implementing tools that utilize real-time formative data helps educators identify students who need more help mastering the skills that are being taught and to use personalized interventions to get them where they need to be. On the other end of the spectrum, it can also alert educators when students aren’t being challenged. Students who complete work quickly and accurately have likely already mastered the skills being presented to them. This provides the educator with an opportunity to advance students and keep them engaged by offering them more challenging work. As I said, the main goal of formative learning is to help students grow, and when learning isn’t personalized it makes it that much harder for students to do that. Students can’t grow when they are discouraged to the point of giving up or sailing through schoolwork without putting any effort into it. That’s what makes the productive struggle found in this system such an effective part of the strategies found in formative learning environments. Students are able to learn at a pace that helps them retain knowledge and skills that can build into the next stage of their academic growth. Using real time performance information for planning and monitoring leads to the best alignment of the learning expectations to students’ personalized needs. And developing the qualities of determination and endurance to seek the right answer is the most powerful skill we can provide our students. I am excited to bring together this process with our partnership with Triumph Learning as Waggle is being designed for the next generation of learners. Dr. Philip Lanoue has worked for the Clarke County School District since 2009 and was an administrator for the Cobb County School District before that. Under Lanoue’s leadership, Clarke County became a Title I Distinguished District and received a number of other statewide honors. He was chosen as Georgia Superintendent of the Year in December and the American Association of School Administrators’ 2015 National Superintendent of the Year. The Challenge Of Personalizing Learning In Real-Time The post The Challenge Of Personalizing Learning In Real-Time appeared first on TeachThought.

Making Your Classroom Work More Like A Playground by TeachThought Staff Should classrooms be more like playgrounds? The playground is a place of whimsy, creativity, cognitive "ease," and social interaction. It’s accessible, open, and fun. There may be some room for this type of thinking in a classroom, yes? Embedded in this thinking are a lot of the ideas that we promote consistently at TeachThought, from learning through play, to student-centeredness, to interdependence, and "messiness." These are the characteristics of a playground, where reduced formality and increased focused on enthusiasm and togetherness yield a tone of possibility. There is potential, then, in bringing these characteristics to your classroom as well. Some may not translate directly, depending on what you teach (content, grade level, etc.), but if you squint a little, you’ll see the connection. We’ve included some examples for each below to jumpstart your thinking, but note-bringing a "playground" approach to your classroom is as much a matter of tone and purpose as it is tips and strategies. Without the right frame of mind, you can check every box and still miss the point. As a teacher, if you’re not being playful and creative and innovative, you’re just "doing what you’re told," and risk conditioning your students to think the same way. Making Your Classroom Work More Like A Playground 1. Kids decide what to do and when to do it on a playground, so consider allowing students to choose their own entry and exit points in a lesson or unit. 2. Use the Sync Teaching Method, where students have some degree of autonomy, but "sync" with teachers where the teachers require. 3. Help students make their thinking visible. Share skills and resources in project-based learning. Digital portfolios are a no-brainer. 4. Use inquiry-based learning, where there is no standardized beginning and ending point, no pre-determined understandings, and no universal assessments. 5. Playgrounds have slides and courts and fields, some of which suggest existing games (e.g., soccer or tag), but you’ll also see students have fun making things up as they go-and not just elementary aged students either. If children are given a chance at design thinking, they usually take it, so integrate design thinking in projects, creative writing, or non-creative writing that might benefit from creative thinking. 6. Consider the "playground equipment." Use the resources around you to create something new-a digital photography collection to create an eBook for children, for example. 7. Be intentional with the tone of every interaction, assignment, and requirement. Or better yet, let students help determine it. There is a tone and atmosphere to exceptional learning circumstances, and people and their emotions have to be at the center of it all. 8. Playgrounds are in neighborhoods that children know and have used for years. So, consider place-based education. Publish work in the local community. Consider problem-based learning solving local challenges. The big idea is that work is social and products are social and effort is social, so the entire experience is social. 9. Digital citizenship is about people and their connections, not friends and what they "prefer." Create projects that require students to work together with those that may not be their first choice, and then help frame that work so both can be comfortable and successful. Also, help students "think globally" by realizing the way they impact total strangers in a scenario-based learning project, for example. 10. Accept non-academic goals as valid and authentic compared to those that are academic. In a "playground approach," the goal isn’t to prove you have "mastered" the standard, but that you’ve let your truest "Self" shine through. Imagine how this one alone could change a classroom! A digital video project where the big idea is to illuminate the part of themselves no one seems to see! 11. Play requires agency and control. Help students take control of their own learning-self-directed learning, for example, or a Maker Education project where the work can’t survive without them and their cleverness and ingenuity. 12. Help students find their own particular way to show leadership. Not all leadership is vocal; every student, introverted or extroverted, 2nd grade or 12th, "good in school" or "struggling" all have a chance on a playground, because there is so much to do, and so little direct pressure to conform. Your classroom can benefit from the same approach. Yes, we can learn through play-but it’s also true that play can be the goal, not just the means. Playfulness with an idea, theory, tool, or group is the sign of a mind at ease, in control, and thinking creatively. Play is both a cause and an effect of great learning! Help students use ongoing and personal platforms-blogs, businesses, learning simulations, video games and more-to make play a habit. Making Your Classroom More Like A Playground; image attribution flickr user bobbyjames The post Making Your Classroom More Like A Playground appeared first on TeachThought.

15 Assistive Technology Tools & Resources For Students With Disabilities by Brian Neese, Alvernia University According to the National Education Association (NEA), the number of U.S. students enrolled in special education programs has risen 30 percent over the past 10 years. Additionally, the NEA reports that nearly every general education classroom in the country includes students with disabilities, as three out of every four students with disabilities spends part or all of their school day in a general education classroom. But as the number of students in special education programs has increased, the supply of special education instructors has not kept pace. Based on the Department of Education’s Teacher Shortage Area Nationwide Listing, 47 states in the 2014-15 school year were in need of special education instructors. One tool to help students with disabilities even in the face of a special education teacher shortage is assistive technology. Today, assistive technology can help students with certain disabilities learn more effectively. Ranging in sophistication from "low" technologies such as a graphic organizer worksheet to "high" technologies including cutting-edge software and smartphone apps, assistive technology is a growing and dynamic field. Several areas of assistive technology and sample products may be found in any given classroom, making a difference in how students of all abilities learn. Text-To-Speech Assistive Tools As an assistive technology, text-to-speech (TTS) software is designed to help children who have difficulties reading standard print. Common print disabilities can include blindness, dyslexia or any type of visual impairment, learning disability or other physical condition that impedes the ability to read. However, other students can benefit from TTS technology, such as children that have autism, attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) or an intellectual disability. The technology works by scanning and then reading the words to the student in a synthesized voice, using a large number of speech sounds that make up words in any given context. With the advances in speech synthesis, TTS technology is more accurate and lifelike than ever. Intel Reader                                                                                         The Intel Reader is a mobile handheld device that uses TTS technology to read printed text aloud. It features a high-resolution camera that captures printed text, converts it to digital text and reads it to the user. During playback, words are highlighted as they are read aloud, and the user can pause and have the device spell out highlighted words. The available Intel Portable Capture Station functions as a stand for the Intel Reader to easily and quickly capture text from books and other documents. At about the size and weight of a paperback book, the Intel Reader is mobile enough to use in any environment. Students can also transfer content from a home computer, or save generated audio versions of printed materials to a computer. Available voices vary in gender, pitch and speed. Kurzweil 3000 The Kurzweil 3000 is a leader in TTS software for individuals that struggle with literacy. In addition to a range of TTS features, the full-featured software program integrates abilities that can help students in other areas, potentially appealing to those who may have a non-print disability or those who may not typically consider a TTS program. Some of the features include: • Multiple TTS voices • Support for 18 languages and dialects • Talking spell-checker • Picture dictionary graphics for more than 40,000 words • Text magnification • Tools for test taking, essay writing, note taking, reference and more The Kurzweil 3000 strives to provide students with a multi-sensory approach to literacy learning. It is available for Windows and Macintosh. Graphic organizers can be effective in helping students to organize their thoughts during the writing process. As an assistive technology, graphic organizers can be a strong choice for students with dysgraphia or disorders of written expressions — particularly the conceptual aspects of writing. Graphic organizers work by helping the student map out a course of action. Depending on the type of writing, the graphic organizer can prompt the writer to describe an object, chart out a course of events or perform some other task that can help in planning the piece. Graphic organizers vary by type and technological sophistication. Low-Tech Handouts Graphic organizers do not need to be technologically advanced; in fact, they can exist in simple handout form. Sample handouts can be found at the Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Company. The sandwich chart can assist students with paragraph writing. The sequence chart can help with narrative writing and the ordering of events. The sense chart is designed for descriptive writing, where writers are prompted for terms that characterize and express an item. Dozens of other sample charts exist and can help students with virtually any type of writing. Draft:Builder Draft:Builder is a writing tool that integrates outlining, note taking and draft writing functions to break down the writing process into three steps. Using a graphical organizer, the program helps the student visualize the project and insert information into the appropriate place without having to conceptualize the whole process. It then automates the process of creating the paper, where the student can drag and drop what is written in each note to the rough draft. Other features include a talking spell checker that uses TTS technology, a bibliography tool, a dictionary and the ability for teachers to add locked text into the program for further guidance. Draft:Builder is available for Windows and Macintosh. Assistive Listening Systems A variety of assistive listening systems, or hearing assistive technology, can help students who are deaf or hard of hearing, as well as those with other auditory and learning problems. According to the National Association for the Deaf, assistive listening systems can be used to enhance the reach and effectiveness of hearing aids and cochlear implants, or by children who do not need those tools but still need help hearing. Assistive listening systems use a microphone, a type of transmission technology and a device for capturing and bringing the sound to the ear. The specific transmission technology used in the system is typically what contrasts one type of assistive listening system from another. FM Systems According to the American Speech-Language-Hearing Association (ASHA), FM systems are the best choice for children with sensorineural hearing loss. The most common type of hearing loss for all ages, sensorineural hearing loss occurs when the inner ear (cochlea) or nerve pathways from the inner ear to the brain are damaged. FM systems work using radio broadcast technology. With a transmitter microphone and a receiver, the teacher and student can maintain a consistent sound level regardless of distance and background noise. Additionally, ASHA notes that the hearing aid microphone can be turned off, so the student can concentrate on the teacher alone. Sound-Field Systems Sound-field systems are a strong choice for classrooms that need to assist listening for all children in the class. ASHA notes that these systems benefit not only children that have hearing loss, but those that have other auditory and learning problems, such as language delays, central auditory processing disorder, articulation disorders and development delays. Additionally, sound-field systems can be used for students who are learning English as a second language. Sound-field systems use a microphone that projects sound through mounted speakers around the classroom. In classrooms that have good acoustics, sound is able to travel evenly throughout space, eliminating problems of distance between the speaker and each listener. Sip-and-Puff Systems Sip-and-puff systems are used by students who have mobility challenges, such as paralysis and fine motor skill disabilities. These systems allow for control of a computer, mobile device or some other technological application by the child moving the device with his or her mouth. Similar to a joystick, the child can move the controller in any direction and click on various navigational tools using either a sip or a puff. An on-screen keyboard allows the child to type using the same movements. Sip-and-puff systems are a type of switch device, which refers to the technology used to replace a computer keyboard or mouse. Other switch devices include buttons or other objects that a student can touch, push, pull, kick or perform some other simple action that can then control the device. Jouse3 The Jouse3 is a sip-and-puff system that allows children to control a device using any part of the mouth, cheek, chin or tongue. Due to its accuracy and quick response, home users can use it for drawing or computer games. It can mount to the desktop, a bedframe or any other type of structure; it does not require a headpiece or placement on the body of the user. The product supports Windows, Macintosh, Linux and Unix based computers, in addition to Android and iOS mobile devices. It can support one or two external switches, and has two types of mouthpieces. Sip-and-Puff Systems From Origin Instruments Origin Instruments offers a range of sip-and-puff products that students can use to control an electronic device. Using a head mounted or gooseneck user interface, or available tubing for a custom solution, the child can control a mouse, joystick or keyboard with ease. The primary system is powered using USB technology. The product supports Windows, Macintosh and Linux based computers. Two pressure switches connect the system to the user interface solution for use on electronic devices. Proofreading Software Proofreading software is a branch of assistive technology that goes above and beyond the typical proofreading features found in a word processing system, such as correcting words frequently misspelled by students with dyslexia. A number of other features offered within this category can help students work on his or her English skill set to become a more effective and accurate writer. Although primarily geared towards individuals with dyslexia, proofreading software can be helpful to those with any type of learning disorder that makes writing and reading challenging. Ginger Ginger offers several features that can help students with dyslexia and other learning disorders with writing. It is also designed for speakers of languages other than English. Some of the features include: • Grammar checker that analyzes context to determine any errors or misspellings. For instance, Ginger can recognize whether "there," "their" or "they’re" should be used in a sentence, which is a common mistake in writing. • Word prediction and sentence rephrasing tools that can be helpful for students learning how to construct sentences properly. • TTS functionality so students can hear what they’ve written. • A personal trainer that provides practice sessions based on past mistakes made by the student. Ginger is available for Windows and Macintosh systems, as well as for use on iOS and Android mobile devices. Ghotit Ghotit is specifically designed for students with dyslexia and other learning disorders who have difficulties with writing. The name is inspired by the word "Ghoti," which is a constructed term that illustrates irregularities in the English language. And since many spellings are counterintuitive — especially for those with dyslexia — Ghotit dedicates itself to assisting children and adults who struggle with writing accurately. It features the ability to learn from the user’s past mistakes, personalizing suggestions for spelling and grammatical errors. Ghotit can predict words, check passages of text contextually, read text aloud using TTS technology and recognize split and merged words. It also includes an integrated dictionary for students to quickly look up a word. Math Tools A range of technology and tools can help students that have trouble with math, most commonly found in a learning disability called dyscalculia. Dyscalculia makes it difficult to grasp numbers and it is characterized by a general lack of understanding in the field of math. Assistive technology in math is not just for those with dyscalculia. It can also help students with blindness, fine motor skill disabilities or some other type of disability that makes it difficult to perform math-related work. MathTalk MathTalk is a speech recognition software program for math that can help students with a range of disabilities. From prealgebra to Ph.D. level mathematics, students can perform math problems by speaking into a microphone on their computer. The program works with Dragon NaturallySpeaking programs for voice-to-text functionality, making it ideal for students who have fine motor skill disabilities. Students with blindness or vision disabilities can use the integrated braille translator. In addition to these audiences, MathTalk also appeals to students with dyscalculia. The program functions as an electronic math worksheet, allowing the child to organize, align and work through problems on the screen, making it helpful for students who have difficulties performing math problems on paper. Math Simulations Math simulations can help students with dyscalculia visualize math problems and concepts. As a result, students can better understand the application of a particular type of problem, since many students struggle with the conceptual aspects of math. Examples can be found at the NASA website. From video to animated simulations, teachers and students can visually see how a math concept or problem would work. And with some math simulations, students can work through the problem and then see the result play out in the simulation. Conclusion Thanks to the rapid advances in assistive technology, students, parents and teachers have a seemingly limitless number of tools at their disposal. As these tools start to appear in the home and in the classroom, parents and teachers can utilize them for students’ academic and personal growth. But technology alone is not enough - to successfully use these tools, it’s critical to develop a plan for their use and have regular check-ins to ensure the student is gaining the most value possible and not becoming overly reliant on these tools. But while assistive tools have become plentiful, the same cannot be said for special education instructors. As previously mentioned, the vast majority of states in the 2014-15 school year reported a need for teachers in special education. And many general education classrooms instruct children with special needs. Certification is a faster way for current teachers to qualify to teach this growing population. At Alvernia University Online, teachers can pursue a special education certification for grades PreK-8 or 7-12 to help make a difference for children with special needs. They will also improve their marketability in the process, gaining additional opportunities for their career. Overall, more teachers are needed in this area. Although the advancement of technology in special education is promising, the same increase is needed for the number of special education instructors. Certification offers one solution to quickly meet this need. Learn more about Alvernia’s program today. 15 Assistive Technology Tools & Resources For Students With Disabilities The post 15 Assistive Technology Tools & Resources For Students With Disabilities appeared first on TeachThought.

Creating A Fire For Inquiry Starts At The Beginning by Brian Cleary, oldbrainteacher.com If science is inquiry and inquiry is a fire, when does that fire start? When the world talks about STEM education for the most part they talk around elementary teachers rather than to elementary school teachers. This should not be seen as an insult or slur upon our value, but as a matter of course. Most "real" science does not start until middle school or even high school, and for school in poverty perhaps not even then. However, with the need to develop more students ready to step into STEM careers, and the corresponding efforts to grow educational foundations in those area elementary science will play a pivotal role. A 2012 report on student motivation toward STEM career, out of The University of Nevada, (How to Motivate US Students to Pursue STEM Careers by Md. Mokter Hossain, Michael G. Robinson) disagrees. Their paper suggested "Students need to be inspired in STEM subjects beginning in the middle school grades with course work extracurricular activities focusing on honing problem solving skills in the high school grades." While I have no issue with the research of the Nevada team, I believe there conclusion is short-sighted on two fundamental points. Students are not inspired by course work and extracurricular programs; they do those things because of they have already been inspired. STEM grows from the root. Perhaps more importantly waiting to provide inspiration until middle and high school is a large part of the problem. Certainly older students are entirely capable of being inspired, but where the extracurricular programs studied by the Nevada team found success were in projects where students could create and own their projects and therefore their success. These programs, like Science Olympiad and First Robotics are building and encouraging students to continue to pursue lofting and rigorous goals. However these activities are limited to those teens that already see appeal in such groups. In effect, they enhanced the growth rate of the STEM but not the root. A child’s opinion and attitude toward math both science, while still malleable, is first formed long before they enter middle school. Even the most conservative estimates suggest that student perceptions of their own ability are established by seven or eight years old. Though there is a clear distance between perceived ability and inspiration, a tangible link connects the two. Students who do not feel they can be successful in math or science are less likely to be inspired to do math and science. Planning to ignite a flame in the belly of young science students in middle school is akin to trying to gather firewood on a rainy day. The task is restricted to those that have been sheltered from the storm unless someone was smart enough to plan well ahead. If parents and teachers do not create a receptive and fertile field for STEM inspiration in elementary school , the quality and quantity of science programs in middle school and beyond will only serve the a same small percentage of the population who’ve already seen success. When we are successful we feel empowered to continue, the rush of dopamine through our brains masks the memory of painful struggles and past loss to convince us that we our masters of our own destiny. Students that are successful in math and science work harder than those that have not shared that success because they have tasted victory. What doubts they carry are over shadowed by the more powerful memories of success. Meaningful success is a tricky thing in the earliest of grades. Gold stars given for participation are shallow victories that mean little-and inspire less-in a five year old. Business schools have extensively studies success over the years and while there definitions are different from those in education, many of the findings are transferrable. In a Harvard Business Review study from 2011, Teresa Amabile and Steven J. Kramer found two factors that affected the importance, or value of a success: It’s relation to a larger goal Genuine praise form peers. Our goal is to inspire students to study math and engineering. We hope to reach beyond the pool of individuals who identify with Sheldon Cooper or Mr. Spock to the masses that are entertained and inspired by them. To achieve that ambition we need to make certain the science we offer our elementary students offers the same kinds of success that inspire there middle and high school peers. Rigorous, project based, curriculum set up with tiers of increasing complexity and decreasing adult support. It is the formula of success and inspiration that has been used by extracurricular programs form T-ball to the Math Olympiad. Come to think of it, every story of inspiration, real or imagined used those same formulaic elements, there is struggle (rigor) there is a quest (e.g., project-based, genius hour, etc.), and there is a dynamic component of instruction until the student proves his or her mastery.  "Real science" may be thought of not start until middle school or later, but preparing students for real science begins as soon as they students enter a classroom. Any classroom. The onus is on all of us, as educators, to think of learning less like episodes of mastery, and more like building fire that burns and burns. Creating A Fire For Inquiry Starts At The Beginning; image attribution flickr user usarmycerdec The post Creating A Fire For Inquiry Starts At The Beginning appeared first on TeachThought.

10 Ways To Engage In Lifelong Learning by Andrea Leyden Learning is about reaching your full potential and can help you achieve self-actualization, the highest need identified by Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs. However, traditional education generally has a beginning and an end which culminates in taking tests. Lifelong learning preserves an individual’s desire to obtain new knowledge outside of the formal education system. Developing an attitude where you constantly learn is the only way to succeed in the dynamic environment which we live in today. There is so much technology at your fingertips which you can take advantage of to help you learn throughout your life. This means you can follow your passion for languages, improve your craft skills and even develop a mobile app using resources you can find online. 10 Simple Ways To Engage In Lifelong Learning There are countless ways you can follow your goal of becoming an eternal learner. Watch this video to discover some ways you can get the motivation to get started. Here’s how you can apply the ideas in the video: 1. Read widely and often Buy newspapers, search for things online you want to know more about, ask your friends for books they found helpful; above all else, be curious. If you want to find research on a topic, use Google Scholar to find academic research. Delve into a topic and don’t stop until you have exhausted it! 2. Keep smart company Reach out to contacts that you admire. Get talking to some influencers on Twitter and organise to meet up to explore some ideas and learning topics. Make sure to keep in touch with people you have come into contact with who have inspired you to learn on your journey. 3. Teach others You don’t need to join the teaching profession to help people learn. Teaching others what you know will also help ensure that you really understand something; it’s a real test of your knowledge. 4. Keep a list of things you want to explore This is a good way to help you get started. Before you jump right into an area, spend some time researching topics and keeping notes. Once you have developed a list then you can decide what the best option to follow for you is. 5. Start your own project If you’re a teacher, encourage students to plan out their own projects starting with goals and objectives. This will help them to cultivate an idea of how they would be able to follow this process in the future which could be applied to various scenarios. 6. Use a personal learning environment Understanding how to learn is an invaluable skill. Using personal learning environments such as GoConqr.com can help you adopt proven learning techniques which students can use throughout their journey to discovering new knowledge.    7. Experiment with new ways to learn Trying a variety of ways to learn will help you to find the way that sticks. Drawing diagrams, watching documentaries, creating mind maps and using music to study are some alternative ways students can approach learning. 8. Join a study group Find virtual study groups online where you can collaborate and learn from people with varying experiences. Take insight on board from a variety of sources and apply it to your own knowledge search. 9. Find a job that encourages learning and collaboration Most professional roles include some degree of learning whether it’s on the job training, workshops or other educational encouragement. Pursuing a career in an evolving area will ensure that you are constantly learning and developing your skillset. 10. Make it a priority! Don’t just keep saying ‘one day’. Make today that day. Whether you’re a teacher, student, professional or other - make learning a priority in your life. If you wait for it to find you, you will limit the amount of information you know plus your ability to attain this knowledge over the long-term. It may even help to understand the characteristics of a lifelong learning, including curiosity, skepticism, creativity, initiative, perseverance, and "perfectionism," among other habits. Still curious? Take this quick test to see if you have these qualities. Quiz created by andrea.leyden with GoConqr 10 Simple Ways To Engage In Lifelong Learning; image attribution flickr user vancouverfilmschool The post 10 Simple Ways To Engage In Lifelong Learning appeared first on TeachThought.

25 Resources For Teaching With Movies And Film by Gerard Harris Whether you’re a student looking to get into the film industry or a teacher looking for reference points to help your pupils, you’ll need all the online resources you can find. To make things a little easier for you, the film section of Tuppence Magazine has put together a list of the 25 best learning resources for film studies available online. It covers everything from film theory and study points to filmmaking, behind the scenes advice and useful inspiration, providing a wide range of options for teachers and students alike. 25 Resources For Teaching With Movies And Film 1. Empire Magazine Empire magazine may not seem like a go-to place for the finer points of movie theory, but its film studies 101 is a great section to find info on all aspects of filmmaking. Great movie moments are dissected in detail, technical complexity is explained, on-set jargon is made clear and behind-camera movie roles are discussed. 2. KFTV Sometimes it’s not necessarily what you know, but who you know and KFTV could be your inroad to a wide knowledge of all areas of the film industry. Within its confines you’ll be able to search for film, TV and commercial production service companies in 173 countries, so if you’re looking for potential employers or an equipment rental company for the latest project you’ll be able to find the contact details on KFTV. 3. BBC Filmaking Sadly, the BBC has stopped updating its online filmmaking section, but that doesn’t stop it from being a solid go-to place to find out more about the industry. It’s got some great guides, features and case studies to give you a little insight into what actually goes on behind the camera. Set visits, how-to guides, the legal and rights side of the industry and a little information on funding all get the BBC treatment, making it a good online resource to check out. 4. BFI Education and Research The BFI’s education and research section is another wealth of knowledge when it comes to film studies. It’s got sections for learning and teaching, along with information about its funding schemes, tips for film academy graduates and entertaining and inspiring ways for young people to understand film. You can also find out more about the industry with its series of statistics and reports, which might come in handy if you need to factor in some data into your class notes or essays. 5. Wikipedia Film Studies  Inevitably, Wikipedia is going to be a pretty valuable resource for everyone interested in the film industry, and one of the best place to start is on its page dedicated to film studies. It’s got a useful series of links to key filmmakers and film critics to find out more about, but this will lead you into a Wikipedia research run that could see you finding out more about film theory, film noir or the early history of the art. 6. Pinterest Study Boards If you’re looking for image based inspiration, Pinterest can help you find great infographics, movie posters and checklists. In this film studies board, Candice Lela has done a good job of compiling some useful items to kick start your research and learning. The Pinterest search bar also makes for a good tool, so you’ll be able to put some visuals behind your study notes, no matter what movie you happen to be writing about. 7. David Bordwell’s Cinema Site  David Bordwell’s cinema site is a useful place to read up on the finer points of the art. There’s a lot to read but there’s plenty of great nuggets of information, insight and inspiration to find. It includes books, video pieces and essays, along with news and blog posts from the movie industry. 8. Sparknotes Film Studies Sparknotes has got a relatively brief section on film studies that gives you a whistle stop tour of the theory and history that sits behind it. It’s by no means exhaustive, but it does package things up into chunks of useful content, making it a good online resource to help you to summarize things into easily understood overviews. 9. Questia’s Film Theory Questia’s film theory section will come in handy if you need to find books on the subject for further research, study or class preparation. It’s broken down into related topics too, so you can dig into more in-depth study streams like feminist film theory, film criticism, and film genres. 10. The Process of Filmaking  This website is dedicated to the filmmaking side of things, providing advice and information on everything from how to become a successful filmmaker to what gear you can get to start things off. It’s got help on finance for projects, case studies from existing filmmakers and avenues to go down in terms of selling your end product, whether it’s a short film on iTunes or the big leagues of Hollywood. 11. Independent Movie Making If you’re looking to go guerrilla on your filmmaking next steps, you can find a lot of insight about making independent movies thanks to the work of Indie Movie Making. The website may not be the most polished out there, but there’s a lot of good intentions locked inside its confines with articles on finding composers, improving set design and cheap methods of achieving cinematic lighting. The only downside is that it hasn’t been updated for a while, but there’s still a lot of good stuff in its archives. 12. LA Video Advice for Movie Making As the strap line for the website says, LA Video Filmmaker is hard-earned advice for filmmakers. It splits its advice posts up into topics covering a wide range of subjects including directing, editing, screenwriting, sound, design, distribution etc. It’s a pretty exhaustive list and within each subject area there is an abundance of useful information for anyone looking to get into the film industry, or to teach it as part of a film studies course. 13. The Script Magazine’s Advice Hub The Script Magazine’s hub for movie makers continues to be updated with the latest from the world of filmmaking, making it a good online resource for up-to-date advice from the great and good within the industry. You’ll find a regular stream of help on film editing and screenwriting, setting up productions, directing and intellectual property rights, as well as on-location insight from directors and producers in the process of shooting a movie. 14. Filmaking on a Budget It’s good to add in a few video resources to your online research for film studies and the guys at this channel walk through a lot of practical examples for filmmaking on a budget. It will help you to understand everything from the importance of lighting to the science, tech and equipment that goes into making movies. 15. Filmaking, How-to ‘Detailed’  Another good YouTube channel to check out is this one on filmmaking, which is much more tuned in to the film theory side of the coin than Andyax above. As well as providing similar practical how-to videos, it also covers topics like storytelling with cinematography, the origins of acting and method acting and the art of editing film. 16.Behind the Scenes at Pixar The wonderful guys at Pixar have also taken a little time away from creating some of the most impressive animation movies of all time to give us a back stage pass to snippets of the activity that goes on behind the scenes at their HQ in sunny California. It’s been created as a series of video interviews with its producers, directors, animators and designers, so it’s practical experiences from the people that actually do the work. It’s a nice way to get into the heads of people that have already made it in the business and the thought processes that they follow when starting a new project, whether it’s designing a characters by looking into the eye of a cow or directing an animated movie in general. There isn’t huge amounts of technical content on this site, but it does make for an interesting look at the work of key figures in the animated movie industry. 17. Note-taking in Filmaking This little site on how to write about film may not look very fancy, but it’s got a few useful notes on the importance of paper topic choice, along with information about getting your introductions, conclusions and thesis statement right. It also comes with a few sample essays to act as a guide and a useful glossary on key terms to demonstrate understanding in an essay. 18. Film Analysis Film analysis and writing about film continues with this short, scrolling one-page guide that takes you from provisional notes to your final essay. It’s pretty basic, but sometimes it’s important to remind yourself of the simple principles you need to follow to write well. 19. Critical Note-taking  If you want to take your film studies writing notes and plans up to the next level, this PDF from the Writing Centre at the University of Colorado could help to get you there. It provides a few strategies to keep your critical thinking active in the dark of the cinema and uses Timothy Corrigan’s A Short Guide to Writing About Film as its framework, identifying three major genres of film writing; the movie review, the critical essay and the theoretical essay. 20. Martin Scorsese’s View This is the kind of resource that speaks for itself. Martin Scorsese knows a little about the film industry and when he mentions 85 movies you need to see to know anything about film you should probably take it seriously. Reading the page is enough of a time consuming effort in itself, let alone dedicating the time to watching each of the movies listed, but out the other side you’ll probably be ready to take on any film studies challenge thrown at you. 21. Film Studies Degree in the Real World This post from the Guardian newspaper provides a little nudge in the direction of what a film studies degree actually means out in the big wide world. As it rightly says, the film industry is indeed notoriously competitive, so the article looks at the transferable skills graduates develop as a part of their degree. It also provides more information on the type of jobs that students can aim for post-study. 22. Details for a Film Studies Dregree If you or your students are at an early stage in reviewing the possibility of a future film studies degree, it’s worthwhile looking at the details about the courses from the universities directly. Not all of these are very useful, but the information on the Portsmouth University page gives a good grounding in what to expect. It covers everything from the type of facilities and features that should be provided along with more information on future career opportunities to take into account. 23. Greatest Movies of All Time In addition to watching the 85 movies that are close to Martin Scorsese’s heart, it’s also a good idea to be aux fait with many more of the greatest movies of all time and this top fifty from the BFI is a well balanced starting point. Hitchcock, Welles, Kubrick and Ford all get high places in the list, along with a few lesser known gems for you to build up your knowledge banks on. 24. Sound and Film Scoring Sound and film scores make up a a big part of understanding the impact of cinema, so this piece on how to score a movie makes for a nice reiteration of this principle. Looking at the scores created by Michael Giacchino for films like Up, Super 8 and The Incredibles, it discusses the thought process that goes into creating memorable music in movies and TV. 25. Composers in Film Industry Continuing the closing oracular segue is another great online resource from the guys at You Shoot I Score, which is written by composer Ned Bouhalassa. It’s heavily targeted at composers that are interested in getting into the film industry, but it also answers a lot of questions that might be beneficial for anyone looking to find out more about composing movie scores. 25 Resources For Teaching With Movies And Film The post 25 Resources For Teaching With Movies And Film appeared first on TeachThought.

50 Alternatives To Lecturing by TeachThought Staff Ed note: This post is promoted by SEU’S online masters in education programs. SEU simply asked us to write about how learning is changing and the updated kinds of things teachers need to know, and to let you know about their program. So here we are. As teachers, when we lecture, we have the best of intentions. We have a concept we want the class to understand, so we stand and explain it to them. We give them background. Offer details. Anticipate and pre-empt common misconceptions. Illuminate the more entertaining bits. Emphasize the nuance. So explaining things isn’t "bad," so how about beginning with some clarification. Talking is not lecturing-it’s talking. Talking with students and expecting them to respond meaningfully isn’t lecture-that’s accountable talk, which itself is close to a Socratic dialogue or Paideia seminar. Explaining an idea verbally, especially if being done to clarify a context or history of circumstance-can be a powerful tool if used expertly. Everyone loves a story, and unless you’re awful, your students probably like you and want to hear from you. But you can’t "give knowledge." Or "verbally annotate" discovery and inquiry. Clearly this thinking comes from a place of constructivism, so it’s slanted that way. Lecture likely has a place in education. In the background knowledge-building phase of learning, for example. Or in a "flipped classroom" setting where the "lecture" is designed to be consumed at the student’s own pace (using viewing strategies, for example). Or when students have mastered a core set of understandings, and are ready-in unison-to hear something from an honest-to-goodness expert who only has an hour to unload what he/she knows. In these cases, when… All students are similarly motivated All students have mastered certain "listening strategies" All students have strong note-taking skills, and can adapt those strategies for a variety of content, delivery speed, and so on All students have a similar background knowledge …then lecture can be moderately effective, but even then it depends on what we mean by "effective." (Prince 2004) The List of Alternatives To Lecture So then, the list. This is an interesting post to write, because a large part of our content is to provide alternatives to lecture. In that way, our site at large could be seen as a compilation of alternatives to lecturing. But for those educators that’d like to see a kind of index all gathered in one place, with certain links to more in-depth analyses elsewhere, this post might help scratch that itch. This is a long list. The idea is to see a lot of awesome possibilities in one place, not write a book. A few notes: 1. This is a mix of learning models and literacy strategies that can be used to accomplish what we hope a lecture might-"give information" and "promote understanding." Not every one is a perfect replacement for what a "good lecture" is, but most, in spirit and function, are close. 2. Some of the ideas don’t have links-we’ll try to go back and add them. Suggest some in the comments if you know of a good one. We may go back and add brief definitions links to great content that then clarifies and extends these items with thinking, frameworks, strategies, and tools, because some are admittedly confusing in name-only. We were going to include several videos and frameworks, but that makes the post clumsy and slow-loading on smaller mobile devices. If you get curious and/opr confused and we still haven’t clarified something you’d like to know, either ask in the comments, or try keyword searching on your own. 3. If you look at this list as a whole, it’s clear education is either changing, or has a slew of tools it’s ignoring in not changing. 50 Alternatives To Lecturing Learning Models 1. Self-directed learning 2. Learning through play 3. Scenario-based learning 4. Game-based learning 5. Project-based learning 6. Peer-to-Peer instruction 7. School-to-school instruction (using Skype in the classroom, for example) 8. Learning through projects 9. Problem-based learning 10. Challenge-based learning 11. Inquiry-based learning 12. Mobile learning 13. Gamified learning (gamification) 14. Cross-curricular projects 15. Reciprocal Teaching 16. "Flipped-class" learning 17. Face-to-Face Driver blended learning 18. Rotation blended learning 19. Flex Blended Learning 20. "Online Lab" blended learning 21. Sync Teaching 23. HyFlex Learning 24. Self-guided MOOC 25. Traditional MOOC 26. Competency-Based Learning 27. Question-based learning Literacy Strategies 28. Write-Around 29. Four Corners 30. Accountable Talk 31. RAFT Assignments 32. Fishbowl 33. Debate 34. Gallery Walk 35. Text Reduction 36. Concentric Circles 37. Traditional Concept-Mapping (teacher-given strategy-"fishbone" cause-effect analysis, for example) 38. Didactic, Personalized Concept Mapping (student designed and personalized for their knowledge-level and thinking patterns) 39. Mock Trial 40. Non-academic video + "academic" questioning 41. Paideia Seminar 42. Symposium 43. Socratic Seminar 44. QFT Strategy 45. Concept Attainment 46. Directed Reading Thinking Activity 47. Paragraph Shrinking 48. FRAME Routine 49. Jigsaw Strategy Other  50. Content-Based Team-Building Activities 51. Learning Simulation 52. Role-Playing 53. Bloom’s Spiral 54. Virtual Field Trip 55. Physical Field Trip 56. Digital Scavenger Hunt 57. Physical Scavenger Hunt 58. What? So What? What Now? (See also here.) 50 Alternatives To Lecturing; adapted image attribution flickeringbrad The post 50 Alternatives To Lecturing appeared first on TeachThought.

Grant Wiggins, Champion Of Understanding by Terry Heick Modern education icon Grant Wiggins, co-creator of Understanding by Design, has died, as announced on his twitter account by Grant’s wife, Denise. Our colleagues at ASCD have also verified Grant’s death, as has Grant’s professional development company, Authentic Education. His daughter Alexis has also confirmed the news on her account below. Grant Wiggins, of brilliant mind and dearest heart, died yesterday. The world has lost a true champion of learning.Carry on the work.-Denise — Grant Wiggins (@grantwiggins) May 27, 2015 Yes. Grant is gone, suddenly and unexpectedly. We are bereft. — Grant Wiggins (@grantwiggins) May 27, 2015 Grant Wiggins, of brilliant mind and dearest heart, died yesterday. The world has lost a true champion of learning. @grantwiggins — Alexis Wiggins (@alexiswiggins) May 27, 2015   The First Time I Saw Grant Grant was tremendously influential on me as an educator. His focus on what it means to understand, his focus on transfer, and his work on thematic unit and lesson design all changed me, first as a teacher of literature, and today as director of an education organization.  Sometime around 2005 I think, I was walking through the booths at a major conference. Row after row of blahblahblah. A lot of textbooks. Standardized curriculum. Misrepresentative edtech. Lots and lots of smartboards. But as I kept walking toward the exit, at one of the last booths I saw this bearded guy with gentle eyes, perched on a stool, talking about understanding. And that’s all he talked about. A revelation! After hearing the cliche calls for alignment, data, and rigor as the tools of school improvement in my own district, in Grant I found a voice that-as far as my tiny mind could tell-knew what it was talking about. Think about the simplicity and power of his message. Authenticity. Understanding. Design. Transfer. This is the blueprint for a modern teacher.  He sat at a textbook company’s booth and, without irony, described a way of teaching that would be difficult to accomplish with a textbook. I loved it! Champion Of Understanding I listened to him talk, bought a UbD book, then reached out to him via email individually as a follow up to try to better understand "big idea planning." Fast forward several years, I was floored when, not long after I started TeachThought, he began contributing to the site as a writer. I nerded out.  As an educator, Grant was able to deftly balance the trivium of education improvement-thought, research, and practical tools teachers can use in the classroom. As a result-in my opinion-there are few who have done more to change education in the last fifty years.  The good news? His work remains. His writing is always available-here, in his books, on his own blog, his twitter account, and more. When your work is thought and you leave a record of that thought, then your work never stops. Even when you ultimately have to. Above all else, as I see it, his legacy is that of a champion of understanding. And that’s pretty awesome.  Rest in peace, Grant. Love and strength to your family. You can show your support, for now, by tweeting with the hashtag #grantwiggins. image courtesy authenticeducation and huffingtonpost The post Grant Wiggins, Champion Of Understanding appeared first on TeachThought.

The 4th Annual Teaching and Learning With the iPad Conference is Accepting Presentation Proposals Through June 30th by Teaching & Learning with the iPad Conference Organizers Do you teach in an iPad-empowered classroom, or help support teachers who do?Are you passionate about the many ways that the iPad can play an engaging role in curriculum delivery, assignments, increasing productivity, and more? Come and share your experience and your passion with us at the 2015 Teaching and Learning with the iPad Conference! EmergingEdTech is delighted to team up with the Franklin Academy again this year to offer the Teaching & Learning with the iPad Conference, November 12 - 14, 2015 in Raleigh, North Carolina. This will be the forth year for the conference. We started in 2011 with the first all-iPad education conference in the country. In 2014 we had over 250 participants from stated all across the U.S., and several countries outside of it! We hope you will come join us, and encourage you to consider presenting. There are many session slots available (50 minutes each). We welcome and encourage proposals for all grade levels and curriculum areas, as well as for IT management. The conference is organized around Session Themes. Please give the conference themes a look over before you submit your presentation proposal. Session Themes Each of the themes listed here are intended to be general categories that the majority of the information covered would be related to in the presentation. All submissions must choose one main theme for their presentation. Assessment: The iPad used as a tool to assess student performance in a variety of ways to include formative, summative, objective, and subjective elements. Teaching & Learning standards: The iPad used as a tool for connecting learning to a variety of state and national standards. Content Creation: The iPad used as a tool in the hands of teachers and students to create documents, media rich content, interactive products and support classroom workflow. Instructional Strategies: The iPad used with specific instructional strategies that produce quality results in student learning. Device Management: Strategies and techniques for managing the iPad in 1:1, classroom sets, and cart configurations. The conference schedule is available here. Proposal Submission is open through June 30, 2015. All presenters will be notified of the status of their proposal by July 31, 2015. (Note: The Conference Registration Fee is waived for Presenters!). Come join Steven W. Anderson and other education technology experts and advocates, and share your voice! The post iPad Conference Accepting Proposals Through June 30th appeared first on TeachThought.

Lesson Example: Helping Students Respond To Art In A Museum by Steve Berer, musexplore.net In this article, I will present a project to challenge your students to creatively respond to art objects that they find particularly engaging or mysterious. Their task is to try to see those works of art accurately and to develop a relationship with them. As a teacher your job is to act as a coach, pointing out interesting details, asking and answering questions, and providing feedback to the work your students are producing. Project OutlineEdit Edit date and time Ideal Grade Level: 8-12; 5-12 if modified I developed this project to help students learn about Asian art at the Freer Gallery in Washington, DC. However, you can easily modify it by providing a collection of images, or assigning your students to explore a local museum’s collection, or exploring any of dozens of great museum collections that can be found online. Find 3 objects in the museum. First, describe each of them accurately in words. Second, draw each of them. Finally write a poem or story about each of them, or create counterpart drawings to them. Students can work individually or in teams of 3. Students should be sure to photograph or record each object and its label, if available. Tools Needed Notebooks for writing and sketching Phone for photos, video, and sound recording (if visiting a museum; be sure to verify if the museum allows photography) Pens and pencils; colored pencils or water colors, if desired Job Assignments (if working in teams): Documenter: writes descriptive text Artist: sketches the object Writer or 2nd artist: creates poem, story, or counterpart drawing Teams should begin by discussing the object, deciding who takes on each task, and coming up with creative ideas for the poem/story/counterpart drawing. Timeframe: If exploring a museum online: 1 class to find the art objects; 2-3 classes to write and draw If you provide the artworks: 2-3 classes to write and draw If in a museum: 90-120 minutes, plus 1-3 hours in class and at home, editing and refining the work done in the museum 1-3 classes for presentation of the completed projects, including rough drafts and rejected sketches and writings Knowledge Enhancements: Fluencies in writing, drawing, creative thinking, collaboration Visual literacy, art history, cultural awareness Editing, presentation A Sample Project Step 1: (A project-group’s summary after visiting a museum:) Our group chose 3 paintings. We began by taking a quick tour through the whole gallery to locate paintings and objects we liked, noting their rooms. We decided to stick to paintings, and each of us got to pick one. Although there were many we liked, we realized we didn’t have time to ponder. After about 15 minutes we each had a painting that we thought would be fun to work on. Step 2: The first painting was ‘Taoist Immortals’, a humorous and appealing ink drawing from Japan. Since none of us was strong in art, we decided to switch roles with each painting, so each of us would have a chance to write a description, to do some creative writing, and to try our hand at drawing. We first studied the painting and then talked about what we could see in it. Two questions jumped out: 1. Why were the immortals laughing, and 2. Why would immortals have a broom? Step 3: We then got to work. The person who had to do the drawing tried a couple of sketches and wanted to tear them out and rip them up. It was really hard. Just then our teacher showed up and we asked him if we could skip the drawing part. "Absolutely not!" he answered. What he told us was that creativity begins when we overcome our fears, and try to stop judging ourselves. This was not about proving that we were the next Rembrandt, but about understanding how to translate what we see, through our hand, onto a piece of paper. Our teacher, who was not an artist either, then pulled out his notebook and pencil and showed us how he’d start. He said there were 2 ways: Don’t try to copy the painting. Instead, produce a schematic drawing, using lines, boxes, and ovals to capture the main shapes, any movement, color centers, and other kinds of focus points in the painting. That was very cool. Attempt a rough copy. Block out the main shapes with very light lines to get the proportions about right, and then go back and begin to build up the image using the pencil’s point to do sharp lines, and the side of the point to do shading and make soft lines. He kept going over it, building up line and shading and detail. The result was pretty good, fast, and it didn’t seem all that hard. We figured if he could do it, so could we! He also reminded us to keep all of our rejects and notes. We would use them in our class presentation. It turned out, the hardest part for each of us was writing the poem or story. We each felt like the painting we were working from was fascinating, and we wanted to create a story as interesting as the picture. We worked as a group to brain-storm ideas briefly; then we got to work. Each of us had a decent first draft by the time we had to leave, but we all felt like we needed to work on it more. All told, we spent about an hour and 45 minutes in the museum. Suggestions For Customizing This Project Be sure to specify guidelines. Here’s a sample of a brief set of guidelines: "Your description should be 2 full paragraphs that carefully and accurately discuss the appearance of the object, the materials from which it was made, basic shapes and colors, originating country and artist if known. If the label provides information about the image/object and it’s background, use that to do research outside the museum to prepare a fuller description of the object, its history, and the story its telling. Your sketch should be a schematic diagram with notes describing the painting/object, its details, sense of movement, areas of striking color, and what you perceive as the focus point(s). Or if you prefer, attempt to make a copy of the object. If you write a poem, it should be in the sonnet form; otherwise write 3 different haikus for each object. If you write a story, it should be at least a full page long, opening with a problem and ending with a solution. If you draw a counterpart image, it should be carefully drawn, with attention to form, (color?), and detail. It should have a clear relationship to the original painting." An alternative challenge: You might have your students choose two portraits. Have them imagine the people in the portraits are in love, and they are writing an exchange of love poems or love letters. If the portraits originated from different cultures or regions, you might frame it as a Romeo and Juliet situation, or you might have the lovers talk a little bit about what life is like in their country or city, and where they can meet and what they can do. High school students working alone will probably need an hour per object/painting to complete their description, sketch, and poem/story. Working in 3-person teams, high school students should be able to complete one set in 30-45 minutes. Middle school students will probably complete their work more quickly. Your mileage may vary. Lesson Example: Helping Students Respond To Art In A Museum; image attribution flickr user woodleywonderworks The post Lesson Example: Helping Students Respond To Art In A Museum appeared first on TeachThought.

10 Ideas For Upgrading Your Teaching This Summer by Nellie Mitchell, thislittleclassofmine When my district tech office sent out an email the last week of school announcing that we would be getting new computers mid-summer, I was ecstatic. The MacBook computers we’ve been packing around for the last five years are great machines, but I am ready for the upgrade. Anticipating the news that new computers might be on the horizon, I started organizing my computer two months ago. Along with the announcement came a 7-page document outlining the steps and options to back up our lesson plans, files, and slide shows. Computing has changed a lot in the last five years. Now, instead of backing up our documents on CDs, as we did the last time we got new computers, we are encouraged to use the cloud. Save the files on Google Drive. Make a ‘keep’ folder full of ‘essentials’ only. The district will not be transferring large files, media files or photos. It is our responsibility to remove those things from our devices before the upgrade. (Glad I had a head start!) I’ve been with the district for my entire 9.5-year career, and this will be the third computer they’ve provided for us in that time—-needless to say, I have a lot of files. Last year when I moved to a new classroom, I started throwing away photocopied ‘idea’ folders and packets, in favor of my pin boards and ‘flipboards’. I consolidated three filing cabinets down to one.  Most of the things I threw away already exist in a new-and-improved digital version. Purging old files from my computer feels the same. My iPhoto was filled with thousands of photos and videos. My document file had documents that I created as a student teacher. It’s freeing to delete old documents, forms, and pictures that are backed up elsewhere. There is really no reason to save every single thing on a device. Most of that stuff was just unusable, irrelevant clutter. It feels good to organize things that were saved haphazardly in random places into their new home in the cloud. It is funny to browse through the links that I bookmarked years ago and update my bookmark toolbar to only the necessary links. Upgrading for me means a new computer, a clean, fresh start for next year. A true upgrade is a lot more than just rolling in some new shiny hardware. It’s about assessing what’s out there, removing the old outdated equipment and thinking, and investing in the future. Upgrading means assessing the way you do things, evaluating the validity, and only saving the really good stuff. Upgrading means taking the time to clear out the clutter. It means pairing down the unnecessary junk into just the essentials. Upgrading is systematically sifting through the things that are right in front of you all the time, but are no longer relevant. It is about managing disorganized ideas and content. It is about updating and rebooting. It means changing for the better. It is nice to have a little time this summer to work towards the upgrade. During the regular school year, I don’t have multi-hour blocks of time to devote such a transformative project. The upgrade has forced me to think about other things in my teaching that deserve time an attention. What else needs an overhaul? Maybe you are already super organized. Maybe you just upgraded your computer. A massive purge of ‘old clutter’? A shiny new idea? An evaluation of your old classroom management policies? An entirely new system of collecting data? We have put together a list of ideas to help you upgrade your teaching practices this summer. Obviously, travel, reading, relaxing and taking a break are critical during the summer, but implementing one of these suggested upgrades now, will be a good investment in the long run. 10 Teacher Upgrades For $10 Or Less Clean, purge and restore. Clean out filing cabinets. Clean off your computer. Save only the essentials. Back up your important documents in the cloud. Browse through links that were bookmarked years ago and update the bookmark toolbar with only the necessary links. Purge old worksheets and curriculum tools that don’t apply to your classroom anymore.  Cost: FREE. Manage your email. Delete irrelevant messages and go through the process to unsubscribe from mailing lists. Adopt an inbox zero philosophy to help you avoid the spam/junk/clutter all year long. Cost: FREE. Join a Twitter Chat. Fact.: 44% of users who are signed up for Twitter have never sent a single tweet!! Connect with sources that will strengthen your personal learning network. It will be a great investment in the future. Cost: FREE. Find an Ed Camp near you and sign up.  It is an incredible source of professional development and since it is summer, you won’t even need to create sub plans. You might just find that shiny new idea! Cost: FREE (and free food!) Gather a few teacher friends and do a book study. Meet up a couple of times this summer at the pool, for brunch, or for a teachers-night out to talk about the book. I suggest Drive: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us by Daniel Pink, The Power of Habit, by Charles Duhigg or Thinking, Fast and Slow by Daniel Kahneman. Cost: All three have a Kindle edition under $10. Take a class in something you are admittedly not good at, in order to understand the perspective of struggling learners. Seriously. A few hours in a dance or sewing class and you might be ready to quit. The process will be good for you and it will give you some insight into the frustration your students have. It will also give you a chance to observe a teacher in a different content area and setting, which could potentially transform your own practices. Cost: Price varies. Print those school photos. Okay, this suggestion might be creating a little more physical clutter, but having tangible evidence of student projects, collaboration, and fun times in the classroom are a great investment in the future. Print them off, hang them up, share them with colleagues and use them in your classroom displays next year, or for parent conferences. If you never print them, look at them or share them, why bother backing them up and transferring them from device to device. Use it or lose it. Cost: Varies. Online printing services run deals for 99 prints for $0.99. Develop a community service project and a plan to implement it next year. Figure out how to use your existing curriculum to make the world a better place. Find inspiration in a local, real-world problem. Do the legwork now and introduce it when student engagement is floundering. A dual investment in the future. Cost: Free. Spend time reflecting and evaluating why/how you do things. You could finally start that blog. (My absolute favorite source for encouragement and reflection are sitting in a folder in my email inbox. I get a weekly article from SmartClassroomManagement.com but I don’t always have mental fortitude to digest the information during the school year. This summer, I plan to spend a little time with the articles that resonate with me so that I can update my classroom management plan.) Cost: Free. Download a classroom library app. Spend some time organizing your books. Cost: varies, most are free.   What could you do this summer to upgrade your teaching? What could you do to change your teaching practices for the better? Let us know in the comments if you have any other tips for teacher upgrades! image attribution pixabay The post 10 Ideas For Upgrading Your Teaching This Summer appeared first on TeachThought.

The Cycle Of Reflective Teaching by Pete Hall and Alisa Simeral The authors of this post, Pete Hall (@educationhall) and Alisa Simeral (@AlisaSimeral), will be the guest experts on ASCD’s next #ASCDL2L Twitter chat, Tuesday, June 2 from 8 - 9 p.m. ET. The chat will give teachers a forum to discuss effective self-reflection and personal capacity-building and will be guest hosted by TeachThought (@TeachThought). Please join us, Pete, Alisa, and @ASCD for a terrific chat! The more reflective you are, the more effective you are. This is a phrase that has become synonymous with the work we have done with building teachers’ reflective capacity. With a century’s worth of research touting the benefits of self-reflection and a slew of tools to help teachers (and the coaches and administrators who support them) strengthen their reflective habits, the causative relationship between the two is growing more evident. People often ask us, "If self-reflection is a skill that can be developed, how exactly am I supposed to develop it?" Fortunately, with the release of our new book, Teach, Reflect, Learn: Building Your Capacity for Success in the Classroom, we have provided hundreds of reflective prompts and dozens of strategies. Here’s a cheat-sheet: 3 steps we can all take to build our self-reflective habits. The Cycle Of Reflective Teaching Step 1: Stop Have you ever heard someone say, "Well, I never really stopped to think about it." More than likely, you’ve muttered that phrase yourself. We tend to get so caught up in the here and now, busy hustling from task to task, drowning in our to-do lists, that we find ourselves too deep in our routines to see beyond the ruts. We’re doing without really thinking about what we’re doing. This is the cause of what we’ve come to call the doing-thinking gap. As a teacher, you do a thousand things a day - it’s high time that you stopped, took stock in what you’re doing, why you’re doing it, and how it’s going. It’s a cycle, which means it can be practiced and refined. Step 2: Practice Thinking about your work, as an act unto itself, will not singlehandedly make you a more reflective and effective educator. It is a necessary, though not sufficient, activity. How you reflect, and what you reflect about, will provide structure to this thinking strategy. In T,R,L, we share the Reflective Cycle - four key steps that usher you along the path to deeper self-reflection. If you center your reflective practices on these four, you’ll reap the dividends: Awareness: Reflective practitioners are aware of their instructional reality. That means they know their students, their content, and the high-leverage pedagogy that leads to higher levels of learning. So pay attention to everything, pick up the details, look for opportunities to connect the three together. Intentionality: You may have heard us exclaim, "Excellence is not happenstansical." Greatness is born from intentionality and planning. Everything a reflective teacher does is selected on purpose, to achieve a certain outcome, and is planned and executed deliberately. Emphasis here addresses the why you are doing things. Assessment: If a teacher uses strategy x to accomplish outcome y, then it would make sense for that teacher to determine if it worked. Reflective practitioners assess the results of their work all the time, constantly determining the effectiveness and shortcomings of their efforts. Deeper reflection leads to an analysis of why certain teaching moves worked and others didn’t. Responsiveness: Building off the assessment step, reflective teachers take action - if strategy x didn’t achieve outcome y to the degree needed, the teacher does something about it. Modifying lesson designs, providing reviews, delivering in-the-moment clarifications, and constructing intervention plans are all examples of how teachers can be responsive to that assessment. Step 3: Collaborate This work is far too complex, and far too important, to go it alone. In our first book, Building Teachers’ Capacity for Success: A Collaborative Approach for Coaches and School Leaders, we offered a coaching model and tools for administrators to "talk teaching" with their teachers. Now, we invite teachers to partner with their colleagues, create a network of reflective practitioners, and take the reins of their own reflective professional growth. It’s amazing what we can accomplish when we put our heads together. Think about it. Pete Hall (@educationhall) is a veteran school administrator and professional development agent who has dedicated his career to supporting the improvement of our education systems. His is currently a faculty member with ASCD Professional Learning Services. Alisa Simeral (@AlisaSimeral) is a school turnaround specialist and veteran educator who has guided school-based reform efforts as a teacher, dean, and instructional coach. Together, they are co-authors of the new book, Teach, Reflect, Learn: Building Your Capacity for Success in the Classroom (ASCD); The Cycle Of Reflective Teaching; image attribution flickr user woodleywonderworks The post The Cycle Of Reflective Teaching appeared first on TeachThought.