The Best States To Live And Work As A Teacher by Brian Neese, Southeastern University For years, the news has been clear — more teachers are needed. And many are stepping up to answer that call. But despite the need for teachers, not all states are created equal. Budgets are distributed differently, not only within states but also within counties. Resources and access can differ dramatically. And although many teachers begin the work for the love of education, salary and cost of living are still significant factors in career satisfaction. With the patchwork quilt of information about how much teachers earn across the United States, it can be difficult to determine where to settle down. Although many factors contribute to the decision to live and work in a specific area, salary is one significant factor. Cost of living, however, also needs to be considered, because that is a determinant in how much pay a teacher actually takes home. The need for teachers in various regions, as well as what types of teachers are needed, can also play a role in the decision to live and work in a given state. Using salary information from the National Education Association and the U.S. Department of Education, Southeastern University’s interactive map illustrates the best states to teach in America based on monetary factors. It also includes cost-of-living information from The Council for Community and Economic Research and a summary of tenure protections using information provided by the Education Commission of the States. Top States for Teachers Pennsylvania and Wyoming lead the nation as the best states to teach in America. As two top 10 states for all three salary metrics — average starting salary, average salary for teachers with a bachelor’s degree and average salary for teachers with a master’s degree — they are the only states that rank this highly for salary and also fall outside of the top 10 for the highest cost of living. Not only do these teachers earn more, but they also pay less for basic living expenses, leaving them with more take-home pay. Other states that offer a strong value for teachers include Indiana, Illinois, Louisiana, Michigan and Ohio. These are the only states found in the top half nationally for all salary metrics while staying in the bottom half for cost of living. It is important to note that metro areas can affect the statewide averages for salary and cost-of-living data. Teachers should examine various regions within a state to gain a clearer picture of how salary and cost of living interact in any given area. Different Regions, Different Benefits Of course, the various regions of the United States each have their own charms … and challenges. Here are just a few of the aspects teachers should consider about each area. Northeast This area offers a competitive salary with a relatively high cost of living. All nine states have a cost of living in the upper 40 percent of the country, with five states falling in the top 10. New Jersey, New York, Massachusetts and Connecticut lead the region in salary indicators. Pennsylvania is the best value for teachers in this region, with high salary figures and a slightly above-average cost of living. South This area fluctuates in terms of the cost of living and salary data for teachers. Texas is the strongest value for teachers in the South. It has a cost of living in the bottom 25th percentile and offers two top 15 salary metrics. Kentucky is another value in the South. It has the fourth-best cost of living in the nation and can be found in the top half of states in the country for average starting teacher salary and average salary for teachers with a master’s degree. West This region offers a generally high cost of living with varying ranges for salary metrics. Only four of the 13 states in the West place in the lower half of the cost-of-living rankings. For states with a high cost of living, salary figures can be high (Alaska and California) or near the middle (Oregon, Washington, Nevada and Colorado) as compared to national averages. Wyoming leads the West, and likely the nation, in terms of salary and cost of living balance. It ranks in the top 10 nationally for all three salary figures and has a 93.9 percent cost-of-living average for the state, which is below the national average. Midwest This region presents value for teachers looking to balance cost of living and salary. Nine of the 12 Midwestern states are in the bottom half nationally for highest cost of living, while seven are in the top half nationally for average base salary for teachers with a master’s degree. Illinois, Indiana, Michigan and Wisconsin emerge as top states in the region for salary and cost of living. Illinois and Michigan lead the country for the highest percent increase between average base salaries for teachers with a bachelor’s and a master’s degree. Illinois is first at 42.6 percent, while Michigan comes in second with a 35.7 percent increase in salary — no other states in the nation exceed the 30 percent mark. The Importance of Education for Teachers One of the most powerful ways for teachers to increase their earning potential is to advance their education. According to the U.S. Department of Education, teachers with a bachelor’s degree earn a national average base salary of $46,340, while teachers with a master’s degree earn an average base salary of $57,830 — a 24.8 percent increase. In addition to an increase in earnings, teachers with a master’s degree are more competitive in the job market. Ease of mobility, enhanced job security and other opportunities are generally more open to teachers with a master’s degree than to those with just a bachelor’s degree. A master’s degree can also lead to specialization opportunities that can enhance teachers’ career opportunities, earnings and overall career development. Specializations Matter The current need for teachers with specialized skills highlights an opportunity for teachers across the country. In the 2014-2015 school year, five subjects were in demand by at least half of the states in the U.S., including more than three-fourths of states for special education, math and science, and more than half of states for foreign language and teaching English to speakers of other languages (TESOL). In-demand specializations include the following: Special Education: The number of U.S. students enrolled in special education programs in the past 10 years has risen 30 percent. (National Education Association). Math and Science: Initiatives surrounding enhanced proficiency in the fields of science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) have resulted in an increased demand for teachers. The U.S. Department of Education has reported a plan that includes developing, recruiting and retaining 100,000 STEM teachers over the next 10 years. Foreign Language and TESOL: According to the National Center for Education Statistics, 9.1 percent of public school students in the United States were English language learners. The rise in English language learners — especially students from households that speak Spanish — has resulted in an increase of teachers who can help foreign language learners in their native language, as well as teachers who can help learners improve their English skills. Teachers looking to specialize in a certain area can pursue certification in a specific degree concentration. For instance, a master’s degree in special education or TESOL is a common option for teachers to advance their education and earn a career specialization. Conclusion Although choosing a location is not based solely on salary and cost of living, understanding these factors can help teachers decide where to pursue a career. When taking into account available data for salary and cost of living, Pennsylvania, Wyoming, Indiana, Illinois and Louisiana fared well in the analysis of the best states to teach in America. Florida is another top state when considering state-specific data. No matter where teachers live, however, a master’s degree improves salary and mobility prospects. Specializing in an in-demand subject area increases those metrics, as well. For teachers looking to advance their careers with a master’s degree, it’s important to choose a university that offers the most valuable specializations. Southeastern University, for example, offers online Master of Education programs with five specialization options, as well as an online Doctor of Education program. Teachers can use these degrees to improve their career prospects and then choose the area that best meets their needs. Online education degree programs at Southeastern University include the following: MEd in Arts and Academic Interdisciplinary Education MEd in Elementary Education MEd in Educational Leadership MEd in Exceptional Student Education MEd in Reading Education MEd in Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages Doctor of Education Choosing where to live depends on many factors, but finding a state that balances salary with cost of living can be an important consideration. The good news is that the more education you have, the more flexibility you’ll have as a teacher to find a home that will meet your needs. The post The Best States To Live And Work As A Teacher appeared first on TeachThought.

20 STEM Activities For Kids This Summer by pltw.org School may be winding down, but that doesn’t mean learning has to. In fact, it is vital that it doesn’t! When students let their brains take a break over the summer, they can lose the equivalent of two months of their grade-level math and reading skills. To combat summer learning loss and keep those STEM skills fresh over the summer, Project Lead The Way put together a list of super simple (and fun) STEM activities you can do with your children over summer break. Create a discovery jar. Sit down with your child at the beginning of the summer and brainstorm all of the questions or ideas your student is curious about. Maybe it is why grass is green or how space travel started. Or how many varieties of leaves exist on the trees in the yard. Then put all of the questions into a mason jar. Pull one out each day for your child to research and explore. PLTW Director of Assessment Claudia Guerere (@ClaudiaGuerere) recommends this activity, which she says engages kids’ natural curiosity and discovery. Do try it at home! Matt Arnold (@ArnoldSTEM), PLTW instructional specialist, is a big fan of the Lemelson Center’s collection of ‘Do Try This at Home!’ activities, through which students develop their innovation and creativity. Try one of these free and fun activities. Keep their math skills sharp. Bennett Brown (@BennettBrownIA), PLTW director of curriculum and instruction for computer science, prefers IXL.com, which offers grade-based math activities that feel more like fun than practice. Bug out! Did you know that insects outnumber humans 200 million to one? No matter where you live, insects are a vital part of your community and play an important role in everything from recycling waste to helping plants spread pollen. Discover what bugs live in your neighborhood, and try to identify those you haven’t seen before. Explore computer science.You don’t need to be a professional to create computer Apps! Help your student learn basic computer science principles with these easy-to-use computer science platforms. PLTW’s computer science curriculum developers recommend these resources: Scratch Jr. (PreK-3) - Scratch Jr. is a free App available on both iPad and Android tablets that allows even the youngest students to learn to code. Scratch (grades 3-9) - Scratch is a free platform for students to program interactive stories, games, and animations. All you need is a laptop and creativity. App Inventor (grades 5+) - This platform allows students to create their own Apps in less than an hour. To use, you’ll need two devices: a Web browser on computer, as well as an Android device. Both must be able to access the same wireless Internet network. Tynker (grades 4-5) - Tynker is a blocks-based programming platform available on desktops, laptops, and tablets that helps students learn to code. Both free and paid memberships are available. DroidScript - DroidScript lets students of all skill levels easily and quickly write Apps for Android using JavaScript. Use a PC and an Android phone, tablet, or Smart Watch. Both must be connected to the same wireless Internet network. Lightbot - Lightbot is an educational video game for learning software programming concepts. Paid versions ($2.59-$4.99) exist for both Apple and Android tablets, as well as Windows and Mac devices. Feel the beat! Learn how different activities affect your heart rate with this fun activity from Rachel Allard, PLTW’s director of curriculum and instruction for PLTW Biomedical Science. Teach your child how to measure his or her resting heart rate, and then collect it at different points throughout the day to learn how quiet versus physically active tasks change their heart rate. Find a helpful guide here. Bake! It’s one of the best ways to teach young children math and science. Work on their math vocabulary and measurement skills as you measure out ingredients. And explore where ingredients come from, or how solids and liquids transform during baking for a basic science lesson. Then reward them with a chocolate chip cookie or a Rice Krispies® treat! Explore architecture and public works! @BennettBrownIA recommends taking children on a fieldtrip to your local infrastructure facilities - the waste water treatment plan, electric plant, or manufacturing plant - to learn about civil engineering and architecture. Most do free tours if you call ahead. Sharpen their problem-solving skills! PBS Kids offers a great resource full of problem-solving games for young students. PLTW Director of Curriculum and Instruction Vanessa Stratton (@Vanessa_PLTW) enjoys these with her own children. Go to camp! The Engineering Education Service Center is a great resource for a list of summer engineering camps happening across the U.S. Camps are listed by state. Take a snack break. Several members of the PLTW Programs Team recommend the Exploratorium’s Science Snacks for hundreds of ideas, sorted by subject. Some of our favorites require few materials and even provide talking points for parents. Balancing ball Your sense of taste Blind spot Take it from the top Make getting the mail fun. PLTW Director of Instruction Stephanie Poll subscribes to Tinker Crate to keep her children engaged outside of the classroom. Tinker Crate promises not to be just another science kit. This monthly subscription-based service designed for kids ages 9-14 creates ‘low threshold, high ceiling projects accessible and fun for all types of learners.’ A version of Tinker Crate is also available for ages 3-4 and 4-8. Upcycle! Associate Director of Curriculum and Instruction Joanne Donnan (@JoanneDonnan) loves to see what students create when handed a bin full of recyclables. Gather your old materials and this kit of connectors ($12.50) and turn your kids loose. Modern Parents Messy Kids has another take on this creativity-inspiring activity. Master physics. @BennettBrownIA and @ArnoldSTEM love the Minute Physics channel on YouTube. These videos, set to engaging animations, make some of the most complicated science topics easier to understand. Grow a salad. Explore life sciences with this fun activity. Grow lettuce, cucumbers, and tomatoes in your garden or in separate pots. Students will learn the growth cycle of plants and the impact of soil, sun, water, and nutrition on plants’ growth. Take the egg drop challenge. What happens when you drop an egg from ceiling-height? It cracks and creates a giant mess, right? Challenge your child to engineer a vessel that will protect the egg and keep it from breaking when dropped. Go star gazing! Warm nights and clear skies allow for fun interstellar observation, with or without a telescope, says PLTW Director of Curriculum and Instruction Gerald Holt (@Holt10). Sky Map, built by a team of amateur astronomers who work at Google, helps Android users locate stars and planets in the night sky. NASA also provides a fun way to locate the International Space Station with its Spot The Station website. Help your children boost their critical thinking skills."Instant challenges" are go-to resources for many on PLTW’s Programs Team with their own children. These challenges, set to a specific amount of time, force children to think on their feet, work in teams, and use their critical thinking skills. Google ‘Instant Challenge’ for ideas, or check out some of @Vanessa_PLTW’s favorites: Instant Challenge Matrix Roll-A-Challenge Four Square Deal (Activity #2) Catch it if you can! (Activity #4) Learn about microorganisms! Microorganisms are important to life on Earth, acting as decomposers in various ecosystems and playing a vital role in the nitrogen cycle. Help your child learn about the different bacteria in their daily environment and the important role each plays with this interactive game. Build a paper rollercoaster. @JoanneDonnan recommends Canon’s printer-friendly roller coaster template and corresponding instructions. Print and assemble your very own paper roller coaster, and then assemble your coaster car and race it around the track. Take a picture as you enjoy these activities with your children, and share it with us on social media! Tag PLTW on Twitter @PLTWorg, on Facebook at ‘Project Lead The Way - PLTW’, or on Instagram at PLTWorg. image attribution flickr user usarmyrdecom The post 20 STEM Activities For Kids This Summer appeared first on TeachThought.

How To Make Learning Visible: A Spectrum by Terry Heick  What students say and do and create are products of thought processes that, more or less, are predictable-and of significant potential if we can make those processes visible. The idea of making learning visible isn’t new. This is an idea as old as conversation or writing-show me what you know. It comes in many forms, from essays, quizzes, and exams, to the lifeless "What’d you learn in school today?" conversation after school. Playing an automotive racing video game recently, I unlocked a badge for accruing a certain number of miles on a specific track. As I was driving-or rather, pushing buttons on a controller that simulated a lot of the visuals and some of the sensations of racing a car-a little badge popped up at the bottom of the screen, along with a title reflecting what I’d accomplished. Badges and trophies are usually seen as a reward for an accomplishment, but they’re not very good at it. They flash on the screen, create an all-too-brief dopamine response, and are gone.  On modern video game platforms like The Xbox One, PlayStation 4, and Steam, no one really cares about these collections because everyone has them. They might be quantified, as in "I have more points or trophies than you," but as individual episodes of achievement, they’re mostly anonymous, which means they fail to signify something actually worth signifying. In a learning ecology-as we use them now-digital badges usually cause little excitement and mean nothing. As levers of gamification, however, they have the potential to uncover the nuance of performance, as I explained in that post. "A digital trophy system-if well-designed-offers the ability to make transparent not just success and failure, accolades and demerits, but every single step in the learning process that the gamification designer chooses to highlight. Every due date missed, peer collaborated with, sentence revised, story revisited, every step of the scientific process and long-division, every original analogy, tightly-designed thesis statement, or exploration of push-pull factors-every single time these ideas and more can be highlighted for the purposes of assessment, accountability, and student self-awareness." So, in the best of cases, these icons can be gathered into a personal collection to act as an uber-report card. Imagine the icons on your phone or tablet as symbols of something important attempted or accomplished by a student. That’d be a great starting point for learning badge and gamification "2.0," but merely updating a broken system doesn’t seem like the best use of our time. It’s much more fun to speculate what might be possible if we’re willing to squint a little to maybe find something we haven’t found before. Transfer The shift from proving understanding of externally-driven content (i.e., curriculum maps and pacing guides created from a universal set of standards) to turning inward and learning to ask questions that sustain learning isn’t simply a matter of process, but purpose and human outcome. See John Dewey explain. "From the standpoint of the child (Ed note: this is the only standpoint that matters, right?), the great waste in the school comes from his inability to utilize the experiences he gets outside the school in any complete and free way within the school itself; while, on the other hand, he is unable to apply in daily life what he is learning at school. That is the isolation of the school — its isolation from life. When the child gets into the schoolroom he has to put out of his mind a large part of the ideas, interests, and activities that predominate in his home and neighborhood. So the school, being unable to utilize this everyday experience, sets painfully to work, on another tack and by a variety of means, to arouse in the child an interest in school studies. While I was visiting in the city of Moline a few years ago, the superintendent told me that they found many children every year, who were surprised to learn that the Mississippi river in the text-book had anything to do with the stream of water flowing past their homes." (Dewey 1916) In focusing on narrow data from a fixed curriculum using universal assessments, it might be that we’ve gotten the learning process itself all knotted up. Curiously, there haven’t been very many attempts to make learning, in and of itself, visible. Letter grades and paper certificates make up the bulk of these efforts, and digital portfolios and project-based learning artifacts are about as exotic as it gets. Badges are a more recent entry into this field, but we’re falling far short of what’s possible. In short, badges as evidence of achievement are interesting, but insufficient because they are residual. Leftover. Effects. Artifacts. Fin. But if we use them as simply the first "stage" of a growing idea, then we can both illuminate and catalyze learning as a process while it’s happening-and in the process, connect students with someone other than the teacher. The question becomes then, what should we make visible, how, and to whom? How To Make Learning Visible: A Spectrum Below is a kind of model to think about this. It is setup here as a spectrum. Stage 1 represents early thinking about the idea-essentially, where many classrooms are today, while Stage 4 represents more developed thinking-what "classrooms" might seek to become as we move beyond "I’m done with this assignment" thinking. The big idea, then, is to evolve the thinking behind letter grades, certificates, and badges in pursuit of a genuine ecology of learning-pushing past simply sharing evidence of "mastery" (which is perishable), toward a focus on the students as they ask questions, seek information, apply their own thinking, and see learning as a fluid-and entirely personal-process. Big Idea: A shift from emphasizing the products of learning to the process of learning Stage 1: Product (The Artifacts Of Learning) At the first stage of this "spectrum" of making learning visible, there is emphasis on the finished products students create. This can provide evidence of understanding, and allows other stakeholders in education an opportunity to infer what’s happening in the classroom. This is also where most classrooms are today. Examples: Physical projects and models, essays, posters, blog posts, badges of completion, ribbons, letter grades, diplomas, certificates, PowerPoints, project-based learning artifacts, photographs Driving Question(s): What compelling evidence of performance and understanding can be shared with others? What is the most authentic way to publish student work in affectionate and attentive communities? Stage 2: Process (The Patterns & Sequence Of Learning) As we make learning visible during this second stage, the process and sequence of learning is illuminated. This may include ongoing or even finished projects shared, but only insofar as student habits, decisions, developing understanding, and ongoing performance are concerned. This helps students see understanding as alive-and thus capable of growth or decay-and always evolving. This also helps schools and teachers see student performance as an extraordinarily individual and often chaotic-even Rhizomatic-journey, and design curriculum, assessment, learning feedback, and other systems around that idea. Examples: Any practices that encourage metacognition, journaling about the Habits of Mind, making room for failure, revisiting old work for reflection or improvement, entrepreneurship projects (including community projects and businesses), visual data that shows change over time, returning to "places" (physical or digital) of learning, the iteration of digital portfolios (rather than the artifacts themselves), reflecting on what students felt emotionally during the process of learning Driving Question(s): What does "personalized learning" mean? How do students learn differently-both in a standardized curriculum, and in a model where each student learns something different? How can the nature of learning as a process be made visible-and in a way that serves the student as much as those around them? Stage 3 : Need To Know (The Reason For Learning) At this advanced stage of making learning visible, knowledge demands and curiosity are the focus. Here, what students need to know is supplemented-and empowered-by why they need to know it. These two concepts work together to bolster both curiosity and the utility of knowledge. Driving Question(s): How can the need to know be communicated, emphasized, and published? What role does curiosity play? What is the difference between "engaged academic" and "authentic learning"? Examples: Informal learning, demonstrated curiosity, problem-based learning, challenge-based learning, visible transfer of knowledge, communal constructivism, self-directed learning as a classroom model Stage 4: The Self (The Context For Learning) The last of these so-called "stages" of making learning visible finishes with the student themselves. A continuum that began with the idea of students proving themselves to others by what they "do" has now transformed into one that focuses on the students themselves as a context for learning-what they learn, why the learn it, and what they do with what they know. Some of these kinds of questions can be found in our self-directed learning model, including: What problems or opportunities are within my reach? What important problems & solutions have others before me created? What legacies am I a part of & what does that suggest that I understand? For me, in this light, what’s worth understanding? Examples: Self-directed learning as a classroom model, place-based education, learning through play Driving Question(s): How is each child different? How are each child’s knowledge demands unique? In what contexts do students both need to know and then-unprompted-use what they know? The next question to address, which I’ll do in a follow-up, is whom are we sharing the above with, and how? For professional development around this idea or others you read about on TeachThought, contact us. How To Make Learning Visible: A Spectrum; image attribution flickr user woodleywonderworks The post How To Make Learning Visible: A Spectrum appeared first on TeachThought.

The Mistakes I Made As A New Teacher by Robyn Jackson I’ve been talking to teachers lately about creating an environment in their classrooms where students are free to make mistakes and supported in learning from their mistakes. I argue that learning from mistakes can be a powerful way of helping students learn. But the value in learning mistakes isn’t just limited to our students. As professionals, we need to learn from our mistakes as well. I realize that the environment in our profession isn’t exactly friendly to making and learning from mistakes right now, but I would encourage you to not let that stop you. Don’t be afraid to make the inevitable mistake or two in the classroom as you teach. Instead, be open to learning from your mistakes and using them to make your teaching stronger. To get the ball rolling, I thought I’d share five mistakes I made early in my career and what I learned from them. Please share your mistakes and best advice as well in the comments section and let’s learn from each other. Also take a look at our page full of advice for new teachers from seasoned teachers and leave your best advice there too! Mistake #1: I took everything personally. If the students disobeyed me, I got angry at them. If they didn’t do their work, I took it as a personal affront. Every time they put their heads down or didn’t turn in their homework, I was personally offended.  The problem with taking things personally is that it usually leads to blaming the students. The moment I realized that it wasn’t about me, I was able to to shift my focus from how offended I was to what I needed to do to help my students make better decisions the next time. When I stopped taking personal offense at everything my students did (or didn’t do) I was able to focus on how I could best respect, honor, appreciate, and capitalize on the currencies they brought to the classroom. Mistake #2: I avoided dealing with parents. When parents contacted me, I used to cringe. Usually, they were not calling with good news. I did everything I could to avoid dealing with them. By seeing them as an adversary, or at least a nuisance I wanted to avoid, I created more problems with parents than I solved. Once I learned to see parents as my partners, to keep them informed about what was going on in my class, and to bring them into the loop early in the process, I found that parents were my best allies. As a result, even when we disagreed on a course of action for their child, we were more likely to work out a plan that we could both support. Mistake #3: I waited until students were failing to intervene. I was always surprised at interim time that certain students were failing.  What made it even worse was that by the time I sent out interims, there was really little students could do to redeem their grades before the end of the marking period. It wasn’t until I created a proactive intervention plan that forced me to systematically look at student performance that I started to notice the moment students began to fail and plan in advance what I would do to get them back on track. Then, I could intervene before they got so far in the hole that they could not possibly ever get out. Mistake #4: I was afraid to make mistakes. I thought that as the teacher, I always had to be right. I worked really hard at being the smartest person in the room. When my students asked me a question for which I had no answer, I’d make one up. If I made a mistake, I would cover it up. Only when I gave myself permission to be, well, human, did my teaching get really good. When I let my students see me make mistakes, admit them, and then take steps to correct them, it made it okay for them to make mistakes too. The more I took risks in the classroom, the more I made it safe for them to take risks. As a result, my classroom became a place where real learning could happen. Mistake #5: I tried to cover everything. I thought that if it was in the curriculum, it had to be taught. The problem is that most curriculum documents are so bloated that it is difficult to cover everything or allot the same amount of time to every assignment. What’s more, covering the curriculum does not guarantee that the students will meet all of the standards. Once I realized that, I began to focus on the standards and on helping my students reach the standards rather than just cover the curriculum. Doing so gave me more time to teach what really mattered and more flexibility to adjust my teaching based on my students’ needs. What mistakes have you made and what have you learned from them? What is some advice you would give to teachers starting out? Have you struggled with motivating reluctant learners? If so, come see Robyn’s keynote luncheon at the 2015 ASCD Conference on Teaching Excellence, June 26-28 in Nashville. A version of this blog first appeared on ASCD EDge; Robyn Jackson is the founder of Mindsteps Inc. and the author of 10 books, including Never Work Harder Than Your Students and Other Principles of Great Teaching (ASCD, 2009), and her latest Real Engagement: How do I help my learners become motivated, confident, and self-directed learners? (ASCD, 2015), coauthored with Allison Zmuda; The Mistakes I Made as a New Teacher; adapted image attribution flicker user tulanepublicrelations The post The Mistakes I Made As A New Teacher appeared first on TeachThought.

Why Students Should Read by Terry Heick Lately, there’s something about reading that’s bothering me about how we teach reading and writing. I’ve written about it before and said a lot of what I say here, but never quite said what I was trying to say because I’m not sure what I really mean. It’s got something to do with how schools frame it. Call it "literacy." Sterilize it. Cleave it cleanly from its human contexts until it’s a school thing and good for you and you should totally do it and one day you’ll be thankful you did. Like flossing. Decoding & Comprehension Reading, as taught, is a skill. This is partly by definition. The word reading represents a slew of ideas. It’s a verb, but it’s such a familiar idea and outwardly passive process that it works almost like a noun. Reading can create a kind of flow state where the consciousness of the reader merges with that of the writer through the text. And when this happens, all three can kind of disappear. There is no reader, no writer, and no text, but rather simply a mind dancing with ideas while the world falls away. But that’s a best-case scenario and disgustingly romantic and not what I mean to say either. So then, education. As a matter of teaching and learning, reading is absolutely iconic. To teach reading requires us-teachers-to break it down into parts, usually somewhere along the fault lines of decoding and comprehension. The decoding part is a mix of letters and sounds. Digraphs, clumsy blends, irregular words, and pattern recognition. Phonemics. It’s literally learning to speak a new language, one made with alphanumeric characters on paper (that can travel through time) instead of sounds with your mouth. It begins and ends in your brain and if you can internalize it, ends up in your mind. Comprehension, however, is somewhere close to your stomach. It’s more metacognitive and personal, where the reader takes the internalized symbols and, leveraging their own schema and background knowledge, turns the symbols into something they can recognize and their soul winks and spins. This is a person making meaning. How crazy is that? When a teacher, then, seeks to teach reading, they have to make a choice: Teach decoding, teach comprehension, or try to merge both. This, though, isn’t necessarily a problem. Or the problem as I’m trying to better understand. For all of its intentions, pedagogy is inherently destructive. It seeks to change and reform and mash and refine and alter and reduce and increase. Put another way, focusing on reading-the-verb-the skill as assessed by reading speed and sight vocabulary and main idea extraction and author and purpose and details, and a million other silent efforts readers make in unfolding a text in a way that they can make some kind of sense of it-annihilates reading from the beginning. The assumption is that if one can read, and read well, then they will. This is a useful microcosm that emphasizes how education can grow. Think: Skills vs habits. Competencies vs tendencies. Abilities vs affections. When we focus on teaching content rather than teaching the child, we lose the child. As it stands, we’re a curriculum-centered, data-driven, institutionally-focused industry, and our language reflects that approach. Progress. Acceptance. Rejection. Pass. Fail. Register. Enroll. Proficient. Assess. Data. When seeking improvement, we seek to improve how we’re doing what we’ve always done, but more of it-faster and more efficiently. We break the learner and their sense of self to fit in stuff. We seek to improve our collective processes to cause more learning, which makes as much sense as teaching students how to read instead of why. And that’s about as close as I thought I was going to get (for now) as to why literacy, as taught, is gnawing at me. I was going to end there with useless uncertainty, but publish it anyway so I can read it later and shake my head. Until I read this quote from Franz Kafka on why we should read. "I think we ought to read only the kind of books that wound or stab us. If the book we’re reading doesn’t wake us up with a blow to the head, what are we reading for? So that it will make us happy, as you write? Good Lord, we would be happy precisely if we had no books, and the kind of books that make us happy are the kind we could write ourselves if we had to. But we need books that affect us like a disaster, that grieve us deeply, like the death of someone we loved more than ourselves, like being banished into forests far from everyone, like a suicide. A book must be the axe for the frozen sea within us. That is my belief." When we read-really, really read-for a while, a normally very loud part of us grows quiet and limp while our mind begins unraveling new ideas. Then, pushing further, we look inward, turning our skin inside out to expose our pulsing, naked nerves to the text. We erect a sense of self to withstand the sheer momentum of the text, then rummage through the debris when it’s all over to see what’s left behind. And what we find is who we are. That’s why students should read. For professional development around this idea or others you read about on TeachThought, contact us. Why Students Should Read; adapted image attribubtion flickr user wolfganglonien The post Why Students Should Read appeared first on TeachThought.

Moving Up? 4 Tips For Managing Your Career As A Teacher by Karen Baptiste This March in Houston, ASCD held its 70th Annual Conference for educators and enthusiasts seeking information from the latest innovation and invention to the most effective resources. One of the memorable opportunities provided this year was the Student Career Chat for Student Chapter Members interested in advancing their job search or even relocating to continue their career. Many of the topics discussed were ideal for educators hoping to advance their career, whether in the current district or by relocating, and I’ve aimed to capture some of the best insights to share with you.Moving Up? 4 Tips For Managing Your Career As A Teacher 1. Build real relationships. It can be easy to stay in the same position until you retire with no growth or movement, but if your desire is to move upward, you have to stay current with your organization’s progress or movement, and make sure the organization knows about you as well. I always think of myself as a brand: how will I market myself to decision-makers? This is a key question to consider as you establish your value.  For starters, introduce yourself to others and start building relationships. Everything you do is about relationships! If you’re moving up within the same organization, then you should have networked with other individuals who are in a position to hire you. You should attend events that the school or district holds, and even volunteer to help out with logistics.  Digital connections are fanastic, but they should serve authentic connections, not replace them. 2. Keep a compelling portfolio. As your relationships will be grounded in your work, start showcasing your work to others in and outside of your department or school. You should keep a portfolio of the work you’ve done, along with measures of its effectiveness over a period of time. If you are in a position where you have had little demonstrable impact, then that may not be the right position for you, and chances are you will struggle with getting a promotion. Something that is true in education and across all industries: employers always want to know what impact you have made to prove you will be an asset to their company. Your portfolio should be substantive, visual, easy to share, and indicative of your talent as an educator. 3. Technology can extend the reach of your work.  If you can, attend public events or job fairs that the school district is having and start to network and connect with individuals from there. Also, look up their social media page and see who people are and what they have done in the past. Technology has evolved immensely and we have access at our fingertips to look up organizations and people. For example, you can search for different people on sites such as LinkedIn and friend request them. Networking with people via social media allows you to see what they support, believe in, and their career path. Finding their Twitter handle is also a great way to follow an organization or person’s work. The school community’s local media and newspaper are great outlets for you to do your due diligence in researching before applying. This will start to give you a sense of the community and relationship that the school district has built with its constituents. If the school district is very secretive about their operations, salary and data around achievement, then chances are you don’t want to work there.  Ultimately, technology can both increase your visibility as well as extend the impact and reach of your work as an educator. 4. Do your homework before relocating. Moving to another state, or even just a new city, can be overwhelming, especially when you are job seeking. As I mentioned before, do your homework on any organization―whether school, district, or otherwise―you apply to work for. Always read their mission, their results, employee retention or turnover, salary, and benefits. Research how employees feel about a company and if they are satisfied overall.  Before I relocated to Florida, I tracked the progress of the district to which I was applying for two years because I wanted to be sure that their mission and vision were aligned with mine. While I could not find out about all of the inner workings of this school district, I got a pretty good sense of how they operate by watching their school board meetings broadcasted live on the internet each week. I would read articles on the district and the changes the new superintendent was making to improve the schools.  Best of luck to you as you pursue the best opportunities for yourself as an educator! This guest post by Karen Baptiste discusses lessons she shared with educators at the 2015 ASCD Annual Conference in March. This summer, teachers nationwide will have more great opportunities to supercharge their PD and expand and strengthen their PLNs at the ASCD Summer Academies, led by Heidi Hayes Jacobs and Harvey Silver. Learn more about these academies, Connect 21 Camp: Becoming a 21st Century Teacher, Leader, and School and The Strategic Teacher: Developing Every Teacher’s Instructional Know-How. Karen Baptiste is the Supervisor of Teacher Development in Broward County, Florida and an ASCD Emerging Leader; 4 Tips For Managing Your Career As A Teacher; image attribution flickr user flickeringbrad The post Moving Up? 4 Tips For Managing Your Career As A Teacher appeared first on TeachThought.

by Judy Seltz, Executive Director At ASCD Sometimes the replacement is better than the original, and we don’t miss the original for more than a brief moment: think whiteboards v. blackboards, chalk, and erasers; or copy machines v. mimeograph machines and purple "masters." But then sometimes we look around and wonder why something important seems to have disappeared, like play, for example. Where has play gone, for both children and adults? Think back to your childhood - what memories are the strongest? Probably the times you took off for an afternoon with friends, exploring a stream, playing an invented game in a vacant lot, finding a new neighborhood in your town, or supplying a hideout with forbidden candy bars. And yet, today, unstructured play for children has become an endangered species, replaced by organized sports, karate and dance lessons, and screen time. Many families simply don’t have much unscheduled time - parents’ work schedules, long commutes, and children’s activities contribute to the logistical challenges of managing the week. Some families live in neighborhoods that may not be safe for outside play; others are concerned that their children need every possible advantage to compete successfully, and pile on tutoring, enrichment classes, and more. To clarify, the need for play is not just about the need for physical activity. The American Academy of Pediatrics recommends that recess be unstructured, free play that is a complement to physical education, not a substitute for it. Play, they say, "is essential to developing social and emotional ties…. [and] is a natural tool that children can and should use to build their resilience." (PEDIATRICS, Volume 129, Number 1, January 2012) Play helps young people discover and connect to their own interests, exploring what they want to do at their own pace and for their own satisfaction, rather than working for adult praise or trophies. Through play, they acquire mastery of their world, setting their own boundaries for risk taking and experimentation. What can I build with what’s at hand? How can I improvise? How do I negotiate with my peers? The lessons of inventiveness, resilience, and persistence are an integral part of play. Research also indicates that play impacts brain development in young children by changing the connections of neurons in the brain’s executive control center, important in problem solving, planning, and regulating emotions. (NPR, August 6, 2014, "Scientists Say Child’s Play Helps Build A Better Brain") Despite the evidence, schools have been whittling away at recess as they devote more time to academic subjects and test preparation. The disappearance of play is not peculiar to the United States, however; a New Zealand study found that nearly half of their children do not play daily, despite three-quarters reporting that their preference is outdoor activity. And a recent German study out of the University of Hildesheim indicates another reason to make time for play - researchers found that adults who reported significant childhood time in free play enjoyed high levels of social success as adults. The flexibility and problem-solving skills learned through free play translate to adaptability in adulthood. As Ralph Waldo Emerson once said, "It is a happy talent to know how to play." Honing this talent is just as important for adults as it is for children. Play makes people happy. Playing with pets is fun. Playing with children is fun. You don’t need permission to play. Try it. And let’s make sure that play does not go the way of the manual typewriter or the floppy disk. Unlike those, play would be deeply missed. How might you make room for play in your classroom-as a matter of design? Or even build your classroom around it as an idea? Judy Seltz is the executive director of ASCD, a global community dedicated to excellence in learning, teaching, and leading. ASCD publishes professional development books by leading authors; produces Educational Leadership magazine; hosts conferences and institutes for teachers, principals, and administrators; advocates for federal policy that supports the well-rounded needs of all students; and much more. Learn about ASCD’s programs, products, services, and memberships at ascd.org; Where Has The Play Gone?   The post Where Has The Play Gone? appeared first on TeachThought.

June 15: Exclusive Live Stream Of The Atlantic’s Education Summit by TeachThought Staff TeachThought is excited to be the exclusive streaming partner for today’s The Atlantic’s Education Summit. Summary Two-year olds are entering preschool and learning on iPads. Primary schools are considering the role supportive environments play on students’ learning. Admission to college is a tangible goal for many, but cost and completion remain a challenge. Via the stream below beginning at 8:30 am Eastern, join The Atlantic for our first annual Education Summit where we will gather educators, innovators and policymakers to examine America’s education system from cradle to college and explore changes that could improve how we approach learning in the years to come. June 15: Live Stream Of The Atlantic’s Education Summit The Atlantic Education Summit: 2015 Newseum Knight Conference Center (7th Floor) 555 Pennsylvania Avenue, NW Washington, D.C. 20001 Agenda 8:30 a.m. Guest Arrival, Breakfast and Registration 8:55 a.m. Orientation Margaret Low Smith, President, AtlanticLIVE 9:00 a.m. Remarks from The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation* James Marks, Executive Vice President, Robert Wood Johnson Foundation 9:05 a.m. Building Blocks of Learning Lisa Klein, Executive Director, Alliance for Early Success Danielle Ewen, Senior Policy Advisor, EducationCounsel LLC Lauren Hogan, Vice President of Programs and Policy, National Black Child Development Institute With Claudio Sanchez, Education Correspondent, NPR 9:30 a.m. Leveling the Playing Field Kaya Henderson, Chancellor, DC Public Schools With Matt Thompson, Deputy Editor, TheAtlantic.com 9:55 a.m. The Age of Emotional Intelligence Marc Brackett, Director, Yale Center for Emotional Intelligence 10:15 a.m. It Takes a Village Randi Weingarten, President, American Federation of Teachers With Steve Clemons, Washington Editor at Large,The Atlantic 10:35 a.m. Learning is a Team Sport Tim Shriver, Co-Founder and Chair, Collaborative for Academic, Social and Emotional Learning With James Bennet, Co-President and Editor in Chief, The Atlantic 10:55 a.m. "Why Principals Matter" Video Presentation 11:00 a.m. P.S. NYC: Lessons from America’s Largest School System Carmen Fariña, Chancellor, New York City Department of Education With Matt Thompson 11:55 a.m. Climbing the Rocky Mountain to Reform Mike Johnston, Member, Colorado State Senate 12:15 p.m. Lunch Break 1:00 p.m. Afternoon Remarks Margaret Low Smith 1:10 p.m. The Atlantic and College Board Writing Prize TBA, Winner, The Atlantic and College Board Writing Prize Stefanie Sanford, Chief of Global Policy and Advocacy, the College Board John Williamson, Vice President, Advanced Placement Program, the College Board James Bennet 1:25 p.m. Teaching Digital Natives How to Read and Write Peter Gault, Executive Director, Quill.org Peg Tyre, Author, The Good School 1:55 p.m. Southeast67: Reflecting on What Counts Steve Bumbaugh, Manager, Breakthrough Schools: D.C., CityBridge Foundation With James Bennet 2:35 p.m. Pomp and Circumstances: Making it from High School to College Nick Ehrmann, CEO and Founder, Blue Engine With Claudio Sanchez 3:00 p.m. The Community College Revolution Eduardo Padrón, President, Miami Dade College With Steve Clemons 3:30 p.m. Education for All: A Tall Order Michael Crow, President, Arizona State University Mary Hamm, Starbucks Employee and Arizona State University Student With Amanda Ripley, Author, The Smartest Kids in the World 4:00 p.m. Commencement Margaret Low Smith 4:05 Reception * This session was programmed by our underwriter and not The Atlantic’s editorial staff. June 15: Exclusive Live Stream Of The Atlantic’s Education Summit On TeachThought The post June 15: TeachThought Exclusive Live Stream Of The Atlantic’s Education Summit appeared first on TeachThought.

My Approach To Digital Content Curation by Steven Anderson, Presenter at tlipad.com. I spend a great deal of time looking up stuff. Whether that stuff is blog posts to get a pulse on what is happening in the edusphere or researching new tools to share with teachers, I come across a wide variety of resources that I need to save, catalog and be able to come back to later. Curation is a large part of my day. Wait. What is curation anyway? Think about it in terms of a museum curator. Their job is to tell a story with artifacts. They scour the globe looking for just the right piece to help convey a message. We have to do the same with the resources we gather. For educators and students, curation is a 3-part process. Gathering Resources Organizing Resources Sharing Resources Gathering Resources - The Internet has allowed us to retrieve as much information on any topic as we wish, from pretty much any source we want. Information is no longer a premium. However, the more important necessary skill is vetting the information once we find it. Wading through the junk can be tough. We have to rely on the collective knowledge of ourselves and that of our friends and colleagues to help us sort the good from the bad. Organizing Resources - Once we find the good we have to be able to store it and find it again. Having good tools at our disposal is crucial so that the hard work we go through to vet resources doesn’t go to waste. Having a collection of unorganized sites, blog posts, videos and more is useless. Using a system of tags that allow you to categorize those resources can not only save time but can help you utilize the best resource for the be purpose. Sharing Resources - What if knowledge wasn’t shared? Imagine having to discover everything you know today on your own with no help. We wouldn’t be as advanced as a society as we are today. Sharing is the cornerstone of knowledge and one of the most important parts of curation. Having the tools to organize what we find is definitely helpful. But these tools also allow us to share our learning and curated resources, adding to the global knowledge. (Remember, alone we are smart but together we are brilliant.) Curation is an important part of my learning and professional development process. I get a great deal of information from services like Twitter and blogs I read. That’s the easy part. The more challenging part is the filtering of the information and saving it for later so I can find it. Most of the time I am on the go and my iPad serves as my homebase for learning. For curating, it really is a great tool because I can do so much. And for that I rely on 3 important web tools in my arsenal. The Content Curation Tools I Depend On Evernote Suite Of Apps - Hands down, my favorite app for organizing. Not only do I have it installed on on my iPad but it’s on every computer and all my other mobile devices as well. With it I can organize everything I am doing into notebooks and notes. On my iPad I use Skitch to mark up images clipping specific parts of pages. On the web I have the Clipper installed so I can snip quotes, references or parts of blog posts that I want to come back to. Best part? All the annotations come with it so it makes the citation later much easier. From my phone I can add to or edit my notes, insert photos or audio. No matter where I am or what I come across I can add it to my notes and notebooks in Evernote. Pocket - This is another app/program that I have everywhere. Since I do much of my information gathering through things like Twitter I need an easy way to save information without adding to to my master repository. I think of it like a way station. An opportunity to vet the resource before deciding I don’t need it or transitioning it to a place for long term storage. With this browser extension I can, with the click of a button mark the site as something to read later. I can search by tag or key word and since I have it installed on my mobile devices I can read my saves when I have a moment or save something to my list when I am out and about. Diigo - This is another place I save web resources. With the Diigo app I can take the items I am ready to permanently save and add them to my Diigo list. Oh and I can use the various tools there to annotate and mark up the pages and add any notes. I add tags to organize them and I can share all my saves with a link or two. If you are an educator you get even more perks like the ability to create accounts for your students, sharing lists of sites easily and creating groups so students can share resources. Curation is becoming increasingly important. Being able to filter information quickly and retrieve the saved information even quicker are skills we all need to develop and help kids develop too. These skills are going to prove very valuable in the future. And by using just a few, free iPad apps, you can become a curation master! Want to learn more about curation? Check out Content Curation: How to Prevent Information Overload, available from Corwin Press. Steven W. Anderson is a learner, blogger, speaker, Educational Evangelist, author and Dad.  As a former teacher and Director of Instructional Technology and best known as @web20classroom, he is highly sought after for his expertise in educational technology integration and using social media for learning. Steven presents at conferences worldwide and is also responsible in helping create #edchat, the most popular educational hashtag on Twitter ;My Approach To Digital Content Curation The post My Approach To Digital Content Curation appeared first on TeachThought.

Amazon Updates Whispercast For Use In Schools In Education From a press release SEATTLE—Recently Amazon launched Whispercast 3.0, an update to its free, self-service platform for organizations to easily discover, procure, manage and distribute digital content to nearly any device. Since launch, Whispercast has been adopted by more than 130 of the 250 largest school districts in the U.S., including Cypress-Fairbanks ISD and Prince William County Public Schools. Over 2,400 higher education organizations—including 24 of the 30 largest in the U.S.—also use Whispercast, including The University of Texas at Austin, Santa Barbara Business College, and Seton Hall University. Whispercast distributes eBooks, eTextbooks, apps, documents, and eTextbook rentals to hundreds or thousands of devices already deployed in schools, including Kindle e-readers, Fire tablets, iOS, Android, Chromebooks, Macs, and PCs. "Amazon launched Whispercast to help make it stress-free for organizations of any size to easily and quickly deliver digital content, in addition to helping manage fleets of devices—and we’re excited so many schools have chosen to adopt Whispercast over the years," said Rohit Agarwal, General Manager, Amazon Education. "These customers have given great feedback to inform our roadmap, and many of the features are rolling out today with Whispercast 3.0, including tiered administration and group management, an easier-to-use UI, added payment options and premium customer support." New features and enhancements—including tiered administration, group management, and premium customer support—make it easier for organizations to use Whispercast at-scale  Whispercast supports devices using the free Kindle reading app, including Kindle e-readers, Fire tablets, iPad, iPhone, Android tablets and phones, Chromebooks, Macs, and PCs Features With Whispercast 3.0, Amazon launches a number of new features to make it easier for education institutions to transition to digital learning, and scale their deployment of technology for every student.  The features include: Tiered Administration and Group Management - Whispercast administrators now have more control to easily setup organizational hierarchies and permissions, enabling scalable, centralized or delegated control—as well as organize into structures that make the most sense, whether classes, grades, groups, or other. Digital Transition Services - Amazon will now offer Digital Transition Services tailored for K-12 and higher education organizations with named service representatives to assist with onboarding and implementations at-scale, based on best practices. Easier-to-Use Interface - The updated design includes a new step-by-step setup wizard, making it possible for educators to create groups, add and move users, procure digital content and distribute to their organization, without requiring technology training. New Purchasing Options - Whispercast is expanding the payment methods accepted to procure digital content with purchase orders and purchase cards, in addition to credit and gift cards. The Goal Of The Updates "As a long-time customer of Whispercast, we were excited to test out the new features early," said AJ Phillips, Supervisor of Instructional Technology Director at Prince Williams County Public Schools. "The updated user interface and tiered administration has made it easier than ever to onboard staff using the tool—we have more teachers now using it and they are able to add user groups and individuals more quickly and distribute content in minutes." "Supporting an accelerated Ed.D. program of K-12 school administrators from across the country has its logistical challenges, but Amazon Whispercast enabled us to instantly distribute digital textbooks and course materials to all students simultaneously," said Jan Furman, Ed.D., Program Director at Seton Hall University. "Whispercast removes logistical concerns associated with traditional course material distribution. The benefits from both the student and program operations perspectives are tremendous." "Our team evaluated several options when researching how to digitally engage our students," said Matthew Johnston, President of Santa Barbara Business College. "Without a doubt, Amazon’s Whispercast solution and device selection aligned best experientially and financially with our requirements and student needs." With Whispercast, educational institutions can access the Kindle Store’s unmatched collection of over three million books, textbooks, newspapers, and magazines, from thousands of publishers. The selection includes over 6,000 common core aligned titles from National Geographic, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, Scholastic, Lerner Publishing, Cherry Lake, Sleeping Bear Press and Harper Collins, including leveled readers, chapter books and literature classics.Institutions using Whispercast also have access to the Amazon Appstore with over 400,000 apps, including popular education apps like Duolingo: Learn Languages Free, BrainPop, PBS Kids, Starfall and Quizlet. Whispercast also makes it easy for educational institutions to manage fleets of devices—organizations that have deployed Amazon devices can register and seamlessly manage the settings on all their devices using Whispercast, including adding password protection, centrally configuring wireless connectivity to their organizations’ private networks and restricting individual purchases. To learn more about Whispercast, visit http://whispercast.amazon.com. Amazon Updates Whispercast For Simpler Use In Education The post Amazon Updates Whispercast For Simpler Use In Education appeared first on TeachThought.

27 Things Teachers Do Well by TeachThought Staff What’s a teacher? What kinds of things should a 21st century be able to do? How about with an iPad? What’s the purpose of school? These are the kinds of questions we like to try to tackle here at TeachThought, as it’s these macro-level questions that can help inform micro-level decisions. In that line of thinking comes this graphic, which takes a more light-hearted approach to the kinds of things teachers do. We’ve featured Mia Mackmeekin’s graphics in the past, which do a tremendous job of itemizing popular topics that are important to educators. Graphic: 27 Things Teachers Do Well 1. Talk: We talk to ourselves really well. 2. Show: We show people how to do things really well, too. 3. Host: We host all sorts of end-of-the year parties. 4. React: We are ready to react to any great excuse. 5. Being On Time: We are on time. 6. Cue: We can give great secret cues to be silent. 7. Run: We can run on little food during the day and still be nice. 8. Over Explain: We are really good at over explaining anything. 9. Move Backwards: We are really good at creating anything backwards. 10. Jump Ahead:  We can jump ahead of any line and not get in trouble. 11. "Hop": We can play hopscotch and other games without getting funny looks- as long as it is in the lesson. 12. Skip Ahead: We can skip ahead without even physically moving. 13. Love: We get to love the students around us and then send them home. 14. Finding Time: We always have time to grade work. (Not really but we tell ourselves that.) 15. Off: We are good at getting time off. (Ed note: Are we?) 16. Rally: We can rally any crowd if it gets us out of the classroom. 17. Enjoy: We really do enjoy our job… 18. Sleep: We can operate on very little sleep. 19. Create: We are very creative…in our own unique way. 20. Colorful: We encourage colorful explanations. 21. Work: We work very hard. 22. Share: We share more than most professions. 23. More: We give more to our students more than most people realize. 24. Hugs: We believe that hugs can go a long way. 25. Gather: We can gather together the most random people in one room. 26. Good: We see good deeds everyday. 27. Friends: We make good friends. Graphic: 27 Things Teachers Do Well The post Graphic: 27 Things Teachers Do Well appeared first on TeachThought.

MakerBot Launches Hands-On Learning Guide For 3D Printing In The Classroom by TeachThought Staff New MakerBot Handbook Helps Educators and Students Get Started with Lesson Plans and Hands-on 3D Design Projects BROOKLYN, N.Y., -Thousands of educators throughout the U.S. are embracing 3D printing as a new way to teach 21st century skills and prepare students for the jobs of the future[1]. Taking the first steps to introduce students to 3D printing, however, can be challenging. MakerBot, a global leader in the desktop 3D printing industry, conducted in-depth research this spring to better understand how to help educators incorporate 3D printing in classrooms[2]. The research shows that acquiring 3D design skills is a major hurdle for educators and there is no single resource to address this need. To fill that gap, MakerBot today published a handbook designed to provide educators with a wide variety of ideas, activities and projects to get started with 3D printing. Titled MakerBot in the Classroom: An Introduction to 3D Printing and Design, the handbook includes an introduction to 3D printing and a range of hands-on 3D design lesson plans. MakerBot in the Classroom is available as a free digital download for registered MakerBot customers and a sample project chapter is available free to anyone who registers on MakerBot.com. Additionally, MakerBot launched a new MakerBot Education Resource Center with further ideas and resources to support the integration of 3D printing in the classroom, such as real-world MakerBot stories, videos, challenges for teachers and students, and more. "3D printing is a powerful tool in the classroom and provides engaging experiences that motivate students to excel. 3D printing can help teach many of the 21st century skills that employers are looking for, such as STEAM[3] literacy, collaboration, problem-solving and applying knowledge to the real world," said Jonathan Jaglom, CEO of MakerBot. "We’re excited to launch MakerBot in the Classroom to help even more educators and students discover the power of 3D printing to create original designs. This handbook is part of our broader MakerBot Education initiative, which aims to provide teachers, professors, librarians, and students with access to the resources and tools they need to embrace 3D printing. We will continue to work together with educators to build out the leading MakerBot 3D Ecosystem to address their specific needs." A recent survey of teachers commissioned by MakerBot showed that 83 percent of teachers using MakerBot 3D Printers empowered their students to design their own objects as opposed to having them print existing designs[4]. This requires educators to teach 3D design and introduce students to the software that enables them to take an idea and turn it into a 3D printable design. Lesson plans and project ideas were among the most frequent requested resources to help educators get started, andMakerBot in the Classroom fills those needs. MakerBot in the Classroom is divided into three sections: The first section covers how MakerBot Replicator 3D Printers work and the technology behind them, the second section shows how to download, scan and design models to print on a 3D printer, and the third and most comprehensive chapter features multiple projects for teachers and students to 3D design and 3D print. Each section provides background knowledge, learning objectives, terminology, sample activities, and discussion materials. The project ideas in the handbook are provided as a starting point to help educators integrate 3D printing into their own lesson plans and classrooms. They invite educators and students to investigate a subject matter, explore a variety of 3D modeling tools, and create and print original designs. Each project introduces a different type of free 3D design software, including Tinkercad, OpenSCAD, Sculptris and 123D Design. Each project also has a section that offers guidance on tying the project further into curriculum. For example, Make Your Own Country is a project that casts students as explorers of a new world. Students design and 3D print tiles representing water, forest, mountains, and other landscapes, which can be assembled into a new and uncharted territory. Students then form groups that develop settlements by surveying the land and discovering its natural resources. During this project, students learn 21st century skills, such as 3D design, critical thinking, problem solving and collaboration. MakerBot in the Classroom is the first offering as part of MakerBot’s long-term commitment to working with educators to provide better support for 3D printing in classrooms and on campus. Additional tools and resources for educators are now available on the new MakerBot Education Resource Center, such as real-world MakerBot stories, videos, and challenges for teachers and students. For example, MakerBot recently launched five Thingiversity Summer STEAM Challenges on MakerBot Thingiverse, the world’s largest 3D design community, to encourage students, teachers and librarians to try 3D modeling at home over the summer. The leading MakerBot 3D Ecosystem also includes hardware, materials,learning, software, and apps like MakerBot PrintShop for iPad, which allows students to turn 2D drawings and sketches into physical objects. Additionally, MakerBot offers custom product solutions for educational institutions such as theMakerBot Starter Lab, a scalable, reliable 3D printing solution that is easy to implement; and theMakerBot Innovation Center, a large-scale 3D printing hub. MakerBot Replicator 3D Printers are used in more than 5,000 schools throughout the U.S. The Whitby School, in Greenwich, CT, uses MakerBot Replicator 3D Printers in the school’s Design Technology classroom to spark an interest in 3D printing and teach problem solving and design thinking. At theState University of New York at New Paltz, a MakerBot Innovation Center has had a profound impact on students, faculty, and the community in its first year. The university quickly forged public-private partnerships with industry leaders to create a vibrant cross-departmental learning commons and innovation hub that serves both students and the local business community in unprecedented ways. About MakerBot MakerBot, a subsidiary of Stratasys Ltd. (Nasdaq: SSYS), is leading the Next Industrial Revolution by setting the standards in reliable and affordable desktop 3D printing. Founded in 2009, MakerBot sells desktop 3D printers to innovative and industry-leading customers worldwide, including engineers, architects, designers, educators and consumers. MakerBot has one of the largest installed bases and market shares of the desktop 3D printing industry, with more than 80,000 MakerBot Desktop 3D Printers in the world. The robust MakerBot 3D Ecosystem makes 3D printing easy and accessible for everyone. To learn more about MakerBot, visit makerbot.com; MakerBot Launches Hands-On Learning Guide For 3D Printing In The Classroom The post MakerBot Launches Hands-On Learning Guide For 3D Printing In The Classroom appeared first on TeachThought.

Introducing The Acer Chromebase, A Chrome OS All-In-One Touchscreen by TeachThought Staff Summary: In classrooms globally, Google continues to increase their momentum, and the latest announcement from Acer could help increase adoption rates with its packaging and design. From A Press Release Acer announced today the latest addition to its industry-leading Chrome OS device family, the Acer Chromebase series, complementing its existing Chromebooks and Chromebox. The touch-enabled configuration of the Acer Chromebase is the industry’s first all-in-one Chrome OS desktop with touch display, continuing Acer’s activity in the Chrome OS market after launching the first 15.6-inch display Chromebook and fastest-performing commercial Chromebook. According to the latest data from Gartner, Acer Group is currently the world’s leading Chromebook brand with over 36% market share in 2014. Simple, Fast, Secure, and Affordable The new Acer Chromebase comes with a Full HD resolution, 178-degree viewing angle display which incorporates 10-point touch technology, enabling more than one user to work, play and interact together. The device boots up in 10 seconds, and has multiple layers of security built-in with automatic system updates. Chrome OS supports multiple users and accounts while photos, videos, music, and documents are all synchronized and backed-up with the user’s Google account. Acer Chromebase also comes with a complimentary 100 gigabytes of Google Drive storage so users have plenty of space. Ideal for Work or Play The Acer Chromebase is powered by a NVIDIA® Tegra® K1 quad-core processor, helping it deliver a multi-tasking experience, and stay quiet even when running heavy workloads. It has a built-in HD webcam, so that users can chat face-to-face with family and friends on Google Hangouts with amazing video image quality on the 21.5-inch 1080P Full HD display. The Acer Chromebase is VESA-compliant so that it provides flexible viewing options when mounted to a VESA-compatible stand, bracket, arm, or wall mount suitable for search or navigation use in public areas. It has two 3W audio speakers and provides HDMI out, USB 3.0, USB 2.0 ports in addition to 802.11a/b/g/n Wi-Fi and Bluetooth 4.0 wireless connectivity. Availability The Acer Chromebase will be available in North American and Asia Pacific markets in Q2, to learn more about availability, product specifications and prices in specific markets, please contact your nearest Acer office via www.acer.com. The post Introducing The Acer Chromebase, A Chrome OS All-In-One Touchscreen appeared first on TeachThought.

8 Reasons Why Students Should Still Write Research Papers by Dorothy Mikuska There are plenty of reasons why the research paper is not assigned.  They pretty much boil down to: perceived irrelevance of the assignment in light of modern publishing and technology widespread plagiarism teachers buried alive grading 10-page papers from 150 students (that’s 1500 pages to grade, not just read). Before the research paper is declared dead and deleted from the curriculum in pursuit of briefer and more tech-based learning, here are 8 important reasons why students should still write research papers. 8 Reasons Why Students Should Still Write Research Papers 1. Complex Reading Skills Are Applied to Multiple Sources The research paper requires close reading of complex text from multiple sources, which students must comprehend, analyze, synthesize, and evaluate. These tasks, more sophisticated than merely summarizing an article for a report, reflect the complex work demands of college and career. 2. It Creates A Research Mind Set Research is finding answers to questions: how many teeth does a killer whale have—Google will give the number 52.  Real research deals with deeper and broader issues than finding isolated facts. Students must learn to think of research as investigating profound and complex issues. 3. It Can Promote Curiosity From early childhood, curiosity drives the search to understand increasingly complex questions, to constantly question information, and to explore more sources and experts. The research paper provides a structured, yet independent opportunity for students to pursue in depth some extended aspect of the course content. 4. The Librarian Can Be A Life-Long Resource Students often see librarians merely at the check-out desk or collecting fines.  Librarians are specialists at both accessing extensive sources from a variety of media and reinforcing the teaching of responsible use of information and technology. Because they work with students every day and are the center of the school’s curriculum, they can direct students to appropriate sources.  As a researcher’s best buddy, librarians are gatekeepers and trackers of information and can turn every question into a teachable moment. 5. The Power of Attribution Undocumented information that students encounter online—social media postings, tweets, blogs and popular media—artificially narrows their experience to opinions and anonymous writers.  Students never see citations on a tweet or a bibliographical reference in People magazine.  Research conducted in the career world requires not just expert information, but the attribution of sources through in-text citations and bibliographies. As students use sources that model research material with annotations and bibliography, they develop a questioning mindset: who said that, where did that come from, and where can I find more? 6. It Builds Related Skills Unskilled researchers collect downloaded files and perhaps highlight passages, sometimes indiscriminately whole paragraphs or pages, without understanding the text. This method may work for a cursory summary of an article or for identifying key points, but not for synthesizing information from ten sources for an in-depth report. File formats can make annotating text awkward. Even if notes can be easily added in the text, students will struggle scrolling through multiple files to synthesize scattered information, resulting in a collection of summaries from each source rather than an integrated understanding of the topic. Formal note taking, necessary for extended and rigorous research papers, keeps track of information as quotations and paraphrases, identifies the unique content of each note, connects it to other notes with keywords, and identifies the source that can be cited in the paper and added to the bibliography. An added value of note taking lies in the learning process.  By reviewing notes with the same keywords, students can synthesize the material into an organized plan for the paper. 7. Plagiarism and Intellectual Property Rights Matter Because of plagiarism’s prevalence in student work, it may be easier not to assign research papers. However, plagiarism and intellectual property rights issues, whether related to research papers or music and video piracy, need to be a major conversation throughout the curriculum. Students do not understand what plagiarism is, its consequences to their learning and character, why everyone makes a big deal over it, and how to avoid it. While direct instruction teaches what plagiarism is, students must put into practice ethical research writing. The research paper process provides students and teachers the opportunity to discuss intellectual property rights and ethics as part of the assignment. 8. Coaching The Writing Process Is Powerful The research paper is not just an assignment, but a commitment to continual dialog between teachers and students. Teachers as research paper coaches can explore their students’ understanding, interpretation, and synthesis of their reading, discuss their choice of sources and note taking strategies, evaluate their work incrementally, and model ethical paraphrasing and summary skills. The research paper can be frightening, even paralyzing for some students with little or disappointing previous experiences. Teachers as coaches can make students feel comfortable taking control of the conversation and believing their voice and work are important. By personalizing instruction to ensure student success throughout the process, and by students taking control of their work because they have important information to report, students are eager to share what they have learned. Poorly researched papers with little to say are poorly written or plagiarized.  Coached students will write papers that their teachers will want to read. The Research Paper in the Information Age The research paper is about information found, understood, and explained to others, a way to authentically extend the course content and purpose. The private and public sectors consume and create carefully written research. Feasibility studies, like the possibility of marketing sausage casings in India, laboratory or field research, inquiries to determine educational, political, or banking policies—all are formats of the research paper that organizations use to make critical decisions. Before reporting new information, published reports with requisite citations and bibliography begin with what experts have already contributed to the issue. Since this is the intellectual milieu our students will enter after graduation, they should be prepared for the complex reading, research, thinking, and writing skills they will need. Dorothy Mikuska taught high school English including the research paper for 37 years. After retirement she formed ePen&Inc and created PaperToolsPro, software for students to employ the literacy skills of slow, reflective reading needed to write good research papers; 8 Reasons Why Students Should Still Write Research Papers; image attribution flickr user samladner The post 8 Reasons Why Students Should Still Write Research Papers appeared first on TeachThought.

Teaching Is Harder-And More Rewarding-Than Ever by Nellie Mitchell Nostalgia comes pretty effortlessly as we get older, doesn’t it? It is fun to look back with fondness at the things that used to be so cool in school, like the Oregon Trail game, laser disks, and typewriters. Were they effective instruction tools? Maybe not, but they were cool. On the other hand, it’s also fun to daydream about the future, ‘Someday, we will all have hover boards!" Everyone will have microchips and virtual reality and 3-D everything. But in the here and now, the reality is less romantic, and as we head towards the 2015-2016 school year, it’s just might be that teaching is more difficult than it’s ever been before. Everything is scripted, planned, pushed, and monitored. Nothing is easy, everyone’s an expert, making it too easy for the joy of teaching and learning to disappear. If you’re old enough, you might remember schools in the 1980s and 1990s: Teachers used textbooks and workbooks. Curriculum came directly from the book. Substitute plans consisted of movies. It was okay to spend instructional time doing a craft or an art project, especially seasonal and holiday stuff. Students practiced spelling and cursive writing. Flash cards and drills promoted memorization and were valuable learning activities. Schools made time for Weekly Readers and Channel One news. Class materials were stored in cubbies and desks. Teachers used those red hard-cover grade books to keep track of missing assignments and grades. Computers were in labs, separated from regular instruction, used for fun activities. Let’s contrast that with popular visions of near-future learning: Teachers will use Internet videos, eBooks, and online streaming services to access content anywhere, anytime. Curriculum will be fluid and ever changing as resources evolve with new technology. Substitute plans will consist of movies—-created by teachers, as if they are not even gone, instruction will carry on as planned. It will be okay to spend instructional time creating a multimedia project, especially if it is collaborative and innovative. Students will practice typing, word processing skills and coding. Research-based activities will meet the needs of diverse learners. Schools will make time for eReaders and Web-based news. Class materials will be stored in the cloud or in digital libraries. Teachers will use online gradebooks seamlessly to share information and projects with parents in a way that feels more like social media and less like grading. It will be more interactive and customizable. Computers will be in the hands of every student, replacing paper and pencil—essential learning tools with occasional opportunities for fun. The Reality of Teaching Today Educators today are under intense pressure to innovate, reinvent, flip, somersault and dive into new methodology. We are criticized for not using technology effectively or innovating our teaching strategies to meet the needs of an evolving educational climate. We are experts in our own content, and we are passionate about it. At the same time, we are told that ‘lecturing’ is boring and it is not an effective way to deliver content to the short-attention-span modern student. Our own students tell us we are boring. Sure we have more technology than ever, but implementing it effectively is hard work and takes a lot of time. Teachers have to be willing to try something they have never done before—in front of an audience. It has to increase student motivation, achievement, test scores, and it has to be fun. But it might not work. That new thing—it might waste a ton of instructional time to implement effectively. And we have to have a back up plan in case it fails. The Internet goes down and kaboom! The entire plan is shot. Teachers today are doing double the work of any teacher that has ever existed or will ever teach in the future. Teachers must double plan every single move they make. Teachers have to have a backup plan in case the technology fails—and it fails often. Teachers Lacl Enough Time For True Innovation Many American teachers end up spending 10-11 hours a day at school, with only 3-4 hours per week of scheduled time allotted for planning. (Source) In other nations, teachers get 40% of their time to plan. Many school districts have adopted the practice of writing their own curriculum in order to align with Common Core. Curriculum is not created in a vacuum, generally curriculum directors, principals, and content expert teachers work together to make decisions about what should be taught, and when. For some, curriculum writing is fun. Right? Let’s throw out the books and decide what we want to teach, and when we want to teach it. A pretty good theory, but the amount of available information on a given topic is expanding so rapidly, how can we approach true "mastery" of even a fixed set of standards? We can’t. It is not enough to write the objective, make sure it aligns with Common Core, state grade level expectations, that it is grade-level appropriate, meets individual personalized learning needs, and it will help students succeed on standardized tests. Teachers today also have to fill in the gaps, innovate, and create their own resources to align with objectives. No more reliance on workbooks anymore. Online resources must be vetted; teachers must painstakingly sift through all the available materials and decide if the source is reliable and appropriate. Since curriculum is drafted by school districts, there are no pre-written quizzes and tests, nor are there suggested activities or guiding questions. Teachers have to figure out how to formatively and summatively assess students by writing quizzes, tests, and assessments to assess higher order thinking skills and demonstrate student ability on each objective. The curriculum-writing teachers of today have to design project-based learning activities that are rigorous, fun, tech-based, content rich, and absolutely never boring. By customizing curriculum, creating a scope and sequence, and adopting their own objectives schools in the same district are able to stay on the same page, even without a textbook. Schools haven’t completely abandoned the textbook, but many districts are allocating textbook funds into digital resources and technology, leaving fewer texts in the hands of students. This means more opportunity for teachers, but also more work, new thinking, and new resources. The modern teacher generation is the saddled with adhering to and/or writing the curriculum, trying all the new software, technology, updating classroom practices, being experts in our content, surviving on a shoestring budget, and it’s a tremendous challenge. Teachers with good attendance rates are frequently gone from the classroom for curriculum planning, collaboration, testing, and professional development. Instead of rolling in a TV cart, allowing a substitute to show a video, teachers must create intensely detailed plans and write out a script for the day. Absolutely no instructional time can be wasted (except in the honor of innovation or technology, then we can afford to lose half a day, as long as we are using it in an innovative and creative way). Teachers must also be active in their professional organization, have an impressive PLN, spend their own time participating in Twitter chats and book studies, and stay late for tutoring and parent events. Yeesh. To the Teachers and Students of the Future: You Are Welcome Maybe future teachers and students will look back with fondness about the first time they ever held an iPad to look up their house on Google Earth. Maybe Google Earth is the Oregon Trail of the modern generation. With all the pressure being placed on teachers today to implement the new methods, and throw out all the old, outdated, boring stuff from the past, education is bound to look different in the future. It just might be that the ground work is being laid, the documents are being drafted, new learning models are being designed, and teachers today are simply the guinea pigs. If so, it is up to the current generation of educators to figure out what works, blog it, tweet it, implement it and spread the good word that the future is, while sometimes blinding, overwhelmingly bright. Teaching Is Harder Than It’s Ever Been; image attribution flickr users flickeringbrad and nasagoddard The post Teaching Is Harder-And More Rewarding-Than Ever appeared first on TeachThought.

What Happened When I Tried To Teach Alone by Terry Heick During summer evenings here in Kentucky, it’s never all the way dark. Stars pierce the sky, etching the jagged canopies of Oak, Maple, and Sycamore trees against what we forget is literally the universe itself.  It’s also never all the way quiet; the air is thick and wet and alive, vibrating with sound. Crickets rub bone to bone, making a kind of electric purring that sits at the back edge of your mindscape, only ever recognizable if you’re able to stop your own thinking. Cicadas can’t help themselves, droning on in the dark madly, endlessly; one tree will rise in sound, starting low and pushing itself to a soft frenzy, only to grow quiet again, panting, while the tree next to it fills the quiet with its own version of summer lust.  Every now and then, two trees will start their sound in parallel (it’s unclear if this is some kind of selfishness or agreement), and the sound is mesmerizing-a gentle crash of sound that’s strangely fluid. And contrasting the chaos above and around is the slow dance of lightning bugs mingling in the evening air moving soundlessly, their blinking a kind of vulnerability that reaches out in every direction. Somewhere in all of this-or behind it-there’s a lesson for me. About five years ago, I took a job in, what for me was, an unhealthy work environment. It just wasn’t a good fit. I was, in a way that’s hard to explain, alone as a professional. Not independent, but standing stark and pale against my environment. Ego, social expectations, professional accountability, and money forced me to stick it out longer than I should’ve. The cost for me was a pervasive sense of anxiety that I had never felt before in my life (I was 35 at the time), and that I continue to confront and understand today. Or at least I think that’s the way it went. It’s not always easy to separate cause from effect, and ultimately it all goes both ways anyway. One thing touches everything. As far as anxiety goes, I’ve never been overly nervous or worried. I played a lot of very competitive sports and never felt anything more than butterflies. I’ve always been a very sensitive person, which can be exhausting. I don’t get way up and way down, but when I feel things I feel them. I’m frustratingly sentimental. Love listening and being heard. Prone to nostalgia. Being in love as a teenager sucked. I can still hear the first few notes of certain songs, and I’m there all over again. You know. There. That first time you reached out for their hand and they took it in and the sky arched itself parallel with the shape of the universe, which also felt-vaguely-like the shape of your soul and everything-for a moment-felt whole. Ugh. It was terrible. I tend to be overly transparent in an attempt, I think, to feel connected to other people because I think people are meant to love one another, and connecting and mutual understanding is a decent first step. I’ve always had this compelling instinct that human beings are amazing and the natural world is overwhelming beautiful, and we all walk around with our eyes closed to it all. Or even when we can open them, they just can’t open wide enough to take it all in, like sticking your head out of the window of a car on the interstate and not being able to breath.   Right, so, the anxiety. After five years of having it under control, about two months ago, it came back. Yay. Not sure why (working on that part) but it’s not been fun, and has impacted my work-writing, productivity, etc. Created both discomfort and fatigue. This time, I took a multi-faceted approach: I changed my diet, doubled an already active exercise routine, started hot yoga, began practice with both moment-by-moment mindfulness, and meditation. I went to the doctor to see if medication made sense, clarified and bolstered my own support system, and reduced my workload. So far, so good. These are all steps in my journey-one being an educator is a part of. Separating one’s self from one’s work is a problematic illusion. I know none of this is especially compelling or insightful; I wanted to use this post not as some viral contribution to the conversation of modern teaching and learning, or even as a dumping ground for my heart, but rather as encouragement to take care of yourself.  Especially as an educator.  This is a high-pressure game with a lot of moving parts, and a lot of collective misunderstanding. There is no misunderstanding what Kohl’s is, or Honda, or the American Cancer Society, or a library. But a school? What’s that, exactly? What’s a "good school"? There’s very little confusion about whether a tree trimmer is succeeding, or a salesperson excelling. What about a teacher? Who gets to say you’re doing a good job? And above all of the formal metrics and growth plans and walk-throughs, when you go to bed at night, whose approval are you really looking for? What do you look for to let you know, deep in your own heart, that you’re doing this thing "right"? And what happens if you’re not sure? Do you change what you’re looking for? Rationalize the mediocrity? Mute that voice? This internal conversation is part of what separates "a person doing their job" from "a human being doing good work." This field can eat you alive. Think for a moment about how the best teachers are the ones that "learn to survive." That’s a stunning indictment of where we are as an industry. I guess my point is, take care of yourselves and the people around you. That might mean to buy each other chocolate or send one another inspiring quotes on pinterest, but that’s kind of simply coping, isn’t it? Just surviving? Sometimes that’s all you can do, but when that’s the tone of your day-to-day existence, you may want to think again. We can do better. Maybe you help rethink and redesign and retool something that’s collectively unsustainable. That’s one way to describe the work I do here at TeachThought. It could mean taking steps in a new direction and doing something not from the spirit of retreat, but the unique momentum of your life. It could mean to humble yourself and really, truly serve others-to stop that inward-out thinking pattern that’s created so much suffering for you. Don’t be afraid to start over-to reinvent yourself on the shoulders of everything you’ve learned to this point. There are many ways to be a teacher. There may be a time where will and expertise and credibility and grit aren’t enough, and you’re vulnerable. What results could just be a bad day, or a lot of bad days. Or anxiety. Or depression. Or addiction. In spite of all of our growth as a culture and planet, mental health continues to be stigmatized. And so we whisper, or pretend, or stop listening to ourselves. I guess. I dunno. Some people may read this post and sympathetically think "Awww, good for you!" but what I’m trying to say is "No, good for you." You’re beautiful and capable beyond your wildest dreams. The adage ‘If you want to go fast, go alone; if you want to go far, go together’ is staggeringly, painfully true, no matter how hard it can be. This doesn’t imply that you have to assimilate your thinking, or that other people should change theirs for you. It means being together matters. There is love around you, but you have to open yourself to it. Be light for others, but look for their glow as well. You need it, and they need yours, like lightning bugs hanging in the purple ether. What Happened When I Tried To Teach Alone; image attribution flickr user mikelewinski The post What Happened When I Tried To Teach Alone appeared first on TeachThought.

23 Tools For Students To Publish What They Learn by Nadya Khoja, venngage.com It’s no surprise that’s no surprise that there are so many tools available for students to publish their ideas to in the year 2015. There was once a time when publishing thoughts to the web required considerable knowledge of HTML and CSS, however with the surge of online blogging and publication systems, the power of expression has never been easier. Students now have a well of opportunity to express their thoughts and ideas with the added chance of getting global feedback on those insights. Here is a list of some of the best online publication tools that students can post their creative impressions on. 23 Tools For Students To Publish What They Learn 1. Medium Medium is a new blogging tool created by, Evan Williams, a co-founder at Blogger and Twitter. Medium is a great tool for those who wish to share their stories with the world. It is a very easy to use tool because unlike a lot of other blogging platforms, it doesn’t require much knowledge of implementing advanced widgets. There is also the added benefit of an annotation feature that lets students cite their source with ease. Although Medium does not allow for much customization, its clean and classic appearance makes for a simple navigation of the tool. 2. Blogger Blogger, formerly known as Blogspot is publishing platform owned by Google. The registration process makes it easy for students to get started as it only requires a Google account to sign up. The drag-and-drop features allow for quick and frictionless design and customizations so that students can have the ability to be creative, without hassle. 3. WordPress WordPress is certainly one of the most popular blogging platforms on the web. It’s great for students because it offers a wide range of functions and widgets. There are plenty of layout themes to choose from, and the registration process is quite seamless. The platform is very widely used and many web servers feature WordPress as a simple to install plugin. The top 10 blogs on the web all use WordPress as a host. It is perfect for new bloggers, professional bloggers and businesses small and large. 4. Edublogs Edublogs is a blog created for educational purposes and is ideal for students and teachers alike. This is an ideal tool for teachers who wish to assign writing projects because it allows them to review posts and add comments where they find errors. Essentially, this is the WordPress for educators. Some extra features include calendars, discussion tools and video embedding widgets to name a few. 5. Quora Quora is a question-and-answer website and is perfect for inspiring students to push their curiosity via a web-based platform. Site users can create and curate questions and answers to a variety of topics, making it a great tool for teachers to develop practice quizzes and assignments for their students. The blogging platform of Quora does not, however, allow for much customization. 6. Exposure.co Exposure is a photo-based blogging website. Due to its visual nature, the site is a great way for students to share photographs of projects or experiences, and promotes creative, visual expression. It is also very easy to register with Exposer, and user can sign-up with their Facebook accounts as well. 7. LinkedIn Not too long ago, LinkedIn announced a new blogging feature for their site, which allows writers to publish original content. Published content is automatically added to the user’s profile and is therefore a great way for encouraging students to develop their LinkedIn presence while young. 8. Postach.io Postachio is another a microblogging tool that is linked with Evernote is designed for notetaking and archiving. It will allow students to create a "note" which can be a piece of formatted text, a full webpage or webpage excerpt, a photograph, a voice memo, or a handwritten "ink" note. These notes can be done by just using a smartphone and can easily be shared to postachio. Infographic Creation Tools for Students 9. Venngage Venngage is an easy to use online infographic maker. It’s drag and drop interface makes it an ideal tool for individuals with minimal design experience. There are a vast variety of templates, themes, charts, fonts, maps, icons and images that make it simple to create infographics. Schools can take advantage of the Venngage Education package, an affordable alternative for educators who want to implement infographic use in the classroom with access to all of the premium features. 10. Vizualize.me Vizualize.me is a tool that students can use to create infographic versions of their resumes. The tool is very easy to use since students can just sign in with LinkedIn.  Their profile information will automatically populate the infographic, producing an aesthetically pleasing representation of their professional experiences. 11. Google Developers Google Developers is an infographic tool that depicts live sets of data. The tool is free and simple to use, but certainly doesn’t lack in power. Students have plenty of options to choose from with charts and can easily use the featured generator to visualize their research faster. 12. Easel.ly Easel.ly is another infographic tool that offers a range of customizable templates. Similar to Venngage, the tool makes use of a drag-and-drop widgets. Easel.ly is a very user friendly and intuitive tool that students young and old can successfully navigate the site, and design infographics independently. 13. Vizual.ly Visual.ly is both a tool and a community dedicated to data visualization and infographics .It is another awesome tool where students can create and share infographics directly to Social Media. Visually covers a wide range of different topics students can also learn from. Topics range from Education, Business and Politics. 14. Get About Get about is a Microsoft Windows app that is for free. It can make life easier for students to monitor their Social Media account activities. It can also easily generate infographics to aid in visualizing their network. Social Media for Students 15. Facebook Facebook is now the most popular and widely used social network site on the web. The ever-expanding site offers note-making and sharing features, photo album creation features, twitter and Instagram integrations, and the ability to create groups. Groups are a great way for students to collaborate on assignments and share their ideas online with their classmates. 16. Tumblr Tumblr is another microblogging tool. This popular platform is mostly used by younger individuals and the sign-up process is very frictionless. There is also a Tumblr app which students can install on their smartphones making it very convenient to blog anywhere, anytime. Since it is a microblogging site, students can have their content posted to the web in just a matter of seconds. 17. Instagram Instagram is a mobile-based photo and video sharing app. The app can easily be synced to Facebook, Twitter and Flicker, making it very easy to share content with the world. Instagram is a great tool for featuring visually-based student assignments such as: photo essays, campaign projects, and video assignments. There are also a number of surprising ways that Instagram can be used to promote cognitive learning. 18. Twitter Twitter is an online social networking service that allows students post 140-character tweets. US News stated that Twitter improves learning in college classrooms since it promotes feelings of global involvement and connectivity. The 140-character limit also pushes students to share their thoughts clearly and succinctly. 19. Vimeo Vimeo is a video-sharing website where students can view videos by users, or share and upload their own productions. Vimeo Video School also offers video creating tutorials for students to learn some of the skills required in the art of production. Their creations can be easily shared to other social media sites like Facebook and Twitter as well. 20. Google+ Google+ is a social network by Google Services where students and teachers can create group circles to discuss important issues, lessons and where reminders for upcoming assignments can be privately posted. Students can also use the platform to share their ideas and to bring up any questions they may have. It is a great social media tool for managing the art of virtual communication. 21. Pinterest Pinterest is a web and mobile-based image-sharing site. Students and teachers can create specific subject boards that can be used to curate pictures, posters, infographics and other visual learning resources. Middle-school and high-school students can like, share and pin images and infographics that they find on their own board. The Pinterest interface also promotes organization and content management for classes. 22. Youtube Youtube is another video-sharing website where students who love to create videos can publish their work. Youtube also features a wide range of tutorials on a plethora of subjects. Not only does this make the platform a great promotor of participatory culture, but it also promotes the advancement of learning. Youtube is now the second top used search engine after Google. 23. DeviantArt Deviantart is an online community that showcases multitudes of original user designed artworks. Students can use the site to share their own digital art, whether it be drawings, infographics or other images. Deviantart promotes artistic creativity for all age groups. Sharing ideas has never been as easy as it is in 2015. Within just a few clicks and a few taps, students can publish their work for the entire world to see. These tools do not only empower students to express their own thoughts, but also motivates them to explore their creative potential. 23 Tools For Students To Publish What They Learn The post 23 Tools For Students To Publish What They Learn appeared first on TeachThought.

Graphic: A History Of Ancient Philosophy by Noet Scholarly Tools This post is offered by Noet Scholarly Tools who are offering TeachThought readers 20% off their entire order at Noet.com with coupon code TEACHTHOUGHT (enter the coupon code after you’ve signed in). They asked us to share their latest teaching resource on ancient philosophy to help inspire students to explore classic works and dig into the foundations of Western thought. Start your study with their introduction packages on Greek and Latin classics (and don’t forget to take 20% off!). We recently partnered with TeachThought on on guide for questioning in the classroom, and it is in that spirit of inquiry, epistemology, and critical thinking that we are sharing an infographic on the history of philosophy. Ancient philosophy raised and explored many of the issues that became the central themes of Western thought. Ancient philosophers sought to understand the essential order of the universe through reason and observation. They used logic to explore how ideas like justice and virtue created a framework for civic and political life. Ancient philosophers also examined theological and ethical issues, seeking to understand how humans should order their lives in relationship to nature and the divine. Below we’ve itemized 13 thinkers who, quite literally, changed thinking as we know it. We arranged them chronologically, and gathered them on the graphic below, along with other tidbits that characterize each philosopher. 13 Classical Thinkers Who Changed Thinking  Pre-Socratics (585-480 BCE) 1. Thales of Miletus 2. Pythagoras: 3. Protagoras Classical Period (479-322 BCE) 4. Socrates 5. Plato 6. Aristotle Hellenistic Period (323-31 BCE) 7. Epicurus 8. Zeno of Citium Roman Era (30 BCE 529 CE) 9. Philo of Alexandria 10. Marcus Aurelius 12. Plotinus 13. Hypatia of Alexandria         The post Graphic: A History Of Ancient Philosophy appeared first on TeachThought.

Ross Teacher Academy: An Immersive Approach To Professional Development  by Ross Teacher Academy Staff For more information on Ross Teacher Academy, you can visit their site. The Ross Teacher Academy offers professional development in a wide range of topics and fields related to the Ross Learning System, from pedagogical best practices, to school culture, to grade- and domain-specific strategies and content. Both two-day courses and four-day workshops are available, taught by experienced Ross faculty and administrators. Some courses are taught in partnership with Ross mentors and scholars. Ross Teacher Academy offerings target a range of educators, including teachers, department chairs, team leaders, school leaders, and informal educators. Though courses follow a broadly outlined curriculum, they are customized and tailored to fit the needs of those in attendance to ensure that participants acquire the training and level of understanding necessary to implement concepts and practices in their own schools and share what they have learned with their colleagues. Current course offerings are listed below. Custom-designed courses are also available; please contact us with your suggestions or requests. Four-Day Courses Early Childhood Education for the Global Era Educating Future Generations About Climate Change and Sustainability Global Education Toolkit: Making Real-Time Sense of Critical World Issues and Events Innovation Lab @Ross: Innovative, Integrated Science and Mathematics Interdisciplinary Teaching and Learning Mindful Practices: Integrating Wellness Throughout the Curriculum Two-Day Workshops Creating Core Values and an Empathetic School Culture Developing Critical and Creative Thinking Through Media Studies Documenting Student Learning Early Childhood Education for the Global Era* Global Education Toolkit: Field Academy Global Education Toolkit: Senior Project Interdisciplinary Teaching and Learning Teaching Through Multiple Intelligences* Teaching with Art and Artifact * Offered in Spanish and English Upcoming Ross Teacher Academy Courses AUGUST 4-7 2015 $1800 4 DAYS / 5 NIGHTS Arrive Sunday after 2:00pm Depart Friday by 11:00am AUGUST 10-13 2015  $1800 4 DAYS / 5 NIGHTS Arrive Sunday after 2:00pm Depart Friday by 11:00am AUGUST 17-18 2015 $950 2 DAYS / 2 NIGHTS Arrive day before after 2:00pm Depart last day by 11:00am AUGUST 19-20 2015 $950 2 DAYS / 2 NIGHTS Arrive day before after 2:00pm Depart last day by 11:00am ACCOMMODATIONS Private room with ensuite bath, $225 per night Private room with shared bath, $190 per night Double accomodation possible with prior notice—splits cost of room. Meals at the Ross Café and all workshop materials are included. About The Ross Model At the core of Ross School and the Ross Model is a unique and comprehensive Spiral Curriculum that fosters such 21st century skills as intercultural understanding, multidisciplinary problem solving, collaboration, and independent pursuit of personal passions. Students work directly with emerging media, information, and communication technologies, learning how to use these technologies creatively and how to respond critically to the way media influences culture. Students are instilled with the intellectual curiosity and creative energy that help them to become lifelong learners. More importantly, they develop a multifaceted worldview that enables them to understand current dilemmas in a broad historical context and to anticipate the challenges they will encounter in the new global era. One of the greatest dilemmas of education today is how to engage all children while maintaining rigorous standards. Traditionally, schools that attempt to reach all children do so by diluting excellence, while schools that promote rigor tend to focus only on teaching high-performing students. Students with diverse learning needs who come from a variety of socioeconomic, cultural, and linguistic backgrounds all thrive in the Ross environment because of the school’s intercultural commitment and its appreciation for multiple intelligences and diverse ways of learning. Accommodations Housing Ross Teacher Academy is located on the beautiful Ross Upper School campus in East Hampton, New York, about two hours east of New York City. Accommodations are spacious, beautiful, and luxurious Hamptons-style homes with large bedrooms, private bathrooms, a living room, kitchen, and study rooms. Homes are air-conditioned, and most have swimming pools available. Laundry facilities are available in the houses as well. Houses are lightly stocked with basics: coffee, tea, water, and toiletries. Sheets and towels provided. Ross Café Breakfast, lunch, and dinner will be served at the exemplary Ross Café. Meals are nutritious and flavorful, and are prepared using fresh, regional, organic ingredients. Meals include vegetarian options, and accommodations for other dietary requirements are available as well. Facilities Professional tennis courts, a weight room, and playing fields appeal to athletes, while extensive libraries, stunning architecture, and ubiquitous artwork nurture the aesthetic senses. Innovation Lab has specialized, state-of-the-art laboratories. All buildings are air-conditioned, providing a welcome respite from the warmth of summer. Transportation Shuttle service can be provided upon request. Details Overview Courses The Ross Model Accommodations  Contact For More Information For more information, contact Meg Regan mregan@ross.org 631-907-5300 The post Ross Teacher Academy: An Immersive Approach To Professional Development appeared first on TeachThought.

TeachThought Library: 10 Learning Models & Frameworks by TeachThought Staff For professional development around these ideas, contact us. As with any publication, blogs and websites are only as thoughtful as their design. If you can’t find what you’re looking for, no matter how "good" the content is, it’s useless. And sometimes you don’t even know what you’re looking for, and don’t know what you don’t know. This is part of the limitation of a blog, and the allure of social media sites like facebook and pinterest. Each approach, though, has its challenges-and this is something that will always be a growth opportunity for those that seek to share their ideas. This isn’t new-always has been for content publisher since long before digital media emerged, and likely will be until AI is perfected-and by then it won’t matter because we’ll all be plugged into the Matrix and exit entirely in the digital vapor. Or not. For now, we’ll keep trying new ideas, which is where this collection comes in. The Utility Of Learning Models One of the things that sets TeachThought apart from other education publishers is our focus on and development of learning models and frameworks-new ways of teaching and learning and schooling that others can use. In addition to sharing other people’s work-Grant Wiggins, for example-this is part of our effort to illuminate what’s possible in teaching and learning Models like these embed certain (new?) ideas in certain contexts. Self-directed learning, the Maker Movement, mobile learning, education technology integration and more are all relatively new, and have a variety of perspectives that can be taken in examining them and what they enable or change. By clarifying what something is or implies, as an educator you can draw your own conclusions as to what might be in whatever learning environment you work in. This is where the models and frameworks come in-visuals that clarify possibility, sequence, characteristics, and more. To make them more accessible for you, we’ve decided to create libraries of content, starting with an early collection of the learning models and frameworks we’ve created. The first of many such libraries appears below. We’ll work to make these more useful to you as we figure out how you use these visuals, how this library works on different devices, and what you need most as an educator. For example, from our "Inside-Out School" Model: "As a follow-up to our 9 Characteristics of 21st Century Learning we developed in 2009, we have developed an updated framework, The Inside-Out Learning Model. The goal of the model is simple enough-not pure academic proficiency, but instead authentic self-knowledge, diverse local and global interdependence, adaptive critical thinking, and adaptive media literacy. By design this model emphasizes the role of play, diverse digital and physical media, and a designed interdependence between communities and schools. The attempted personalization of learning occurs through new actuators and new notions of local and global citizenship. An Inside-Out School returns the learners, learning, and "accountability" away from academia and back to communities. No longer do schools teach. Rather, they act as curators of resources and learning tools, and promote the shift of the "burden" of leanring back to a more balanced perspective of stakeholders and participants. Here, families, business leaders, humanities-based organizations, neighbors, mentors, higher-education institutions, all converging to witness, revere, respond to, and support the learning of its own community members. The micro-effect here is increased intellectual intimacy, while the macro-effect is healthier communities and citizenship that extends beyond mere participation, to ideas of thinking, scale, legacy, and growth." This presents a new thinking for what a school is and might be. How it’s used for you as a district official, teacher, principal, parent, or related organization varies, but if you can’t find it, you can’t use it. TeachThought Learning Models & Frameworks The post TeachThought Library: 10 Learning Models & Frameworks appeared first on TeachThought.

30 Examples Of Disruption In The Classroom by Terry Heick This post is actually intended to supplement the "Cycle of Learning Innovation" we recently published, which means this is less about analysis and context and more about the examples. First, some quick clarification so that we have a common language. In short, by "disruption," we are referring to something that causes the kind of impact that leads to change. To push it further, one definition of disruption might be a bottom-up cause that substantially affects the ecology it is a part of (e.g., perception, market advantages, resource needs, usage patterns, etc.), forcing redistribution (e.g., market, demographic spread, revenue, credibility, knowledge) of something else we collectively value. Or put even more simply, "a bottom-up cause that substantially affects the ecology it is a part of, forcing reconfiguration of that system, and recreation and redistribution of currencies within that system." The Innovator’s Dilemma This leads to the "innovator’s dilemma," described recently in The Economist as "the difficult choice an established company faces when it has to choose between holding onto an existing market by doing the same thing a bit better, or capturing new markets by embracing new technologies and adopting new business models." The article goes on to point out some examples of this kind of dilemma, and how certain businesses responded. "IBM dealt with this dilemma by launching a new business unit to make PCs, while continuing to make mainframe computers. Netflix took a more radical move, switching away from its old business model (sending out rental DVDs by post) to a new one (streaming on-demand video to its customers). Disruptive innovations usually find their first customers at the bottom of the market: as unproved, often unpolished, products, they cannot command a high price. Incumbents are often complacent, slow to recognize the threat that their inferior competitors pose. But as successive refinements improve them to the point that they start to steal customers, they may end up reshaping entire industries: classified ads (Craigslist), long distance calls (Skype), record stores (iTunes), research libraries (Google), local stores (eBay), taxis (Uber) and newspapers (Twitter)." What are some examples of disruptions in the classroom, then? Not necessarily initially innovations, but factors (value neutral-neither good nor bad in and of themselves) that can lead to innovation? I’ve listed some examples of disruption in education below, and ranked them (though obviously the ranking is entirely subjective and only useful as a crude reference point to start your own thinking). For the #1 disruption in education, I’ve actually summarized the disruptor and its effect as an example, though for the rest, I only include the disruption itself for most of the rest. 30 Examples Of Disruption In The Classroom  The ubiquity of Google search and its impact on curriculum knowledge demands Common Core standards (this one’s not sexy, but few factors impact public education in the United States in 2015 more than this index of academic content) Planned obsolescence of mobile technology 1:1 as a standard rather than a luxury Rising cost of universities Change in cultural perception of identity-gender, technology, science, faith, sexuality, etc. Change in credibility of a high school diploma or college degree Increasingly formal use of social media by education institutions Maker Movement General insecurity or misunderstanding about how to meaningfully integrate technology in the classroom Relative "normalizing" of computer coding Falling cost of mobile devices, which impacts what’s affordable, who shows up to school with what on their own, school budgets, etc. The increasing potential to "start a business" that is entirely social and digital (which impacts the idea of a "job," for example) Adaptive learning platforms and learning algorithms Rapid change in the demands for media forms (e.g., text to infographics to eCards to podcasts) Ease of publishing (e.g., blogs, social media, podcasting) to promote conversation and thinking around what’s possible in education The general success of Google as a platform model (Classroom, Music, YouTube, Search, Chromebooks, Chrome OS, etc.) Narrowed (overly-narrow?) metrics of "school success" which causes parents to question how learning effectiveness is measured (see also #20). The relative shrinking marketshare of iPads, as well as some very visible failure of iPad rollouts Education documentaries on Netflix (such as "Waiting for Superman"), which brings the "Ed reform" conversation to a broader audience 3D Printing (this one should be higher-likely will be in five years-but we’re just not there yet) New demands for digital citizenship District-level BYOD programs The adoption of blended learning approaches through learning management systems Highly variable quality of "learning apps," which causes some app developers to "backwards plan" from the what a teacher or school will find credible; it also which causes some teachers to change their definition of what "effective" means, while others respond by calling for standards on measuring that effectiveness. Robotics in the classroom Social credibility of alternative school models (Walden, Montessori, Homeschooling, etc.) MOOCs, nanodegrees, etc. Relative crudeness of most school and district IT performance (Wi-Fi, bandwidth, district filters, repairs, regulations, workflow, etc.) which can reduce the demand for innovative technology by teachers already hesitant to adopt meaningful education technology The difference between the success of a school and the success of its most needful students 30 Examples Of Disruption In The Classroom; image attribution flickeringbrad The post 30 Examples Of Disruption In The Classroom appeared first on TeachThought.

So We’re Trying This T-Shirt Thing by TeachThought Staff In an effort to promote the visibility of progressive teaching and learning, we usually create content. Essays, models, frameworks, lists, etc. To supplement that approach so that you might spread the good word in your building, district, or organization, we thought we’d try t-shirts (which can find our first release here). We’re starting small with a limited batch of 20 shirts and a simple phrase. We’ve got a lot of exciting ideas, but we wanted to start modestly to gauge reaction, and do so with a concept (in this case, Why questions are more important than answers) that is central to what we stand for as an organization, and what resonates with you as a teacher. We may earn $45 for every couple of dozen of shirts we sell. Not a good investment of the several hours all this has taken. But the upshot? If you like the shirts, we can have more fun with this idea and begin some campaigns that help raise funds for your school or classroom, student projects, etc. If not, no worries. We have other plans in development as well. For now, we start simple. The initial run will be gone by July 15th, so you have until then to grab yours. The Fine Print Note, we’re not a manufacturer, and though we may sell a handful of items like shirts or mugs, we’re not getting into sales and merchandising as a company. This is happening through teespring, a great company if you have an idea you’d like to see executed. Food for thought. If the shirts lack quality, we want to know so we can work with them to make it better. Sizing, returns, billing, and other issues are handled through them, as this is a teespring-based campaign.  To order, go to teespring and click "Reserve It Now." The post So We’re Trying This T-Shirt Thing appeared first on TeachThought.

2015 Lost Mountain Next Gen Symposium July 11 In Mozambique by TeachThought Staff From a press release -Maputo, Mozambique, Monday, July 6 Gorongosa National Park, Mozambique, Thursday, July 16, 2015 Since July 11, 2015, Gorongosa National Park has hosted 33 African and North American students, adventurers, scientists and conservation leaders for the first ever Lost Mountain Next Gen Symposium. "There has already been a lot of excitement and information," says Salvador Nanvonamuquitxo, a graduate student at Universidad Lurio, Mocuba, Mozambique. "From meeting new people to learning so much about different cultures— we all have a love of the environment as our common denominator." The twelve-day symposium seeks to launch a wave of "disruptive" conservation - a model for building community-driven conservation in some of the world’s most remote and biologically diverse places. The Symposium students are developing the next phase of community engagement, development, and conservation for Mount Namuli, a 7,936-foot granite monolith and the largest of a group of isolated peaks that tower over the ancient valleys of northern Mozambique. Mount Namuli and Mount Gorongosa are both part of the greater Eastern Afromontagne region and they are now further linked through this Symposium. Students are drawing deep knowledge and experience from Gorongosa National Park’s team of scientists, rangers, educators and conservationists while learning new skill sets to contribute to the future plan for integrated conservation on Mount Namuli. Mount Namuli is one of the world’s least explored and most threatened habitats. Here, plants and animals have evolved as if on dispersed oceanic islands, so that individual mountains have become refuges to their own unique species, many of which are yet to be discovered or described by science. "To create a model where people and ecosystems can thrive together on Mount Namuli, we’ve learned we need two things,"Grant Bemis, graduate from Eckard College living in Minneapolis, USA says. "Strong leaders and a strong understanding of best practices in conservation of biodiversity. We’re getting both of these things here at the Symposium." Since the beginning of The 2015 Lost Mountain Next Gen Symposium, participants have been immersed in a wide variety of activities. Students have participated in a transformative leadership workshop led by Seid Aman, the Ethiopian director of imagine1day, have begun a 5-day intensive training in the Open Standards for the Practice of Conservation framework, and are integrating environmental stewardship practices through the first-ever delivery of the Leave No Trace platform in Mozambique. These classroom activities have been punctuated by visits to Gorongosa National Park for a game drive, a lab tour of the E.O. Wilson Center for Biodiversity, and a visit to the neighboring community of Vinho to better understand how Gorongosa partners with communities in the buffer zone around the Park. Students will draw from all of these disciplines and experiences to design a plan for Mount Namuli, which will then be vetted with Namuli community members and implemented in August. "The Symposium has greatly enhanced my theoretical knowledge from university with practical skills and understanding,"explains Maria Muchanga Davissone, a graduate student at Eduardo Mondlane University in Maputo, Mozambique. "At schools here in Mozambique, we study a lot about the environment, but we don’t see the environment as very few students have the opportunity and resources to go to the field. Field visits are so important because when you’re here, you see the wilderness, and more importantly, you feel the world around you." "For example," Maria continues, "Yesterday in Gorongosa National Park, we saw an abundance of yellow fever trees.Usually these kinds of trees aren’t as plentiful, but since the elephant population is so low, they aren’t controlling them like they normally would. I’ve read about the impact of elephant poaching in books - but to see it in real life really brought it home." It is this combination of theoretical and practical skills across a number of disciplines as well as the long-term impact of students’ work on Mount Namuli that makes The 2015 Lost Mountain Next Gen Symposium unique. "As we move through the curriculum of the Symposium, the goal is to have students see that a holistic approach to conservation will create long term impact," explains Majka Burhardt, Director of The Lost Mountain. "This approach is one that includes leadership, a clear understanding of planning, implementing and evaluating ecological projects, as well as best practices for minimizing personal and societal environmental impact. By investing in the whole person, we are building up balanced leaders who will make a significant impact in our world." — www.thelostmountain.org Interviews, Imagery, and More Information: Leigh Boyle, Community Leader, Lost Mountain +1-604-910-4903 | team@additiveadventure.com ABOUT THE LOST MOUNTAIN The Lost Mountain Initiative is an international venture to foster a future where people and ecosystems thrive together on Mount Namuli, Mozambique. The Initiative began with a 2014 field expedition combining rock-climbing, cliffside scientific research, integrated conservation planning, and media. Mount Namuli, a 7,936-foot granite monolith, is the largest of a group of isolated peaks that tower over the ancient valleys of northern Mozambique. It is one of the world’s least explored and most threatened habitats.  Here, plants and animals have evolved as if on dispersed oceanic islands, so that individual mountains have become refuge to their own unique species of life, many of which have yet to be discovered or described by science. Biologists and conservationists from around the world have identified Mount Namuli as a global hotspot: a place of critical biodiversity and an opportunity to model a new vision for wildlife preservation that integrates the wishes and needs of local people. The Lost Mountain Consortium is directed by US-based Additive Adventure and Mozambique-based LUPA. The Lost Mountain is supported in part from a grant from the Critical Ecosystem Partnership Fund—a joint initiative of l’Agence Française de Développement, Conservation International, the European Union, the Global Environment Facility, the Government of Japan, the MacArthur Foundation and the World Bank. The LostMountain Next Gen Initiative’s presenting partner is Positive Tracks, a national, youth-centric nonprofit that helps Generation Next get active and give back using the power of sport and adventure. With key support from Ethiopian Airlines, Osprey Packs and Goal Zero and supporting sponsors Clif Bar, Patagonia, Kickstarter, Petzl, Scarpa, Julbo and 1% for the Planet. The post 2015 Lost Mountain Next Gen Symposium July 11 In Mozambique appeared first on TeachThought.

A Lesson Using Twitter Must Have A Social Component by Michael Catelli New technology is never universally accepted and can face a slow implementation. Just look at the fears of the of the 15th century monk Johannes Trithemius who penned a scathing book about the horrors of the printing press and how it would devalue all books. Trithemius must have gravely lamented when he allowed his book to be published on a printing press so more people could read it. Twitter has not created as large of an impact as the printing press, but it is still worthy of implementation. To avoid turning into Trithemius, there are easy ways teachers can start brining Twitter into classroom use. Classrooms around the world are beginning to not just see Twitter as a learning tool, but use it that way. (There are reasons twitter works in education.) Teachers have Twitter accounts to help provide their students with classroom updates. Many teachers are encouraging students to follow reputable news sites to help them stay on top of current events. Some projects even have students write out tweets as historic or literacy figures, such Abraham Lincoln tweeting about the Civil War. While these are important first steps, educators need to do more to truly shift their students’ learning. When educators, and society in general, begin implementing new technology the uses tend to replace things that were already done and are typically not transformational. This is how most of education uses Twitter. Having students construct 140 character tweets in the perspective of Abe Lincoln is realistically not pushing their learning far beyond summary of events. There is certainly student engagement, which is always essential, when they have to tweet for homework, but there also needs to be higher order learning. Perhaps the goal of a lesson is for students to summarize, than that activity works, but teachers should be weary of trying to change technology to fit it into their lessons when it should be the other way. A lot of online homework portals promise that students will do more homework if teachers use their website because it looks like Facebook, which kids love. The way to incorporate new technology, Twitter included, is to fit educational goals into the aspects of the technology that is engaging for students. Kids don’t log into Facebook to do homework, so making a homework site Facebook clone provides nothing. By tapping into the engaging components of new technology educators have a great potential for more meaningful lessons. (For a few ideas, see 25 ways to use twitter in the classroom.) There are a lot of components that make Twitter engaging, but the main point is the social networking aspect. A lesson using Twitter must have a social component. Without that need for dialogue or socializing thinking, using social media of any kind can’t be effective. When a student writes tweets for homework they are not tweeting, they simply have their sentences limited. Connecting and sharing with others in a trend while using hashtags is engaging or live tweeting an event with others is engaging. With that in mind here are three ways teachers can use Twitter right now to change their classroom and teaching. 3 Ways To Bring Twitter Into A Classroom 1. Live-Tweet A Learning Experience A Reading, for example. Student can tweet at their teacher in class or for homework and give their immediate reactions as they are reading a fiction or nonfiction work.  Students and teachers can see the class’ response when a character makes a poor choice in a story. Think of how natural a class discussion would be if the teacher knew every student in the class had a strong reaction to a specific part of a reading. Students could analyze why classmates reacted differently to the same event, all while the teacher watches in real time to see if students comprehend what they are reading. 2. Hashtag Thematic & Content-Specific Images & See What Trends The teacher can provide or students can find images from an event or about a topic and then use a class hashtag or tweet at their teacher as they hashtag themes in those images. Imagine a class looking through Dorthea Lange’s iconic Great Depression images, what would trend? Students can see what hashtags were used the most to determine the class trends and discuss what in the images made these ideas come across for so many students. 3. Have An Ongoing Class Twitter Chat Around An Essential Question Or activity, lesson, project, or idea. Even an "asynchronous" debate. There are certainly other tools that exist for online discussions, but Twitter Chats are unique. They are fast paced and those involved micromanage multiple conversations at a time. Even more powerful is how the moderator can be involved just like a regular participant. Students can moderate the chat by coming up with their own questions ahead of time and the teacher can be involved in discussions to help push student thinking. One can only imagine that Trithemius would scoff at Twitter and the possibility of using it to teach. Luckily for society he was wrong about the printing press and the times changed around him. Education should not fear new technology, specifically Twitter, because they are often the best ways to engage our students. A Lesson Using Twitter Must Have A Social Component; 3 Ways To Bring Twitter Into A Classroom The post A Lesson Using Twitter Must Have A Social Component appeared first on TeachThought.