What a 21st-century science classroom should look like By Tim Magner, Special to CNN Editor’s note: Tim Magner is the executive director of the Partnership for 21st Century Skills (P21), a national organization that advocates for 21st-century readiness for every student. He has had an extensive career in education, serving most recently as the vice president of Keystone for KC Distance Learning (KCDL) as well as the director of the Office of Educational Technology for the U.S. Department of Education. (CNN) – Whether it’s technology, the global economy or the changing nature of work itself, we are tasked with preparing our children for success in college, career and citizenship in a world that looks very different from the one we grew up in. 21st-century readiness – having the knowledge and skills to pursue further education, compete in the global economy and contribute to society – demands much more of all of our students, and our education system must change to meet these demands. And it comes not a moment too soon.
What Is Social Learning (And Does It Work)? Distance learning, e-learning, mobile learning, blended learning. There are a slew of educational learning trends that have been happening for years now. And now, we’re adding social learning to the mix. The something-learning trend is continuing to move forward, this time putting popular social media to use. Social learning employs things like gamification, peer feedback and review, ranking, and awards to engage students in the material and learning process. The handy infographic below takes a look at the growing number of internet users worldwide, the proliferation of smartphone usage, and how leveraging these tools can benefit both students and teachers. What Is Social Learning? The term Social Learning was coined by Bandura, a behavioural Psychologist, in 1977. Peer review, which is when students check each others’ work, uses the Social Learning theory by giving students a chance to copy the behaviour of each other, in addition to a teacher. Does It Work?
9 Ways To Deliver An Award Winning Speech Word of mouth marketing can be one of the most powerful marketing tactics. Think about it - it costs nothing and every person who hears about your product is a potential genuine referral. Sometimes you are asked to give business presentations to a group of people interested in your ideas. It can be very difficult to put your ideas into words that your listeners will relate to and appreciate. I have discovered that there is a checklist of guidelines. I need to make sure my listeners are able to follow along with me and capture my enthusiasm as I deliver a speech selling my ideas. 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. o Identify the root cause for the fumbling. o Next replace the root fear with its polar opposite. o Think positively! 7. 8. 9. And that’s all there is to it! Article By: Daniel Massicotte Checkout this award winning speech.
MindShift | How we will learn MindShift explores the future of learning in all its dimensions. We examine how learning is being impacted by technology, discoveries about how the brain works, poverty and inequities, social and emotional practices, assessments, digital games, design thinking and music, among many other topics. We look at how learning is evolving in the classroom and beyond.We also revisit old ideas that have come full circle in the era of the over scheduled child, such as unschooling, tinkering, playing in the woods, mindfulness, inquiry-based learning and student motivation. Contact the us by email.
Crowd shaped: The future of online learning? | chat2lrn The @chat2lrn crew are delighted to have a blog post this week from Kate Graham (@kategraham23) in which she explores Crowd Sourced Learning. In 2012, technology and collaboration collided in a big way and started to change the face of learning. Crowd sourced learning projects were the big story last year, a trend that seems set to continue. Over $70 million was invested by venture capitalists in crowd sourced learning, across a range of social and business sectors. Although quite new, these crowd sourced learning hubs are already offering learners thousands of courses. The background to this rise is the failure of the Internet search engines and social applications to deliver timely, authoritative answers to learning challenges, too often leading students down frustrating blind alleys. Social learning Without doubt there is a wealth of learning already available online, much of it free. The democratisation of learning Like this: Like Loading...
SerenA | chance encounters in the space of ideas Hip-Hip Hooray for Summer! Three Tips to Spark Your Learning When I was a kid, some of the things I enjoyed most about summer were swimming and banana splits! Yes . . . you heard right. Banana splits! In my opinion, if we decide to do summer learning at all, it should be fun, meaningful and engaging. So today, I offer you three tips on how to do some summer learning and still keep those banana splits coming! 1) Attend Free Webinars Professional Development can take many shapes. 2) Join a Summer Book Club We frequently talk about the importance of summer book clubs for our students, but don't often enough choose to do one for ourselves. 3) Jump into a Month-Long Article Read Last week Doug Rice, a blogging buddy from the business world, shared a post called Small Business Article Reading Schedule. Summer learning can be as much fun as a tasty banana split with a cherry on top, or as dreary as a rained out ball game. Now it's time to share yours!
Peer Learning Handbook | Peeragogy.org Local Projects Critical Thinking, Textbooks and Primary Sources This week my grade 6 students have continued to develop their critical thinking skills within the boundaries of our Social Studies curriculum. Our final unit this year is on exploration. In the past the learning goal would have been event and fact based and the main source of information would have been the textbook, because that is all we had to refer to. That, of course is no longer necessary. Access to primary sources of information is available to every elementary student. Students can now read (in translation) the account of the first siting of land by Christopher Columbus' crew or view Magellan's circumnavigation of the globe. Today, for example, they were asked to consider the Treaty of Tordesillas. We then had a brief discussion on how those conflicts might have been resolved which led to learning about the man with ultimate power at that time: Pope Alexander VI and his decision to divide the world in two. The students had strong reactions to this occurrence. 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6.
How to Send Better Email - Without Second-Guessing a Single Word Have you ever received an amazing email, one that you’d like to print out and pin to your wall, one that made you grin from ear to ear or slow-clap in appreciation and reverence? When I come across these gems, I drop them into a “Snippets” folder. I study them, I swoon over them, and I borrow bits and pieces of them to send better email. Now imagine that every email you send is as great as these occasional all-stars you receive. Impossible? Worth shooting for? At Buffer, we strive for 100 percent awesomeness in the emails we send to customers, and that pursuit of excellence carries over to the emails we send to teammates, colleagues, friends, and family. So I’m happy to share some of my sources of email inspiration. An email template for shaving 20 hours off your work week Author Robbie Abed took to LinkedIn to share a pair of emails that he had used successfully to shave his workweek from 60 hours to 40 hours. Here is email number one, which is to be sent on Monday. Empty words (Do not use)
50 Things Everyone Should Know How To Do Self-reliance is a vital key to living a healthy, productive life. To be self-reliant one must master a basic set of skills, more or less making them a jack of all trades. Contrary to what you may have learned in school, a jack of all trades is far more equipped to deal with life than a specialized master of only one. While not totally comprehensive , here is a list of 50 things everyone should know how to do. 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10. 11. 12. 13. 14. 15. 16. 17. 18. 19. 20. 21. 22. 23. 24. 25. 26. 27. 28. 29. 30. 31. 32. 33. 34. 35. 36. 37. 38. 39. 40. 41. 42. 43. 44. 45. 46. 47. 48. 49. 50. Check out these books for more ideas on pertinent life skills:
10 Things in School That Should Be Obsolete Flickr: Corey Leopold By Greg Stack So much about how and where kids learn has changed over the years, but the physical structure of schools has not. Looking around most school facilities — even those that aren’t old and crumbling — it’s obvious that so much of it is obsolete today, and yet still in wide use. 1. COMPUTER LABS. At Northern Beaches Christian School students learn everywhere. 2. 3. 4. 5. Corridors at Machias Elementary are used for informal learning 6. 7. 8. Learner Centered Classroom at Riverview Elementary School. 9. 10. Greg Stack is an architect for NAC Architecture and specializes in developing best practices for the planning and design of educational environments.
selfiecity The Selfie: Making sense of the “Masturbation of Self-Image” and the “Virtual Mini-Me” Alise Tifentale, The Graduate Center, CUNY This essay reviews some of the most recent debates on the selfie phenomenon and places it into a broader context of photographic self-portraiture, investigating how the Instagrammed selfie differs from its precursors. Read the essay Imagined Data Communities Nadav Hochman, University of Pittsburgh Writing about media interface presentations and their relation to larger cultural trends is tricky. Read the essay Beyond Biometrics: Feminist Media Theory Looks at Selfiecity Elizabeth Losh, University of California, San Diego As large-scale media visualizations from the Selfiecity database of images shot in five cities on four continents indicate, the selfie has become a truly transnational genre that is as much about placemaking as it is about the narrowcasting of particular faces and bodies. Read the essay