How to Keep Kids Engaged in Class

Have you ever plunked yourself down in a staff meeting where some of your colleagues were, for lack of a better phrase, not paying attention? Grading homework? Having private conversations? Texting? As we know all too well, kids aren't a whole lot different than adults: If they aren't absorbed by what's going on, they'll find something else that interests them. Getting all your students focused, eager, and on task at the beginning of class is challenging enough. Still, unless you manage to capture and keep students' focus, whether at the beginning of or midway through class, the engine of student learning that you are trying to drive simply isn't even in gear. From Dead Time to Active Learning I call this lack of engagement dead time. I have come to feel that dead time is so pernicious that I will do everything I can to prevent even the hint of an outbreak. They call students at Level 4, the lowest level, the work avoiders, and on level 3 are the halfhearted workers. Building Your Arsenal

Hands-on Activities for Teaching Biology to High School or Middle School Students by Drs. Ingrid Waldron and Jennifer Doherty, University of Pennsylvania The expression "hands-on, minds-on" summarizes the philosophy we have incorporated in these activities - namely, that students will learn best if they are actively engaged and if their activities are closely linked to understanding important biological concepts. Many of our activities are explicitly aligned with the Next Generation Science Standards, as indicated by (NGSS) in the descriptions below and the links to the right. To accommodate limited budgets, most of our activities can be carried out with minimum equipment and expense for supplies. Additional resources for teaching biology are available at More Minds on Activities for Teaching Biology. Read More Intro and Biological Molecules Is Yeast Alive? Students evaluate whether the little brown grains of yeast obtained from the grocery store are alive by testing for metabolism and growth. Enzymes Help Us Digest Food(revised, July, 2016) Who Took Jerell's iPod?

Online Mind Mapping and Brainstorming - MindMeister Wikis in Education: Teaching Students to Share Knowledge Wikis are gaining popularity in an educational setting as a way to give students a hands-on learning tool. Providers see the demand and are creating wiki tools to help teachers make wider user of wikis in the classroom. Teaching and learning have always had a collaborative element, but wiki technology has in recent years made collaboration central to the method of many educators. Since they can be edited by anyone with access to them, education wikis are ever-changing and evolving documents that ideally represent the wisdom of the student crowd. Teachers are constantly finding new and creative ways to use wikis. The possibilities for wikis in the classroom, in other words, are as limitless and never-ending as wikis themselves. Scientific Method Back in 1999, wiki expert and consultant Stewart Mader, who publishes Grow Your Wiki, wanted to start a Web site to help students at the University of Connecticut understand chemical applications related to spectroscopy. The Education Market

I Love That Teaching Idea! How to Motivate People: Skip the Bonus and Give Them a Real Project Science has managed to reveal some crazy things that fly in the face of almost every commonly accepted management practice. Here's the latest: Rewards for top performers lead them to worse performance. And if you want to foster innovation, bonuses won't work either. Rather, it's all about letting people slip from under line management and strike out on their own, on projects they care about. Dan Pink lays all that out in this new video, which illustrates a talk he gave at the RSA (a kind of British version of TED): Wild stuff, and all the more unsettling because of the current mess on Wall Street. The fact that science has also created a new vision for workplace performance--fueled less by management and more by individual goals--is shocking. Pink tackles those themes at length in Drive: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us.

Online Creative Writing Courses Offered Free by Top Universities and Educational Websites Getting Educated for Free 1. Introductory Courses Introduction to Creative Writing - University of Utah Course Creative Writing 101 - Eight Lesson Suite101 Course Intro to Creative Writing - Eight Week Course from the Crafty Writer Creative Writing Workshop - Four Lesson Suite 101 Course Writing What You Know - Introductory Course from the UK's Open University 2. Introduction to Fiction - Undergraduate Course from MIT Start Writing Fiction - Introductory Course from the UK's Open University Introduction to Screenwriting - Steve Barnes' Nine Week UCLA Writing Course Approaching Prose Fiction - Intermediate Course from the UK's Open University Writing Science Fiction and Fantasy - Quick Launch or In-Depth Courses for Writers of All Ages 3. 4. 5. 6. Utilizing Your Creative Writing Knowledge Writers do not necessarily need a degree to be successful. You can be published online, in magazines, newspapers, trade publications and in books. Salary Potential Source: Bureau of Labor Statistics

The Ajanta Caves – Ancient Temples Carved from Rock Two thousand two hundred years ago work began on an extensive series of cave monuments in Maharashtra, India. Over a period of hundreds of years, thirty one monuments were hewn piece by piece from the rock face. Then, some speculate around the year 1000AD, they fell in to disuse. Dense jungle grew around, hiding the caves away from human eyes. They Ajanta caves lay undisturbed for hundreds of years. One can only imagine what went through Smith's head when he made his find. The nearest human habitation is Ajinṭhā, a tiny village a few miles away from the caves. The first caves were hewn from the bare rock at the time of The Sātavāhana Empire which started around 230BC. Although there is widespread debate about the time at which the second period of building took place most now agree that it was probably during the reign of Harishena, from 460AD and over a period of around twenty years. There are paintings everywhere – literally. They were created using an ancient method.

Cell Phones in Education Part 4: Learning on Location Disclaimer: While this post presumes the use of a smart phone, and while it is true that not all students own a smart phone, with the current shift toward smart phones, soon, smart phones will be as prevalent as cell phones are today. When I reflect on what is traditionally thought of as a field trip in a typical K-12 school setting, what often comes to mind is a visit to a location that may have some direct or indirect connection to the unit of study being taught. The vision of students visiting different areas or exhibits with “experts” telling students why this or that is significant dances in my head. Students may walk around with paper and a pencil answering questions based on what they see or what they are told. To me this type of learning seems to be inauthentic as this way of organizing field trips seems artificial and top directed. This is where the mobile phone comes into play. What happens to students who don’t have these fancy phones? Like this: Like Loading...

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Education 2.0 – Social Networking and Education In the last decade, the Internet has changed how teachers and students learn in the classroom. Companies like Google, Wikipedia, and WordPress have opened the door to instant exploration of subjects and questions that haven’t been available in the classroom before. Students are now able to explore the ancient Egyptian pyramids using Google Maps, see updated facts and information on a wiki, or read a famous explorer’s blog posts on their expeditions, all safely from their desks. Classrooms, schools and even districts are able to share and collaborate in private social networks, expanding collective knowledge and relationships to new horizons. With our culture’s shift to “social,” companies have created tools that offer free platforms for blogs, wikis and private social networking sites. Blogs share the knowledge of the classroom, projects, and/or experiences with others who can greatly benefit from the shared knowledge.

Edheads - Activate Your Mind! Amazing Metropolis Discovered in Africa is 200,000 years old! By Dan Eden for viewzone. They have always been there. People noticed them before. But no one could remember who made them -- or why? Until just recently, no one even knew how many there were. Now they are everywhere -- thousands -- no, hundreds of thousands of them! Something amazing has been discovered in an area of South Africa, about 150 miles inland, west of the port of Maputo. The image [top of page] is a close-up view of just a few hundred meters of the landscape taken from google-earth. This changed when researcher and author, Michael Tellinger, teamed up with Johan Heine, a local fireman and pilot who had been looking at these ruins from his years flying over the region. "When Johan first introduced me to the ancient stone ruins of southern Africa, I had no idea of the incredible discoveries we would make in the year or two that followed. Where it was found The area is significant for one striking thing -- gold. The individual ruins [see below] mostly consist of stone circles.