The Art of Teaching Science If only teaching K-12 science was itself a science – assess student knowledge deficits and remedy them. This “knowledge deficit” model has been shown ineffective time and again. Most teachers already know that; it’s why they work so hard to develop lesson plans and activities tailored to their students. So here’s a new tool for any teacher who’s spent evenings and weekends trying to find a lesson that’s the perfect fit for their class: it’s called MOSART, brought to you by the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics. Teachers know that students don’t arrive in class as blank slates, and research on students’ prior knowledge in a variety of subjects is available in the academic literature. MOSART’s multiple choice tests offer five options that are each based on cognitive science: “many items require a choice between accepted scientific concepts and misconceptions that have been well documented in the science education literature.”
Exploratory Learning: A Toolkit to Turn Elementary School Kids Into 'Neighborhood Detectives' | Education on GOOD As Neighbor Day approaches, we here at GOOD would like to suggest that kids take a break from all that in-class activity and explore the world right outside their door. In collaboration with two wonderful first grade teachers, we’ve put together this terrific tool kit: the projects within it demonstrate that, for elementary school kids in particular, there are a million things to learn and discover while taking a walk around the block. The Neighborhood Tool Kit takes its inspiration from Ms. The ideas and projects here are meant to inspire (and we think they can be a valuable addition to curriculum). Neighborhood Study Toolkit For the past several months, the first grade class at Children’s Day School, located in San Francisco’s Mission District, has been exploring their neighborhoods. The neighborhood study is based on the premise that first-hand experiences are the most dynamic and generative types of learning for children at this age. Assignment #1: ~ What is a map? Assignment #2: A. B.
My 10 Favorite Learnist Boards Of The Year This week’s top ten Learnist boards is a “year in review” of ed tech boards. Some have popped up before and others are hot off the presses. As we talk more and more about getting tech in the hands of teachers and classes, which is a great conversation to have in honor of the 2012 Edublogger Awards, I want to take a moment to reflect on and review some of the best Learnist boards, apps and thoughts out there in terms of learning about and using educational technology. Favorite Apps for Education This collection is a compilation of tons of apps for educators–it’s a mega-collaboration board started by Crystal Morgan which has been added to by teachers all over the country.This is the type of board I’d love to see more of–collaborations. When people get together to work on boards, amazing things emerge. Free Elementary Ed Tech Apps Shawn Rubin’s board on Elementary Ed Tech Apps is a great resource for looking to technify the elementary classroom.
My Edmodo Journey | SteveColebourne I decided early this year to try using Edmodo with a class. I had met three VLEs during my PGCE, and I considered Edmodo to be the best fit for what I wanted. Edmodo, in my opinion, is nearly perfect for use in the classroom. It’s free, is easy to set up, and easy to use. The students can use it intuitively, as can staff. I gathered support from management and from colleagues and we decided to try a couple of terms initially, with my Year 10 Higher Maths group. My first worry was that I wouldn’t get a critical mass of students that were interested and the experiment would fail before it had even started. Over the course of the year, Edmodo has supported us to: Based on that list, I would say that my experiment has been a success, and I am pleased with the different ways in which we have used Edmodo, but that list doesn’t tell the whole story. From Christmas onwards, we had two 5-week terms, and I found that these terms passed me by before I had even noticed they’d taken place.
How To Use Google Drive and Evernote To Create Digital Portfolios The following post is written by Greg Kulowiec & Beth Holland from EdTechTeacher. You can hear them both present at the April 10-12 EdTechTeacher iPad Summit in Atlanta! As iPads proliferate in schools around the world, and students as well as teachers create more and more content, questions about what to do with all of those learning objects have arisen. In other words, how can we curate this content into portfolios for assessment as well as reflection. Portfolio Curation with Google Drive Source: The Verge With recent upgrades to the Google Drive app on the iPad, it is now a viable solution for student portfolios that can be created in their entirety on iPad. The Google Drive app now allows for the creation of Documents, Spreadsheets, and Folders. The video tutorial below explains the process of creating, uploading and sharing within the Google Drive app on an iPad. Using Portfolios to Make Connections with Evernote Evernote provides one possible solution to the challenge.
Innovating Pedagogy 2012 from The Open University The Open University has published an innovation report – Innovating Pedagogy 2012. The executive summary is as below for your preview. It’s an excellent timing to review them and plan ahead for 2013. This series of reports explores new forms of teaching, learning and assessment for an interactive world, to guide teachers and policy makers in productive innovation. “ the innovations are not independent, but fit together into a new and disruptive form of education that transcends boundaries ” New pedagogy for e-books As e-book technologies evolve, they will offer new ways of interacting with massively shared, adaptive and dynamic books. Publisher-led short courses These are short courses offered by publishers either in affiliation with recognised educational providers, or independently. Assessment for learning Assessment can support the process of learning, not just measure its outcomes. Badges to accredit learning Badges offer a way of accrediting non-formal learning. MOOCs Seamless learning
iPads in the classroom: embedding technology in the primary curriculum | Teacher Network | Guardian Professional Last year David Andrews wrote for us about how he was using one-to-one devices in the classroom in the hugely popular blog post: An Apple for the teacher: are iPads the future in class? Here, he updates us on his progress and shares some of his favourite technology-led learning ideas. Since the start of September 2012 myself and a colleague, Chris Williams, have been trying to maximise the use of handheld technology (iPads and iPods) in year 6 in all areas of the curriculum. The potential for enhancing teaching and learning through technology has been particularly interesting: we've developed a range of apps using both iPads and iPods to engage, motivate and inspire pupils' learning in the classroom. The school's 'Apple journey' began in June 2012. Once the year 6 SATs were finished, we gave both our year 6 classes a two-week project to build a controllable vehicle. Allowing the children to work in this manner shifted the learning from teacher-centred to child-centred.
10 Free Typing Practice Activities for Students This afternoon I received an email from a reader who was looking for some typing games that her elementary school students can play to practice their touch typing skills. I've reviewed a lot of online typing practice activities over the years, but it has been more than a year since I updated my list. So this evening I put together an updated list of online typing practice activities for students. Type Rocket is a free typing game from ABCya. Z-Type is a simple and fun typing game. If you want students to take a break from the games, have them use Typing Speed Monitor for Google Chrome. Typing Adventure is a nice little game that young students can use to practice their typing skills. Good Typing is a free online typing skill development program. Dance Mat Typing is a nice little resource from the BBC. Word Games offers a large collection of online word games and typing games. Typing Web is an online typing tutorial that provides instant feedback after every free typing lesson.
6 Possible Roles For Teachers In A Personalized Learning Environment by Justin Marquis, Ph. D There is a mountain of speculation and debate about what school and learning will look like in the near future. Will education be online? The Future of Learning An October, 2012 video released by telecom company Ericsson presents a survey of educational experts and entrepreneurs speculating about the future of education. The focus of the video is the ability of these technologies to track minute user data and facilitate intimately individualized instruction based on that data, including student learning preference, peak performance times, prior knowledge, and a host of other information. “Coursera’s Koller says one of the revolutions in education is that teaching will be less about conveying information and more of a return to its original roots where instructors engage in dialogue, develop critical thinking skills and spark passion about a discipline.” (23 Oct., 2012) The Role of the Educator on an Individualized World? 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6.
Educational Technology and Mobile Learning: The 33 Digital Skills Every 21st Century Teacher should Have By EdTech Team Updated on march 2, 2015 : The original list that was created in 2011 comprised 33 skills , after reviewing it we decided to do some merging and finally ended up with the 20 skills below. The 21st century teacher should be able to : 1- Create and edit digital audio Here are some tools for teachers to develop this skill :Free Audio Tools for Teachers 2- Use Social bookmarking to share resources with and between learners Here are some tools for teachers to develop this skill : A List of Best Bookmarking Websites for Teachers 3- Use blogs and wikis to create online platforms for students Here are some tools for teachers to develop this skill : Great Tools to Create Protected Blogs and Webpages for your Class 4- Exploit digital images for classroom use Here are some tools for teachers to develop this skill :Web Tools to Edit Pictures without Installing any softwareTools to Convert Photos into Cartoons
Digitally Interfaced Book: Paper, Graphite, Makey Makey, Scratch, and Imagination As a professional artist, deepening the ways in which seemingly disparate objects and processes are interconnected through locating, and mapping their intersections has been one of the main elements of my studio practice. The Fab Lab tools and working processes create an environment that is well suited to investigating those types of intersections. In an effort to integrate Fab Lab tools centered on craft, and studio-based processes into the classroom, I have been working to implement a Mobile MakerCart at a project-based K-8 charter school. In addition to introducing craft-based physical computing projects to the children, a guiding principle behind the MakerCart is to give teachers the opportunity to develop familiarity with the MakerCart’s tools and processes in order to be able to envision the ways in which they might be able to develop their own curriculum for use in the classroom. Fig. 1 Fig. 2 Fig.3 Fig. 4 1.1 Fold The Paper Fig. 5 1.2 Create Your Story Fig. 6 1.3 Build The Circuit Fig. 7