How to Implement Deep Learning Characteristics in the Classroom | The Educato... Deep learning is the foundation on which I instruct my students; whether it is through the use of practical thinking skills, human dimension activities, and/or data gathering. There are other deep learning characteristics I implement daily, but these are most commonly used in my classroom. These strategies help to... Deep learning is the foundation on which I instruct my students; whether it is through the use of practical thinking skills, human dimension activities, and/or data gathering. There are other deep learning characteristics I implement daily, but these are most commonly used in my classroom. These strategies help to keep me focused on one common goal for all my students: to promote better learning outcomes for all students-ones that are transformational. Engaging students actively in their own learning, and encouraging understanding of presented materials, should be the main goal of all educators. Practical thinking skills are an essential part of my lesson planning.
10 ways to encourage students to take responsibility for their learning 1. Don’t make all the decisions Allow choice. Encourage students to make decisions about how they learn best. Create opportunities for them to pursue their own interests and practise skills in a variety of ways. Cater for different learning styles. 2. Ask open-ended questions, with plenty of possible answers which lead to further questions. 3. Minimise standing out front and talking at them. 4. Talk about your own learning. 5. Get your students to write down what they learned, whether they enjoyed a particular learning experience, what helped their learning, what hindered their learning and what might help them next time. 6. Record student thinking and track development over time. 7. Help students to define goals for their learning. 8. If you know exactly where the lesson is leading and what you want the kids to think, then you‘re controlling the learning. 9. Make sure you and your students know the reason for every learning experience. 10. I know there are lots more ways. Like this:
Games and your brain: how to use gamification to stop procrastinating 1.4K Flares Filament.io 1.4K Flares × It is Thursday afternoon. Hump day. You are being humped. The one thing you wished to accomplish today remains unaccomplished, sitting there as a painful reminder of your failure, goading you to check Tumblr just one more time. And there’s your answer! Turning repetitive tasks into games is the secret sauce to getting things done. Where did gamification come from in the first place? The idea behind gamification—challenge, motivation, reward— have been present in video games from the start, and it was gaming’s growth from niche to mainstream in the 2000s that helped push game mechanics into new industries and fields. The spark for the gamification boom is often traced to technology apps like Foursquare, which popularized ubiquitous badges for highly engaged users, and social games like Zynga’s FarmVille, which achieved huge commercial success on Facebook with its infinite reward system. Why our brains are so attracted to playing games (image via) 1.) 2.)
5 Tools to Help Students Learn How to Learn Helping students learn how to learn: That’s what most educators strive for, and that’s the goal of inquiry learning. That skill transfers to other academic subject areas and even to the workplace where employers have consistently said that they want creative, innovative and adaptive thinkers. Inquiry learning is an integrated approach that includes kinds of learning: content, literacy, information literacy, learning how to learn, and social or collaborative skills. “We want students thinking about their thinking,” said Leslie Maniotes a teacher effectiveness coach in the Denver Public Schools and one of the authors of Guided Inquiry: Learning in the 21st Century. “When they are able to see where they came from and where they got to it is very powerful for them.” A good example is a long term research project. During the process, students will go through different stages of emotions. [RELATED READING: Creating Classrooms We Need: 8 Ways Into Inquiry Learning]
How 21st Century Thinking Is Just Different How 21st Century Thinking Is Just Different by Terry Heick This content is proudly sponsored by The Institute for the Habits of Mind, promoting the development of personal thinking habits in 21st century learners. In an era dominated by constant information and the desire to be social, should the tone of thinking for students be different? After all, this is the world of Google. As a result, the tone of thinking can end up uncertain or whimsical, timid or arrogant, sycophant or idolizing–and so, devoid of connections and interdependence. The nature of social media rests on identity as much as anything else—forcing subjectivity on everything through likes, retweets, shares, and pins. But this takes new habits. Information Abundance There is more information available to any student with a smartphone than an entire empire would have had access to three thousand years ago. New contexts—digital environments that function as humanity-in-your-pocket—demand new approaches and new habits. Persisting.
Resiliency and Grit, Not Failure At ISTE 2013 in San Antonio, Texas, Microsoft gave away over 10,000 Microsoft Surface Tablets to participants. Basically anyone that was at the conference that wanted one was going to get one for free with their registration. The majority of people that came to the conference had no idea that this was happening and I would say very few (if any) people signed up to go to ISTE to get the Surface. I chose not to get one. I chose not to take a free tablet/computer with my registration to ISTE. From what I heard before the conference, the device was not that great, would crash often, and was not as intuitive as other devices. As participants unpacked their devices, played with them, what they had told me was basically what I had heard in the reviews before. Here’s the thing…if Apple gave away an iPad at ISTE, I would have taken it in a second. Embrace Failure? This is not about Apple vs. Every time I hear things like this, I get worked up. Failure or something else? Language is important
Critical Thinking Abilities Weak versus Strong Critical Thinking Critical thinking involves basic intellectual skills, but these skills can be used to serve two incompatible ends: self-centeredness or fair-mindedness. As we develop the basic intellectual skills that critical thinking entails, we can begin to use those skills in a selfish or in a fair-minded way. In other words, we can develop in such a way that we learn to see mistakes in our own thinking, as well as the thinking of others. Typically, people see mistakes in other's thinking without being able to credit the strengths in those opposing views. We call these thinkers weak-sense critical thinkers. Another traditional name for the weak-sense thinker is found in the word sophist. Sophistic thinkers succeed only if they do not come up against what we call strong-sense critical thinkers. Perhaps even more important, strong-sense critical thinkers strive to be fair-minded. Figure 3.1. Figure 3.2.
- Create a Culture of Questioning and Inquiry 4 Comments August 14, 2013 By: Guest Blogger Nancy White Aug 13 Written by: 8/13/2013 6:00 PM ShareThis I have often suggested to teachers that when students have access to technology, whether it is provided by the school in a 1:1, BYOD, or simply the smart phone in their pocket, there should never be a question that goes unanswered –or un-followed. What I discovered in the 300+ observations I have done for our 21st Century Learning grant work was that the problem isn’t necessarily about allowing time for students to answer questions. As the new school year begins, think about how you might begin to shift from a culture of compliance, to a culture of questioning in your classroom. Ask: “What do you wonder?” This seems like a simple thing to do – and it is! Question wall I found these in several classrooms I visited recently. Question journal Get students in the habit of collecting questions in a journal – paper or electronic. Question Formulation Technique Inquiry days
thinking skills There is no logic in connecting an office copier with 'nose'. That is to say, there is no 'logic' in our normal undertanding of logic. This understanding is based on passive surface information systems. There is, however, the logic of active surface information systems, and that is the logic of a patterning system. In such a system, the putting together of 'copier' with the random input 'nose' is perfectly logical. At the same time, the juxtaposition is a logic of action. JUXTAPOSITIONAs many readers will know, the random juxtaposition is one of the many tools of lateral thinking. • What has smell to do with a copier? Smell is a sensation. • What could smell be used for? When copiers run out of paper or toner, there is usually a light signal - perhaps a red light. SMELL SIGNALWhat about a 'smell signal'? There could be different smells for different things. MOVEMENTThe above example illustrates the process of 'movement', which can be practised until a skill is built up in this operation.