Tuesday, March 31, 2015

Educational Resources & Tech Tools 04/01/2015

Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.

Monday, March 30, 2015

Educational Resources & Tech Tools 03/31/2015

  • tags: game Gamify game creation Software programming

  • Audio editor

    tags: recorder audio editor tech tools editor

  • tags: dyslexia google gafe differentiation

  • Some useful ideas in here on how to use the search bar.

    tags: google gafe search

  • Very tangible suggestions here.

    tags: humiliation discipline SEL Edutopia new teacher

    • When is it OK to humiliate students? Never.
    • Many of us can recall a situation when we were humiliated by a teacher. If you close your eyes and recall it, it still has the power to make you cringe. And also for many of us, if we never resolved our feelings with those teachers, we still haven't forgiven them
  • How the learning environment affects learning.

    tags: learning Environment Classroom architecture

    • The modern classroom is a space full of light and colour, with flexible furnishings and a degree of comfort not present in the classrooms many adults recall. Students are encouraged to take charge of the space and arrange its physicality to meet their needs. Design decisions are based around engagement, creativity, expression, imagination and an understanding of education as an active process that the student chooses to engage with. So important is the physical space that authors and architects for education OWP/P published a book titled ‘The Third Teacher’ as a tome for anyone wishing to enhance the effectiveness of their learning spaces. 
  • Lesson for digital citizenship that fair use has major implications. Thicke and Williams had to pay $7.4 million to Marvin Gaye for his song.

    tags: remix fair use digital citizenship

  • The article states why the humanities are still important to developing a well rounded work force. Especially interesting are the test stats vs. the innovation within a given nation. They seem to run contrary.

    tags: STEM innovation humanities maker education article

    • A broad general education helps foster critical thinking and creativity. Exposure to a variety of fields produces synergy and cross fertilization. Yes, science and technology are crucial components of this education, but so are English and philosophy.
    • Innovation is not simply a technical matter but rather one of understanding how people and societies work, what they need and want.
    • the American economy historically changed so quickly that the nature of work and the requirements for success tended to shift from one generation to the next. People didn’t want to lock themselves into one professional guild or learn one specific skill for life.
    • In truth, though, the United States has never done well on international tests, and they are not good predictors of our national success. Since 1964, when the first such exam was administered to 13-year-olds in 12 countries, America has lagged behind its peers, rarely rising above the middle of the pack and doing particularly poorly in science and math. And yet over these past five decades, that same laggard country has dominated the world of science, technology, research and innovation.
    • Consider the same pattern in two other highly innovative countries, Sweden and Israel. Israel ranks first in the world in venture-capital investments as a percentage of GDP; the United States ranks second, and Sweden is sixth, ahead of Great Britain and Germany. These nations do well by most measures of innovation, such as research and development spending and the number of high-tech companies as a share of all public companies. Yet all three countries fare surprisingly poorly in the OECD test rankings. Sweden and Israel performed even worse than the United States on the 2012 assessment, landing overall at 28th and 29th, respectively, among the 34 most-developed economies.
    • “This country is a lot better at teaching self-esteem than it is at teaching math.” It’s a funny line, but there is actually something powerful in the plucky confidence of American, Swedish and Israeli students. It allows them to challenge their elders, start companies, persist when others think they are wrong and pick themselves up when they fail. Too much confidence runs the risk of self-delusion, but the trait is an essential ingredient for entrepreneurship.
    • technical chops are just one ingredient needed for innovation and economic success.
    • America overcomes its disadvantage — a less-technically-trained workforce — with other advantages such as creativity, critical thinking and an optimistic outlook.
    • Jack Ma, the founder of China’s Internet behemoth Alibaba, recently hypothesized in a speech that the Chinese are not as innovative as Westerners because China’s educational system, which teaches the basics very well, does not nourish a student’s complete intelligence, allowing her to range freely, experiment and enjoy herself while learning
    • Mark Zuckerberg was a classic liberal arts student who also happened to be passionately interested in computers. He studied ancient Greek intensively in high school and majored in psychology while he attended college. And Facebook’s innovations have a lot to do with psychology.
    • Tasks that have proved most vexing to automate are those that demand flexibility, judgment, and common sense — skills that we understand only tacitly — for example, developing a hypothesis or organizing a closet.”
    • This doesn’t in any way detract from the need for training in technology, but it does suggest that as we work with computers (which is really the future of all work), the most valuable skills will be the ones that are uniquely human, that computers cannot quite figure out — yet.
  • Work offline is a good setting to know about as well as linking within a doc.

    tags: google gafe Google Drive google docs Google_Drive

    • Google Drive has an “offline” mode that lets you create, view, or edit documents in these situations.
    • A little known feature of Google Drive is its web clipboard, which lets you copy and paste data across Docs, Sheets, and Slides. Unlike your operating system’s clipboard, it can hold multiple items at once, and because it’s associated with your Google account, its contents are accessible across all your devices.
  • WeVideo is a web-based video editing platform whereby students can share videos with teachers. What this means is that teachers can monitor students' progress while they are working on a video. However, it is not like Google Docs where students can collaborate with one another in real time. Still, students can do work on video together, just at separate times.

    tags: video video editing collaboration tech tools technology

  • Tangible ideas for how to use Google Forms to check in with students about their social-emotional wellbeing.

    tags: forms SEL social-emotional check-in

  • How competitive high schools are crushing students souls.

    tags: stress high school pressure

Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.

Thursday, March 26, 2015

Educational Resources & Tech Tools 03/27/2015

  • This article describes the merits of formative assessment and offers over 50 suggestions for such assessments.

    tags: formative assessment differentiation assessment understanding

    • What strategy can double student learning gains? According to 250 empirical studies, the answer is formative assessment, defined by Bill Younglove as "the frequent, interactive checking of student progress and understanding in order to identify learning needs and adjust teaching appropriately."
    • Alternative formative assessment (AFA) strategies can be as simple (and important) as checking the oil in your car -- hence the name "dipsticks." They're especially effective when students are given tactical feedback, immediately followed by time to practice the skill.
    • Pre-planning methodical observations allow instructors to efficiently and effectively intervene when it counts most -- the instant students start down the wrong path
    • New to Alternative Formative Assessment? Start Slow

        

    • having learners use their own vernacular to articulate why they are stuck can be profoundly useful for identifying where to target support.

        

    • The biggest benefit of integrating AFAs into your practice is that students will internalize the habit of monitoring their understanding and adjusting accordingly.
  • Another take on parenting and punishment

    tags: parenting punishment consequences

    • Punishment will be considered to be any artificially created   consequence for a given behavior.
    • Any time that one attempts to change a child's behavior the child will   resist.
    • Add punishment and you will insure more resistance to change.)
    • When a parent resorts to   punishment both the parent and the child begin to pay attention to the   punishment
    • the child is not engaged in   creating a new thought process that will bring about better decisions and   outcomes next time.
    • A child sent to his/her room will   seldom or never think about how to behave properly but rather will think   about how unfair his/her parents are or some equally negative idea.
    • It becomes a game of   not getting caught.
    • Punishment traps the "punisher" into maintaining the   punishment schedule. "You made the rules, now you must enforce them."
    • Punishment does not teach accountability.
    • As parents we need   to point out the negative consequences inherent in their negative   behavior, we do not need to create new ones.
    • We can serve as a big help to   our children if we help them foresee potential problems and the natural   consequences of some of their possible decisions.
    • The error comes when we think that the punishment has taught the child   what to do in the next situation.
    • It has taught the kid NOT to do   something… but it has not taught them what to do! That is our job as   parents… teach them what to do and how to decide to do it!
  • This book excerpt puts an interesting spin on punishing children.

    tags: parenting punishment consequences

    • Punishment proved to be counterproductive regardless of whether  the parents were using it to stop aggression, excessive dependence,  bed-wetting, or something else.  The researchers consistently found that  punishment was “ineffectual over the long term as a technique for eliminating  the kind of behavior toward which it is directed.”
    • parents who “punish[ed] rule-breaking behavior in  their children at home often had children who demonstrated higher levels of  rule-breaking when away from home.”[3]
    • Hitting children clearly  “teaches them a lesson” – and the lesson is that you can get your way with  people who are weaker than you are by hurting them. 
    • Announcing how we plan to punish children (“Remember:   if you do x, then I’ll do y to you”) may salve our  conscience because we gave them fair warning, but all we’ve really done is  threaten them.
    • This communicates a message of distrust (“I don’t  think you’ll do the right thing without the fear of punishment”), leads kids  to think of themselves as complying for extrinsic reasons, and emphasizes  their powerlessness.
    • Sometimes parents are advised to use a time-out instead  of spanking their kids -- as though these were the only two options  available.  The reality, as we saw in an earlier chapter, is that both of  these tactics are punitive.  They differ only with respect to whether  children will be made to suffer by physical or emotional means. 
    • “When you stand by and let bad things happen, your  child experiences the twin disappointments that something went wrong and you  did not seem to care enough about her to lift a finger to help prevent the  mishap.  The ‘natural consequences’ approach is really a form of punishment.”[7]

Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.

Wednesday, March 25, 2015

Educational Resources & Tech Tools 03/26/2015

Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.

Monday, March 23, 2015

Educational Resources & Tech Tools 03/24/2015

Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.

Wednesday, March 18, 2015

Educational Resources & Tech Tools 03/19/2015

Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.

Monday, March 16, 2015

Educational Resources & Tech Tools 03/17/2015

Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.

Saturday, March 7, 2015

Monday, March 2, 2015

Educational Resources & Tech Tools 03/03/2015

Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.