Educational Resources & Tech Tools 01/29/2015

• (Rethinking) Makerspaces — @joycevalenza NeverEndingSearch
  How to think about making especially in terms of a library.
  tags: makerspace joycevalenza makerspaces maker makered maker movement
  • A Makerspace is not a one-size-fits-all kind of space.
  • What are teachers already doing? What is already there, and how can we add to and augment it?
  • Makerspaces in schools should connect to student’s authentic interests, or the experiences children have had.
  • When students have to spend all their time fulfilling an external agenda, they don’t have a chance to learn how to create their own agenda. Teaching kids only what adults think they need to know can take up all the time kids need to explore what it is that they care about.
  • But in the process of following their own interests, they’re going to develop a lot of other skills.
  • School does some things well, but what I love about the library is that when I enter, I set the agenda.
  • I am excited about Making in schools — it can be really great.  But if the agenda for what needs to be Made is coming from outside the Maker, then that could be problematic.
• LINKS - La Cucina Matematica
  tags: math
• Printable Link Sheet - Google Docs
  Lots of great math resources.
  tags: math resources math
• Printable Link Sheet - Google Docs
  Lots of math resources here.
  tags: math
• What's Worth Learning in School? | Harvard Graduate School of Education
  tags: balance learning teaching
  • Educators, Perkins says, need to embrace these same insights. They need to start asking themselves what he considers to be one of the most important questions in education: What's worth learning in school?
  • These days, he says we teach a lot that isn’t going to matter, in a significant way, in students’ lives. There’s also much we aren’t teaching that would be a better return on investment. As a result, as educators, “we have a somewhat quiet crisis of content,” Perkins writes, “quiet not for utter lack of voices but because other concerns in education tend to muffle them.” These other concerns are what he calls rival learning agendas: information, achievement, and expertise.
  • The information in textbooks is not necessarily what you need or would like to have at your fingertips.” Instead, even though most people would say that education should prepare you for life, much of what is offered in schools doesn’t work in that direction, Perkins says. Educators are “fixated” on building up students’ reservoirs of knowledge, often because we default to what has always been done.
  • “Conventional curriculum is chained to the bicycle rack,” he says. “It sits solidly in the minds of parents: ‘I learned that. Why aren’t my children learning it?’
  • Curriculum suffers from something of a crowded garage effect: It generally seems safer and easier to keep the old bicycle around than to throw it out.”
  • Just as educators are pushing students to build a huge reservoir of knowledge, they are also focused on having students master material, sometimes at the expense of relevance.
  • Unfortunately, if someone questions whether this expertise serves students well and instead suggests more life-relevant topics, Perkins says the common reaction is: “We’re sacrificing rigor!”
  • Instead of building during the first 12 years of schooling toward expertise in an advanced topic like calculus that hardly ever comes up in our lives, Perkins says students can instead become “expert amateurs” in something like statistics — a rigorous topic that is also used in daily life. In fact, expert amateurism works great, he says, in most of what we do in our lives
  • There’s no list of 1,000 things we must know or teach. Perkins says there would be no way to create a definitive list because there are lots of things worth learning at any given time or for a specialized career or even simply because we enjoy learning.
  • “The fixation on the heap of information in the textbooks is itself part of the problem because the world we are educating learners for is something of a moving target,” he says.
  • With high-stakes testing, he says, there’s a fixation on “summative” versus “formative” assessment — evaluating students’ mastery of material with exams and final projects (achievements) versus providing ongoing feedback that can improve learning.
  • Perkins says he’s not surprised that so many people have trouble naming things they learned early on that still have meaning today or that disengaged students are raising their hands, asking why they need to know something.
• Main Findings | Pew Research Center's Internet & American Life Project
  Teens and Technology 2013 Report
  tags: media use screen time report pew internet
• Zero to Eight: Children's Media Use in America 2013 | Common Sense Media
  tags: media use screen time report common sense technology

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

Parenting in the Digital Age

Two weeks ago, our school invited Catherine Steiner-Adair, author of The Big Disconnect, to speak to our community about "protecting childhood and family relationship in the digital age".  As a new mom, I didn't feel like I needed to start worrying about online safety just yet; after all, my son is only 15 months old.  Nevertheless, I was surprised to learn that there are steps I should be taking now that will aid in his development with regard to technology.  To be specific, the American Academy of Pediatrics recommends that children between the ages of 0-2 have no screen time, while children from 3-5 have very limited exposure to screens.  That seems easy enough, but screens are so pervasive in our lives that trying to limit exposure to them can become a game of hide and seek with one's cell phone.  And as we work hard to limit our infants' and toddlers' exposure to screens, what are we doing to help older children?  Do we even know how to help them find balance, focus and self-confidence in this digital age?  Perhaps start with this.

Recently, the Huffington Post ran an article entitled, Here's What A Constantly Plugged-In Life Is Doing To Kids' Bodies.  The article details the ways in which media affect children.  But rather than leaving parents feeling hopeless, it offers tangible solutions to each of the problems it mentions.   Moreover, it's embedded with links to research on this topic.  Still, one article is not enough to help our children navigate the tricky waters of screens and social media.  So where to turn?  Consider these options.  First, subscribe to sites like Common Sense Media and Edutopia.  Both offer parents great advice from experts in the fields of technology and education, and each has sections dedicated specifically to parenting and families.  Second, familiarize yourself with the technology your children use.  Chances are they aren't on Twitter and they probably just think of Facebook as something adults like.  But Instagram, yeah, they love Instagram!  Want an inside perspective on this, click here and see what it's doing to kids lives.  Finally, consider modeling the behavior your wish to see in your children.  If you want them to put down their phones, make sure you are doing the same!

Common Sense Media Makes Sense

If you haven't perused Common Sense Media's site yet, take a few minutes to do so.  As a parent and educator, I am blown away by the resources they provide to their audience.  Their "Best of . . ." lists provide age appropriate recommendations for games, movie, apps, websites, books and more.   The corresponding blog, Making Sense: Parenting, Media and Everything in Between also offers a plethora of timely articles on newsworthy items.  And for educators looking to incorporate digital citizenship lessons into their curriculum, there is a wonderful scope and sequence with accompanying lesson plans.  Take a look!