Podcasts For High School Students — from teachthought.com by Dennis Lee,

Categories covered include:

  • Academic Related Podcasts
  • General and Special Interest Podcasts
  • Entrepreneurship
  • Inspirational & Motivational
 

Bridging the digital divide in online learning — from tonybates.ca by Tony Bates

Excerpt:

The problem
At the start of the pandemic, in Oakland, California, 40 miles north of Silicon Valley, only 12 percent of low-income students, and 25 percent of all students, in Oakland’s public schools had devices at home and a strong internet connection.

The outcome
Two years into the pandemic, Oakland has been able to connect 98 percent of the students in the district. As of February, the city had provided nearly 36,000 laptops and more than 11,500 hot spots to low-income public school students.

Also from Tony, see:

Getting into the online learning industry

Three years ago, I wrote a blog post called ‘So you want to be an educational technologist…’ in which gave some advice on how to get into and develop a career as an educational technologist. In that article, I noted that I didn’t have much experience to guide people going into the corporate training area, and this article by Matthew Lynch does exactly that. This article complements nicely what I wrote earlier.

 

The Re-Emergence of Competency-Based Education: What It Might Look Like and Why It’s Needed in Today’s Classrooms — from thejournal.com by Keith Look

Excerpt:

For the current or upcoming unit of instruction, identify three learning targets to be assessed. Have students show what they know through both traditional modes of assessment as well as through CBE experiences. Then, consider what the data shows:

  • For which learning targets is student competency better presented through traditional assessment? Through CBE?
    • Is that a factor of the learning target or the way in which the assessment (traditional or CBE) challenged students?
    • Based on this experience, what kinds of learning targets may lend themselves more to CBE? To traditional assessment?
  • Are there students who more effectively demonstrate competency through the CBE than the traditional assessment?
    • Why is CBE a more effective vehicle for those students?
    • Could the task itself be revised to unlock the same potential in other students?
 
 

Play-based learning in your homeschool: It’s more than just board games — from raisinglifelonglearners.com by Colleen Kessler

Excerpts:

Play-based learning doesn’t have to fit in a box!  There are many wonderful resources in the homeschool community to help you discover what works best for your family.

In addition to the various suggestions I have included in today’s episode of the podcast, you’ll find excellent recommendations from these sites, dedicated to creating out of the box approaches to learning:

In a nutshell, this means that kids learn best when they’re mentally active, engaged socially, and when they can make connections to their lives.

Also relevant/see:

Financial literacy games provide fun ways for students of all ages to learn about finances on various topics. Some websites have grade bands with interactive ways for students to explore creating a bank account, setting a budget, applying for a loan, and many others. Many of the options available include financial literacy games for the classroom.

From DSC:
Although the following resource isn’t about learning, it reminds me of the topic of “play”:

 

How a Statewide Entrepreneurship Contest Launched 3 Indianapolis High Schoolers into a Million-Dollar Business — from the74million.org by Tim Newcomb

Excerpt:

If not for a statewide pitch competition for entrepreneurial students, three Indianapolis high schoolers likely wouldn’t have started their business. And they certainly wouldn’t have seen that company, Find Ideal Applicants, earn $20,000 in early-stage investment that valued the company at $1.5 million.

State leaders “wanted to see if they could intersect students with entrepreneurship and innovation,” he says. Students learn how to see a problem as an opportunity and come up with a plan. Wettrick says the faster students understand the benefits of learning from their mistakes, the more success they will have sooner in their lives.

 

Teaching for uncertainty vs. teaching the basics — from davecormier.com by Dave Cormier

Excerpts:

The first question I asked the crowd was what they thought students were learning for…

Q1. What do you think our students are learning for? What should they be good at when they’re done school?

 
 

It’s (Past) Time to Redesign the Teaching Profession — from gettingsmart.com by Katie Kimbrell

Excerpts (emphasis DSC):

I don’t care if you don’t have kids, if your kids are grown, or if you think for some reason you’re shielded from this threat: This crisis should concern everyone. Just like when any core institution is threatened to subsist, reinvention is not just an opportunity to do better, but an imperative to survive—both for an institution, but more importantly, for our collective humanity.

Please note that this piece is not making an argument for the concept of agency teaching (ie. please don’t send me your theses on why my idea is bad), but rather to demonstrate a point about the need to rethink the teaching profession and to treat educators as humans and critical stakeholders in the way we redesign it.

Asking a critical mass of past, present, and future educators these questions is where the empathy work begins—and therein the only way we will be on the right track in designing a system that works for all the humans inside of it.

Also relevant/see:

Who is Going to Teach the Kids? — from by Cameron Paterson

Key Points:

  • There have been profound changes in the work and workload of teachers.
  • During remote learning, both teachers and students discovered a new sense of autonomy.
  • Reprioritizing the focus of work for teachers is critical to the success of schools.
 

A Conversation with Ken Robinson’s Daughter about Their New Book on Transforming Education — from betterhumans.pub by Eva Keiffenheim
Kate Robinson and Co-Author of Imagine if — Creating a Future for us All

Excerpt:

In writing the book, we highlighted ten “Manifesto Statements” that really summarize the key points the book is making.

The main themes of them are:

  • we are all born with immense creative capacities
  • our incredible powers of imagination are what separates us from the rest of life on Earth
  • Education systems are based on conformity
  • real life thrives on diversity
  • we are in the midst of two climate crises: the crisis of the Earth’s natural resources, and the crisis of our human resources
  • and no matter who you are, you are the system — if you change your behavior, you have changed the system, and when enough people commit to changing the system, we have a revolution that will change the world

According to Imagine if…, the future will be grim unless we take action to change the course where we’re heading. What actions need to be taken and what needs to be done and how? Where do we start?

The first and most important step is to embrace a richer conception of human intelligence. Like any ecosystem, our cultural ecosystems depend on a wide variety of talents, interests, and capabilities to thrive. Therefore, we must actively encourage each person to connect with and make the most of their own abilities and passions.

 

Homeschool math doesn’t have to be intimidating! — from raisinglifelonglearners.com by Colleen Kessler

Excerpt:

Finding The Right Math Program For Your Child
There are so many choices on the market. Some with manipulatives, some with thick workbooks, some on online learning platforms.

While it may seem overwhelming, its actually good news! You don’t have to worry about all of them – you only have to find the one that works for you!

That’s exactly what’s happened for my family this year with CTCMath.

CTCMath is an online program developed by a father of ten children, with twenty years teaching experience. It is a subscription math service that provides learning from Kindergarten all the way through Calculus. CTCMath specializes in providing online video tutorials that take a multi-sensory approach to learning.

 

 

The number one thing we’ve loved most about CTCMath this year is that it teaches math in short, bite sized amounts.

I LOVE the shorter lessons approach. Not only is it the best way to teach children with attention issues, but it also makes it easy for parents who struggle with math themselves!

Colleen Kessler

 

45 Next Generation Learning Tools That Kids Will Love — from ireviews.com with thanks to Alex Ward for this resource

Excerpts:

There’s a wide range of tools designed to support curriculum and help teachers and students achieve their goals. These are our top picks for school students of every age, due to their impressive functionality and simple integration into the classroom.

 


From DSC:
Below is a sample screenshot from the Elementary school resources section. They also have resources for middle schoolers and high schoolers.


45 Next Generation Learning Tools That Kids Will Love

 

Technology Trends for 2022 — from oreilly.com
What O’Reilly Learning Platform Usage Tells Us About Where the Industry Is Headed

Excerpt:

It’s been a year since our last report on the O’Reilly learning platform. Last year we cautioned against a “horse race” view of technology. That caution is worth remembering: focus on the horse race and the flashy news and you’ll miss the real stories. While new technologies may appear on the scene suddenly, the long, slow process of making things that work rarely attracts as much attention. We start with an explosion of fantastic achievements that seem like science fiction—imagine, GPT-3 can write stories!—but that burst of activity is followed by the process of putting that science fiction into production, of turning it into real products that work reliably, consistently, and fairly. AI is making that transition now; we can see it in our data. But what other transitions are in progress? What developments represent new ways of thinking, and what do those ways of thinking mean? What are the bigger changes shaping the future of software development and software architecture? This report is about those transitions.

O’Reilly Answers
We’re very excited about O’Reilly Answers, the newest product on the platform. Answers is an intelligent search that takes users directly to relevant content, whether that’s a paragraph from a book, a snippet of a video, or a block of code that answers a question. Rather than searching for an appropriate book or video and skimming through it, you can ask a specific question like “How do you flatten a list of lists in Python?” (a question I’ve asked several times). 


Also see:


 
 

Over Half of Students Surveyed See Coding Skills as Vital But Over a Third Lack Learning Access — from thejournal.com by Kristal Kuykendall

Excerpt:

A new survey by KX shows that over half of U.S. students ages 16–23 believe coding skills are as important as foreign language skills for future career prospects, yet more than a third say they lack educational access to coding programs

 
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