Best Document Cameras for Teachers — from echlearning.com by Luke Edwards
Get the ultimate document camera for classroom use and beyond with this guide
Companies are key to solving the digital skills gap — from zdnet.com by Vala Afshar
The digital skills gap is becoming a digital skills crisis. An innovation expert discusses the root cause of what is driving the digital skills shortage and how can companies contribute to closing the gap.
Excerpts (emphasis DSC):
Vala Afshar: When we talk about the digital skills gap, what do we really mean?
Simon Mulcahy: Fundamentally, it’s an issue of supply and demand: a mismatch between the need for a digitally savvy workforce and the availability of workers trained in those skills. Every organization — whether a bank, healthcare company or retailer — is becoming a digital organization. Core digital skills aren’t the purview of a single department but increasingly hard-wired into nearly every job on the planet.
On the flip side, there’s a massive shortage in the skills needed to operate and lead in a digital-first environment. More importantly, there’s no mechanism in place to fix it.
…
VA: What can be done to address this growing gap, and what role should companies play?
SM: We need to revamp the way we deliver education. Of course, we need to build a foundation early on, but there are much better ways to equip people than through exams that don’t evolve to match society’s needs or degrees that force young people into onerous debt.
Instead, we should think of ourselves as lifelong learners. In support of that, we need just-in-time training that’s integrated into our working experience and relevant to wherever we are on our career journey. We need education that’s widely available, simple to access and affordable. It has to be easy to upskill or gain the knowledge we need to divert onto a different path. We also need education to be a lot more personal, matching what an individual needs in the moment.
Better Questions in the Classroom Lead Students to Think Harder—and Learn Deeper — from edsurge.com by Staci Bradbury and Rebekah Berlin
Excerpt:
The takeaway here is that teachers should ask questions and design tasks that require students to engage in effortful thinking. This “teacher action,” as we like to call it, is one of the ways in which Deans for Impact has operationalized the vast body of research about how people learn in a way that teachers can use.
Also see:
Before providing evidence to support that claim, a quick recap of our organizational journey. Two years ago, we launched the Learning by Scientific Design (LbSD) Network to begin the vital—albeit challenging—work of redesigning how teachers are prepared. This effort is informed by principles of learning science and taking place in what is now a network of 10 educator-preparation programs across the country. More than 70 faculty are working with us to change the arc of experiences that teacher-candidates receive as they prepare to become teachers.
Potential unfulfilled: COVID-19, the rapid adoption of online learning, and what could be unlocked this year — from christenseninstitute.org by Thomas Arnett
Excerpt:
The foundational tenets of conventional instruction hinge on uniformity and compliance. Schools and classrooms, by and large, need students to conform to a common set of requirements in order for cohort-based learning to work. Unfortunately, nearly all students struggle to one degree or another to fit conventional instruction’s norms.
For example, conventional instruction requires students to show up to school ready to learn at times dictated by the school schedule, but for some students, life gets in the way. Conventional instruction moves all students through content at a uniform pace, but not all students master content in the time allotted. And conventional instruction often obliges students to sit and work or sit and listen for large portions of the day, yet some students struggle to sit quietly for extended periods of time. Fortunately, online learning offers the ability to replace many of these systemic rigidities with greater adaptability to students’ needs.
From DSC:
The above excerpt brings the image (below) back to my mind. The image represents our educational systems’ ways of never stopping or slowing down for anyone. They leave the station at such and such a time and then they move at a very face pace for everyone. There’s no stopping them — regardless of whether a student has mastered the content or not.
From DSC:
One of our daughters — who just graduated from college with a degree in Early Education — told me about a fun tool for classroom management. It’s called ClassroomScreen.com. I just thought I’d pass it along in case you want to try it out!
“Support your class activities, stimulate engagement and help your students get to work by using the intuitive tools of Classroomscreen.”
She also mentioned:
Technology Made Special Education Parents Better Advocates During the Pandemic — from edsurge.com by Nadia Tamez-Robledo
Excerpt:
Those are lessons that should stay in place long after our current era of remote learning, says research analyst Lane McKittrick, who focuses on special education and families at the Center on Reinventing Public Education. She recently co-authored a report on how charter schools effectively supported students with disabilities during the pandemic and is blogging about the topic.
McKittrick’s disappointment didn’t just come from her role as a researcher. She’s also a mom to four children, three of whom are deafblind.
The schools that most successfully served their special education groups were those that prioritized communication and learning about families’ needs, McKittrick found in her own analysis.
Nalukai Academy: Harvesting Hawai’i’s Next Generation of Leaders — from gettingsmart.com by Ashley Ranan
Excerpt:
Nalukai’s program curriculum includes 5 areas of interest:
Also see:
