Reimagining Education: What to Keep/What to Ditch — from techlearning.com by Matthew X. Joseph
When reimagining education, the focus needs to be on finding and keeping the best learning practices

 We have a unique opportunity to look at programmatic and philosophical shifts to promote energetic and curious learners. 

 

New Research: Flipped Classrooms Improve Student Academics and Satisfaction — from techlearning.com by Erik Ofgang
A new analysis of more than 317 studies found flipped classrooms to be tremendously successful although a partially flipped classroom might be best of all.

Excerpt:

In a meta analysis recently published in the Review of Educational Research, Bredow and her co-authors examined 317 high-quality studies with a combined sample size of  51,437 college students in which flipped classes were compared to traditional lecture classes taught by the same instructors. They found significant advantages for flipped versus traditional lecture in terms of academics, interpersonal outcomes, and student satisfaction.

But there were also some surprises in where and when flipped classrooms worked.

From DSC:
I love the idea of the flipped classroom due to its powerful ability to turn over more choice and more control to the students. They have much more control over the pacing of the delivery of content.

 

Reading Wikipedia in the Classroom is the Wikimedia Foundation’s flagship teacher training program, helping both educators and students to develop vital media and information literacy skills for the 21st century, including:

  • Understanding how information is produced
  • How to access and evaluate content online
  • How to understand biases and knowledge gaps in the information they consume

 

 

Executive Function: What Is It, Why Does It Matter, and How Can You Support Building This Skill? — from blog.edmentum.com by Madison Michell

Excerpt:

What is executive function?
Executive function (EF) skills are the mental processes that enable us to plan, focus attention, remember instructions, and manage multiple tasks successfully. In simpler terms, executive function skills are the air traffic control system of the brain. They help us filter distraction, prioritize tasks, set and achieve goals, and control impulses.

Executive function consists of three distinct, but related, dimensions, including…

Along these lines, also see:

 

From DSC:
While checking out an edition of innovation & tech today, the following sites caught me eye.

LearnWorlds looks intriguing to me. It will be interesting to see how teachers, professors, trainers, instructional designers, artists, coaches, and more make their living in the future. I’m pulse-checking the area of learning platforms and posting items re: it so that we can stay informed on these trends.

Learn Worlds dot com -- create and sell online courses from your own website

Learn Worlds dot com -- create and sell online courses from your own website

Also from LearnWorlds:

 


Also see:

Thinkific’s powerful, all-in-one platform makes it easy to share your knowledge, grow your audience, and scale the business you already love.

thinkific.com -- an online learning platform

 

Lights, Camera, Action! 5 Ideas for Student-Created Video Assignments — from barbihoneycutt.com by Barbi Honeycutt, Ph.D.

Excerpt:

Here are 5 ideas for student-created videos. I hope these ideas inspire you to mix up your assignments and assessments to increase student engagement and improve learning.

Judith [Dutill] mentioned that students’ knowledge of and comfort with communicating by video is a 21st century skill that we need to prepare them for.

 

HyFlex Learning from an Undergraduate Student’s Perspective: Positives and Pitfalls — from hyflexlearning.org by Ashley Peterson

Excerpt:

HyFlex learning: the learning method none of us expected, nor was quite ready for. On March 12, 2020, my school, the University of St. Thomas, announced that we would be transitioning to online learning for a few weeks – maybe even longer. That following fall semester was when HyFlex learning kicked into high gear, giving us students control over choosing the learning modality that worked for our needs. Though HyFlex learning came as a surprise, sometimes the least expected things are the most worthwhile. With over a year of online/HyFlex learning under my belt, I am now reflecting on the positives and the pitfalls of the time spent inside and outside the classroom as a college student.

Also see:

 

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.

K-12 education in America is a like a quickly moving train that stops for no one.

 

A LIFETIME OF LEARNING — from continuum.uw.edu

Excerpts:

The 60-year curriculum is the modern approach to a lifetime of learning. Getting a degree, getting a job and never setting foot in a classroom again are not today’s reality.

A discussion paper from the McKinsey Global Institute predicts that in the next 10 to 15 years, the need for new tech skills will accelerate. We will also need people who will develop, innovate and adapt those technologies. The paper asserts that, right now, 80% of the workforce doesn’t have the skills for most of the jobs that will be available in the next five to 10 years.

The 60-year curriculum. Lifetime learning is now a requirement.

From DSC:
It would be good to integrate more vocational types of pathways/items in here as well.

 
 

New accessibility features for students and teachers using Chromebooks — from educatorstechnology.com

Excerpt:

After the new Google Meet updates, Google introduced new features in Chromebooks, ones that will definitely enhance the overall usability and accessibility of the device. Starting with the new PIN logins’ feature for education users, students, teachers, and educators will now be able to log in to their assigned devices using a six digit pin code. This new feature will be standard on all new Chromebooks.
Students with special needs will particularly benefit from the introduction of new accessibility features. There is the novel Live Caption functionality which allows students to caption videos. There is also the Switch Access feature which allows users to control their cursor either using the built-in keyboard or through connecting an external USB or Bluetooth.

 

 

Are smaller class sizes without the pitfalls possible? Pandemic pods make the case — from crpe.org by Ashley Jochim and Travis Pillow

Excerpt:

Pandemic pods were borne by necessity as families faced urgent needs for childcare and remote learning support. But they also offer fresh solutions to an age-old education problem: how to dramatically lower class sizes without diluting teacher quality and falling into traps that have snared traditional class size reduction efforts.

By leveraging pandemic innovations in student support, school systems recovering from the COVID-19 crisis may be able to recreate the high level of individual attention students saw in successful pandemic pods.

As one pod educator told us: “This is probably the most professionally satisfied I’ve been in my entire career. . . . Being able to be one-on-one and form relationships with kids. I can tell you every single one of their strengths, I can tell you their weaknesses. . . . I’ve never been able to do that before in my life, except with my own child, and that’s super powerful.” 

From DSC:
I really appreciated this part too: “Learning pods brought new adults—including families and community-based organizations who hosted pods—into the process of supporting student learning.” It’s even more of a community-based effort…a new meaning to the use of teams.  🙂 

 
 
 
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