10 Ways You Can Use Podcasts in Your Course to Engage Students — from barbihoneycutt.com by Barbi Honeycutt, Ph.D.

Excerpt:

Have you used podcasts in your courses yet? If not, you might want to consider it! Podcasts can be an excellent tool to add to your lesson to enhance a message, present more in-depth perspectives, and offer a different medium for students to engage with the course content.

And, podcasts are popular! There are more than 630,000 podcasts representing a variety of topics: current issues, education, writing, research, science, leadership, politics, management, business, skill development, hobbies, etc. The list just goes on and on.

I’m almost positive there is at least one episode in one podcast somewhere you could integrate into your course. And if there isn’t, then you and your students could create one!

 

Best Restorative Justice Practices and Sites for Educators — from techlearning.com by Diana Restifo
Best practices, resources, guides, sites, and more for implementing restorative justice in schools

Excerpt:

In recent years, the conversation around school discipline has shifted from the punitive-based approach to an admittedly more complex, holistic approach known as restorative justice (RJ) or restorative practices (RP). Using carefully facilitated conversations, students, teachers, and administrators work together to solve behavior problems in schools. There may still be suspensions or expulsions—but as a last resort, not first.

The following articles, videos, guides, professional development opportunities, and research are a great starting point for educators and administrators to learn what it takes to institute restorative practices in their schools—and why it matters.

 

 

Returning to School: Why Video Is Here to Stay — from gettingsmart.com by Jessica Slusser

Excerpt:

Here are a few reasons video can be powerful and a few ways to incorporate it into your lesson plans:

  • Agency. We know some learners built a deep sense of agency while learning from home. Through video, students can tell their story, use a different format than they’ve used before to explain work and build and share their own lessons with classmates. Imagine the power of flipped student presentations.
  • Flip Your Classroom. Utilize the power of video by recording some of your direct instruction plans for learners to watch as “homework” then spending class time diving into work and building understanding.
  • Enriched Station Rotation. Create differentiated videos for each of your small group stations so students can watch a video that you created and be working on different review activities in their different stations. This also helps build a library of content you can use in the future.
  • Built in Assessment. Educators can create videos that are embedded in a Google Form that serves as a quick assessment. If a student gets the answer wrong, they’re moved into a new branch of the form that has a video to help build understanding, then when finished they go back to the original question to reassess. Students can also respond to assessment questions or submit work.
  • Better than Red Ink. What if instead of writing a learner’s grade with short feedback on their next written assignment, you could record a quick 30-second video that explains your grade and give real-time feedback that is more robust than the traditional red pen.
 

First Day of Class: 5 Edtech Tools That Can Make it More Engaging — from techlearning.com by Erik Ofgang

Excerpt:

For younger students, a great way to have students learn more about one another and let their creativity shine is to have them create an “About me” page using Book Creator. This can include a short bio and photo. Students can also add audio and video components to their page, providing an opportunity for more of their personality to shine. Ultimately, the various student’s pages can be combined into one ebook about the class.

…I find PronounceNames.com to be a life saver. The site has recordings of proper pronunciations for more than 100,000 names. 

 

20 back to school templates to save you time — from ditchthattextbook.com

Excerpt:

Back to school is an exciting time. It can also be overwhelming. Teachers have a LOT to plan: lessons, communication, organization, building community … and that just scratches the surface!

That’s where templates come in.

Templates can save us time. They give us a starting point so we can adapt them to fit our needs.Below you will find 20 useful templates for back to school.

Be sure to also check out…

 

Elaboration Strategies That Benefit Learning — from theelearningcoach.com by Connie Malamed

Excerpt:

Although retrieval practice and spaced learning may be more well-known, elaboration is an instructional strategy worth our attention. Elaboration strategies refer to the many ways of connecting prior knowledge to what someone has newly learned. This has the potential to make the new material more memorable and meaningful.

We all know that new learning requires a foundation of prior knowledge. Elaboration techniques give people opportunities to make the connections stronger. In the book Make It Stick, the authors write, “The more you can explain about the way your new learning relates to your prior knowledge, the stronger your grasp of the new learning will be, and the more connections you create that will help you remember it later.” (Listen to my conversation with one of the authors of Make It Stick.)

 

What Is Instructional Scaffolding? — from edtechreview.in by Saniya Khan

Excerpt:

Scaffolding is a bridge used to build on what the students already know to get to something they do not know. If the scaffold is properly administered, it will act as a facilitator, not an enabler” (Benson, 1997).

The process of Scaffolding is based on Lev Vygotsky’s concept of the Zone of Proximal Development (ZPD). This is the distance between what children can do by themselves and the next learning when they can be helped to achieve with competent assistance. Vygotsky said, “children who can perform their tasks at a particular cognitive level in cooperation and collaboration with others and with adults will be able to perform at a higher level. And this difference between the two levels is the child’s Zone of Proximal Development”. He defined scaffolding instruction as the “role of teachers and others in supporting the learner’s development and providing support structures to get to the next stage or level.”

 

Transforming the classroom with augmented learning — from thetechedvocate.org by Matthew Lynch

Excerpt:

Forbes documented the many ways that augmented reality (AR) has come to life in recent years. They list several award-winning apps that use AR. A few are:

  • The “Gatwick Airport Passenger” App, which helps passengers navigate the airport;
  • The “Dulux Visualizer” App, which  lets you virtually scan and paint your room any color you choose;
  • “Envisioned by the Mine” App, which lets you put 3D images of any type of accessory or furnishing in your home that Lowe’s offers;
  • “Sephora Virtual Artist”, which allows you to “put makeup on” without actually touching brush to face;
  • “Accuvein”, which doctors and nurses use to scan a patient’s vein network (it reduces escalations by 45%);
  • And, of course, there are apps like the “BIC DrawyBook App” just for fun.

But what about the classroom? Can we see a future in transforming the classroom with augmented learning?

From DSC:
Along the lines of developing creativity with edtech…

I saw another item recently about Book Creator, something that’s made this blog before. I love that type of tool because it promotes creativity, unleashes a student’s imagination, promotes their artwork and writing/storytelling and their musical or acting abilities, and it develops skills in design and developing multimedia-based artifacts. For teachers, it could be a nice project-based learning exercise. 

I asked our youngest daughter if she would like to use it…we’ll see. You can get a free account that allows you to publish up to 40 books. (Plus there is pricing for schools and districts.)

And who knows…? This type of thing might just produce the next J.K. Rowling or a J.J. Abrams.

Book Creator -- check it out

Book Creator -- check it out

Book Creator -- check it out

 

New Teachers: How to Start Your First Year With Confidence — from edutopia.org by Candice Batson
A set of strategies ranging from the simple—like organizing your desk and room every afternoon—to more complex ideas like turning your teaching philosophy into actions.

Simply put, your pedagogical creed is your core belief as an educator. Think of it as your mission statement.

What is your role as the teacher? What do you believe education should accomplish for students? What are important components in a classroom environment?

 

 

3 innovative ways to integrate Twitter in your teaching [educatorstechnology.com]

Excerpt:

Much ink has been spilled on the use of Twitter in education. A simple search in Google using the phrase ‘Twitter in Education’ returns thousands if hits. My intent in this post is go beyond regurgitating what has already been written in this regard and rather provide you with innovative ways to use Twitter in your instruction.

 

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.

 

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:

 

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.

 
 
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