Feynman – Don’t lecture and Feynman Technique — from donaldclarkplanb.blogspot.com by Donald Clark

Excerpt from the Feynman Technique section

  1. Write down everything you think you know about the topic from the top of your head
  2. Teach it to someone much younger
  3. Identify the gaps and fill them out
  4. Simplify, clarify and use analogies

Learning this way is iterative, as you must go back to sources to fill in any gaps uncovered by your attempts to recall what you think you know. The act of writing, teaching, simplification and analogising, is a form of retrieval practice that increases understanding and retention.

Also see:

The Feynman Technique Can Help You Remember Everything You Read — from medium.com by Eva Keiffenheim
How to use this simple principle for you.

Excerpts:

Social climber Dale Carnegie used to say knowledge isn’t power until it’s applied. And to apply what you read, you must first remember what you learned.

Nobel Prize-winning physicist Richard Feynman (1918–1988) was an expert for remembering what he learned.

Most people confuse consumption with learning. They think reading, watching, or hearing information will make the information stick with them.

Unless you’ve got a photographic memory, no idea could be further from the truth.

Teaching is the most effective way to embed information in your mind. Plus, it’s an easy way to check whether you’ve remembered what you read. Because before you teach, you have to take several steps: filter relevant information, organize this information, and articulate them using your own vocabulary.

 

Holt (1923 – 85) homeschooling and unschooling — from donaldclarkplanb.blogspot.com by Donald Clark

Excerpt:

John Holt graduated from Yale in 1943 but signed up to be a submariner in WW2. On discharge, he eventually became a teacher, in various schools. This led to a disillusionment with the US education system so deep that he became an advocate for homeschooling and unschooling. This emerged from his belief that education was so deeply embedded, structurally and culturally, that it was unreformable. Neither did he believe that alternative schools were the answer. He retains his reputation as the founding father of homeschooling.

National Home Education Research Institute (NHERI)

Excerpt:

NHERI is the National Home Education Research Institute. NHERI conducts and collects research about homeschooling (home-based education, home schooling), and publishes the research journal called the Home School Researcher. The institute has hundreds of research works documented and catalogued on home schooling, many of which were done by NHERI. Simply put, NHERI specializes in homeschool research, facts, statistics, scholarly articles, and information.

For those interested in home-schooling -- NHERI

Homeschooling – home education or home-based education – has grown from nearly extinct in the United States in the 1970s to just over 2 million school-age students. NHERI focuses on homeschooling research, homeschool facts, homeschool fast facts, and in-depth scholarly articles.

The Home School Legal Defense Association

 

Discovery Education Collaborates with AWS to Enhance Recommendation Engine — from discoveryeducation.com

Excerpt:

SILVER SPRING, MD [On Monday,?September 27, 2021] — Discovery Education—a worldwide edtech leader supporting learning wherever it takes place — announced that it has enhanced its K-12 learning platform with Amazon Web Services (AWS) machine learning capabilities. The pioneering use of machine learning within the Discovery Education platform helps educators spend less time searching for digital resources and more time teaching.

Several months of planning and deep collaboration with AWS enabled Discovery Education to innovatively integrate Amazon Personalize technology into the “Just For You” area of its K-12 platform. The “Just For You” row connects educators to a unique, personalized set of resources based on the grade level taught, preferences, and assets used in the past.

“For some time, educators have desired more resources to help personalize teaching and learning. ML technology is already being used to curate our entertainment experiences, help with workforce productivity, and more, and it’s exciting to see this innovation is being integrated into classrooms,” said Alec Chalmers, Director, EdTech and GovTech Markets at AWS.

From DSC:
It looks like Amazon continues to make inroads into the education space. Team up this type of recommendation engine with an AI that’s pulling the latest skills that are needed for — and embedded within — job descriptions and you have a learning powerhouse. 

Disruption ahead…?

 

Learning from the living class room
Also see:

  • How Machine Learning Is Having an Impact on Education — from techlearning.com by Erik Ofgang
    Discovery Education has partnered with Amazon Web Services to enhance its platform with machine learning. It’s one of many ways machine learning is being used in K-12 today.
 

Differentiation Technique: Embed A Classic — from byrdseed.com by Ian Byrd

Excerpt:

Possibly my #1, most favorite way to increase the interest in a lesson is to simply remove the built-in examples in a lesson and replace them with some kind of classic.

Wait, What’s A “Classic”?
A classic may immediately bring to mind old works: Shakespeare, Beethoven, and Da Vinci. And those are indeed important! Use them.

But I’d say that The Wizard of Oz is a classic. Lord of the Rings is a classic. Hokusai’s painting of The Great Wave is a classic. The Beach Boys are a classic!

Classics are things that are culturally important. They could be stories, films, songs, paintings, photos, and so on. Classics are referenced constantly in daily conversation as well as in other creative works.

 
 

What Will Online Learning Look Like in 10 Years? Zoom Has Some Ideas — from edsurge.com by Stephen Noonoo

Excerpt:

This week at Zoom’s annual conference, Zoomtopia, a trio of education-focused Zoom employees (er, Zoomers?) speculated wildly about what hybrid Zoom learning might look like 10 years from now, given the warp speed advances in artificial intelligence and machine learning expected. Below are highlights of their grandiose, if sometimes vague, vision for the future of learning on Zoom.

Zoom very much sees itself as one day innovating on personalized learning in a substantial way, although beyond breakout rooms and instant translation services, they have few concrete ideas in mind. Mostly, the company says it will be working to add more choices to how teachers can present materials and how students can display mastery to teachers in realtime. They’re bullish on Kahoot-like gamification features and new ways of assessing students, too.

Also see:

An Eighth Grader Was Tired of Being Late to Zoom School. So He Made an App for That. — from edsurge.com by Nadia Tamez-Robledo

“I could not find anything else that exists like this to automatically join meetings at the right times,” says Seth, a high school freshman based in Walnut Creek, Calif. “Reminders are just really easy to ignore. I’ll get a notification maybe five minutes before my meeting, and it’ll just sit there and not do anything. [LinkJoin] interrupts whatever you’re doing and says, ‘Join this meeting. In fact it’s already opening, so better get on it.’”

 

 
 

The STOP Award $1 Million Prize — to honor education providers that continued to perform for underserved families during Covid.

We would like to support and endorse their work in the future to provide Sustainable, Transformational and Outstanding education for students in Permissionless settings.

A $1 million cash prize will be awarded to the education provider that best demonstrates that it delivered for underserved students an outstanding and transformational education during Covid.

 

Untold provides educational video content to engage students in history learning — from educatorstechnology.com

Excerpt:

Untold is a platform that provides educational resources to engage students in history learning. The site offers a free collection of animated videos that shed light on alternative historical perspectives highlighting those stories and events that do not normally make it into the mainstream history textbooks. As they interact with these resources, students develop critical thinking skills required to help them evaluate and question the validity and authenticity of the information and news they deal with on a daily basis.

Untold materials are provided for free for teachers and students.

 

Why “Challenging” Isn’t The Right Goal — from byrdseed.com by Ian Byrd

Excerpt:

If I asked you to alphabetize the US state capitals in under 90 seconds, you’d certainly be “challenged”! But you’d also feel stressed out and frustrated.

I wish I had realized this years ago. Something can be “challenging” and also be at the very bottom of Bloom’s Taxonomy. Something can be “challenging” and even impede learning.

So here’s the word I use now when I’m planning lessons for Byrdseed.TV: interesting.

I want to “interest” students. A student who is interested will work over the weekend simply because they want to know more. An interested student will stay in from recess by choice to keep at it. An interested student is intrinsically motivated.

From DSC:
This reminds me yet again of this graphic that readers of this blog will recognize:

In the future, learning channels will offer us more choice and more control

 
 

Some psychological benefits of remote learning in k-12 sector — from by Tony Bates

Excerpt:

There have been many criticisms of the move to remote learning during the pandemic for students in schools, but there also appear to have been some unexpected benefits. This article looks at these from a psychological point of view, and how some of these benefits could be continued post-pandemic. The article lists the following benefits…

 

Top 300 Tools for Learning 2021 [Hart]

Top 300 Tools for Learning 2021 — from toptools4learning.com by Jane Hart

Excerpt:

2021 was the YEAR OF DISRUPTION! There were a substantial number of new tools nominated this year so the main list has now been extended to 300 tools to accommodate them, and each of the 3 sub-lists has been increased to 150 tools. Although the top of this year’s list is relatively stable, there is quite bit of movement of tools on the rest of the list, and the effect of the new tools has been to push other established tools down – if not off the list altogether. Further analysis of the list appears in the right-hand column of the table below.

This table shows the overall rankings as well as the rankings on the 3 sub-lists: Top 150 Tools for Personal Learning (PL150), the Top 150 Tools for Workplace Learning (WL150) and the Top 150 Tools for Education (ED150). NEW tools are shaded YELLOW, tools coming BACK on the list are shaded GREEN. The most popular context in which each tool is used is also highlighted in BLUE.  Click on a tool name to find out more about it.

 


Top 300 Tools for Learning 2021 -- from Jane Hart


 

 

10 Ways to Reuse Your Pre-Recorded Videos — from barbihoneycutt.com by Barbi Honeycutt

Excerpts:

2. CLONE YOURSELF

My friend is a 2nd grade teacher, and this year, she is back in the in-person classroom with her students. After teaching online last year, she started wondering how she could reuse all of the videos she recorded.

She came up with the idea to play clips of the videos during her in-person class time. As the video is playing, she walks around the room and helps students in real-time as they are working through the lesson.

If they are struggling, she is right there to guide them through that part of the video or lesson. She can pause the video if many students are struggling, or she can let the video play as she works individually with students who need additional help.

She said this approach gives her instant feedback (and makes it easy for a substitute teacher to use if needed). She said, “I’m not tied to the front of the room at the board. It’s literally like having two teachers!” 


4. VIDEO EXCHANGE
Do you have a video that would be helpful for a colleague to share with his/her/their students? Maybe they have a video you need to integrate into your course? Here’s the perfect time to exchange videos! It’s like a giving a virtual guest lecture!

 

Teacher Tips: Starting the Year with Station Rotation — from catlintucker.com by Caitlin Tucker

Excerpt:

In an effort to reimagine the first weeks of school, I decided to use the station rotation model to encourage my new students to interact with one another and learn about our class. I designed a collection of stations to encourage them to explore expectations for conduct, course requirements, goal setting, what it means to collaborate, etc. The results were incredible! I was able to breathe and enjoy the relaxing, student-centered atmosphere I had created. Instead of standing at the front of the room talking at them, students worked independently and collaboratively on the tasks at various stations. I was freed to circulate, facilitate, and connect with my students.

 
© 2024 | Daniel Christian