teachers

Resources from “The Science of Learning” — from deansforimpact.org

Excerpt:

The Science of Learning summarizes existing cognitive-science research on how students learn, and connects it to practical implications for teaching. The report is a resource for teacher-educators, new teachers, and anyone in the education profession who is interested in how learning takes place.

Deans for Impact believes all teacher-candidates should know the cognitive-science principles explored in The Science of Learning. And all educators, including new teachers, should be able to connect those principles to their practical implications for the classroom.

One of those resources is:

Also see:

There are six major takeaways from our first administration of our Learning by Scientific Design assessment:

In general, future teachers are unfamiliar with basic principles of learning science – and they struggle to connect these principles to practice.
Encouragingly, future teachers recognize the critical role that background knowledge plays in learning.
Future teachers struggle to identify effective forms of practice – and they appear to conflate student engagement with learning.
For the most part, teacher-candidates hold beliefs about teaching and learning that align to principles of learning science –- but there are clear areas for improvement.
Teacher-candidate understanding of learning science does not vary based on key categories we might expect.
Teacher-educators in the LbSD Network do better at identifying learning-science principles in practice than just the principles in the abstract.

Five Tips for Launching an Online Writing Group [Rouech, VanDeuesen, Hoffman, & Majorana]

On 10/01/2021, in adjunct faculty, colleges, community colleges, faculty/staff, higher education, Michigan, professional development, teachers, teaching & learning, teaching online, Uncategorized, United States, universities, writing, by Daniel Christian

Five Tips for Launching an Online Writing Group — from scholarlyteacher.com by Kristina Rouech, Betsy VanDeuesen, Holly Hoffman, & Jennifer Majorana — who are all from Central Michigan University

Excerpt:

Making time for writing can be difficult at any stage of your career. Pushing writing aside for grading, lesson planning, meeting with students, and committee work is too easy. However, writing is a necessary part of our careers and has the added benefit of helping us stay current with our practice and knowledge in our field. Lee and Boud (2003) stress that groups should focus on developing peer relationships and writing identity, increasing productivity, and sharing practical writing. Online writing groups can help us accomplish this. With the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic, working online has become a necessity, but it can take time to figure out what works best for you and your writing colleagues. We recommend five tips to help you establish an online writing group that is productive and enjoyable for all participants.

Best Wireless Keyboard and Mouse for Teachers 2021 [Edwards]

On 10/01/2021, in Apple, higher education, IT in HE, K-12 related, law schools, learning ecosystem, teachers, teaching online, tools, vendors, by Daniel Christian

Best Wireless Keyboard and Mouse for Teachers 2021 — from techlearning.com by Luke Edwards
The best wireless keyboard and mouse for teachers can give freedom to move without losing ease of input

The following don’t focus much on Apple’s products, but you can also see:

The Best Wireless Mouse — from nytimes.com by Kimber Streams and Justin Krajeski | Updated September 7, 2021
The Best Ergonomic Keyboard — from nytimes.com by Melanie Pinola
The Best Bluetooth and Wireless Keyboards — from nytimes.com by Kimber Streams

This article is for us IDs, trainers, teachers, faculty members, & teams who are working on creating online-based learning…

On 09/28/2021, in adjunct faculty, collaboration, colleges, communities of practice, community colleges, content development, aggregation, repositories, corporate universities / corporate training, Daniel S. Christian, digital learning, distance education, faculty/staff, higher education, instructional design, K-12 related, law schools, learning, learning ecosystem, Learning Experience Design, Learning from the Living [Class] Room, learning theories, online learning, online tutoring, participation, pedagogy, productivity / tips and tricks, remote teaching and learning, student teaching/teacher education, student-related, teachers, teaching & learning, teaching online, by Daniel Christian

From DSC:
For IDs, trainers, teachers, faculty members, & teams who are working on creating and delivering online-based learning……the following article is a good one for us to check out and reflect upon:

Most Online Courses Are a Waste of Your Time — Here’s How You Know — from medium.com by Eva Keiffenheim
A quick guide that helps you find the worthy ones.

Excerpts:

Not all learning investments are created equal. People who’ve excelled at their craft are often not the best teachers. Likewise, creators who write the best sales copy don’t offer the most value.

Here’s precisely how you can spot bad online courses so that you won’t waste your time and money.

…

Feynman – Don’t lecture and Feynman Technique [Clark]

On 09/28/2021, in active learning, adjunct faculty, education, Europe, faculty/staff, higher education, learning, learning ecosystem, Learning Experience Design, learning theories, memory, pedagogy, physics, teachers, teaching & learning, UK, by Daniel Christian

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

Excerpt from the Feynman Technique section

Write down everything you think you know about the topic from the top of your head
Teach it to someone much younger
Identify the gaps and fill them out
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.

Three resources for those interested in home-schooling

On 09/28/2021, in education, education reform, face-to-face, faith, homeschooling/homeschoolers, K-12 related, neurodivergent/special needs, policy, student-related, teachers, technologies for your home, United States, user experience (UX), youth, by Daniel Christian

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.

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…?

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

On 09/24/2021, in digital audio, digital photography, digital storytelling, digital video, drama/theater, ideas, instructional design, K-12 related, learning, Learning Experience Design, media/film, multimedia, pedagogy, student teaching/teacher education, student-related, teachers, teaching & learning, United States, by Daniel Christian

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 [Noonoo]

On 09/16/2021, in 21st century, 24x7x365 access, A/V -- audio/visual, change, cloud-based computing / apps / other cloud-related, collaboration, colleges, communities of practice, community colleges, corporate universities / corporate training, distance education, education technology, educational games / serious games, future, future of higher education, game-changing environment, higher education, human-computer interaction (HCI), ideas, innovation, instructional design, interaction design, interactivity, internet, K-12 related, law schools, learning, learning ecosystem, Learning Experience Design, Learning from the Living [Class] Room, learning hubs & pods & microschooling, learning preferences, learning spaces, multimedia, online learning, online media, online tutoring, platforms, play, programming, remote teaching and learning, teachers, teaching & learning, teaching online, technologies for your home, tools, training / L&D, trends, TVs, United States, universities, vendors, videoconferencing, youth, by Daniel Christian

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.’”

Check out “The Learning Scientists Podcast”

On 09/15/2021, in accessibility / UDL, active learning, adjunct faculty, adult learning, assessment, blended learning, colleges, community colleges, content development, aggregation, repositories, corporate universities / corporate training, digital learning, education technology, elearning, face-to-face, faculty/staff, flipping -- inverted learning, formal learning, higher education, homeschooling/homeschoolers, hybrid learning, ideas, instructional design, K-12 related, law schools, learning, learning ecosystem, Learning Experience Design, Learning from the Living [Class] Room, learning hubs & pods & microschooling, learning preferences, learning spaces, learning theories, library / librarians, memory, metacognition / metacognitive skills, online learning, pedagogy, podcasting, productivity / tips and tricks, professional development, student teaching/teacher education, student-related, teachers, teaching & learning, teaching online, universities, vision/possibilities, by Daniel Christian

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

On 09/13/2021, in education, funding / grants, K-12 related, learning, learning ecosystem, parents/guardians, teachers, teaching & learning, United States, by Daniel Christian

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 [educatorstechnology.com]

On 09/12/2021, in art, digital learning, education technology, engagement / engaging students, history, homeschooling/homeschoolers, K-12 related, legislatures / government / legal, society, sociology, teachers, United States, vendors, youth, by Daniel Christian

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 [Byrd]

On 09/08/2021, in attention, education, education reform, homeschooling/homeschoolers, ideas, K-12 related, learning, Learning Experience Design, learning preferences, more voice more choice more control, motivation, parents/guardians, participation, student teaching/teacher education, teachers, teaching & learning, by Daniel Christian

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

Google Earth Lesson Plan [Smith Budhai]

On 09/08/2021, in Africa, Asia, attention, Australia, Canada, content development, aggregation, repositories, creativity, digital learning, education, education technology, engagement / engaging students, Europe, experimentation, geography / geology, global / globalization, Google, India, interaction design, interactivity, K-12 related, learning, learning ecosystem, Learning Experience Design, Learning from the Living [Class] Room, Michigan, multimedia, participation, presentations, productivity / tips and tricks, remote teaching and learning, student teaching/teacher education, student-related, teachers, teaching & learning, teaching online, tools, UK, United States, youth, by Daniel Christian

Google Earth Lesson Plan — from techlearning.com by Stephanie Smith Budhai

Excerpt:

The 3D interactive online exploration platform Google Earth provides a pathway to endless learning adventures around the globe. For an overview of Google Earth and a breakdown of its unique features, check out How to Use Google Earth for Teaching.

Learning Ecosystems

Five Tips for Launching an Online Writing Group [Rouech, VanDeuesen, Hoffman, & Majorana]

Feynman – Don’t lecture and Feynman Technique [Clark]

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