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The study, titled “Learning with Others: A study exploring the relationship between collaboration, personalization and equity,” is slated to be released in October by the Student-Centered Research Collaborative, which funded the research. A preliminary report, summarizing the findings, was released in August. The collaborative is primarily funded by the Nellie Mae Foundation, which is among the supporters of the Hechinger Report, and, since its formation in 2016, regularly brings together researchers and education experts to share findings and disseminate them to schools.
Four years ago, I was introduced to the work of John Hattie, which changed my vision of my role as an educator. Hattie convinced me to think of myself as a change agent who could apply the tools of Visible Learning to guide my students to succeed in math beyond their own expectations. To do this, I had to create a classroom where my students knew exactly what they were learning, how well they were doing, and where that learning would take them.
Because project based learning is an avenue to many destinations, some can be landmarked as you set out on your journey. Some horizons, however, are too open and vast for definition. There are so many possible effects of project based learning that can’t be evaluated. In the most general terms, they are the invisible experiences of learners through the projects for which there is no real gauge beyond the insights or reflections before, during and after students immerse themselves in their work, never mind the long term impact of the essential and transferable learning skills. Some of those connected aspects also include the impact of voice and choice, the development of autonomy and the ever-important fostering of self concept.
For a new study in Applied Cognitive Psychology researchers led by Aloysius Wei Lun Koh set out to test their theory that teaching improves the teacher’s learning because it compels the teacher to retrieve what they’ve previously studied. In other words, they believe the learning benefit of teaching is simply another manifestation of the well-known “testing effect” – the way that bringing to mind what we’ve previously studied leads to deeper and longer-lasting acquisition of that information than more time spent passively re-studying.
"Pick any article from the newspaper," I would say to my students. "Bring it in and we'll analyze it." This was one of my favourite - and my most effective - activities in my critical thinking classes. I never knew what the students would bring in. With each article we would have to begin afresh. I was not merely teaching critical thinking, I was modeling it with them.
Why is fun and play crucial to achieving effective learning? It’s true that learning is important, but it doesn’t have to be dead serious. Everyone who desires to learn should be open to the idea of playing. It knows no age, subject, or grade restrictions. It encompasses endless notions and possibilities because it is driven by imagination. Play belongs in our learning and certainly in our classrooms, which is where we strive for achieving effective learning.
6 years ago this week the Personalization vs. Differentiation vs. Individualization (PDI) Chart was published. Millions of educators from around the world have downloaded the PDI Chart. It has been translated in many languages and it is found in schools, classrooms, academic publications, state DOE sites, educational blogs and articles. I am excited to create and share this PDI Chart, v3 Infographic designed specifically to mark this anniversary!
Overview: This post compiles two previous blogs from hastac.org (originally published in June 2015 and October 2017) and concludes with a bibliography of scholarship on active learning (or "radical pedagogy"). The first blog post focuses on basic engaged pedagogy methods, some of which go back to the Freedom Schools, some extend as far back as Maria Montessori. Some come from the Occupy Wall Street movement, others from K-12 teachers, still others from medical school practices. All are based on the premise that simply asking people to "contribute" to a conversation (in a faculty meeting or in a classroom) seems open and fair but, as much sociological research shows, typically ends up replicating the values of the person in charge or privileges those from elite backgrounds who have been well-schooled in (often unspoken) social and cultural clues and capital. The second blog post answers the question posed to me by a friend: “But how do I teach a difficult text, such as Heidegger, using activist pedagogy?” (The good news is that Heidegger, in What Is Called Thinking?, answered this question, falling down on the side of engaged pedagogy, what he called “letting-learn.”) Why try these methods? (1) If your personal goal is equality in a world where inequality is structural and violent and pervasive, engaged learning allows you to restructure your classroom with equality at the core. (Here's the adage: You cannot counter structural inequality with good will; you need to create structures designed for equality.) You cannot structure all the rest of education or society--but you can at least start with your classroom as a place in which to model a better way. (2) Engaged learning methods work. We've known at least since Ebbinghaus's memory experiments of the 1880s that students (like all of us) forget up to 75% of the tested or "testable" content learned in a course within six days after taking a summative, high-stakes exam in a course. Active learning--peer-to-peer explanation, exchange, individual research on the topic, and methods described below--increase retention, understanding, and applicability well beyond the test.
Via Jim Lerman
The Consortium for School Networking (CoSN) released a report in February that takes a deep dive into project- and problem-based learning. The report explores how schools are using extensive projects and real-world teaching methods to increase student engagement, skills development and problem-solving techniques.
Via Nik Peachey
“Knowing” and “understanding” are related concepts, but they’re not the same. Each is a distinct mental state involving cognitive grasp: Knowing is static, referring to discrete facts, while understanding is active, describing the ability to analyze and place those facts in context to form a big picture. Without knowledge, understanding is impossible. But having knowledge doesn’t necessarily lead to understanding of a greater narrative, which is the real point of gathering information.
The word agentic is described as an individual’s power to control his or her own goals actions and destiny. It stems from the word agency, which Webster’s Dictionary defines as the capacity, condition, or state of acting or of exerting power. In the late 1980s, Stanford University Psychologist Albert Bandura began developing a theory of social cognition that he associated with self-efficacy. He later examined more specifically the role of agency and motivation, and coined the term Agentic, in which people are viewed as self-organizing, proactive, self-reflecting and self-regulated, which he calls Agentic. Agentic learning is defined by self-directed actions aimed at personal growth and development based on self-chosen goals. Within this context, students initiate actions of their own volition that drive their learning.
This book is available for download with iBooks on your Mac or iOS device. Multi-touch books can be read with iBooks on your Mac or iOS device. Books with interactive features may work best on an iOS device. iBooks on your Mac requires OS X 10.9 or later. Description The Challenge Based Learning user guide is for anyone interested in building learning communities focused on identifying Challenges and implementing thoughtful and sustainable solutions. It expands on the original Challenge Based Learning Classroom Guide and White Paper and reflects the most recent information about the framework. If you are new to Challenge Based Learning the guide provides background information, key concepts, and resources for getting started. If you are a Challenge Based Learning veteran the guide includes recent updates and expands on the information found in the original white paper and classroom guide.
The country’s government makes sure areas with low income levels and property values get good teachers too.
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FLIPPED LEARNING 1.0 VERSUS FLIPPED LEARNING 3.0 We've entered a new era of Flipped Learning. To fully understand the stark differences between the original flipped classroom model and Flipped Learning 3.0 get your free subscription to Flipped Learning Review.
That’s why he and two co-authors — Dweck and Greg Walton of Stanford — recently performed a study that suggests it might be time to change the way we think about our interests. Passions aren’t “found,” they argue. They’re developed. In a paper that is forthcoming in Psychological Science, the authors delineate the difference between the two mind-sets. One is a “fixed theory of interests” — the idea that core interests are there from birth, just waiting to be discovered — and the other is a “growth theory,” the idea that interests are something anyone can cultivate over time.
Getting faculty on board with active learning is key to improving student outcomes, and incorporating these learning strategies requires buy-in from both instructors and students.
There’s a lot of discussion going on about what personalized learning is and isn’t. While speaking with education leaders about the subject, we noticed a lot of recurring themes—even as definitions of personalized learning seemed to vary. One thing we learned for certain is that personalized learning is not the antithesis of “one size fits all.” In fact, sometimes in trying to become the antithesis of "one size fits all," we create the antithesis for personalized learning. For more on personalized learning misconceptions, listen to this podcast with mathematician Brandon Smith.
Re-post of our 2016 article from EDUCAUSE Review framing personalized learning as family of teaching practices that are intended to help reach students in the metaphorical back row.
Via Ana Cristina Pratas
Moving the classroom chairs in a circle had radical effects on the way we all looked at our learning: As I told my students, if we transported a warrior from 1,000 years ago to a present-day battlefield, he would die quickly; if we transported a surgeon from 1,000 years ago to a modern operating room, he wouldn’t know what to do; but, if we transported students and a teacher from 1,000 years ago to most contemporary classrooms, everyone would know where to sit, who was in charge, who would speak, and who would remain silent. In a circle, the teacher isn’t privileged as the single most important voice; there is no back row; instead of students and teacher staring at each other, we all become visible to each other. For me and my students, changing the physical arrangement of the classroom was only the first step.
So my advice for teachers is that next time you feel the need to convey information via a lecture, create or find a story that illustrates those concepts and tell learners that story. Matthew James Friday in his Edutopia article, Why Storytelling in the Classroom Matters describes the benefits of storytelling in the classroom: Inspires purposeful talking, and not just about the story — there are many games you can play. Raises the enthusiasm for reading texts to find stories, reread them, etc. Initiates writing because children will quickly want to write stories and tell them. Enhances the community in the room. Improves listening skills. Really engages the boys who love the acting. Is enjoyed by children from kindergarten to the end of elementary school. Gives a motivating reason for English-language learners to speak and write English. Storytelling is the most powerful way to put ideas into the world today. Stories are the creative conversion of life itself into a more powerful, clearer, more meaningful experience. They are the currency of human contact. — Robert McKee
Bloodletting to keep the "humors" in balance was a leading medical treatment from ancient Greece to the late 19th century. That's hard to believe now, in the age of robot-assisted surgery, but "doctors" trusted lancets and leeches for centuries. To Nobel laureate Carl Wieman, the college lecture is the educational equivalent of bloodletting, one long overdue for revision. "It's a very good analogy," the Stanford professor says. "You let some blood out and go away and they get well. Was it bloodletting that did it, or something else?"
Overview: This post combines two blog posts on engaged pedagogy originally published on hastac.org in June 2015 and October 2017. The first post offers classic rationales for what is called “active learning” or engaged, student-centered, or radical pedagogy. It then offers several specific methods, with details for how to make these work in your classroom, meetings, or social organizing. Some of these tactics go back to the “Freedom Schools,” some to Maria Montessori. It ends with a bibliography of useful theoretical and practical books and articles on these methods. The second post answers the question posed to me by a friend: “But how do I teach a difficult text, such as Heidegger, using activist pedagogy?” The good news is that Heidegger, in What Is Called Thinking?, answered this question, falling down on the side of engaged pedagogy, what he called “letting-learn.” At the end, is a bibliography of useful theoretical and practical books and articles on these methods.
A Picture of 21st Century Learning
If you can, imagine a 21st century learning environment. Learners buzz about a classroom working on a project to improve local water quality. They are working within and across small groups with a staggering variety of media, from essays and reports to quick videos and social media streams, to understand the scale of the problem.
They revisit old research from earlier in the year saved in Google Docs, review resources curated in Pearltrees during research for another project, and start concept-mapping potential approaches using Mindo.
Rather than compliance or letter grades, designing elegant solutions to address important problems is what motivates them—little social entrepreneurs exploring through own interdependence with one another and community with digital tools. Among their challenges? Not only the problem itself, but collaboratively identifying the best way to present their ideas to diverse audiences that may or may not use technology.
To accomplish this, they use Evernote to take quick notes, YouTube to better understand the water cycle, conversations with teachers to explore possibilities they might be missing–often anchored in a project-based learning framework.
They demonstrate a consistent pattern of reflection, deconstruction, and evolution of thought while bridging physical and digital audiences.
Their pace is self-directed, and their resources would be immediately overwhelming without a plan.
Their objectives, while clear, are always a kind of moving target.
Task-swapping is constant, quick, adaptive thinking absolutely critical.
These are the things that cause understanding; they’re also effects of understanding. This is the picture of 21st century learning. How this translates to multiple choice tests and short-answer response is unclear.
It’s not uncommon for authors to be asked to submit a shortened version of a research article or piece of writing. This, says Thomas Basbøll, is too often looked upon as a problem of “reduction”, of pruning a longer text. Rather, the enormous surplus of knowledge that the longer text demonstrates the author has is a material resource for producing a different, shorter text. By using a key-sentence outline, authors can plan and reorganise the longer text without setting a material constraint on the shorter one. Sometimes a draft gets longer than we’d like. Sometimes we are asked for a text that is shorter than the one we’re working on. We’re writing a paper for a journal with an 8,000-word limit and before we know it we’ve written 10,000 words. Then we’re suddenly asked to submit an extended abstract on the same subject with a 1,500-word limit. The problem, we tell ourselves, is to “reduce” what we’ve got to something shorter. I want to offer an argument against this way of thinking.
Education Reimagined defines the paradigm shift from teacher-centered to learner-centered as shifting how we see learners and their critical role in their own learning now, and throughout their lives. The critical shift is that “Learners are seen and known as wondrous, curious individuals with vast capabilities and limitless potential. This paradigm recognizes that learning is…
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