All Blog Posts Tagged 'teaching' (14)

Investigating Connectivism

Having casually followed the work of George Siemens for well over a year now, I jumped at the chance to enroll in the second run of the open course Connectivism & Connective Knowledge, co-taught with Stephen Downes, someone who resurfaced on my radar last spring when I was working on the… Continue

Added by Fred Haas on September 19, 2009 at 9:30pm — 5 Comments

Facilitating A Squirrelly Strategy

This post features a video that a colleague recently added to a… Continue

Added by Sean Nash on August 2, 2009 at 5:00pm — 3 Comments

Experiment, part I

As part of our comittment to public outreach, the Royal Astronomical Society of Canada runs a series of lectures for the general public (free, but signup required) called NOVA (New Observers to Visual Astronomy). I had never done one of these before, but I was in the right place at the right time - having coffee with the organizer when he got the call that one of the speakers had to cancel - and agreed to fill the gap. As I was preparing my talk it occurred to me that a one-shot deal for a few… Continue

Added by Ed Hitchcock on July 26, 2009 at 1:55pm — 5 Comments

Games are the new School

Original post here and I welcome your comments. - - - - - Games development is slowly becoming a central and one of the largest global industries. Right after our basic human needs, where satisfaction and esteem start, and self-actualization follows, right there you will find games. It’s not news that games promise entertainment, and looking at cubs playing you can easily deduct the relationship between play and development, bu… Continue

Added by Or-Tal Kiriati on June 15, 2009 at 5:02am — 2 Comments

Teaching Digitally: The Power of PDF

The Paradigm is shifting. One word encompasses the new global paradigm which affects… Continue

Added by Andrew on June 10, 2009 at 10:43am — No Comments

It's About Connection

As a middle school teacher, if I have learned anything about being an effective teacher, I have learned it's all about connection. Not connection with 'the class' because there's no such thing as 'the class'. The connection(s) you must cultivate are those between you and each and every student. Students will largely forget what you say to them but they will never forget how you made them feel. Connection offers the opportunity for you to build trust in s… Continue

Added by Andrew on June 8, 2009 at 10:30am — No Comments

The Changing Nature of Professional Development In Education

Just posted this at Ed. Paradigms---->This blog and it's sister blog has as its focus bringing to light the game changers of 21st century technologies and globalization as related to Education and how teaching and learning gets done in (U.S.) schools. The very first posts were critical commentaries about the perceived fear and obstruction of schools in terms of adopting new a… Continue

Added by Andrew on May 29, 2009 at 9:30am — 4 Comments

How do you get your students to take ownership of their learning?

For a long time now I have used the term "learning activities" when referring to what teachers design and carry out as they go about their job of teaching. Lately, I have been thinking a lot about moving ownership of learning from the teacher to the student. The term "learning activities" implies something that the teacher provides in the hope that the students will learn as a result of the activities. I am now thinking that we should refer to our creations as "learning opportunities". This term… Continue

Added by Ken Messersmith on February 26, 2009 at 1:30pm — 16 Comments

Random Thoughts on Education from a Sage Veteran

Beginning in November and running through the new year Bruce Schauble, of the blog Throughlines, wrote a series of four outstanding reflections titled “On Education.” Since leaving the classroom, he took some time to compose some of the more compelling thoughts about teaching I have read lately. “… Continue

Added by Fred Haas on February 7, 2009 at 7:00am — 4 Comments

Howard Zinn on teaching and activism

I just started reading Howard Zinn's You Can't Be Neutral on a Moving Train: A Personal History of Our Times (1994) and stumbled upon a couple of paragraphs that raise questions in my mind about teaching and activism. Here are those paragraphs copied from page 7: When I became a teacher I could not possibly keep out of the classroom my own experiences. I have often wondered how so many teachers manage to spend a year with a group of students and never reveal who they are, what kind of… Continue

Added by Skip Zilla on January 22, 2009 at 6:30pm — 18 Comments

Where Are Your Expectation Gaps?

The accounting firm Accenture has a neat little phrase: “Expectation Gap”. They use the term to explain the phenomenon of returned consumer electronics for one. It has been discovered that only 20% of returned products are actually defective or broken, though the costumer said they were. Accenture explains that there was an apparent expectation gap which simply means the customer expected that the product would do something but it didn’t or they couldn’t get it to do the thing they wanted it to… Continue

Added by Andrew on June 8, 2008 at 10:30am — 2 Comments

FYI and Note: I Have Merged My Blogs

Dear Friends, I have merged my Education-themed weblogs. It was a marriage that seemed inevitable. In reality, I was testing the waters with Typepad and Wordpress (self hosted) and Wordpress won. The content on both blogs was similar and was centered around provoking thought about school/teaching practices at this particular point in the evolution of Education. I will continue this work, though, with a greater intensity and focus as I am no longer "split" by the hypothetical prospect of writin… Continue

Added by Andrew on May 21, 2008 at 9:49am — 1 Comment

Lighting Fires For 'Dead Wood'

In a comment at Sarah's blog,Intrepid Flame sums up where my head has been for about half a month. The real job is lighting fires among colleagues without burning them.

How can we slowly encourage people (teachers) to understand that the future is here with a sense of urgency, but at the same time not allow them to become defensive?

This is almost exactly the point of th… Continue

Added by Andrew on May 9, 2008 at 5:00pm — 2 Comments

Right Action Requires No Effort

One of the 'free gifts' of teaching are kudos, compliments and thanks from parents for helping mold their child in an image that resembles one they hold for their child. If they come as notes or e-mails, I save all of them. Not to reinforce some vapid ego-based self image but to assist the healing process when one of the very same parents decides to unleash venom on me for some perceived 'wrong' that I committed.

It happened last week. Frankly, I'm still recovering. Never mind that th

… Continue

Added by Andrew on March 19, 2008 at 3:01pm — 4 Comments

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