Educational Common Life

January 2, 2010

“Construction” Follows “Blueprint”


Johnson in his book the history of air–design of factories–follow the power.  Ie the steam plants needed central power corridors to reach all plant floors.  This dictated construction.

Is this analogous to education today where the central power is the Internet?  What educational “construction” must follow for the central power to reach the factory floor.

Filed under Educational Common Life, philosophy by tellio

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December 31, 2009

Thiagi’s Newsletter for a New Year


Thiagi’s Newsletters are full of fascinating and applicable ways to help students learn.  Here are ten tips, but you need to go look at the article to get the good stuff.  No, I don’t have any reason to drive traffic there, just a desire to share really good, practical, and tested training advice.  Here is the link.

Ten Exciting Ways To Waste Your Training Dollars

1. Analysis and Planning
2. The Finish Line
3. Content is NOT king
4. Information Please!
5. Multimedia Spectacular
6. Passive Learning
7. Activity Abuse
8. Testing, Testing
9. Follow the Script
10. Beyond Smile Sheets

Filed under Educational Common Life by tellio

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December 15, 2009

Teacher in a Strange Land: Online Grading: Treat–or Trick?


Points to consider:

    • Expecting parents to track their children’s grades–and do something about low grades or missing assignments–shifts responsibility for learning and monitoring the grade to parents. And guess what? It’s the student’s job to do that, not Mommy’s.
        • When parents are suddenly hawking their gradebooks, teachers feel compelled to put lots of numbers in the book, proving that they’re organized and soldiering away, assigning lots of homework and giving lots of grades. My principal sent us a memo suggesting that we add at least one new grade per week, it being worrisome when parents see that several days have gone by with no grading.
        • Some of those grades represent formative assessment: constructive feedback to students in the process of learning to master a concept or skill. Formative assessment is supposed to be non-punitive–information that helps a student improve. If curriculum is appropriate–in the sweet spot where it challenges, but builds on prior learning–then formative assessment will show lots of room for growth. Try explaining that to one panicked parent at a time
        • Not everything that can be counted counts, and not everything that counts can be counted. (Einstein said that, not me.) An online gradebook converts all assessment data to numbers. Because it’s…digital. Sometimes, kids need coaching or commentary, not a comparative percentage. Sometimes, it’s OK to paint a pumpkin, just to see how it turns out. You don’t have to grade everything, to make it real or valuable.

Citation: 

Filed under Educational Common Life by tellio

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June 25, 2009

Google Teacher Academy Application


Links to the good Google stuff:

Google Classroom Activities

Google Tools for Your Classroom

Google Posters for Your Classroom

Google Education Home

Filed under Educational Common Life by tellio

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January 1, 2009

TIP: Theories


Lisa rebelling due to her aptitude test results
Image via Wikipedia

I ran across this in a David Wylie Slideshare.  Funny how I had seen this before but paid no attention to it.

  • Aptitude by Treatment Principles:

    • 1. Aptitudes and instructional treatments interact in complex patterns and are influenced by task and situation variables.

      2. Highly structured instructional environments tend to be most successful with students of lower ability; conversely, low structure environments may result in better learning for high ability students.

      3. Anxious or conforming students tend to learn better in highly structured instructional environments; non-anxious or independent students tend to prefer low structure.

    OK, so I am going to have confront my bias against strategic students considering that I am actually doing the opposite of what this research suggests I should do with my at-risk students. Rigid structure is what they need, sigh. Teaching is not about my needs. It is about their learning.

Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.

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Filed under Educational Common Life by tellio

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