Teachers who want to learn more about teaching with technology will find this Massive Open Online Course (MOOC), Introduction to Technology-Enabled Learning (TEL), informative and engaging. Using up-to-date learning design and simple, accessible technology, the course runs on an easy-to-use learning platform available via the Internet. The course is designed for teachers who want to build on their knowledge and practice in teaching and learning with technology. It will run over five weeks and requires approximately three to five hours of time each week. Designed to accommodate teachers’ busy schedules, the course offers flexibility with options for learning the content. You will learn from readings, videos, discussions with other participants and instructors, meaningful exercises, quizzes and short assignments. Certification is available for those who wish to complete all required exercises and quizzes.
We might spend days, months, or even years trying to figure someone out. Is he who he says he is? Should I trust her? The wheels in our head spin as we think of all the variables and how they'll play out.
And still, we keep hearing that we should just listen to our instincts. Complicated questions, simple answer. What should we do, and where did this whole idea of the gut instinct come from, anyway?
Intuition isn't some magical, mysterious quality that we carry with us. It actually comes from the knowledge and past experiences that we all carry. Even if we're unable to explain why we feel the way we do, there's a logical explanation behind our gut feelings.
Whenever you encounter anything new, the unconscious side of your brain is constantly making assessments. It takes in certain cues, such as a smile or parts of a story, and then matches it with something similar in our database of memories to come up with a conclusion. Meanwhile, our conscious side remains unaware of this rapid process taking place.
"Ask the members of any team if they want to institute better processes, and be prepared for them to roll their eyes. “‘Better processes’ means ‘more bureaucracy,’” someone will mutter. But ask that same team how much they enjoy doing projects the hard way — duplicating efforts, scrambling to meet deadlines when someone drops the ball, or bearing the brunt of customer fury — and you can expect the floodgates to open.
Why do people love to hate “process” but rail against disorganization? It is because most people associate processes with checklists, forms, and rules — the overseer breathing down their necks. Not surprisingly, leaders wanting to foster innovation and creativity are reluctant to institute such rigid controls and procedures."
Love the point about how processes can enable flow. Processes along with procedures, practices, policies and system created by or in collaboration with the people who do the work is the new management
Communication is an essential life skill for anyone and everyone. It's one of the earliest survival skills we learn as growing children. (How else would we have asked our parents for another cookie?) As we grow and become fully functioning human beings, communication only increases in complexity and importance--especially when you're leading a company.
No matter what industry you're in or what size company you're leading, you're working constantly with different kinds of people. You've got internal team members and employees, clients, prospective clients, recruits, and other industry professionals, each with their own personalities and communication styles.
You even communicate in a lot of different ways: during meetings; via email, phone calls, and group messaging; through thought leadership content published online and on social media; and at industry events.
Teddy Roosevelt did it. Harry Truman did it. Want to be an outstanding leader? Keep a leadership journal. As part of my executive coaching work, one of the most effective tools I recommend that powers up the coaching process is a leadership journal. The exercise of leadership is not unlike a sport you play. When you review your actions in the field you learn what worked, what didn’t, and adjust along the way. Leadership guru Peter Drucker said: “ Follow effective action with quiet reflection. From the quiet reflection will come even more effective action. ”
There is now an overwhelming amount of research evidence to suggest that students learn best when they are ‘active’ in their learning. But what does this mean? And what role can or do new technologies play in supporting active learning?
Types of learner interaction
There are three different ways learners can interact when studying, and each of these ways requires a somewhat different mix of media and technology
"Forget No. 2 pencils, or even the new computer-based common-core exams that have schools across the country scrambling.
"Researchers at the University of Wisconsin-Madison are convinced the tests of the future will look like Crystals of Kaydor, a role-playing video game about aliens.
"Designed to measure children’s learning in real time while rewiring their brains to help them be more empathetic, Crystals offers a potentially transformative response to two cutting-edge questions now being debated in the world of testing: whether digital games can effectively blur the line between instruction and assessment and how educators can better gauge children’s social and emotional skills.
“Our job is to provide compelling examples of what assessments can be,” said Constance Steinkuehler, an associate professor of education and former White House policy analyst who co-directs Games+Learning+Society, a center based here that is dedicated to designing and studying video games."
Robin Good: What does curation mean from an educational viewpoint? And what is the key difference between "collecting" and "curating".
Nancy White (@NancyW), a 21st Century Learning & Innovation Specialist and the author of Innovations in Education blog, has written an excellent article, dissecting the key characterizing traits of curation, as a valuable resource to create and share knowledge.
She truly distills some key traits of curation in a way that is clear and comprehensible to anyone.
She writes: "The first thing I realized is that in order to have value-added benefits to curating information, the collector needs to move beyond just classifying the objects under a certain theme to deeper thinking through a) synthesis and b) evaluation of the collected items.
How are they connected?"
Excellent definition.
And then she also frames perfectly the relevance of "context" for any meaningful curation project by writing: "I believe when we curate, organization moves beyond thematic to contextual – as we start to build knowledge and understanding with each new resource that we curate.
Themes have a common unifying element – but don’t necessarily explain the “why.”
Theme supports a central idea – Context allows the learner to determine why that idea (or in this case, resource) is important.
So, as collecting progresses into curating, context becomes essential to determine what to keep, and what to discard."
But there's a lot more insight distilled in this article as Nancy captures with elegance the difference between collecting for a personal interest and curating for a specific audience.
She finally steals my full endorsement for this article by discretely inquirying how great a value it would be to allow students to "curate" the domains of interest they need to master.
"In his presentation StudentsLive! Real-world learning at the 2010 Olympic and Paralympic Games, Chris Kennedy shares the story of twenty-five students who brought the notion of personalized learning to life and learned how powerful social media can be for learning."
Forget slogans and posters. Forget mission statements. Forget culture decks. A survey of over 400,000 people across the U.S. found that when employees believe promotions are managed effectively, they are more than two times as likely to give extra effort at work -- and to plan for having a long-term future with their company.
But wait, there's more: When employees believe promotions are managed effectively, they are more than five times as likely to believe their leaders act with integrity.
The result? At those companies, employee turnover rates are half that of other companies in the same industry. Productivity, innovation, and growth metrics outperform the competition. For public companies, stock returns are almost three times the market average.
Great Study of 400k employees . So don't waste time on that culture deck ...Promote your best people... if teams matter promote the best team player... if productivity matters promote the best at that... the companies that do this have less turnover, more innovation and better engagement . Carrier Guidance big key. #ADPELEFY18 #offthebenchleadership #Workhappy #hellowork
Great insight "When employees believe promotions are managed effectively, they are more than five times as likely to believe their leaders act with integrity."
As an administrator, whenever I walk into a teacher’s classroom, one of the first things I almost always subconsciously look for is whether or not the students are engaged in inquiry. However, telling a teacher, “Your students need to engage in more inquiry,” is comparable to letting a comedian know she needs to be funnier or asking a pizzaiolo to make a better dough. And, vague directives in the absence of explicit instruction typically generate anxiety.
To avoid these anxieties, and for progress to actually take place, we need to drill down to the nitty gritty and be as explicit as possible. In other words, we need to be explicit about being explicit and leverage specific strategies to comfortably move forward for the benefit of our students.
With these thoughts in mind, I’ve been obsessing over inquiry’s common denominators – the strategies or drivers we should always consider when implementing an inquiry-based lesson.
That being said, here are the six drivers of inquiry-based learning. And, while I don’t think every lesson or activity must have all six, I do believe that once we (and our students) become comfortable with an inquiry approach, all drivers will naturally find a way into learning experiences on a regular, if not daily, basis.
El aprendizaje basado en la indagación (inquiry-based learning) se puede definir como aprendizaje que comienza planteando preguntas, problemas o escenarios, en lugar de simplemente presentar hechos establecidos o describir un camino liso, sin obstáculos aparentes, hacia el conocimiento. En resumen, descubrimos material, en contraposición a la cobertura de contenido y a la memorización y regurgitación de hechos y conocimiento.
Getting smart people into your company is hard enough. Turning them all into great collaborators and risk-takers is even harder. Even on the most high-performing teams, coworkers don’t just openly share feedback and challenge each others’ ideas all on their own–managers need to create a culture that encourages this. And that usually requires building your team’s collective emotional intelligence. Here are a few straightforward (and entirely low-tech ways) to get started.
There’s no single hack for improving your team’s collective emotional intelligence. As a manager, it’s the small habits you perform and encourage that ripple outward.
The freedom to question the status quo and bring up new ideas can clear the way for building interpersonal connections that every emotionally intelligent person needs.
Whether you want to admit or not – college students need help – in more ways than one. No reason to be ashamed…college life is hard! Your first few steps into an independent life, an onslaught of new responsibility smacking you in the face and intimidating decisions constantly being thrown at your feet – yeah, it’s not exactly a stroll through the park. Thankfully, there are tons of apps and websites for college students that make the process a whole hell-of-a-lot easier. And guess what…we’ve simplified things even further, consolidating 50 of the best websites for college students into one giant list you can access any time, any place. In other words: you’re welcome.
From the big thinkers of the previous century that have influenced our own understanding of learning, to the strategic implementation of those pricnciples in designing pedagogy, this text sheds light on the great heritage that we draw upon in our...
Teachers and parents are using Minecraft, a video game popular with children, to help teach science, history, languages and ethics.
by Nick Bolton
"A study by S.R.I. International, a Silicon Valley research group that specializes in technology, found that game-based play could raise cognitive learning for students by as much as 12 percent and improve hand-eye coordination, problem-solving ability and memory.
"Games like Minecraft also encourage what researchers call “parallel play,” where children are engrossed in their game but are still connected through a server or are sharing the same screen. And children who play games could even become better doctors. No joke. Neuroscientists performed a study at Iowa State University that found that surgeons performed better, and were more accurate on the operating table, when they regularly played video games.
“Minecraft extends kids’ spatial reasoning skills, construction skills and understanding of planning,” said Eric Klopfer, a professor and the director of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s Scheller Teacher Education Program. “In many ways, it’s like a digital version of Lego.”
"Named one of the "10 Women to Watch in Tech in 2013" earlier this year by Inc. Magazine, Dr. Vivienne Ming is a theoretical neuroscientist, technologist and entrepreneur. "Maximize human potential" is Dr. Ming's creed and she has embodied this through her groundbreaking work in fields ranging from machine learning and cognitive modeling to neuroprosthetics. Dr. Ming is currently Chief Scientist at Gild, a startup focused on using machine learning to make highly personalized job matches (read more in this New York Timesarticle). Dr. Ming is also the co-founder of the edtech startup, Socos, which she founded with her wife, education policy writer and researcher, Dr. Norma Ming. Socos takes student work (essays, questions etc.) and creates conceptual models that allow educators to better personalize learning."
Jim Lerman's insight:
Facinating interview with Ming, who seems to have had a very hot and cold relationship with formal learning during her life. She is currently in a highly productive phase and, according to the article, is engaged in sharply cutting edge work dealing with neuroscience, technology, congition and learning, and entrepreneurism.
"This space will act as an information hub for #etmooc, an open, online experience that is designed to facilitate & nurture conversations around the thoughtful integration of educational technology & media in teaching and learning.
Think of #etmooc as an experience situated somewhere between a course and a community. While there will be scheduled webinars and information shared each week, we know that there is a lot more that we will collectively need to do if we want to create a truly collaborative and passionate community.
We’re aiming to carry on those important conversations in many different spaces – through the use of social networks, collaborative tools, shared hashtags, and in personalized spaces. What #etmooc eventually becomes, and what it will mean to you, will depend upon the ways in which you participate and the participation and activities of all of its members. Let’s see if we can create something that is not just another hashtag – and, not just another course.
Some exciting topics will be explored during the #etmooc experience. We’ll be leading conversations around many of the recently popularized technologies, media and literacies including social/participatory media, blended/online learning environments, digital literacies, open education, digital citizenship/identity, copyright/copyleft, and multimedia in education. We hope that this list of topics will grow as we expand our membership and tap into the expertise of our participants. However it is not the topics that we cover, but it is what we discover, create and share together that will be critical to the success of the etmooc experience."
"Topics & Tentative Schedule
The 2013 tentative schedule of topics is found below. More detailed information will be provided soon, including exact dates and connection information. Each topic is 2 weeks long so that there is adequate attention and depth.
Welcome (Jan 13-19): Welcome Event & Orientation to #etmooc
- Topic 1 (Jan 20-Feb. 2): Connected Learning – Tools, Processes & Pedagogy - Topic 2 (Feb 3-16): Digital Storytelling – Multimedia, Remixes & Mashups - Topic 3 (Feb 17-Mar 2): Digital Literacy – Information, Memes & Attention - Topic 4 (Mar 3-16): Digital Citizenship – Identity, Footprint, & Social Activism - Topic 5 (Mar 17-30): The Open Movement – Open Access, OERs & Future of Ed."
Robin Good: I think Sam Gliksman has a vital point here.
The point is this: there is no better way to learn something than to research, organize and build a personal framework of information, facts, resources, tools and stories around it.
And yes, if I do think about it, I can only confirm that my in my experience this has certainly been the case.
Rather than learn by memorizing and going through a predetermined path that someone else has arbitrarily set for me (and thousands of others), by curating my own learning path and curriculum, I am forced to dive into discovery and sense-making for the very start, two essential ingredients for effective learning.
The change is evident: from passive memorization of predetermined info, to personal exploration, discovery and sense-making of what I am interested in pursuing.
With such an approach, the replacement of classic teachers with curators who can act as guides, coaches and wise advisors to my exploratory wanderings may be vital to the success of many learners.
Curation can therefore be a revolutionary concept applicable both to learners and their approach as well as to the new "teachers" who need to become trusted guides in specific areas of interest.
Here's the text excerpt from this article, that sparked in me these ideas:
"Reliance on any type of course textbook – digital, multimedia, interactive or otherwise – only fits as a more marginal element in student-centered learning models.
It’s not the nature of the textbook as much as its reverence in the classroom as “the” singular authority for learning.
Lifelong learners need to be skilled in finding, filtering, collating, evaluating, collaborating, editing, analyzing and utilizing information from a multitude of sources.
Instead we could prioritize “content construction”. Textbooks are an important gateway - a starting point from which students can learn and then begin their exploration of information on any topic (although even on that point I feel we should encourage the “critical reading” of textbooks).
However the days when students could responsibly rely on any textbook as a singular information source are gone.
Also, the process of accessing, synthesizing and utilizing information is often as important as the product.
The skills developed are an essential component of education and life today.
We have access to an exponentially growing amount of information to process and apply [and] there are many excellent tools we can all use to help in constructing and organizing that content."
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