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Showing 171 posts tagged howto

How to Foster Collaboration and Team Spirit

For teachers, two initial steps will help foster this process. First, reframe the conversation by using the terminology of teams rather than group work. Think of your favorite sports team and now call them a group. Feel the difference? Teams focus on accountability and commitment; they form for a purpose and operate through norms and shared expectations.

Second, import and adapt the high-performance principles common in the work world to teams in the classroom. This requires time, good coaching skills, a relentless focus on the quality of interaction between students, and a set of team tools, including contracts, rubrics, and exercise. But the payoff is noticeable. Once students form teams over an extended period and begin to collaborate well, they learn more, get better at teaching others, produce more powerful products, and enjoy the process. Here are 10 principles that can help you design high performance teams.

In a rare look, we now have a glimpse at how flipping the classroom is working in Turkey. Mehmet Ali Doğan sent the above video to us and it’s been a lot of fun to watch. The video is dubbed in English and very well done.

Students and teachers from Turkey discuss what they thought about flipped classroom, what happened when they tried it, how technology was used and highlight their successes. Bookmark and watch later if you don’t have the time to devote to it now, it’s worth it!

How to Foster Grit, Tenacity and Perseverance: An Educator’s Guide How can we best prepare children and adolescents to thrive in the 21st century? This question is at the heart of what every educator attempts to do on a daily basis. Apart from imparting content of knowledge and facts, however, it’s becoming clear that the “noncognitive competencies” known as grit, perseverance, and tenacity are just as important, if not more so, in preparing kids to be self-sufficient and successful. To that end, the Department of Education’s Office of Technology has released a report called  Promoting Grit, Tenacity, and Perseverance —Critical Factors for Success in the 21st Century that addresses how educators can integrate these ideas into their teaching practice: Are these competencies malleable and teachable? How significant a role do they play in students’ success? What are the best learning environments to encourage and foster these attributes? photo via flickr:CC | w_miller

How to Foster Grit, Tenacity and Perseverance: An Educator’s Guide

How can we best prepare children and adolescents to thrive in the 21st century? This question is at the heart of what every educator attempts to do on a daily basis. Apart from imparting content of knowledge and facts, however, it’s becoming clear that the “noncognitive competencies” known as grit, perseverance, and tenacity are just as important, if not more so, in preparing kids to be self-sufficient and successful.

To that end, the Department of Education’s Office of Technology has released a report called  Promoting Grit, Tenacity, and Perseverance —Critical Factors for Success in the 21st Century that addresses how educators can integrate these ideas into their teaching practice: Are these competencies malleable and teachable? How significant a role do they play in students’ success? What are the best learning environments to encourage and foster these attributes?

photo via flickr:CC | w_miller

Hi Gwen, Love your Tumblr. Is it easy to make the slideshow? I would like to have that for my tumbler, but I have no knowledge of HTML (or very limited). I understand if you don't have time to answer this. Also, what template are you using? Your page is beautiful and full of insights. Thanks for creating it! Pilar Munday

Asked by aprendeconfotos

image

Wow, thank you so much Pilar! I really like the idea of your tumblr too - pictures to help practice Español! The slideshow would let your viewers practice much easier - glad you asked.

You can add a slideshow to your tumblr pretty easily - here are the instructions (if you run into trouble, message me):

  1. View the source code of that slideshow and copy it. It’ll work as-is for any Tumblr without any changes.

    <!-- Fullscreen Tumblr Image Viewer v0.3 by topherchris -->
<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Transitional//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-transitional.dtd">
<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml" xml:lang="en" lang="en">
	<head>
		<title></title>
		<meta http-equiv="content-type" content="text/html; charset=UTF-8" />
		<link rel="stylesheet" href="http://fllscrn.com/css/supersized.css" type="text/css" media="screen" />
		<link rel="stylesheet" href="http://fllscrn.com/theme/supersized.beta.css" type="text/css" media="screen" />
		<script type="text/javascript" src="https://ajax.googleapis.com/ajax/libs/jquery/1.6.1/jquery.min.js"></script>
		<script type="text/javascript" src="http://fllscrn.com/js/jquery.easing.min.js"></script>
		<script type="text/javascript" src="http://fllscrn.com/js/supersized.3.2.7.min.js"></script>
		<script type="text/javascript" src="http://fllscrn.com/theme/supersized.beta.js"></script>
		<script type="text/javascript" src="http://static.tumblr.com/sajzoro/Wfzloggrk/tumblr-query.js"></script>
		<script type="text/javascript">
		var slides = [];
		TumblrQuery.query(
			'http://api.tumblr.com/v2/blog/?/posts/photo',
			{
				limit: 30,
				api_key: 'QzBFicp9EaPWrCzepyISnrKRgE7b85PCwAWwhoi54LgndsUAob',
				onSuccess: function(transport) {
					document.title = transport.response.blog.title;
					for (i in transport.response.posts) {
						var post = transport.response.posts[i];
						for (i in post.photos) {
							var imageurl = post.photos[i].alt_sizes[0].url;
						}
						var posturl = post.post_url;
						var avatar = "<div id=\"avatar\"><a href=\"http://" + post.blog_name + ".tumblr.com/\"><img src=\"http://api.tumblr.com/v2/blog/" + post.blog_name + ".tumblr.com/avatar/64\" /></a></div>";
						var framesrc = "http://assets.tumblr.com/iframe.html?10&src=" + encodeURIComponent(posturl) + "&amp;pid=" + post.id + "&amp;rk=" + post.reblog_key + "&amp;lang=en_US&amp;name=" + post.blog_name;
						var iframe = "<iframe src=\"" + framesrc + "\" scrolling=\"no\" width=\"330\" height=\"25\" frameborder=\"0\" style=\"position:absolute; z-index:1337; top:0px; right:0px; border:0px; background-color:transparent; overflow:hidden;\" id=\"tumblr_controls\"></iframe>";
						var layer = avatar + iframe;
						slides.push({
							image: imageurl,
							url: posturl,
							layer: layer
						});
					}
				},
				onFailure: function() {
					alert('Something went wrong. I\'m so very sorry.');
				},
				onComplete: function() {
					$.supersized({slides: slides});
				}
			}
		);
		</script>
	<script type="text/javascript" language="javascript" src="http://assets.tumblr.com/javascript/tumblelog.js?2f72e5d41a88380020b3737681107236"></script><meta http-equiv="x-dns-prefetch-control" content="off"/></head>
<body>
	<div id="page"></div>
	<a id="prevslide" class="load-item"></a>
	<a id="nextslide" class="load-item"></a>
</body>
</html>

  2. Head to the Customize Theme area and add a new page.

  3. Select Custom Layout, give it a url, decide if you want to display a link (if your theme supports it), and…

  4. Paste the source code in the form and enjoy.

I’m using the Swell template by Style Hatch, but I’d recommend any of their templates. They’re nice looking, easy to customize, and their support is helpful and friendly. ¡Buena suerte!

Blended Learning Implementation Guide Blended learning is not just another district initiative. It is a fundamental redesign of instructional models with the goal of accelerating learning toward college and career readiness. It is a large-scale opportunity to develop schools that are more productive for students and teachers by personalizing education to ensure that the right resources and interventions reach the right students at the right time. Schools that make the most effective use of new technology will adopt a model of blended learning—“a formal education program in which a student learns at least in part through the online delivery of content and instruction, with some element of student control over time, place, path and/or pace,” and “at least in part at a supervised brick-and-mortar location away from home” (Source: Innosight Institute).

Blended Learning Implementation Guide

Blended learning is not just another district initiative. It is a fundamental redesign of instructional models with the goal of accelerating learning toward college and career readiness. It is a large-scale opportunity to develop schools that are more productive for students and teachers by personalizing education to ensure that the right resources and interventions reach the right students at the right time.

Schools that make the most effective use of new technology will adopt a model of blended learning—“a formal education program in which a student learns at least in part through the online delivery of content and instruction, with some element of student control over time, place, path and/or pace,” and “at least in part at a supervised brick-and-mortar location away from home” (Source: Innosight Institute).

6 Steps to Making Positive Changes in Your Teaching

Instructional change isn’t easy, but these 6 questions can help you decide how you can make positive changes in your teaching.

  1. What am I doing that isn’t promoting learning or very much learning?
  2. How will a change work with my students, content, and when will I use it?
  3. What skills are needed and will my students have those skills?
  4. How much change can I, and my students, sustain?
  5. What will success look like with my students?
  6. What are my expectations for success?