Tips by Tony

Articles I Found Interesting in the Last Week

These are just a few of the articles I found interesting last week.

• The Power of Project Learning

  Why new schools are choosing an old model to bring students into the 21st century.

  Good article on Project-Based Learning (PBL) and how it’s not a new concept, but one that’s enhanced by the new tools that are available.

  The big payoff for PBL, as its advocates refer to it, comes when engaged students learn not only the curricula and the concepts involved in a project, but also learn how to organize and present their thoughts, how to manage a complex project in a limited amount of time, and how to collaborate with members of a group. Sound familiar? That’s because as an educated working adult you do these things all the time. For the next generation, these skills are only going to get more important.

  “It’s not an additional burden of work, it’s a transition of work,” says David Ross, Buck Institute’s director of professional development. Instead of creating daily lessons, teachers do their planning before the launch of a project. Once the project starts, their job is to make sure students stay on track and cover the objectives.

• Where’s the Innovation?

  Great post that’s a reaction/followup to another post. Read both.

  …dramatic change and innovation will not (cannot) occur by incrementally improving our existing practices. We need to see differently and invent the future instead of constantly reinventing the past.

  True to form, I believe this kind of innovation has to start with our goals (the end!) in mind. That is, we have to constantly ask ourselves what we really want learners at our institutions to know and, even more importantly, to be able to do? Are the educational experiences we’re providing for them enabling to do the things we really care about?

• Pull the Weeds Before You Plant the Flowers

  An excerpt from the book Leading Change in Your School by Douglas B. Reeves. Good advice for avoiding “initiative fatigue.”

  Try this simple experiment. Ask your colleagues to list the initiatives and programs that your school has started within the past five years. Then ask them to list the initiatives and programs that have been discontinued as the result of careful evaluation and weeding. I have never been in a school where the first list is not significantly longer than the second.

• Students Can Get Work Done in Groups

  This is a great article about teaching students how to work together in groups.

  “The biggest mistake people make when they put kids into groups is that they don’t give them proper training on how to work together,” says Newman, who teaches geography. “If you provide them with the skills to communicate, ask one another questions, and use their peers as resources, they learn much more.”

  New Tech teachers say that with a little help, students can develop the communication and collaboration skills needed to manage themselves in groups, skills they can then take with them to the college and work worlds. “These kids are getting exposed to the fact that you have to communicate and that you don’t get anything done without talking to others,” Coit says.

• Eight habits of highly effective 21st century teachers

  Read the article for en explanation of each of these 8 habits of highly effective 21st century teachers:

  1. Adapting
  2. Being visionary
  3. Collaborating
  4. Taking risks
  5. Learning
  6. Communicating
  7. Modelling behaviour
  8. Leading

• Tekserve updates free Mac FAQ book

  Not so much an article, but a quick post with link to a great resource for all Mac users.

• 3rd Grade Math Resources

  A collection of links to resources for 3rd grade math.

• California open source digital textbook plan faces barriers

  The governor of California has launched a new initiative to compile open source textbooks for the state. He hopes that the plan will help cut costs and improve the quality of education. The effort seems very promising, but the state’s complex standards and arduous textbook evaluation process will pose major challenges.

  Among the state’s most controversial policies are those which require books to reflect society’s diversity by including representative references to individuals of minority ethnicities. Critics say that these requirements are overly burdensome and have made political correctness a higher priority than quality in the textbook production and review process. The situation has raised some bizarre challenges for publishers. For example, some textbook publishing companies controversially enlist able-bodied children to pose in wheelchairs so that they have a sufficient number of pictures of “disabled” students to appease state textbook reviewers.

• How parents can help young teens at school

  Overall, Hill and Tyson found that indirect support is more strongly related to teen school performance than directly helping with homework. The researchers caution, however, that differences among the studies they examined, along with factors such as student motivation and other behaviours, might also play a role. One thing you’ll hear in every statistics course is, “correlation is not causation.” In other words, just because a link is found between parental involvement and academic performance, it doesn’t necessarily mean the involvement causes the improvement. There could be a third factor that increases both parental involvement and academics.

• Open Letter to the Teacher Who Said “I Hate Technology.”

  Fantastic satirical post about resisting technology in education.

  Secondly, the fact that there will be conversations about topics in my class that occur UNABATED and not in my presence is inconceivable and incorrigible. Thoughts about the content of my class that do not occur during the sanctity of my 50 minute class period belong either as one-on-one conversations with me in the hallway, clearly stated on their homework papers, or held onto in the working memory of the student until the next class period or hallway conversation with me.

• Teachers and Principals Talk About Google Docs

  A short video with teachers and principals discussing the use of Google Docs in the classroom.

Blogs I’ve Subscribed To

• Always Learning – teaching technology abroad
• AssortedStuff – an Instructional Technology Specialist blogging about the state of public education in the United States and the perpetual efforts to reform it. That, plus comments on instructional technology, blogging and the read-write web (aka Web 2.0), various forms of media, digital rights and fair use, and more…
• Dracula – Bram Stoker’s Dracula told in real-time via blog posts.
• drewskinner – a guide to better writing
• The Ed Revolution – an assembly of edu-geeks, trying to make sense of things in a quickly moving world
• The Edublogger – Tips, tricks, ideas and help with using web 2.0 technologies and edublogs
• The End In Mind – Musings about Academic Technology
• The Thinking Stick – thoughts from an Elementary Technology & Learning Coordinator teaching abroad
• I’d Rather Be Writing – a blog about the latest trends in technical communication
• Into the Woods – for all you web designers out there…

Who/What I’m Following on Twitter

Added in the last week: @GrammarGirl, @jutecht, @timstahmer, @BrianLockwood, @marciamarcia, @d_tremblay, @soctechnologist, @tedtheteacher, @eduinnovation, @russeltarr, @motsjustes, @rogernevin, @TeachPaperless, @beckyanneh, @EduratiReview, @internet4classr, @mylenek, @MetiriGroup, @Astro_Mike, @dfoulks, @SacKidsMuseum, @appiphany, @eensiesmama, @momsinspire, @awesomestories

Related posts:

1. Monday Morning Roundup (5/4/2009)
2. Monday Morning Roundup (4/27/09)
3. Monday Morning Roundup (5/18/2009)
4. Monday Morning Roundup (8/31/2009)
5. Monday Morning Roundup (8/24/2009)
6. Monday Morning Roundup (08/17/2009)
7. Monday Morning Roundup (4/20/09)
8. Monday Morning Roundup (07/27/2009)
9. Monday Morning Roundup (9/14/09)
10. Monday Morning Roundup (08/10/2009)