Tag Archive for: teaching

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New iPrep Academy gives students technology-rich environment

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he school will provide students with a technology-rich environment by giving each student a laptop computer to use at the fully Wi-Fi enabled campus and at home. In addition, the curriculum will consist of both online and face-to-face classes of the Honors and Advanced Placement level. According to Pimienta, the combination of computer and traditional classes will give learning a more individualistic twist. “It will make the learning experience more personal,” said Pimienta. “It’s not the standard curriculum you see in normal high schools — it will be adapted for the environment.”

http://bit.ly/bRGjFU

Public Speaking and Adult Learning Principles

 

If you haven't already--as a public speaker, you should dedicate yourself to a lifetime study of adult learning principles. It will pay you colossal dividends.

And there's a lifetime of "adult learning stuff" to learn. Today we'll look at one such principle; Elaborative Rehearsal.

It's more than practice. It's a proactive approach of making the most out of past learning in order to maximize new learning.

For your audiences to make the most out of this proven learning and memory technique, you will have to teach them. Most adult learners just aren't aware of these methods. Here are five tips you can pass along to all of your audiences.

1. Proper Note Taking. For a learner's notes to enhance one's memory, it is important that a learner is able to record the speaker's ideas in their own words. And, as a presenter you need to tell them so.

2. Paraphrasing. This is like the above note taking, except that care is given to the actual words the note-taker uses. Ideally, the words the learner replaces the speaker's with has equal or added meaning to the learner.

3. Predicting. It will help a listener to project a speakers message into the future. This "projection" allows a person to simulate the material they are learning in the theater of their mind.

4. Questioning. A good Q and A will help your audience learn your principles better. Challenge your audience to come up with creative and meaningful questions, and then dig into them together.

5. Summarizing. There much talked about the concept but it is seldom used in most learning environments. Plan a specific, "Now what did we learn here today?"

There's a lot more to the idea of Elaborative Rehearsal than these five tips, and we'll discuss them in future articles.
The "take-away" today is the need for the public speaker to "train" their audiences how to use elaborative rehearsal to their greatest learning benefit.

One thing that will help your audiences to be able to "practice" your message is a strong visual representation of your message. The presentation world calls these graphics by many things, Process Models, Method Maps, Matrix's, and Hierarchy Models, etc.

Wayne Kronz

Wayne Kronz is the host of http://MethodMap.blogspot.com. Visit it today for the best free, online information about the design and use of visual aids in public speaking. You'll discover many actual models you can use in your next presentation plus a host of videos showing you how the top pros are using visual aids in their public speaking. And a lot more!  Photo by The Climate Reality Project on Unsplash
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See 'ME' not the ADHD, 20 August, Melbourne

http://www.acer.edu.au/proflearn/SpecialNeeds.html
This one day workshop will provide research findings related to the characteristics of ADHD and the most effective strategies to support the learning and social needs of students with ADHD.

We choose the moon


  • We Choose the Moon is an interactive experience recreating the historic Apollo 11 mission to the Moon in real time.
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Evaluation of Evidence-Based Practices in Online Learning. A Meta-Analysis and Review of Online Learning Studies

" The meta-analysis found that, on average, students in online learning conditions performed better than those receiving face-to-face instruction."
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Creativity in schools: Every story needs a picture

The children's laureate, Anthony Browne

Anthony Browne, the new children's laureate, who says we should teach children, and adults, to read pictures. Photograph: Eamonn McCabe   >>>

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Visual Learning: Using Images to Focus Attention, Evoke Emotions, and Enrich Learning

Say it with words and you're lucky if they hear it or bother to read it. Tell your story with imagery, and it grabs attention, evokes emotion, and is more instantly processed. Sixty thousand times faster, say some researchers. At Hong Kong International School (HKIS), we have concerns quite similar to those of teachers in the U.S.: We want to engage student interest, we want to efficiently scaffold for students to construct meaning, and we want to motivate and empower them to communicate. Like all educators, we have students who deserve to learn 21st-century media skills and literacy to communicate in ways that are relevant in a new century. Article continues

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Blended Learning – More Effective Teaching Methods

The term blended learning is a term used to describe an educational course in which a mixture of face to face student/teacher instruction and online instruction are used together for any given class. The most exciting part of this process is to decide how to transform the teaching and learning experience into one, so that the student's creativity and thinking skills are enhanced to a higher degree.
Blended Learning Describes a Wide Variety of Teaching Approaches
The term Blended Learning has been used to describe a wide variety of approaches. The term blended learning is also be used to describe arrangements in which conventional, offline and non-electronic based instruction happens to include online tutoring and/or mentoring services. One such course that would be enhanced with blended learning would be a science experiment, where students access their instruction on a computer, and then walk over to a lab table to conduct and experiment.
E-Learning and Traditional School
In most cases blended learning, e-learning is used in a traditional brick and mortal school, to help enhance the student's educational experience and to make the teaching of courses more efficient.
Why Dabble In Blended Learning?
It's about getting students to learn. It's also about saving on cost of textbooks. After decades of teaching students using textbooks, current students are accustomed to reading off a computer screen. Ink on paper is boring to them. They need interaction, instant gratification, multiple actions and movement. Blending face-to-face instruction with a computer screen gets today's student to learn.
There are more significant reasons: At risk students and exceptional students tend to excel with computer instruction. Rather than being lost among a group of 24 students in a classroom, an at-risk student will often surprisingly excel when offered computer instruction. With a system that offers tracking, a teacher can track progress of each student and pinpoint students who need special assistance in certain areas.
Exceptional students enjoy computerized instruction because they can proceed at their own pace and are not "tied down" by students in a classroom who need extra help.
How to Get Started in Blended Learning
The smartest first step in blending classroom instruction with technology is to use a Learning Management System. There are several different learning management systems on the market. Capterra.com offers a list of Learning management systems along with a breakdown of each system's features and cost. Some cater to businesses that wish to train their employees. Others, such as Blackboard, are used in the college market.

Susan Bond is a part of IQity - a comprehensive, online educational system that includes IQity Reactor, a learning object repository that allows educators to create and share custom curriculum, organized by state educational standards. Reactor is integrated with a learning management system that allows traditional bricks-and-mortar schools to create an environment that enables students to learn whenever, wherever, and however is most effective for them.

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Web 2.0, a wiki and teaching English

From the Bight Ideas Blog ...

Whitefriars College teacher librarian Tania Sheko has been busy! She has also created a wiki for the English class she has been working with.

Tania explains how the wiki came about:

The English wiki was created to support a particular English class but with a view to sharing resources with all English teachers. It’s in its very early stages, and will continue to evolve with time, according to the needs of the English class.   >>>

Powering Up Minds and Powering Up Machines: Guided Inquiry, Reading and Web 2.0

Powering Up Minds and Powering Up Machines: Guided Inquiry, Reading and Web 2.0 is an exceptionally vibrant presentation. If you are interested in supporting students right through the researching, writing and presenting stages of assignments, you must experience Dr Ross J Todd’s powerful presentation.

The notes below are a record of the session.