Every educator wants to experience the moment of “flow” when all the goals are set and understood and work is moving along easily and naturally. When we read about engaging students in the classroom using technology and social media, authors often leave us with the impression that this work will flow gentle as a stream. When talking about motivation and learning in school, grit is most often left out of the conversation. Yet, according to Daniel Pink, the best predictor of success is grit, defined as perseverance and passion for long term goals.
Our published book proves that when you find the right project — one that really involves all the students — they can find the grit and do what it takes to reach the final objective. Extract from the PLP post.
At 7 pm EDT – New York City time we will be hosting a Twitter chat.
Ann Michaelsen and her students will lead a Twitter chat about Connected Learners, using the hashtag #plpnetwork. Learn more about the chat, the book and the students’ activities at the Connected Learners blog.
More info will be posted here! In the meanwhile we are proud to show you the book cover!
Sir Ken Robinson outlines 3 principles crucial for the human mind to flourish — and how current education culture works against them. In a funny, stirring talk he tells us how to get out of the educational “death valley” we now face, and how to nurture our youngest generations with a climate of possibility.
Creativity expert Sir Ken Robinson challenges the way we’re educating our children. He champions a radical rethink of our school systems, to cultivate creativity and acknowledge multiple types of intelligence.
If you’re not prepared to be wrong, you’ll never come up with anything original.
All kids have tremendous talents — and we squander them pretty ruthlessly.
Creativity now is as important in education as literacy, and we should treat it with the same status.
I believe this passionately: that we don’t grow into creativity, we grow out of it. Or rather, we get educated out if it.
You don’t think of Shakespeare being a child, do you? Shakespeare being seven? He was seven at some point. He was in somebody’s English class, wasn’t he? How annoying would that be?
Very many people go through their whole lives having no real sense of what their talents may be, or if they have any to speak of.
“The dropout crisis is just the tip of an iceberg. What it doesn’t count are all the kids who are in school but being disengaged from it, who don’t enjoy it, who don’t get any real benefit from it.
Seems like almost every week our national newspaper will post articles about using technology in school. Turns out Norway is the country in the wold with most technology in school. The question to ask is what are we getting out of this? According to the ESSIE The Survey of Schools: ICT in Educationreport Norway has the most computers pr student, the best high speed internet connections and the most digital cameras. And yet we only score right above average when it comes to the use of ICT in education.Norwegian teachers should be among the top 5 when it comes to using ICT in education.
Norwegian teachers should be among the leading experts in the world. We should be well used key note speakers and work shops leaders. I don’t think we are! The question to ask is why not? We have the most computers pr student, the best high speed internet connections and the most digital cameras. Even so we only score right above average when it comes to the use of ICT in education.
Connected learners
My class has recently been occupied writing a book about this and if we were to share one take away from the way we have been working with technology this year it would be this; work and learn together, collaborate online, find others online to learn from and share your work. Too many students are using their personal computers with emphasis on the fist word, personal. Sure, most students in Norway are sharing online. Facebook, Skype, Snapchat, Instagram, you name it. But they are not sharing their learning. And if they are, they are not sharing enough. That is where the teacher has to step up. If the teachers start sharing their work, the students are more likely to do so too. Teachers need to show them how to. Teachers can do this by writing on blogs, sharing ideas on Twitter and writing in Notebooks with the students. Share documents on Google and share videos on how to learn. Make your own videos or use some of the thousands of videos out there!
VideoNot.es
As usual I find a lot of useful links following “Free technology for teachers“. The latest is VideoNot.es. You can use this if you post a video on YouTube for your math instructions. (Flip the classroom.) The students log on to VideoNot.es and take notes while watching the video. The document with the video and the notes is saved to your Google drive. You can share it with your teacher with your questions, or you can share it with fellow students and ask them to contribute as well. Have the whole class add notes to the document. When you write down the notes they are tied to the exact location in the video. Pretty smart! Look at the illustration below to see what kind of videos you can use.
“Kathy Cassidy (is) a shining example of what one teacher with some grit, curiosity and passion can do to realize the powerful potential of computing and technology in the classroom. And she does it with 6 and 7 year olds.” –Dean Shareski, Community Manager, Discovery Education Canada
There is a change in pedagogy in the lower grades these days. In Norway many preschools are using iPads and tablets to teach digital skills and to learn. In the lower grades at school many teachers have started using Smart boards and tablets. To really make the change in your classroom I recommend that you read this book and share it with your colleagues! The shift to connecting your classroom is not that hard if you know how to do this. If you already have a Smart board and computers online, what are you waiting for?
In her new book Connected from the Start: Global Learning in the Primary Grades, primary teacher Kathy Cassidy makes a compelling case for connecting our youngest students to the world, using the transformative power of Internet tools and technologies.The 120-page eBook is the first in a series of solo-author works published by Powerful Learning Press to support teachers and school leaders as they make the shift to digitally infused, inquiry-driven teaching and learning, fueled by students’ own passions and creative interests.
Tweet about Connected From the Start! Join Kathy and Powerful Learning Practice CEO Sheryl Nussbaum-Beach for a one-hour Twitter chat on Sunday, April 14 at 7pm EDT. Use the hashtag #plpnetwork to follow along and participate!
I found this story on my Facebook page today and I think if fits in nicely with our latest project at school, writing a book. My students laugh when I say we can sell a lot of books, not really believing, but I think the message from Brad Meltzer’s TED-Ed is a good one:
Dream big
Work hard
Stay humble
If we all can follow these three simple rules and be creative, believe that we could actually change history!
Even famous change-makers — like Martin Luther King — had concerns like everyone else. They worried about failure and were lonely sometimes, but that didn’t stop them from changing history.
To follow these seemingly simple bits of advice, people must fight through failure, continuing to work hard even when the first attempt at a big idea doesn’t work. And, perhaps most importantly, good ideas often require other people’s help.
Great message to inspire our youth. Source: Mindshift
I just heard on the news today that the government is planning a more rigorous action against schools who separate students according to ability. They are afraid of students being stigmatized and want to prevent the establishment of elite classes. That is my guess anyway. In reality students know very well who master the different subjects and are for the most part aware that students have different abilities, interests and learn accordingly.
I just participated in a workshop for school leaders in Bergen with guests from Alaska Highland Tech High. There they have a system for grouping students in according to ability and moving them up separately when they show mastery of a certain set of standards. This means you could study 7th grade math 8th grade English and 9th grade science the same year. You can move on to university level in science while you are doing 8th grade level in English, just as an example. You can find the standards on their web-site and the rubrics they use to assess. Their slogan is: Education for Leadership, Educating for Life.. I think it is important to remember that school is there for the students. Students’ voice is important. Let the students decide how and where they want to learn. In big groups, small groups, groups the progress quickly, groups that give you time to process what you learn, alone or with their friends. Together with the students monitor their learning and discuss the alternatives. How can we help you master the different subjects and move on to the next level? We are here to help you in your learning!
Listening to the minister of Education on the radio this morning made me think of the RSA Animate - Changing Education Paradigms by Sir Ken Robinson. Sadly I do not think Norway is the country that will be in front in that area. Nothing to be proud of because considering our resources, we certainly should.
How then do we organize our schools?
Schools are still pretty much organized on factory lines. Ringing bells, separate facilities, specialized into separate subjects. And we still educate children by batches. We put them through the system by age group. Why do we do that? Why is there this assumption that the most important thing these kids have in common is how old they are. Is this the most important thing? The date of manufacture? As Sir Ken Robinson, we all know kids who are must better than other kids at the same age in different disciplines. Or even different times of the day. Or better in smaller groups or in larger groups. Or sometimes they want to be on their own. If you are interested in learning you don’t start with this production line mentality, that is all about standardization. I, as Sir Ken Robinson believe we have to go in the exact opposite direction. That is changing the paradigm.
Students loose the ability to be creative after spending 10 years at school where they are taught that there is one answer, and that they can find it in the back of the book, (but don’t look. and don’t copy), because that is cheating! And outside schools that’t called collaboration. We have to recognize that most great learning happens in groups. Collaboration is the stuff of growth, if you atomize people and separate them and judge them separately, we form a disjunction between them and their natural learning environment.
Take time to watch this video and discuss it in your class!
Every educator wants to experience the moment of “flow” when all the goals are set and understood and work is moving along easily and naturally. When we read about engaging students in the classroom using technology and social media, authors often leave us with the impression that this work will flow gentle as a stream. When talking about motivation and learning in school, grit is most often left out of the conversation. Yet, according to Daniel Pink, the best predictor of success is grit, defined as perseverance and passion for long term goals.
