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pedagogy across disciplines

This article pleads for a consideration what now is a full-blown reform in Finland (replacing subjects with topics) and seriously considered in the UK, as reported in this IMS blog: https://blog.stcloudstate.edu/ims/2015/03/24/education-reform-finland/

Broadening Pedagogical Knowledge by Learning from Other Disciplines

By: January 20th, 2016

http://www.facultyfocus.com/articles/teaching-professor-blog/broadening-our-pedagogical-knowledge-by-learning-from-other-disciplines/

there’s a long-standing and still fairly widely held belief that the teaching needed for a particular kind of content is unique. Unless you know the content, you can’t know how to teach it.

What and how we teach are linked, but there are other connections besides those between method and material, and those connections aren’t all unique to the discipline. All (well, almost all) teachers want students engaged, and student engagement in physics and philosophy doesn’t look all that different. All teachers are concerned with classroom management issues. If students are dealing more with their phones than the material, the content is irrelevant. All teachers have a responsibility to prevent cheating. All teachers aspire to use fair and equitable grading practices. Course design principles transcend disciplines. The features of a good multiple-choice question are not discipline specific. And then there are those student characteristics that challenge teachers in every field: passivity, lack of motivation, low self-esteem, less than adequate study skills, and excessive grade-orientation start the list.

leadership competencies

12 Critical Competencies For Leadership in the Future

http://qaspire.com/2016/01/06/leadership-skills-for-the-future

1. Develop an Adaptive Mindset

2. Have a Vision

3. Embrace Abundance Mindset

4. Weave Ecosystems for Human Engagement

5. Anticipate and Create Change

6. Self-Awareness

7. Be an Agile Learner

8. Network and Collaborate

9. Relentlessly Focus on Customer

10. Develop People

11. Design for the Future

12. Constantly Clarify and Communicate

Critical Competencies For Leadership in the Future

online students

How Students Develop Online Learning Skills

http://er.educause.edu/articles/2007/1/how-students-develop-online-learning-skills

1. Develop a time-management strategy.

2. Make the most of online discussions.

3. Use it or lose it.

4. Make questions useful to your learning

5. Stay motivated

6. Communicate the instruction techniques that work.
7. Make connections with fellow students.

 

record Skype calls on Mac

Two Ways to Record Skype Calls on a Mac

http://www.freetech4teachers.com/2016/01/two-ways-to-record-skype-calls-on-mac.html

Record video of a Skype call:
I use a rather simple method to capture video of a Skype call. I simply open Screencast-O-Matic on my Mac then frame the Skype the window. When I’m ready to start recording I simply press record on Screencast-O-Matic and capture the video. One flaw in this method is that I cannot use a headset during the call because it won’t capture audio from both parties. So make sure you’re in a quiet place and just rely on your Mac’s internal mic and speakers.

Record audio of a Skype call:
On a Mac you can record audio of a Skype call by using QuickTime. The screenshots below provide directions for recording a Skype audio call by using QuickTime. After recording your call you can take the audio file and use it Garage Band or another audio editing tool like Audacity to edit the audio.

Gref urged to radically change the Russian model of education

http://en.news-4-u.ru/gref-urged-to-radically-change-the-russian-model-of-education.html

He called to radically change the Russian model of education, beginning with kindergartens and ending with universities.

«We are trying to reproduce the old Soviet, absolutely worthless education system, we nephelem in children huge amount of knowledge», — said the head of Sberbank, adding that to change the model of education we had yesterday.

Herman Gref also stressed that he did not believe in the effectiveness of online education.

His statement also implies that in General, Russia has become a «non-downshifters»: was among the States that «lose», which did not have time to adapt our economy and entire social system to a new reality.

he got it totally right. It is pity that he talks only about Russian education. It will be even more sad, if the US education does not dig into his words

Gref has included Russia in the list of countries of downshifters

http://freenews.xyz/2016/01/15/gref-has-included-russia-in-the-list-of-countries-of-downshifters/

http://www.dnevnik.bg/sviat/2016/01/16/2687032_erata_na_petrola_prikljuchi_rusiia_e_sred/

is engagement learning

How to Determine if Student Engagement is Leading to Learning

http://ww2.kqed.org/mindshift/2016/01/14/how-to-determine-if-student-engagement-is-leading-to-learning

Here are some questions that will assist in determining if engagement is leading to actual learning:

• Is the technology being integrated in a purposeful way, grounded in sound pedagogy?
• What are the learning objectives or outcomes?
• Are students demonstrating the construction of new knowledge? Are they creating a learning product or artifact?
• How are students applying essential skills they have acquired to demonstrate conceptual mastery?
• What assessments (formative or summative) are being used to determine standard attainment?
• How are students being provided feedback about their progress toward the specific learning objectives or outcomes?
• Is there alignment to current observation or evaluation tools?

disconnect the Russian way

Stalin, Siberia and salt: Russian recluse’s life story made into film

British director to tell the tale of Agafia Lykova, the only remaining member of a family of Old Believers who fled to remote Siberian taiga in 1936

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/nov/12/russia-recluse-siberia-stalin-agafia-lykova-documentary

When I finally met Agafia, what surprised me was that rather than feeling like a primitive situation, it felt like arriving in the future – to a world with no technology, the vast forest littered with discarded space junk. It is an incredible and beautiful place

Formative Assessment Tools

Use these tech tools to boost engagement while also getting great feedback about what your students know.

March 26, 2014 Jeff Knutson
Infuse Learning
Infuse Learning is a tablet-based student response system for learning through conversation and collaboration. Teachers can build assessments and track students’ responses. The drawing-response tool (for sketches and diagrams) is a powerful feature here. Also, there’s native-language support for English learners. Read full review.
Kahoot
Kahoot is a game-based classroom response system. Teachers can create quizzes using content from the web. Questions appear on a class screen; without needing an account, students answer in real-time on a mobile device. Kahoot is different in that it creates an engaging competition. Students can also create their own quizzes and assessments. Read full review.
Socrative
Socrative is a student response system with a variety of activities: quizzes, assessments, games, and even exit notes. Teachers control the flow of exercises; students respond in real time. It generates reports to help teachers track learning over time. Read full review.
Turnitin
Turnitin is mostly a tool for promoting originality in students’ writing (or catching plagiarism). However, it’s also a tool to support the writing process — from teacher feedback and grading to peer evaluation and review. There’s also a handy discussion forum feature, with built-in moderation. Read full review.
Poll Everywhere
Poll Everywhere isn’t just for schools, but works well as a classroom response system. Students can respond via text message, Twitter, or a Web browser; teachers can project the results on the Web, or in a PowerPoint or Keynote presentation. Read full review.
TodaysMeet
TodaysMeet is a backchannel to help an audience and presenter connect in real time. Like a closed version of Twitter, posts are limited to 140 characters. Teachers can offer students a live stream for discussion, addressing issues on-the-spot, or as an after-lecture reflective activity. Read full review.
Backchannel Chat
Backchannel Chat is just for educational use. Students don’t have to enter any personal information into the system, and teachers can save, search, and archive discussions. Teachers also get a lot of control with customizable moderation options, a room-locking feature, and filtering for unwelcome content. Read full review.
GoSoapBox
is a student response system offering teachers more than a standard quiz/poll tool. The social Q&A feature allows students to vote the most relevant questions to the top, and a “Confusion Barometer” tool lets teachers track understanding throughout a lesson. Read full review.
Blendspace
Blendspace allows teachers to collect resources from the web and create a customizable, blended-instruction experience for students. Formative assessment tools are built in, allowing multiple question types, and the ability to track students’ progress over time. Read full review.
Collaborize Classroom
Collaborize Classroom allows teachers to create an online classroom community for learning — a home-base for online discussion forums, polls, assessments, and student-driven projects. There are differentiation tools and customized learning opportunities for individuals and small groups. Read full review.

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Class Quiz Games with Quizizz (an Alternative to Kahoot)

Quizizz is an alternative to Kahoot, and there’s also a lot for educators to like. It is very similar to Kahoot, with a few key differences.

Just like Kahoot, the teacher (or student host) chooses a quiz to begin. A five digit game code is provided. Players point their browsers to join.quizzizz.com and input the game code, along with their names. If players are using smartphones or tablets, I display the join link as a QR code.

Quizizz takes a different approach. No projector is necessary becauseplayers see questions and answer options on their own screens. The question order is randomized for each student, so it’s no easy for players to cheat. With Quizizz, players don’t have to wait for the whole class to answer a question before they continue to the next one.

So, Quizizz is player-paced while Kahoot’s pace is determined by the teacher or host. This is the major difference and can be a benefit or a drawback. If you want to pause after each question, then Kahoot is better. The class can stop and discuss after each question, immediately addressing misconceptions. With Quizizz, players zip through questions at their own pace, limiting all discussion to after all questions have been answered.

Twitter in journalism

‘Everyone on Twitter is talking about it’ is not the same as everyone talking about it

Trapped in their self-referential Twitter bubble, journalists often fail to realize that social media doesn’t represent the whole world

http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2016/jan/12/twitter-talking-journalists-social-media

Over the past few years, Twitter’s status as a platform for public debate is a dog-whistle platitude that has become the gilded shield of First-Amendment-waving journalists everywhere, like our very own #NotAllMen hashtag, to justify the mishandling – and, in some cases, even endangerment – of our sources for digital stories (and, yes, tweets should be considered sources).

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