New Visual: 25 Success Features Characterizing 21st Century Teachers

2:08 PM  ,  

December 9, 2014
Here is a good visual that features some of the things successful teachers do differently. This infgraphic is based on an article written by Julie DeNeen which I would refer you to for more details on each of the 25 ideas included below. Read the list and see the ones that resonate with you and also identify the ones missing in your teaching pedagogy.



Here is a quick round-up of the 25 things successful teachers do differently:
  • Successful teachers have clear objectives
  • Successful teachers have a sense of purpose
  • Successful teachers are able to live without immediate feedback
  • Successful teachers know when to listen to students and when to ignore them
  • Successful teachers have a positive attitude
  • Successful teachers expect their students to succeed
  • Successful teachers have a sense of humor
  • Successful teachers use praise authentically
  • Successful teachers know how to take risks
  • Successful teachers are consistent
  • Successful teachers are reflective
  • Successful teachers seek out mentors of their own
  • Successful teachers communicate with parents
  • Successful teachers enjoy their work
  • Successful teachers adapt to student needs
  • Successful teachers welcome change in the classroom
  • Successful teachers take time to explore new tools
  • Successful teachers give their students emotional support
  • Successful teachers are comfortable with the unknown
  • Successful teachers are not threatened by parent advocacy
  • Successful teachers bring fun into the classroom
  • Successful teachers teach holistically
  • Successful teachers never stop learning
  • Successful teachers break out of the box
  • Successful teachers are masters of their subject



Follow us on : Twitter, Facebook , Google plus, Pinterest .

Read More

4 Powerful Apps for Creating Mind Maps on Chromebooks

11:31 AM  ,  

December 9, 2014
Here is a list I curated over the last weekend. The list features some of the best web tools teachers can use to create mind maps on Chromebooks. I have only included the ones I think are too simple and easy to use so any teacher can use them without any advanced technology knowledge. As I was trying these apps on my Chromebook, I discovered some glitches in the popular apps : blubber.us and Text to Mindmap so I did not include them, but you can try them out in your device if you want.

1- Lucid Chart

Lucidchart is an HTML5-based visual collaboration tool that makes drawing diagrams fast and easy. Work together with an unlimited number of others to create and edit diagrams in real time, with changes merged and synced instantaneously -- great for team collaboration.

2- MindMeister

MindMeister is another good app for creating mind maps.MindMeister is deeply integrated into Google Drive, allowing users to open and edit many mind map formats. Some of the things you can do with MindMeister include:

  •  Create, share and collaboratively edit mind maps
  • Import from Text, MindManager and Freemind
  • Export to Word, PowerPoint, PDF, image, MindManager and Freemind
  • Add icons, images, notes, links and attachments
  • Integrated live chat
  • Publish and embed maps
  • Task management and notifications


3- Mindomo

Mindomo allows you to visually outline complex concepts, tasks, ideas, and other related information in a structured form. Some of its features include:
  • Real-time collaboration
  •  Embedded video and audio files 
  •  Presentation Mode 
  •  Multiple layouts (mind map, concept map, org chart, tree org chart) 
  • Great variety of Import/Export formats 
  • Map customization by adding icons, colors, styles and map themes 
  •  Full map history, undo and redo functions 
  • Password protected mind maps 
  •  Comments and voting enabled on topics 
  • Multilevel numbering 
  •  Desktop version that enables users to work offline

Free online mind mapping web site, with realtime collaboration and cloud storage: Make a mind map online, free, and keep it in the cloud with Google Drive, Dropbox, GitHub and our free anonymous storage. MindMup is available everywhere: you can access your maps with a browser or a mobile device, and cloud storage ensures you have access to your data where ever you are, and the application works nicely with both desktop, tablet and mobile browsers.

Read More

Critical Digital Literacy Explained for Teachers

10:24 PM    

December, 2014
Critical digital literacy is one of the essential required competencies for the 21st century educator. In an era of unprecedented personal publishing, infobesity (information obesity) becomes a real issue. Teachers need to be able to critically  assess and evaluate the materials and knowledge they come across. This could be done through adopting a critical thinking lens to filter things that could otherwise unconsciously affect one's stance and interpretation of  a given meaning.

Juliet Hinrichsen and Antony Coombs from University of Greenwich developed this excellent framework to help you understand the concept of critical digital literacy. This framework is made up of 5 dimensions:

Source: http://goo.gl/fBdraV


1- Decoding:
"Learners need to develop familiarity with the structures and conventions of digital media, sensitivity to the different modes at work within digital artefacts and confident use of the operational frameworks within which they exist."

2- Meaning making
"This recognizes the agency of the learner as a participant in the construction of a text. Making meaning is a reflexive process in which the content, style and purpose of the text is in dialogue with the prior experience, knowledge and responses of the reader. Making meaning implies both understanding and interpretation".

3- Analysing
"Learners to develop the ability to make informed judgements and choices in the digital domain.They also need to be able to apply critical, aesthetic and ethical perspectives to the production and consumption of digitized material."

4- Persona
"Sensitivity to the issues of reputation, identity and membership within different digital contexts. The purposeful management and calibration of one's online persona. Developing a sense of belonging and a confident participant role."

5- Using
"Learners need to develop the ability to deploy digital tools appropriately and effectively for the task in hand. They also need to be able to solve practical problems dynamically and flexibly as they arise, using a range of methods and approaches, both individually and as part of communities."

Courtesy of Teachthought where I learned about this work.


Read More

The Digital Learning Wheel

10:25 AM    

December, 2014
Ring of Technologies is a beautiful visual wheel that displays a host of learning goals together with some examples of web tools to achieve them. To me this work  (created and shared by UAF eLearning Faculty Resources) represents the core of digitally-based learning. It also chimes in with what we have said about purposeful use of technology in instruction. Having clear goals about what you want to target in your teaching using technology will definitely help your learners make the best of that technology.
Here is an example of one of the readings of the different components of the wheel. For instance as a teacher keen on enhancing my professional development (goal), I can make use of social bookmarking websites or blogging platforms (tools ) to reach my purpose. Check out the other goals and web tools mentioned in this wheel and share with us what you think of it.

This wheel is also available for free download in PDF format from this link.

Read More

These Are The 4 Concepts Shaping 21st Century Learning

8:18 PM    

December, 2014
Today's learning landscape is enriched with a variety of new concepts that were to the recent past foreign  to many. Of course learning is a dynamic field and it will always keep developing as human knowledge progresses. But the last two to three decades in particular have witnessed the outburst of several new conceptions and theoretical frameworks that, among other things, attempt to capture the latest developments in learning . This cheat sheet features a number of these concepts.

I am also sharing with you the visual below which highlights three more concepts shaping the 21st century learning. To these I added the concept of Andragogy.

Source: http://goo.gl/MBwZfp

1- Andragogy
Andragogy is a teaching strategy developed for adult learners. Andragogy has been around for more than a century but it gained more momentum and came up to the surface in educational literature particularly with the work of Malcom Knowles. Andragogy marks a clear departure from the traditional pedagogy informing child learning in that it is predicated upon 5 assumptions related to the characterstics of adult learners :

  • 1. Self-concept: As a person matures his self concept moves from one of being a dependent personality toward one of being a self-directed human being
  • 2. Experience: As a person matures he accumulates a growing reservoir of experience that becomes an increasing resource for learning.
  • 3. Readiness to learn. As a person matures his readiness to learn becomes oriented increasingly to the developmental tasks of his social roles.
  • 4. Orientation to learning. As a person matures his time perspective changes from one of postponed application of knowledge to immediacy of application, and accordingly his orientation toward learning shifts from one of subject-centeredness to one of problem centredness.
  • 5. Motivation to learn: As a person matures the motivation to learn is internal (Knowles 1984:12)

Check out this page to learn more about Andragogy: 

                                        Related : Pedagogy Vs Andragogy

2-Heutagogy
Heutagogy is the study of self-directed learning and self- determined learning. While some think about Heutagogy as a separate methodology from Andragogy, several other scholars view it as an extension of Andragogy. Heutagogy is all about teaching learners how to learn. In this respect,  "heutagogy looks to the future in which knowing how to learn will be a fundamental skill given the pace of innovation and the changing structure of communities and workplaces.”
Here is a PDF document to learn more about Heutagogy.

3- Peeragogy
As for peeragogy, here are some definitions cited by Arenastudies:
“Peeragogy (which he refers to as “paragogy”), is a collection of “the best practices of effective peer learning.”
“It is also a theory of peer-to-peer learning and teaching that addresses the challenge of peer-producing a useful and supportive context for self-directed learning”.Charles Jeffrey Danoff .

Check out this post to learn more about Peeragogy.

4- Cybergogy
This is a completely novel concept to me and as I searched further on its meaning I came across this entry from Edutech Wiki:
One of the central elements of cybergogy is the intent to combine fundamentals of both pedagogy and andragogy to arrive at a new approach to learning (Carrier & Moulds, 2003). Cybergogy focuses on helping adults and young people to learn by facilitating and technologically enabling learner-centered autonomous and collaborative learning in a virtual environment. At the core of cybergogy is awareness that strategies used for face-to-face learning may not be the same used in the virtual environment.

Read More

Great Teacher-tested Games to Engage Your Students

10:41 PM    

December 7, 2014
Games can be fun and addicting. Well-designed educational games can make the act of learning just as fun and addicting. Here are some teacher-tested games to engage your learners and get them craving more. Parents may like these for holiday enrichment too.



Mathtopia
 Addictive like Candy Crush, but nutritious Math Facts for the brain.
 Learning organic chemistry is tough, but this teacher-created app makes a difficult subject much easier to understand.
A simple grammar game from Grammar Girl, who you may have seen on the Oprah Winfrey Show or Reader's Digest.
 A teacher-created puzzle-solving game to help develop mathematical conceptual thinking skills.

A collection of simple learning games and digital storybooks for kids 2 to 7, from ABCs to tracing to addition.


Want more? Check out these collections of tools.

Game-Based Learning - Math 
This is  curated by fifth grade teacher Monique Haug.
This is Curated by middle school language arts teacher Cary Fields.

Read More

Excellent Apps and Tools to Enhance Math Understanding

10:32 PM    

December, 2014
Technology offers a myriad of ways to learn, practice, and understand math. Math manipulatives, videos, games, interactive simulations, physical activities - all can help reinforce a deep conceptual understanding.


Understanding Math 
 Teaches children fluency in multiplication and division from 1 to 100.­ Start working with this great tool today!
 A whole lot of videos about numbers, from pi to googolplex to Graham's number.
 A whole lot of math games, organized by grades, skills, and Common Core State Standards.
 Play with interactive math and science simulations to gain a visual understanding of these concepts.
Create and print cardboard templates that can be folded into figures and objects.

Want more? Check out these collections of tools.
Apps to Promote Mathematical Thinking 
This is curated by elementary school teacher Glenda Stewart-Smith.
This one is curated by assistant technology coordinator Gwen Johnson.

Read More