“Never Eat Soggy Waffles!” Video Creates Deeper Learning

Reposted from ISTE:

“Never eat soggy waffles!” I thought this mnemonic device for remembering the points on a compass would be enough for my second graders to learn cardinal directions. As it turns out, all it did was enable my students to mindlessly fill in north, east, south and west on the test I had given them. They didn’t have a true understanding of which direction was which, and I needed to change that. I accomplished this by writing a music video with them.

That’s right, we created a music video to learn about cardinal directions. We started off by writing lyrics. Students worked individually, in pairs and as a whole class. I was surprised by how engaged every student was during the writing process. Students who typically despised writing were some of my most fruitful lyricists. It was a good reminder to me to teach writing in a variety of ways, ideally tied to a larger project.

My original plan was to end this project once we’d finished the song, but more than one student said, “So we are going to make a music video, right?” And so we did. As it turned out, creating the video was when the true learning happened…

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Watch the video on YouTube here.

Ideal Lengths for Social Media Posts [INFOGRAPHIC]

Ever wonder the optimal character count and word count for common social media posts? How about the ideal length of time it should take to view or listen to multimedia content? This infographic shares guidelines for optimal lengths for tweets, blog posts and subject lines, as well as SlideShare, Pinterest, YouTube, Ted Talks, podcasts and more. Consider them as helpful rules of thumb as you craft communications for your audiences.

Created by buffersocial and SumAll. See the original post here.

Window Open to Apply to be 2015 PBS LearningMedia Digital Innovator

Reposted from PBS Learning Media:

The 2015 PBS LearningMedia Digital Innovators Program is a yearlong, free professional development program designed to foster and grow a community of highly engaged, tech-savvy K-12 educators who are effectively using digital media and technology in classrooms to further student engagement and achievement. Applications accepted December 3, 2014 trough February 11, 2015.

PBS will select 100 applicants for the program: 70 Local PBS LearningMedia Digital Innovators and 30 Lead PBS LearningMedia Digital Innovators. Each group has its own set of benefits and responsibilities.  All 100 Local and Lead 2015 PBS LearningMedia Digital Innovators will receive one year of free professional development and benefits including virtual trainings, access to premium and exclusive resources, a free PBS TeacherLine course, invitations to special events, membership into a robust professional learning community, and networking and engagement opportunities with peers and thought leaders.

The 30 Lead PBS LearningMedia Digital Innovators will also receive a three day, all-expense paid trip to Philadelphia, PA to participate in the 2015 PBS LearningMedia Digital Innovators Summit on June 26 and 27, 2015 and to attend the ISTE Conference on June 28, 2015. Attendees will hear from renowned speakers and pedagogical experts, learn strategies for delivering classroom-ready best practices in digital learning, and network with like-minded peers. Check out the tentative schedule for an in-depth look at the Summit.

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How to take Public Ed to the Next Level and Generate $225 Trillion

Reposted from Forbes:

We set out to determine the costs and benefits of taking U.S. schoolkids from their middling global rankings to top five in the world, as measured by math scores and rates for high school graduation, college entry and four-year college completion.

There’s no other way to put this: The resulting numbers were big. Really big.The investment required to implement all five would run somewhere in the neighborhood of $6.2 trillion, spread over 20 years. Or $310 billion a year in today’s dollars. And the payoff, as calculated by factoring in all those additional, better-skilled high school and college graduates on our national GDP? Almost $225 trillion, spread over an 80-year time horizon, which incorporates an entire generation’s professional achievement.

There are, of course, numerous assumptions in this exercise, from the political (school leadership gains would require new collective bargaining agreements in many states) to implementation (initial forays into universal pre-K have produced results well short of our expectations). But we did encourage the researchers to be conservative in their approach. The blended-learning assumptions forecast none of the personnel or textbook cost savings that would almost surely come from having students learning in part via online tools. Teacher efficacy focuses solely on recruiting great new teachers, versus removing lousy ones. And so on…

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Blended Learning and the Teaching Profession [INFOGRAPHIC]

This infographic shows how blended learning is not about replacing teachers with technology, but rather empowering them with new opportunities.  The infographic previews the next DLN Smart Series paper “Improving Conditions & Careers: How Blended Learning Will Improve the Teaching Profession” that will be released later this month.

View the original posting of this image on Getting Smart here.

Inspire! Challenge! Excite! [VIDEO 7:23]

Derek Muller explores why many technologies have promised to revolutionize education, but so far none has. Now there is a glut of information and video on the internet so should we expect it to revolutionize education? This video makes the case it won’t, because technology is not inherently superior, animations over static graphics, videoed presentations over live lectures etc. and learning is inherently a social activity, interacting with others. “The job of  teachers is to inspire…to challenge….to excite. The most important thing a teacher does it to make every student feel like they are important…and to make them accountable for their learning.”

NYC Public Schools Lifting Cellphone Ban

Reposted from the Atlantic:

New York City’s public school district is gearing up to scrap a controversial policy forbidding its 1.1 million students from having cellphones on campus. The thing is, plenty of students are already ignoring the ban. It turns out some of the poorest kids in the city are the ones who will notice the change most.

For most of New York City’s 1,800 or so public schools, the ban on cellphones is little more than a line in the district’s discipline code. The out-of-sight, out-of-mind rule doesn’t appear to be in force at most schools. When discussing his plan in September to axe the policy, Mayor Bill de Blasio even acknowledged that his son Dante brings his cellphone to his school, Brooklyn Technical High.

In fact, some New York City teachers rely on student cellphones as tools in the classroom to help with tasks such as research projects. These classrooms become what Andrew Miller, a Tacoma-based educator who specializes in online learning, called “pockets of excellence.” But these kinds of pockets of excellence can’t exist at the 87 schools with metal detectors on campus because the security screening effectively bars kids from physically bringing their devices to class.

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