In this day and age where it is a constant struggle to keep up with the latest web 2.0 technologies, Mashable offers us “35 Tools For Teachers, Tutors and Students“. It offers all kinds of tools that can help you do most of your planning including learning management systems, social networking communities for students, as [...]
For the love of poetry.
@Edu, after sharing with us, that the most common student response to her question, “What kinds of writing do you like to do?” is “Poetry!”, she points us to a perfect site for aspiring junior youth writers: The Young Writers Society, which is “Specifically created for young writers ages 13 [...]
Learn about Virtual Worlds
It seems as if all the junior youth are into virtual worlds these days. Raph Koster, the video gaming guru, points us to the “2008 Metaverse Tour Video” which is a video tour of almost all the major virtual worlds, whilst LightSpeed offers and excellent summary of points via its “Cartoon Networks [...]
Maryellen Weimer, through her experiences with knitting, she writes about “Deep learning”
“….Surface learning is equated with memorization and rote learning as opposed to deep learning generally laid alongside understanding. Actually, I’ve been thinking that deep learning is something more.
….Deep learning means making something your own, owning it, and fitting it into the framework of your [...]
Although, very short on information, it seems that at least the idea of what “Heekya” is planning, sounds very interesting. From their blog:
‘Heekya is a social storytelling platform. We aim to change the way you tell, share and discover stories on the internet.”
Mashable gives a slightly more detailed explanation of the service:
Currently in private beta, [...]
Chris Lehmann in “Why We Need Vision” writes some compelling stuff that is at once inspirational and practical. It was original written to address the question “How can Philadelphia improve its public education system?”
First killer point:
We can talk about all of the issues facing public education, but we have to fundamentally ask ourselves first what [...]
A particular paragraph of Deborah Meier’s recent article on “The Purpose of Small Schools” really grabbed my attention:
Small schools are an attempt to re-create, intentionally, the best of the family dinner table, the town meeting, the public square, the legislative process, the team, and the academy of thinkers—with as much of the diversity of the [...]
In “Videogames and learning: Individualization, simluation, and complexity”, Scott McLeod talks about three core ideas:
the individualization of learning
the simulation of authentic experiences
intellectual complexity
(Okay, so they may not be easy, but there are 3 of them!). Three notable quotes from each of these ideas are:
the individualisation of learning
Video games are structured so that learners constantly operate [...]
Baha’i Community of Canda via their blog “Transforming Neighbourhoods”, offers us two video clips (part 1 and part 2), from the where Jelana tells us, in her own words, the story of how a junior youth group started in her neighborhood and how it is contributing to the moral and spiritual education of the community’s [...]
Harold Jarche has an excellent summary and brief commentary on Haques’ “User Generated context” article. Although much of Jarche’s comments are in context of tertiary education, one can see how it could naturally extend to learning for secondary education, such as for the youth at junior high level. Jarche quite astutely summarizes it saying
Haque says [...]
