Today is that day: July 5, 2010.

Welcome to the future everyone!

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1. The Future: Where “winging it” becomes best practice

This book is an excellent resource on brain research and how it fits in with our students.  Though the book is 10 years old, each chapter provides helpful information on different categories.  There are chapters on how the brain develops, enriching the brain, motivation, stress, emotions, etc.  Each one provides information and ideas on how to help students according to how their brains are functioning.  Many helpful diagrams and pictures are also included, making it an easy read.

Jensen, E. (1998). Teaching with the brain in mind. Alexandria, VA: Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development.

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2. Teaching the male brain: How boys think, feel, and learn in school. James, A.
3. The Teen Brain Pt 5: Making Learning Meaningful

This article gave an example of brain-based teaching strategies for each letter in the phrase, BRAIN BASED.  It elaborated on the:

• Brain’s time clock,
• Repetition, Active learning,
• Images,
• Novelty,
• Be colorful,
• Automatic learning,
• Social brain,
• Elicit emotions, and
• Developing thinking skills.

It gave great statistics to back up some of the ideas, and gave examples of many ways to use these ideas to create a much more enriched classroom environment.

Hileman, S (2006). Motivating students using brain-based teaching strategies. The Agricultural Education Magazine, 78(4), 18-20.

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2. Teaching the male brain: How boys think, feel, and learn in school. James, A.
3. 3 Techniques for Brain Based Differentiation

Will Richardson does a phenomenal job of laying out everything needed to both initiate and defend the use of blogs and wikis in the classroom.  While I have already used a wiki within my classroom, this book provided the pedagogical reinforcement that I to some degree already could have used to defend such use in my classes.

Early in the book, Richardson states,

“It is less about blogs and wikis and podcasts than it is about the educators behind them who are using them so creatively to motivate students to learn more deeply and contribute what they know to the amazing body of knowledge that is the World Wide Web” (vii).

For one, teachers can use these technologies to engage students who are not easily engaged.  This alone is exciting.

Richardson outlines three goals for his book.

• First, “To give educators some context in terms of what these technologies mean for our society as well as for education.”
• Second, he looks to “challenge and motivate teachers to think differently about their classrooms and the potentials of technologies discuss in terms of pedagogy and curriculum.”
• Lastly, the book aims to “share enough of the ‘how to’ needed to get teachers started using these tools right away” (vii-viii).

Richardson later focuses on the importance of securing the use of these technologies, citing the importance of educators’ communicating with colleagues, administrators, students, and parents alike.  These technologies also neatly concentrate student writing and reflections in a format that is user-friendly to both the instructor and the students, for both various types of assessment and for potential portfolio work (23).

Of course, as an English teacher, the publishing aspect is also exciting.  My favorite line in the book was as follows:

“Writing stops; blogging continues.  Writing is inside; blogging is outside.  Writing is monologue; blogging is conversation.  Writing is thesis; blogging is synthesis” (31).

Every English teacher stresses process, process, process.  The use of a wiki or blog can reinforce this and then some!  And of course, the highest level of teaching takes place, theoretically, in a student-centered classroom.  These technologies allow for such realities, once developed within the classrooms culture.

Richardson cites,

“In using wikis, students are not only learning how to publish content; they are also learning how to develop and use all sorts of collaborative skills, negotiating with other to agree or correctness, meaning, relevance, and more.  In essence, students begin to teach each other” (65).

Toward the end of the book, Richardson cites a number of “big shifts” in education that could occur using these technologies, including:

• open content (not confined to textbooks that can quickly become outdated);
• 24/7 access to learning and to some degree, teachers; student collaboration;
• teachers getting in on conversation instead of lecturing;
• students’ knowing where rather than what, as in being able to access resources to find answers instead of regurgitating information;
• moving from “interactiveless” readers to collaborative readers;
• using the web as a notebook of sorts;
• writing digitally rather than solely on paper;
• focusing on the product of learning instead of the testing of learning; and
• reinforcing “contribution, not completion, as the ultimate goal” (131-132).

Richardson, W.  (2006).  Blogs, wikis, podcasts, and other powerful web     tools for classrooms.  Thousand Oaks, CA:  Corwin Press.

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1. Educational uses of blogs and wikis. Flierl, R. and H. Fowler.
2. The grades that vanished, and some other threats to students’ data. Gnatek, T.
3. Hesitant about blogs and wikis? Read this!

This article explained how the adolescent brain is still growing and that it’s part of how their brain learns to test the limits of the environment.  It goes on to detail how best to work with adolescents, with ideas such as continually teaching social and behavioral skills throughout the school year, and keeping the expectations clear.

Graham, K, & Prigmore, E (2009). Order in the classroom. Leadership, 38(5), 32-33.

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1. Active learning: creating excitement in the classroom. Bonwell, C.C. & Eison, J.A.
2. Teaching the Teen Brain.
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Children are researchers.  They will constantly question who’s in charge and what types of behaviors they can get away with.  Teachers need to set limits in the classroom to avoid disruptive behaviors to even take place.  This article mentions the six properties of effective consequences as well as appropriate and inappropriate ways of handling a variety of situations that students may test against their teachers.

Mackenzie, R. (1997).  Setting limits in the classroom.  American Educator.  32-43.

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1. Order in the classroom.
2. Active learning: creating excitement in the classroom. Bonwell, C.C. & Eison, J.A.
3. Literature circles: voice and choice in the student-centered classroom. Daniels, H.

Ray covers the basics of using a weblog (blog) in the classroom at literally any educational level, K-12.

Dubbing them “edublogs”, Ray cites four great ways to incorporate blogs into the classroom, including:

• using them to communicate information to students and parents,
• to provide instructional resources and useful links,
• to allow students the opportunity to collaborate with one another on various projects without being in the classroom itself, and
• to showcase student work and projects, like poetry and photographs of project work.

Ray also highlights some cons involved in using blogs as part of a curriculum.  First, she looks at the accessibility for students.  Her greatest recommendation is that,

“teachers should determine whether or not students have computer and internet access at home before assigning edublogs as instructional tools outside of the school environment.”

She also notes that accessing “Kids’ Rules for Online Safety” at http://www.safekids.com/ is a must for teachers who “post class work on an edublog – whether text, drawings, or pictures” (177).  Also, no names, addresses, or phone numbers should be associated with students in a direct manner.

Good points in this article for any beginning “edublog” user.

Ray, J.  (2006).  Welcome to the blogosphere:  the educational use of blogs. Kappa delta pi record:  175-177.

Related posts:

1. Educational uses of blogs and wikis. Flierl, R. and H. Fowler.
2. Blogs, wikis, podcasts, and other powerful web tools for classrooms.
3. Hesitant about blogs and wikis? Read this!

This article explained how boys are scoring lower than girls on reading tests, and how the gap continues to grow as students get older.  It lays out different ways to get boys more interested in reading, and explains how their brains are not as ready for some activities as soon as girls are.

Giving variety and choices, and allowing boys to focus on plot instead of emotions and feelings are just two examples of what the article says can be done to get boys more involved in reading in the classroom.  By getting them more interested in reading, their tests scores and the gap that we see will begin to improve.

Costello, B (2008). Leveraging gender differences to boost test scores. The Education Digest, 73(9), 32-35.

Related posts:

1. Sax, L. Why Gender Matters
2. Closing gender gaps in science. Saunders, J., Nelson S.
3. Teaching the male brain: How boys think, feel, and learn in school. James, A.

Cooperative learning is not necessarily having students work in the same group of four for every project throughout the year.  Instead teachers turn their focus on implementing a variety of structures in their teaching methods.  Using different cooperative learning methods mentioned in this article, teachers are able to meet the learning needs of every student.

Kagan, S.  (1989).  The structural approach to cooperative learning.  Educational
Leadership. 47(4). 12-15.

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1. Cooperative learning: building a democratic community
2. Best practice: new standards for teaching and learning in America’s schools.
3. The Case for Collaborative Learning.

Poling, who is an administrator in Maryland, looks at the span of uses that blogs can have in a school environment, including:

• individual blogging,
• classroom blogging,
• collaborative blogging, and
• staff development blogging.

Her biggest statement is regarding increased motivation she observes in students who are blogging as part of curriculum:

“[B]ringing children and adults together in an online setting to build communication and deeper understanding, truly motivates children to learn and grow” (12).

She states that while individual blogging can be effective, blogging as part of a class is especially powerful because it “helps build communication and collaboration among students”(12).

In addition, she compares blogging to journaling with a positive edge to technology:

“Handwritten reading response journals allow students to communicate only with the instructor.  Students are motivated not only by the use of technology and the ability to type rather than use pencil and paper but also by the audience they have when writing online” (13).

Lastly, she cites growth as something an educator can observe over the course of a semester and/or school year.   Because the blog can become a portfolio of sorts, students can also observe their growth as writers, thinkers, and collaborators/debaters of ideas.

Poling, C.  (2005, March).   Blog on:  building communication and collaboration among staff and students.  Learning and leading with technology.  Vol.  32, No. 6:  12-15.

Related posts:

1. Inspiring through collaboration. Sullo, B
2. Wiki, blog, or moodle? Fryer, W.
3. Mining the internet: a space for “writing without writing.”