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read moreVolunteering abroad and creating a global classroom
When I visited Kegalle, Sri Lanka to volunteer with elephants, I also had the opportunity to teach English to orphan girls in the community. Despite having little teaching experience and a language barrier, I found it easy to relate with the orphans, and it turned out to be an amazing learning experience for everyone. The faces of these orphans, their personalities and their kind and innocent nature still resonate with me. They will not be forgotten as I return to my comfortable life in the States. I still aim to help them from here in the...
read moreMy Students Put Their 21st Century Skills to the Test
This exciting and demanding opportunity for my students to serve as ejournalists at Canada’s National Rural Congress is the “exam” I’ve been preparing them for. I think this is the future of education: authentic tasks; embedded, mobile, BYOD technology. What students can memorize and spew back on a Biology or English final has no ability to tell me how they will perform in a high pressure situation like this. But I think they’re up for the task.
read moreJuggling Plates, Leading Change
In her new position as Westtown School’s Director of Teaching & Learning, Margaret Haviland says she is “mindful of the many ’21st century learning’ advocates who hold up for us a world in which our students will work in jobs that have yet to be created and likely will hold numerous jobs over the course of their lives. I see this school year as one of living into that experience as I sort through what this new position I’ve accepted will look like.”
read moreUltricies Risus Adipis
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read moreInquiring About Teacher Inquiry
In year two, our Digital Learning Collaborative teams look at what they’ve learned and apply it in their classrooms. Using an inquiry model, we ask the teams to evaluate what impact their use of technology is having on students. But more often than I’m comfortable with, teams balk at this point in the process. Some of them do not want to do this work. That keeps me up at night.
read moreMeet our team: Brenda Sherry
Powerful Learning Practice has expanded its staff and brought some fascinating new minds (and fresh ideas) to our team. We’d like to introduce our team to you, one by one, and so we’ve come up with seven questions for each of them so you can have a little peek into what they’re thinking and who they are.
read morePBL in Primary: Making Up the Rules
Science and health lend themselves easily to PBL (passion or project-based learning) in my mind. But I wasn’t sure how I was going to make it all work in a social studies unit about relationships, rules and responsibilities. I want this to be based on what the students are interested in. Yet there really is nothing about the words “relationships,” “rules” and “responsibilities” that has the ability to inspire passion in most six-year olds. But then I thought about our six Nintendo DS gaming devices.
read moreWhat Is Creativity?
School/Cohort: Australia’s Connect U Team Name: Creativity Team members: Mel Cashen, Jodi Woodward, Michelle Blanksby, Kynan Robinson, Kristen Swenson, Simone Hobbs, Kimberley Hall, Elyse Gill, Clare Rafferty Problem, Issue, or Possibility: What is Creativity? What do learners need to be creative? How do you assess creativity? How do you create a creative environment? Objectives and Assessment: Our main goal for PLPConnectU is to create an integrated (cross-curricular) unit with our topic being Creativity. Once completed, this unit plan...
read moreHow Does Blogging Improve Students’ Reading and Writing?
Team Name: New Literacies Team Members: John Thomas, Trish Dower, Matt Scott, Ray Brookman, Richard Lambert, Suzie Janssen, Kathryn Hamilton, Alyson Leete, Michelle Johnson School: Winters Flat PS, Castlemaine PS, Pleasant Street Primary School, Berwick Primary School, Kalinda Primary School, Bendigo Senior Secondary College, Arthurs Creek PS, Streeton PS Abstract: Our team began by discussing a range of new literacies including online research, wikis, texting, blogging and micro-blogging. We then narrowed our focus to one key new literacy...
read moreAbout
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