Powerful Learning Practice Blog

Zac Hawkins' Plea for Classroom BYOD

At the beginning of the year, when teacher Jamie Weir invited her high school students to bring their mobile technology into her classroom, Grade 12 student Zac Hawkins’ first thought was “Easy class.” He couldn’t, he says, “bring myself to take the concept of using technology in the classroom seriously — more than likely because I’ve been taught all of my life that technology is not meant for the classroom and that school is a paper-and-pencil-only environment.”

Our Skype Adventures: Creating Connected Learners in a Global Classroom

Skype enables students to connect, collaborate, and communicate with students across the globe. It creates an opportunity for students to learn from each other, to have authentic audiences for their work, and to meet musicians, authors, and others who can further their learning. The possibilities are truly endless. Skyping is no longer a novelty — a once-in-awhile special event. It’s becoming a routine part of being an effective 21st century teacher.

How Do We Teach Critical Thinking in a Connected World?

Along with creativity, collaboration, and communication, critical thinking is one of the four components of learning in the 21st century. Unlike the other three, critical thinking is often difficult to reduce to bite-size pieces of understanding and challenging to teach to others.

SAT Subject Tests invite shallow learning

Every state requires high school students to take a US History survey course. For the makers of the SAT Subject Test, every event, every President, every person of note is of equal importance and equally likely to show up on the examination. If I were a college admissions director I would want an assessment that sought to tease out a young person’s sense of what it means to be an engaged citizen, not how many facts they know about President James Garfield.

Opening the Curtain on Lurking

Our player is me: Stephanie, a second-year fourth grade teacher and novice player on the teacher-tech stage. I could be any one of the many teachers on a similar journey. I would venture to say that we all experience bouts of stage fright at some point in our careers. It is normal. Expected, even. We ask ourselves the same questions: What do I have to offer that someone else can’t supply? What good will my opinion do? Hasn’t my question been asked countless times before?

Cathy Beach loves learning and transforming her 21st century classroom

PLP eCourses attract participants from across the globe to learn and grow with one another. Over the next few weeks, we will feature interviews with current and past PLP eCourse participants. We’ll ask participants to share information about themselves, why they chose PLP eCourses and what they are up to professionally.

Flipping Bloom's Taxonomy

I think the revised Bloom’s Taxonomy is wrong. I agree that the taxonomy accurately classifies various types of cognitive thinking skills. It certainly identifies the different levels of complexity. But its organizing framework is dead wrong. Here’s what I propose. In the 21st century, we flip Bloom’s taxonomy. Rather than starting with knowledge, we start with creating, and eventually discern the knowledge that we need from it.