Digital Citizenship Resources

There is never a  shortage of excellent resources for teaching digital citizenship. The hardest part is often sifting through them all and working out which ones are most relevant. This is why I like the  EdTech Review  article on fantastic  resources for teaching digital literacy. Although not Australian based they are still very useful. In particular,  I have always been impressed with  the Common Sense Media classroom activities The infographic  above is also very age specific  for our junior school students. Click on the link to see what's on offer.

Wellington Binks Wins 2014 Readers' Cup

This year the ISC held its 3rd Readers' Cup at the  2014 Garnsey  Cultural Festival. The Readers' Cup is a competition for year 7 and 8's  that promotes reading as well as recognising its importance in the success of our students. Once again, the event was very successful and lots of fun for the participants. It was a very close competition with Wellington Binks winning by just 1 point. Congratulations goes to Alex Sayers, Ashley Singer, Will Johnson and Tom Finlay. The creative responses from each team were of a very high standard and certainly impressed the judges. Well done to all  House leaders and participating students for making this event  worthwhile.

John Hattie

With our focus on Visible Thinking and learning intentions this year it was great to read about Professor John Hattie's recent appointment as Chair of the Board of AITSL. John's research into how students learn is internationally acclaimed and I am not sure if his new role will take him away from being the  current director of the Melbourne Education Research Institute at Melbourne University.  Click on the image above to read about John's thoughts about how we should teach in a 2011 article from the Sydney Morning Herald. I found what he had to say about teachers talking less in class so as to encourage deep thinking by their students pertinent. Also liked what he had to say about how we should look at how students learn when they are playing video games.

11 Habits of Effective Teachers

 

With our recent conversations  about positive education I found this  post from Edudemic very relevant and worth posting. Have a feeling that I might have shown this before but nonetheless a second airing is warranted.Click on the image above to find out what the habits are.

Blended Learning

Over the next four weeks  I am going to provide you with a 5 part series of  how schools can  go about implementing a blended learning environment in their school setting. This program is from Fuel Education and they have found that there are 5 steps to having a successful program. These steps are:

• Strategy
• Alignment to curriculum
• Planning
• Implementation
• Review

This week Steps 1 and 2 have been covered by the videos below



Creating Your Strategy Checklist



Alignment Checklist

Are You Past,Present or Future Oriented?

Is your brain past, present or future oriented? Watch this very interesting video to find out? Social psychologist, Robert Levine has discovered that the closer you live to the equator the more you live in the present. We could have all guessed that one! However,interesting comments made about how students, particularly boys, have now been hard wired to have more control of their learning and delayed gratification is not high on their agenda. This is all because of the thousands of hours spent gaming.

Horizon Report

 





For your interest, each year I post about the latest  NMC Horizon Report that examines emerging technologies for their potential impact and use in teaching, learning, and creative inquiry within the K-12  environment.

This year the Report identifies "Rethinking the Role of Teachers" and the "Shift to Deeper
Learning Approaches" as fast  trends accelerating the adoption of educational technology over the next one to two years. The expectation is that there will be  an emphasis in the classroom on more challenge based,active learning. This will mean that learning will be  more student centred, allowing them to investigate and connect with their own lives and communities.

Six emerging technologies are identified across three adoption horizons over the next one to five years are:

1 year or less - BYOD and Cloud Computing

2-3 years - Games and Gamification and Learning Analytics.

4-5 years - The Internet of Things and Wearable technology

 

For more detailed information watch the video below.