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Helping Learners Move Beyond “I Can’t Do This”
User Generated Education
JULY 24, 2017
I work part-time with elementary learners – with gifted learners during the school year and teaching maker education camps during the summer.
User Generated Education
Freedom to Learn
User Generated Education
AUGUST 12, 2017
I was painfully bored during my K-12 education. I looked forward to college anticipating that it would be different – more engaging, more interesting, more innovative. I was wrong.
Intentional Creativity
User Generated Education
AUGUST 20, 2017
Torrence, whose focus was on creativity, developed the Torrence Incubation Model of Creative Thinking (TIM) model. As emphasized in this video, embedding creativity into the curriculum can and should be a strong component of content area teaching and learning.
Beginning the School Year: It’s About the Learners Not the Content
User Generated Education
AUGUST 8, 2017
5 Costly Inventory Management Mistakes Schools Should Avoid
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If your school is like most, inventory and/or asset management plays a critical role in daily operations.
Introducing Design Thinking to Elementary Learners
User Generated Education
SEPTEMBER 25, 2016
Design thinking is an approach to learning that includes considering real-world problems, research, analysis, conceiving original ideas, lots of experimentation, and sometimes building things by hand.
Maker Education Card Game
User Generated Education
DECEMBER 5, 2015
I like and have always used games in my classrooms. One of my current educational interests is maker education. As such, I have begun creating games for maker education – see my first one, a board game, at Reflecting on the Making Process.
A Model of Good Teaching?
User Generated Education
DECEMBER 26, 2015
One of my guilty pleasures is watching MasterChef Junior, a cooking competition for 8 to 12 year olds, and as an educator, I have been analyzing it as a model for good teaching. My observations include: The challenges are hands-on and naturally engaging for these kids.
Universal Skills All Learners Should Know How to Do
User Generated Education
DECEMBER 5, 2014
This morning I was thinking about the things that all young people should know how to do regardless of income, geographical location, life goals, etc. I started a list – see below. Some have “always” been true – some are unique to this century of learning.
Join SETDA: Affiliate Memberships Now Accepted
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SETDA's Affiliate program connects non-profit education membership organizations with state leaders. SETDA's mission is to build the capacity of education leaders to improve learning through technology policy & practice. Benefits include: SETDA conferences, webinars and news feeds.
Being a Growth Mindset Facilitator
User Generated Education
APRIL 12, 2015
I was asked recently why I have a strong interest and innate understanding of the growth mindset. I believe it comes from a background of being an adventure educator, and even though it was not labeled as such, the adventure educator embraces a growth mindset when working with participants.
Team Building Activities That Support Maker Education, STEM, and STEAM
User Generated Education
AUGUST 14, 2015
Stages of Being a Maker Learner
User Generated Education
JULY 27, 2015
Discussions have occurred around some maker circles about what actually is making as related to maker education. I have proposed that the heart of making is creating new and unique things.
Learning: It’s All About the Connections
User Generated Education
MAY 31, 2015
I’ve written about connections before in It’s All About Connection. Today, though, I was thinking about all of the connections important for learning.
The Future Belongs to the Curious: How Are We Bringing Curiosity Into School?
User Generated Education
NOVEMBER 14, 2015
What is curiosity? The word is associated with the irregular form of the Latin verb cura , which can mean worry or care about or cure. The word closest in meaning is inquisitive, which also has a Latin root: quaere , to search into, to seek. ( How Can Teachers Foster Curiosity? ).
A Model for Teacher Development: Precursors to Change
User Generated Education
AUGUST 6, 2016
Too often teachers are passive recipients of professional development rather than being active agents of their own development and change.
An Educator’s Gift to Their Learners: Seeing Each One of Them
User Generated Education
JANUARY 2, 2016
One of the greatest gifts an educator can give to their learners is to see each one; really seeing each and every one of them. seeing each student’s uniqueness and interacting with each one based on that uniqueness. Some strategies to do this include: Listen More Than Talk.
Growth Mindset: GoBrain and Making a Splash
User Generated Education
NOVEMBER 26, 2014
A recent interest of mine has been the Growth Mindset. I have blogged and presented on this topic: The Educator and the Growth Mindset. The Educator with a Growth Mindset: A Staff Workshop. Growth Mindset: Personal Accountability and Reflection.
The Creativity Mindset
User Generated Education
MARCH 15, 2015
I absolutely love all of the emphasis on mindsets these days. There are growth mindsets (which I discuss in The Educator with a Growth Mindset: A Staff Workshop ) and maker mindsets (which I discuss in The Mindset of the Maker Educator ).
The Imperative of Experiential and Hands-On Learning
User Generated Education
DECEMBER 22, 2016
For the past several decades, I have had my feet in both elementary education and teacher training and development. Regardless of age, grade level, and setting, I include hands-on and experiential learning as a integral part of my instruction.
Maker Education: Pedagogy, Andragogy, Heutagogy
User Generated Education
JUNE 14, 2016
Maker education is currently a major trend in education. But just saying that one is doing Maker Education really doesn’t define the teaching practices that an educator is using to facilitate it. Maker education takes on many forms.
Why Social Media Education Is Needed In Schools
User Generated Education
FEBRUARY 25, 2016
Social media is an intimate part of a large majority of tweens’ and teens’ lives.
Educators as Lead Learners
User Generated Education
FEBRUARY 15, 2015
I have discussed educators as model learners before: The educator’s role has or should change in this age of information abundance or Education 2.0-3.0.
Today’s Education Should Be About Giving Learners Voice and Choice
User Generated Education
AUGUST 9, 2015
Some of the recurring themes of my conference presentations and blog posts include: Schools are doing Education 1.0; talking about doing Education 2.0; when they should be planning Education 3.0. We are living in an age of information abundanc. It is important to facilitate learner agency.
Doing Things at School That Can’t Be Done At Home
User Generated Education
FEBRUARY 28, 2016
Many kids and teens are spending a lot of their time doing solitary screen-related activities. This most often occurs at home with their own devices. We are also living in an age where practically any and all content can be found via the Internet.
Questions to Ask Oneself While Designing Learning Activities
User Generated Education
JANUARY 31, 2015
I absolutely love planning lessons from scratch. I just got a job teaching technology units for a summer camp for elementary age students. I can design and teach whatever I want – planning for a different theme each week.
The Other 21st Century Skills: Educator Self-Assessment
User Generated Education
JANUARY 16, 2015
I’ve posted about The Other 21st Skills and Attributes. This post provides links and resources about these skills as well as an educator self-assessment.
The Classroom or Library as a Maker Space
User Generated Education
JULY 2, 2017
Makerspaces, Maker Education, STEM, and STEAM are gaining lots of traction in Kindergarten though college level education. Articles, resources on social media, and conference presentations on these topics are proliferating at a rate that most educators are now familiar with maker education.
Sharing: A Responsibility of the Modern Educator
User Generated Education
MARCH 29, 2015
In a past post blog I discussed the idea that every educator has a story and that they should share those stories: Educators are doing amazing things with their learners in spite of the standards-based and accountability-driven movements.
Schools Need to Include More Visual-Based Learning
User Generated Education
JULY 11, 2015
When asked what my first language is, I often answer, “visual.” ” I think in images, prefer to be taught through images, and like to express what I know through images.
The Over Promotion of Failure
User Generated Education
APRIL 30, 2017
Almost daily I see posts on social media by educators promoting the benefits of failure. It often seems that there is a push to intentional embed failure into instructional activities. This always rubs me the wrong way. Failure has almost universal negative connotations.
How Do We Learn? How Should We Learn?
User Generated Education
MARCH 7, 2015
If I ask you or your students, “How do you learn,” how many of you could clearly articulate this process? If you can, are the strategies you’re using the best ones for learning?
Extreme Learners
User Generated Education
MARCH 10, 2016
The idea of extreme learners fits so nicely with my ideas of user-generated education. So what follows is an aggregate of ideas, videos, and graphics related to being an extreme learner. Milton Chen has stated, “Extreme learners aren’t so different from everybody else.”
Reflecting on the Making Process
User Generated Education
OCTOBER 5, 2015
My background is in experiential education. One of the strategies used in experiential education is debriefing or reflecting on the experience. In other words, learning from direct experience is not left to chance.
Cardboard Creations: A Maker Education Camp
User Generated Education
JUNE 18, 2017
This post discusses my Cardboard Creations Maker Education Camp that was taught to fifteen 5 to 12 year old learners for five days, 2.5 hours each morning during Summer, 2017. It is split into three sections: Rational for Using No Tech, Minimal Cost Materials. Some Pedagogical Perspectives.
Learning Needs a Context
User Generated Education
MARCH 21, 2015
This is a follow up to a post I wrote, How Do We Learn? How Should We Learn? The purpose of these posts is to encourage educators to examine practices they take for granted, implement without deep reflection of their efficacy.
Show Learners the Possibilities. And Then Get Out of the Way
User Generated Education
JULY 26, 2015
We are living in an age of advanced user-driven technologies, information abundance, and networked, participatory learning. It should logically follow, then, that education should take advantage of these amazing developments. As many of us in education know, it has not.
Approaching Marginalized Populations from an Asset Rather Than a Deficit Model of Education
User Generated Education
MAY 8, 2016
Too often marginalized populations (e.g., some populations of people of color, students from lower economic communities) are approached with a deficit model.
What are the characteristics of high performing schools?
User Generated Education
NOVEMBER 16, 2016
I am the unique position of having several types of education jobs. I teach online graduate courses in educational technology to in-service teachers. I am a cohort facilitator for student teachers; and I teach part-time gifted elementary students at two different elementary schools that serve Kindergarten through 6th grade students.
Is “Have a Growth Mindset” the New “Just Say No”
User Generated Education
SEPTEMBER 4, 2015
I’ve been interested in the ideas surrounding the growth mindset prior to it being coined as such by Carol Dweck. As part of my studying Education Psychology as part of my Doctoral studies, I delved into studying attribution theory.
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