Beginning with the 4 C’s, the key skills of 21st century education have been multiplying, with additions like compassion, culture and connectivity regularly making the cut. Encompassing the core values of 21st century learning, these C’s are fundamental in our understanding of changing pedagogy, and the role that technology plays. A powerful tool to drive these essential skills, adaptive technology maintains a focus on the primary C’s of 21st century education, incorporating each overlapping element in a non-linear path. With others embedded within, the following five skills remain central to personalized learning and it’s efforts in preparing students for 21st…
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Pedagogy and Technology: Integrating the 5 C’s of 21st Century Education
Mobile World Congress 2015: Combining Innovation for Better Education Solutions
On March 2nd, the annual Mobile World Congress is being held in Barcelona. The thrilling four-day event is set to welcome tech-thusiasts from all walks of life, showcasing and exploring “the edge of innovation.” “Connecting billions of people to the transformative power of the Internet and mobilising every device we use in our daily lives”, last year’s MWC opened its doors to over 85,000 attendees, 4,500 CEO’s, 1,800 exhibitors, and 3,900 press members representing 1,700 media outlets from 84 countries. Next generation learning platform, Fishtree, is set to make an appearance at the event, exhibiting its incredibly innovative software that…
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Technology for the Sake of Technology: The Problem with SAMR
When it comes to technology integration in schools, many are looking to the SAMR model for guidance. The Substitution Augmentation Modification Redefinition model offers an insight into how technology can be integrated into the teaching process, following the steps outlined. However, many educators are now turning away from the model, highlighting its over-emphasis on replacing traditional teaching methods, and its lack of focus on learning outcomes. Following the model’s guidelines, many educators suggest we are losing sight of why we are using technology in the first place, making it a case of technology for the sake of technology. Once technology…
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Why Real-Time Learning is the Future of Education
The real-time web has completely transformed the way we interact. With the ability to receive information as it’s published, virtual environments are making us more productive, and more connected, than ever before. Many of us already take real-time media for granted, using it instinctively to communicate without considering the impact it has on our relationships. Facilitating a more personal and one-to-one experience, real-time technology (RTT) is revolutionizing how businesses interact with their customers, how consumers interact with their content, and how we interact with those around us. Building new and improved relationships, the real-time web is making the world a…
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How to Help Your Students to Fail
You either succeed, or you fail. Many take this viewpoint when it comes to effort, forming the conclusion that you can only do one or the other. What’s often omitted from the discussion on success is the promise that failure makes, the many lessons it teaches, and the motivation it produces. An essential component of the learning process, failure is too often overlooked as an unfortunate setback, instead of embraced as an opportunity to progress. Within education, we’ve done it all wrong. Greeting students with “F” grades and low marks, failure is portrayed as a disappointment, and a major downfall…
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A Beginner’s Guide to Cloud-Based Learning
Not all learning environments should be virtual. Offering students the best possible learning experience requires pedagogy that’s flexible, collaborative, inclusive, and meaningful. This means integrating technology that works around your ideas, bringing learning outcomes to the fore. As innovative teaching models that maintain this focus increase in popularity, educators are moving to the cloud for more access, less hassle, and better solutions. The Benefits of Cloud With more schools looking to learning management systems for best practice, the need for cloud is becoming greater. Cloud-based learning essentially eliminates the need for any storage device, saving every lesson, activity, and resource…
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10 Ways Technology Helps Good Teachers to Become Great Teachers
#1. It Saves Time. Good teachers want to dedicate the majority of their professional time to teaching, as opposed to managing. Technology makes it possible to alleviate the pains of administration by providing the resources you need in an instant, allowing you to build a lesson in minutes, and keep track of every student’s progress in real-time. With all that taken care of, more time can be spent engaging students, instead of maintaining them. #2. It Works Around Them. As George Evans states: “Every student can learn, just not on the same day, or in the same way.” Despite the…
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Why Our Gifted Children Need More Support
The desire for fulfilment. The urge for a challenge. The yearning for more out of life. These are common emotions, familiar to most professionals who, at one stage or another, found themselves trapped in an unsatisfying job that failed to feed their appetite. Now imagine this feeling as a child: Day in, day out, at the same desk, begrudgingly carrying out the same mundane tasks that dramatically neglect to pose a challenge. As others around you struggle, you sit patiently waiting for the class to catch up, desperately scanning the four walls of the room for some form of stimulation,…
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What Drives Us? The Surprising Secret to Building Student Motivation
During a recent discussion on The Dropout Epidemic: What We Can Do to Keep Students in School, Steven A. Levy raised the question of motivation. Pointing out Dan Pink’s research on the The Puzzle of Motivation, he unveiled an ideal framework on which to understand and apply these theories to education, driving students to continue learning, constructing their own individual paths to success. Pink outlines how our current system operates in opposition to what actually drives us to succeed, dulling thinking, and blocking creativity. He places an emphasis on three essential factors that he suggests lead to better performance and…
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The Top 10 Qualities of Great Educational Leaders
1. Innovative An innovative leader is not afraid to implement new ideas and take risks. Without the belief that failure is an essential component of real success, a school can never reach its full potential. 2. Confident Confidence is contagious. With the right amount of confidence leading a school, staff and students are guaranteed to follow suit, inspired by the portrayal of inner strength and fearlessness that says: “I can achieve anything.” 3. Collaborative A great leader knows that success comes only through effective collaboration. By including staff-members in decision-making, and confiding in teachers for ideas, suggestions, and support, an…
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