In a recent TED Talk entitled “I’m Seventeen”, Kate Simonds challenges adults to try something new: To listen to teens. Instantly quashing our assumptions that she has achieved something incredible, done something “worthy of our attention”, to claim the stage at the tender age of seventeen, Kate goes on to question, “What makes me worth listening to?” Describing her efforts to ‘gain’ the respect of her audience, she explains how, unlike the other speakers on that stage, their respect was not something she initially had. Why? Why is Student Voice Ignored? Student voice has long been ignored and belittled by…
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Why Don’t We Listen? Harming Education by Ignoring Student Voice
Why is the Student-Teacher Relationship So Important?
For a long time now, we’ve been looking at how to adjust education to better reflect the changing world around us. But as the technology piles up and the innovation spreads, are we losing sight of what makes a learning environment truly effective, and what really drives better teaching and learning? While technology allows for more voice, choice and control, teacher-student relationships lie at the heart of how this technology is used, and how it impacts the teaching and learning experience for all involved. Built on support, trust, and mutual respect, the groundwork for good relationships generally begins in the…
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How is Blended Learning Revolutionizing K-12 Education?
Blended learning is widely considered one of the most significant instructional reforms ever to hit K-12 education. Learning in part through the use of digital and online media, students undertaking blended learning programs pursue a more diverse course of study, gaining an element of control over time, place, path, or pace. According to Michael B. Horn and Heather Staker in The Rise of K–12 Blended Learning, “In the year 2000, roughly 45,000 K–12 students took an online course. In 2009, more than 3 million K–12 students did.” The speed with which online learning is accelerating has made it virtually impossible…
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5 Habits of Highly Innovative Educators
#1. Connect Constantly Regardless of the many curveballs that may be thrown their way during a typical school day, innovative educators are always connected. With a base camp on Twitter, they move from hashtag to hashtag, sharing, connecting and learning, branching out regularly to other social media platforms to expand their reach. Embracing helpful feedback, discovering exciting concepts, and constructing new ideas, these educators then attempt to import their new-found expertise to the classroom, turning theory into practice, and ideas into movements. #2. Self-Assess Hourly With every class delivered, innovative educators try to make time for self-assessment. Analyzing each lesson,…
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Pedagogy and Technology: Integrating the 5 C’s of 21st Century Education
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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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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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 Do’s and Don’ts of Differentiating Instruction
#1. Do Get to Know your Students First Knowing your students is the first step to differentiating your teaching. With a better understanding of your students’ strengths and weaknesses, you can ask the following questions: What do they need? How do they learn best? How can I challenge them in the right way? What would help them succeed? Although finding this out can prove a challenge, by taking the time to analyze each student’s learning, testing out different methods, and incorporating technology to help manage the task, you’ll soon find you know more than you think. #2. Don’t Take on…
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